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First off, positive:

Seeing Teddy Piepkow, Nick Davis, John Haneline, PJ Pope, Eric Curl and I'm sure other players coming back to the Doyt was great. Love seeing former players come back...Nick Davis was telling me everytime he drives over the 75 bridge on Wooster and seeing the stadium gives him chills. That was too cool...He and his wife are expecting so congrats!

Tailgate: Weather was kinda miserable but we still had a great time!! Always enjoy our time with Falcon friends.

The Not so positive:

Obviously, the game. It was very poorly played on both sides...very poorly. Haven't seen a display like that in some time. As someone else said in another post (Drago?), it seemed like neither team wanted to win. I thought the BG sidelines was quiet until Lorenzi's pick six. Then the emotion and excitement kicked in. Schilz needs to get back asap...obviously the offense struggles BiG time without him running the show.
The defense was picked apart by an average passing game...we rush 3, drop 8 and UB still converted a ton of 3rd downs. Very frustrating. The last second FG attempt? Gotta make it, pure and simple. Wright has too much experience to miss a 38 yarder. It appears we still haven't solved our kicking game woes....although Wright does get some touchbacks on kickoffs. His punting has not been consistent, though.

Left to ponder:

Obviously we all knew it was gonna be a challenge with how young the team is this year. But there has been an alarming amount of basic mistakes that need to be corrected now. Almost half the season is over and if we have any hope of winning the East, those mistakes can't happen. Injuries have hit us hard on O so that is challenging. We were 1-4 last year at this point so there is time to turn it around.

We head to Athens, which has always been friendly to us, and play OU. This is a winnable game and we need to get in the win column in conf play. We'll be making the road trip down as this is my fave road trip of any MAC school. GO FALCONS!!!!!

Another thought. We've talked about our depth at receiver a lot. Clawson's talked about it a lot. Why aren't we seeing any receivers besides Wiley, Jordan, Pronty, and Cooper? Hodges has only a few receptions, including a TD against Troy. Haven't seen Hutson at all yet. FWIW, Hodges had 46 for 2 TD last year, and Hutson had 28 for 2 TD. And Justus Jones had a couple of nice games. Why aren't we seeing these guys, especially given the number of drops by receivers?

Can any of them tackle? Or play QB?

or kick

From all of your thoughts I can gather that we are an incomplete team. Hopefully recruiting and growing will help make us better.

We really haven't had a good kicking game since losing Suisham, and that has probably cost us more W's than any other single factor.

-MH

michhiker28 wrote:We really haven't had a good kicking game since losing Suisham, and that has probably cost us more W's than any other single factor.

-MH

While I agree our kicking game has been a big problem since Suisham left, I don't think it's cost us more games than our consistent penchant for poor tackling, which has haunted us for close to a decade.

I'm concerned about some repeating themes year in and year out. We've struggled to win home games against teams we should beat, obviously the kicking game has already been mentioned. We've also witnessed some severely inconsistent play and at times a lack of caring by some players, Saturday was no exception.

I know this team is young and there will be problems, but it pains me to see some of the problems from the Brandon Era are still lingering around. I trust Clawson can get some things turned around, but it's never good to continue failing at the same things year in and year out, especially against MAC opponents.

1987alum wrote:

While I agree our kicking game has been a big problem since Suisham left, I don't think it's cost us more games than our consistent penchant for poor tackling, which has haunted us for close to a decade.[/quote]

I've say it EVERY third down- I hate our third down D.

How many times did Amstutz go against us on fourth down? And how many times was he successful? Too many!

I don't know enough about defensive schemes, etc., but it sure looked like on down 1 and 2 that we were playing a man coverage and doing fairly well. Then on third down it seemed that time and time again we were playing some type of zone as the Buffalo receiver would be in the exact middle of about 5 or 6 defenders, WIDE OPEN! I don't think our DB's have the experience to play any type of zone defense or whatever the heck they call it these days.

The other thing that was really irritating was at the end of the game where we seemed to be resigned to kicking a 40 yard field goal. While I realize turnovers were rampant, I would have like to see us at least run the ball with Willie and try for a few more yards. Besides, when is the last time we won a game on a last second field goal (where it wasn't a tie game)?

You have to go back to at least the early 90's from what I have researched so far.

Redwingtom wrote:I don't know enough about defensive schemes, etc., but it sure looked like on down 1 and 2 that we were playing a man coverage and doing fairly well. Then on third down it seemed that time and time again we were playing some type of zone as the Buffalo receiver would be in the exact middle of about 5 or 6 defenders, WIDE OPEN! I don't think our DB's have the experience to play any type of zone defense or whatever the heck they call it these days.

The other thing that was really irritating was at the end of the game where we seemed to be resigned to kicking a 40 yard field goal. While I realize turnovers were rampant, I would have like to see us at least run the ball with Willie and try for a few more yards. Besides, when is the last time we won a game on a last second field goal (where it wasn't a tie game)?

You have to go back to at least the early 90's from what I have researched so far.

Mark it down as a first, I totally agree with all of the above written by Redwing. Defense frustration and a the play calling at the end of the game trying not to lose instead of trying to win.

Well, going back to the 1983 season, these are the only games that we could have potentially won with a last second field goal. Unfortunately, I can't find any on-line record of these games. Anyone remember any of them by chance?

10/17/92 @ Toledo, 10-9
11/16/91 @ Ball State, 14-13 (Yeah, not likely)
11/11/89 @ WMU, 31-30
11/21/87 vs. CMU, 18-17
10/29/83 vs. CMU, 15-14

This also reveals that we sure don't seem to win many close games...LOL

I don't recall a single game where we won on a last second FG and I've been following BGSU football since the early 80's...

I would have liked to seen us try a couple of lower risk bubble screens or swing passes. We have some athletes at WR and RB who can make guys miss and break one.

Oh, and a few more irritating things from Saturday:

- Why did our home field clock operator stop the clock at half with 0:00.1? C'MON MAN!!!
- Why are we ever passing the ball on a 3rd and 1 or 2 (especially with Pankratz) when our wildcat with Hopgood has been nearly unstoppable?
- Who was the screaming marketing woman and would someone please tell her that a microphone amplifies your voice.
- Students throwing the clapper pieces? Good Lord! Even my 10 year old recognized that this was wrong and could hurt someone!

Redwingtom wrote:Oh, and a few more irritating things from Saturday:

- Who was the screaming marketing woman and would someone please tell her that a microphone amplifies your voice.
- Students throwing the clapper pieces? Good Lord! Even my 10 year old recognized that this was wrong and could hurt someone!

She even managed to mess up the BG-SU chant. Her entire pregame performance seemed very unrehearsed, and the crowd was not behind it at all. Some students even started booing because she was botching things so bad...and she was WAY too loud.

As for the clappers, I just kept reminding myself that at least they weren't seat cushions.