Ohio preview

[Globetrotter]

To what end? I can kinda see using a lot of comparisons to other teams early on as a means of trying to benchmmark what you have and how you might fare going forward, but as the season wears on I don't really see the value in it. I'm far more interested in what we do on the field on a week to week basis...have we improved or not...vs looking at teams that play our style. I really don't care what Baylor or anyone else does.

Our defense has now played six qtrs of fairly decent defense. I'll take 20pts over a game and a half any day of the week
The offense continues to struggle a bit...particularly away from the Doyt. Big games at UT and Akron coming up, that's a bit of a concern.

Discussion

[Flipper]

Discussion of what? There aren't too many teams you can compare us to stylistically...the Baylor comparison is usually the one that is made...but that's apples/oranges due to the relative talent and experience of both squads. It's seems pointless to compare us to teams we're as dissimilar to as we are similar...if not more so. Particularly after six weeks when we have a substantial body of our own work to analyze and discuss

[MarkL]

Penalties were again a problem but two things to think about penalties in the OU game.
First, I think OU had more bad penalties than we did. I think that is the first time at least in conference play when the opponent was making the stupid plays more often than we were. Late in the game before Tate's field goal, OU's D committed two dumb post-play penalties including a punch which led to an ejection. These were the kinds of stupid mistakes our team made against UMass and UB.
Second, we were not doing bad on penalties for the most part until the fourth quarter drive when OU finaly scored a TD. The D was obviously tired and committed some dumb penalties - hands to the face (I didn't see it) on 3rd and very long and roughing the passer (I didn't see it) on 4th and 9. (I think the refs were calling it especially tight late in the game). The D was on the field for over 100 plays and didn't break down into bad penalties until the final 15 or so plays.

I would say we committed WAY fewer dumb penalties than previous weeks and considering the points above, I don't mind minimizing our penalties in the game. There still is room for improvement ... like those 3rd and long and 4th down penalties that continue drives ... but all in all things were much better.

Defense has drastically improved. Against OU they were on the field for 110 plays and allowed only 1 TD. That means out of 110 opportunities for OU to put the ball in the end zone, they only succeeded once.
Offense has had some consistency issues when not playing UMass' defense but we know how explosive our playmakers can be and I think WMU's D presents an opportunity for some fireworks.
Penalties were a HUGE problem vs both UMass and UB but we improved on that front too.

They say a good team improves as the season goes on. I know we have a good team so I expect to see continuous improvement.

[FalconTurf]

It is simple to judge the defense - points per game and wins. For an additional stat look at yards per play given up. Judging by total yardage is unfair when you allow a team to run 110 plays. Giving up an average of 5 yards per play would rack up 550 yards in comparison to a drawn out game in which we only allow the opponent to run 55 plays thus looking better at 275 yards. The faster pace which allows more plays only skews perspective on total yards.