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Since others have posted past thoughts on the 2003/2004 seasons, I felt I should some offer some of my thoughts on the 2005 season. I am using this season, because it seems that this season started our demise of the last two years, including in both the 2005/2006 seasons. If Omar is not hurt I believe we go into the Toledo game with a recored of 8-2, instead of 6-4. Omar's injury showed how much we were dependent on him to produce.If Omar is not hurt, do any of you feel that we would have continued our strength as a program? Sure we lost the receivers and Omar from 2005, but with a better recored and bowl game, would we have received more enhanced recruits?

I don't think anybody questions that we would have had a better record if Omar had not gotten hurt. But we still don't have a a qb thats half as good as omar on the roster. If you don't have a good qb how good the rest of the team is gets overshadowed.

Not to dredge up old arguments, but I don't think we win both those games even with Omar. The team was underperforming before he was injured.

I don't believe his injury had any impact on the 2006 season.

IMO, the Pope injury in the UW game was more pivotal than the Omar injury a few games later. Pope was the MVP of that team, and he was never fully healed the rest of the way through. By the time Omar got hurt we were already struggling (without Pope) on offense. Losing him just completely crippled what was already playing like a wounded warrior.

I'm not sure that the injury had any bearing on the '06 team, except to wonder if Omar freaked about his health and left early because of the injury. No clue on that, really, but it's a thought. Honestly, even with Omar I'm not sure how good we are last year. Certainly better than we were, but still not good enough to win the division, most likely. We were way too young on defense, and way too crappy on STs to have much chance of success last year. Our QB play was poor, but our WR corps was equally poor last year. Only Partridge showed the ability to step up and make plays.

This team needs to get back to the little things. Shore up the STs, Play disciplined fundamental defense, and run the ball. If we do those things the QB play will sort itself out; I do think we have some talent at the position. What we cannot do, however, is plug one of our current guys in and expect them to be Harris or Omar...they're not on that level. Run the ball, control the clock, play some defense, and don't make the STs mistakes, and we should improve by leaps & bounds.

hammb wrote:Honestly, even with Omar I'm not sure how good we are last year. Certainly better than we were, but still not good enough to win the division, most likely.

I took that comment and looked back at the standings to figure out if you were wrong. How the hell did OU play out of their AZZ's like that? I totally forgot they ran away with the East like that. (I think I was thinking of two years ago, when we still had a shot with some convoluted tie-breaker heading into the UT game.) But looking at our '06 MAC losses, Akron and Miami(OH) could have been wins even with the staff we had on the field at the time, CMU was close until we gave up those big plays in the second half (combined with the big play early on). We hung tough with UT, but gave up too much early to get back in it, and Kent was just miserable. Unfortunately, with the season OU had, even counting 3 of those as "Omar wins" wouldn't have been enough, though we'd probably feel a little better about our situation, despite having no clue how our QB would perform this season. (Because we've got a clue now, right? Right? )

I think if Omar would have finished a "decent" '05 season healthy, we still might have seen him go. I doubt the hype would have been anything like it was coming off of his magnificent '04 season, and injury or no, the gettin' was good after '05.

I can't help but think the Wisconsin game in 06 may have been different if we had Omar and a better ST unit. The special teams more or less gave up 14 points in a three possession game. The team was really fired up through most of the game, especially on defense. The defense played pretty well most of the game with some points of excellence, such as that big goal line stand on 4th down. Had the STs not given up those points and the offense been multi-dimensional, we could have maybe walked away with a gigantic upset.

(wishful thinking, maybe ... )

in 05 we probably would have beaten Akron with Omar....the wheels might not have come off against WMU either. In 06...we maybe beat Temple. The AKron game was a total defensive breakdown, the Miami game didn't hing on oiur QB and the Toledo game was another defensive clustermuss.

Other than that...I think we still lose to kent and we still lose to CMU..
Omar would have maybe won us another game...maybe two

I agree with Hammb. Losing Pope in the 2005 opener at Wisky was devasting...he wasn't the same until the UT finale when he rushed for 140+. Losing Jacobs was big...losing Pope was much bigger. Pope was the best all round player I've seen at BG in a long time. His injury really took a bite outta our offense...even though BJ Lane was a good, solid back. Pope could do it all.