Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com

For much of the season, one of our struggles has been our inability to get off to fast or good starts, especially in our last three games. In our last two home games against Akron and UMass, we really struggled to get anything going. We can not afford to do that again here vs Toledo or they will bury us. We need not look any further than the BG/UT game a year ago. We started slow in that game too and Toledo jumped all over us early building a 17-0 lead out of the gates and we didn't and couldn't recover. Ballgame. Another factor tomorrow looks like it's going to be the wind. They're calling for 20+ mph winds from the S/SW and we've all seen our share of games at the Doyt where it affects teams' play for two of the four quarters going with or against it. It's likely going to put an emphasis on running the ball (which both teams do well) and kicking and punting should be affected. I would argue the passing might be hindered more for Toledo because they take shots downfield and execute big plays with their passing game way more than BG does as we're much more methodical with our passing game. But wind or no wind, we can't afford to look past downfield strikes because they will go up top on us a few times without a doubt. They burned us on it last year too.

Team needs to be focused and ready to go. No excuses coming out of the bye week.

I believe the Bye Week actually acts as the excuse.

A good start at Indiana and who knows what would have happened. We were up 10-7 in the 2nd quarter. Same thing at MSU. Got down by 11 and never fully caught up.

As evident by the game last year Toledo has the players to jump on us. First quarter is the only quarter we have been outscored in this year so it would be nice to even that out tomorrow.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/pla ... ance-owens

Owens has been terrible this month. If you look at his splits, his YPA is off by a fair amount this year and his TD/INT ratio is completely off. Interestingly enough...it looks like they come out looking to throw downfield a bit more after the half. 3rd qtr YPA is higher than the other three qtrs by a big chunk. I've seen them play a few times this year. The passing offense is inconsistent...too many drops and throws underneath to be effective consistently.

I think we're going to be able to keep them from getting us with the deep ball this year. If we can get a few three and outs, I think we win by 10-15 because we will move it on the ground. Voss is out and the middle of their Dline is soft.
I don't think either team breaks 30.

This was a prophetic thread -- because the slow start did hurt this team. Despite coming all the way back, does anyone doubt that it took a lot out of this team to do that, and perhaps contributed to giving up the late score that beat them?

While this coaching staff has done some very good things as far as upgrading the talent, they are NOT good at preparing teams for quick starts in games, and they have a piss poor record in all the most important categories: the record vs. your rival; the record in big games for division titles; the record against BCS teams; the record in bowl games.

At some point they either turn the corner or you have to move on. Today's loss is a bad one for Clawson because he still ZERO for all these categories in his tenure. If he fails to get this team a MAC East title, I'd say the AD has to be thinking about looking for a new coach. You can't accept mediocrity if you really want your program to move forward.

They jumped on us 17-0 last year, and 21-0 this year, and to no one's surprise with those kind of starts, the end result is a loss. We kept talking that it was going to catch up with us sometime, like when we played a good team. Today we played one, and it cost us. Yes. We battled back, but we played uphill all day until the final UT drive.