IT'S GAMEDAY!!!!!!!!!

[MarkL]

I'm thoroughly disappointed and I hope Babers shuts the hell up about his stupid offense.

The offense took a bit to get moving, no shocker there as dropped passes were a culprit, but the offense was fine and it will be solid to great all year long. Don't lose sleep there. Lose sleep over taking a top 10 nationwide defense with several senior starters and allowing such terrible passing and total yards and points.

[Schadenfreude]

If we have a new defensive coordinator next week I wouldn't complain.

This. I just don't understand what happened to us tonight.

[Schadenfreude]

c'mon...you give up 17 yards on a third and 16? F**k me running...

That was unreal.

[BGSU33]

c'mon...you give up 17 yards on a third and 16? F**k me running...

That was unreal.

That play pretty much summed up our defensive effort in a nutshell.

[Globetrotter]

I don't know if I'm mad or shocked. How do you take one of the top defenses in the country and then just get absolutely demolished by what will probably be an average 2014 offense?

We were completely out-coached. It's not a talent issue, because you can see the offensive talent is there. Even defensively you can see some talent and we know a majority of these guys produced last year. You can tell it is a coaching/scheme issue because the same things were happening all night - screens, guys WIDE OPEN, no pressure at all, 10 yard cushions. If I can identify those issues, how is an adjustment not made? Shouldn't someone have said, "gee, our defense got Hulksmashed in the first half because we didn't defend screens and they destroyed us on underneath stuff; we should probably do something about that." Not one single adjustment.

It's too soon to start calling out Babers because we have all season left and this game means nothing in the MAC. Wait, no it isn't! You don't give up 59 points to Western freaking Kentucky and get off scotch free. You had the best defense in the MAC! Are you kidding me?! How does that happen?

I'm worried. I wasn't sold on a win, but I didn't think THAT would happen. It almost feels like everything Clawson did right for the program is gone - like we've taken a step back 5 years.

Not almost. It feels like Brandon is our coach again.

[MarkL]

Of course it's s coaching issue. It's s new staff teaching a scheme that is a complete 180 from what Clawson was doing. I'm disappointed in the results (didn't see the game) but to act like we were not going to see some growing pains seems a bit short sighted to me. Personally I believe Babers's system can and will win here. It's just going to take time.

If you wanted to keep the Clawson momentum you don't hire a coach like Dino. But I'm not about to write him off yet. I believe in this style of football.

I am by no means writing off the head coach. Babers is a great coach, no doubt. I believe in the offense and it showed some great signs, including scoring on four straight drives at one point. I am completely upset about how the defense looked unprepared and the defensive coaches did not adjust when things went poorly. The coaches on the defensive side of the ball did not put their players in a good position to win.

[Falconwriter]

Of course it's s coaching issue. It's s new staff teaching a scheme that is a complete 180 from what Clawson was doing. I'm disappointed in the results (didn't see the game) but to act like we were not going to see some growing pains seems a bit short sighted to me. Personally I believe Babers's system can and will win here. It's just going to take time.

If you wanted to keep the Clawson momentum you don't hire a coach like Dino. But I'm not about to write him off yet. I believe in this style of football.

I am by no means writing off the head coach. Babers is a great coach, no doubt. I believe in the offense and it showed some great signs, including scoring on four straight drives at one point. I am completely upset about how the defense looked unprepared and the defensive coaches did not adjust when things went poorly. The coaches on the defensive side of the ball did not put their players in a good position to win.

All of the defensive breakdowns and poor play fall directly on Baber's shoulders. He's the one who put that defensive coaching staff in place.

He knew what he had coming back, and the style they played on defense that was so successful last year. Instead of hiring people who coached in a similar style, and trying to maintain continuity on that side of the ball, he hired coaches with (apparently) a different philosophy.

He could have still implemented his uptempo offense and maintained a stalwart defense IF he had taken the time to find the right coaches to fit the personnel he knew would be on the field for defense. It seems obvious after only one game, he did not do that. He presumed that "his" coaches could make defensive scheme changes and still maintain a quality defense.

It's fairly obvious from the early results that he was wrong.

The real test of a good coach (if he is indeed a good coach) will be how quickly he resolves this. If he lets it fester the remainder of the season, then he'll quickly lose whatever good will he had after his hiring. It's quite obvious to me that the "honeymoon" is over.

Time to go back to the real world.

[MarkL]

Now that I've had a chance to sit down and type, my thoughts on the game. Starting with offense.
- Offense really looked good. They started slow due to dropped passes, a missed FG, and an odd decision to go for it on fourth and three in easy FG range. Write the slow start up to pregame jitters.
- Offense at one point scored on four straight drives. How often has that happened the last two seasons (except against FCS teams and EMU)?
- Matt Johnson was very sharp. As expected.
- I think he only missed on about one or two passes. Most of his misses were on miscommunications or drops.
- The receiving corps is fast. A few weird drops though.
- Ronnie Moore is really fast.
- We have some good size in the receiving corps.
- Especially Heath Jackson. Sans the first dropped pass of the game, he played great. He’s our only senior starting receiver so I hope he has a terrific senior season because he deserves it. He seems to be a high character guy who worked his tail off to become a starter.
- We miss Alex Bayer. Big time.
- Offensive line was for the most part good.
- Especially in not getting gassed by the speed of the game. That was a huge concern of mine going into the season so that concern is alleviated.
- Fred Coppet is a beast. He and Travis Greene are going to have a great season.
- Running game is outstanding and is the biggest beneficiary of the up tempo attack.
- Once the tempo got up to speed, the offense was damn near impossible to stop.
- The offense was good, and I think they’re going to improve as the year goes on. Good luck MAC defenses. They’ll need to be great all the time because …
- The defense. Whiskey … tango … foxtrot??
- How on earth does a previously nationwide top 10 defense returning some great starters with a ton of talented depth and seniors allow nearly 60 points? We looked this bad in 2010 and Michigan and 2011 against WVU, and I thought those days were behind us.
- If you want to go crazy, try to think of the last time we allowed as many points as yesterday, as many passing yards, as many passing TDs, etc.
- The defense is talented. Absolutely. But they went back on mistakes of old.
- They’ll need to improve vastly across the board unless they are interested in some very long games against powerful Big Ten offenses in September.
- The tackling in the first half was abysmal. Nothing to say here that’s not been said many times already.
- The tackling was MUCH better in the second half … until the final drive. That tells me the team really can tackle well but for whatever reason they were unprepared for this game.
- The terrible tackling doesn’t matter much when we run the soft coverage we did. You can run soft coverage effectively if your defensive line gets good pressure. Where was our D line yesterday? They got pressure on occasion but I mean only on occasion.
- And of all the zones to cover, why on earth did they choose to leave the zone in the middle of the field 5-15 yards from the line of scrimmage wide open on every single third down? You know, the very first zone the QB looks at on passing downs!!
- What was up with the soft zone? A key to our successes the last two years has been our corners pressing up against the receivers and allowing the secondary to be creative. One of those very good corners, Darrell Hunter, is back, so why on earth were we leaving our corners in a soft zone and giving the receivers an 8+ yard cushion?
- Speaking of Darrell Hunter … and I hope he reads this … that was a truly severe mistake and it goes beyond football. I don’t know what that tight end said to him, but it really doesn't matter. No matter how vile a person’s words are, nothing justifies a punch like we saw yesterday. If a guy acts like an ass with his words, let him be an ass and let him show the entire world how much of an ass he is. Be the bigger man, step back, let the guy embarrass himself and go along with your business. I’m sure this will be taken care of, but an unnecessary punch is a real concern, far beyond the football field. I don’t personally know the guy, I don’t know anything about his character, so I’m not here to name call. I do hope the coaching staff and athletic department staff treat this as a character development opportunity rather than punishment by stadium runs and pushups.
- The execution on D was bad, but the coordination was far worse. The coaches are supposed to put their players on the field in a good position to win, and they failed horribly. Maybe the defensive coaches felt that soft zone coverage could do the trick against WKU, but it clearly didn't and they did not adjust. Utterly terrible work by the coaching staff. They failed their players.
- I’ll repeat what I said last night. If we have a new defensive coordinator next week I won’t be upset. Not that it is likely to happen, but I acknowledge the possibility and would not be adverse to that move.
- I am a believer in Coach Babers. I am a believer in his system. I am severely worried about what I saw on defense. I’m also worried that the team didn't prepare for WKU the way WKU prepared for us.

Hopefully all the lessons from this game are learned and remembered. The team is far too talented to lay an egg the way they did. Hopefully the defense relearns how to play and returns to 2012-13 form, hopefully the coaching staff figures out schemes that work better for our personnel, hopefully the team prepares better for each team, and hopefully this game is a wakeup call like last year’s abomination against that team up north. There is much to learn from this game. I for one will not be able to watch the VMI game live (seriously, who gets married during football season??) but I anticipate watching the replay and I fully expect to see significant improvement.