Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com

I think we all can agree that the loss last night to WKU was extremely disappointing. I was there at that game and have a few random thoughts now that a day has passed. (warning: long read)

1. First and foremost, lets give WKU some credit - That was a good football team. (at least offensively) That team has some legit playmakers and had a fantastic strategy going into that game. Also, that was one of the better 1st game performances I've seen from any team for awhile as they looked to be in mid-season form. Won't be surprised to see them compete for a Conference USA title - Although, we certainly made it easy for them to look good.

2. We were out coached - plane and simple. Again, lets give credit to WKU as it looked like they knew exactly what they wanted to do to attack that defense. Shame though to see, as you couldn't really imagine a worse start to a team expected to compete for a MAC title and a new coaching staff

4. Could we have pressed receivers? Perhaps - but we were mixing coverages and WKU looked to have both man and zone options on every play we ran - Gotta make open field tackles against spread teams. I can only hope that the full defense wasn't installed yet because it was pretty obvious to me what coverage we were in. Most disappointing to me was the lack of 2nd half adjustments.

5. This team, players and coaches, expected to just walk into that game and win by 2 TD's. Dino is big on having a "swagger" about yourself - and the overconfidence was pretty evident which lead to the frustration by the players on the field.

6. Offense will be fine - Offense actually played well enough to win. After that 1st quarter the Matty J & Co. really settled down and had some nice plays. Dieter and Ronnie Moore played well and you can see the system should be able to produce points all season - You can really see a "take what the defense gives you" approach to Dino's system.

7. We were spoiled the last two years with our defense. its not really logical to expect a top 10 defense year in and year out - That being said I think the defense needs alot of work bu only can go up from here. Yes, it will be a bend but don't break philosophy - However, lets lets remember the majority of the players from last year are on this team - this defense will rebound and be much better than what they showed tonight.

All in all I share your frustration from last night - but this is a proud team that I expect to rebound. This slims the margin for error significantly but we will have two weeks to get ready for Indiana.

With Lewis, Dieter and Moore at WR and Greene and Coppet running the ball, the offense is going to be fine. There will be weeks where we hang 50 on the lousy defenses in the MAC . The defense...who knows.

During one of Brandon's last years here they had a little pregame tradition where a couple of the captains would put a padlock and chain around the gate at the south endzone of the Doyt...like they were locking the other guys in. I thought it was stupid because we didn't have the kind of toughness that could pull that off. That game last night reminded me of that...a lot of talk and nothing else.

I too think the offense is going to be decent. It certainly sputtered and that hurt us early on but we didn't lose because of the offense, we lost because of our defense. With a defensive outing like that again, we can't expect to beat anyone. That was one of the worst efforts and performances I have seen from us in a long time. Even years ago when we had a bad defense - we still played better than that. And I have no idea what the heck we're going to try and run on D either. I kept hearing about how we were going to be an "attacking" defense and we saw nothing of the sort. And that wasn't a "bend but don't break" defense either. That defense was bent, burned and busted all night long. If that's going to be our defensive philosophy then let's end our hopes at another MAC Championship right here and now because it's not gonna happen if that's our game plan and approach.

We have three more games to iron out some kinks and then the REAL season begins. Let's face it, we could very well start out 1-3 and if we play defensively again like we did at WKU, we will be 1-3. I can see 2-2 at best. But if we can go 8-0 after that we're going to the MACC and a bowl game again and that's why more important than what we did in the opener.