Perfect Storm Perspective

I've seen enough upsets to know the routine by now and this game felt bad from the start. FG game goes bad, #1 QB goes down, rash of penalties, defense unprepared and giving up wide open TDs, Oline out of sync. RBs missing blitzes. And if the other team just hangs around till the 4th they have a chance. Syr was just well coached and used the tools they had. Some great coach once said you are going to need your offense to win a few games, your defense to win a few, your special teams to win a few, and finally just luck to win a few. We had none of it tonight. Still, even with all our wheels falling off, it was a 3 point loss on the road off a short week. Lets hope all our boys are Ok, heal up and come back ready after the off week.

TigersAndCubs

Orange Phenom [14618]

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This wasn't one of those fluky games though like the

Oct 14, 2017, 1:40 AM

Pitt loss last year or the NC State near-loss, where a whole string of turnovers and ridiculous circumstances lead to our demise. No, we flat got our arses kicked tonight. We got the only takeaway of the game and we scored on it. If anything, we were lucky to even be in the game at the end.

Cuse had the ball for 10 more minutes, ran 26 more plays, and gained 123 more yards than we did. We let Dungey throw for nearly 9 yards per attempt and kill us on scrambles. We got almost no run stuff all night long - they were consistently able to pick up 3-6 yards on the ground and frequently push our defenders back. They also consistently beat our DBs in coverage both beating us over the top, and sneaking guys out into areas completely vacated by our defense.

Defensively they got consistent pressure on our QBs, gave up almost no big plays through the air (Milan Richard's 24 yard catch was the only completion that went for more than 15 yards!), and really shut down our running game outside of the two big TD runs. We had 89 yards on those two carries and just 24 yards on our other 23 carries. Even if you remove the negative yardage from the QBs, we ran for just 42 yards on 16 carries.

The field goal kicking was obviously a disaster as well. I feel sorry for Spence, but he's just awful right now. He's not just missing very makeable 30-40 yard FGs, he's missing them by 20 yards. FG kicking is a high-pressure job and some people just aren't wired for that. Some stay cool and calm and others get nervous and their limbs get weak and shaky, and they struggle to perform muscle-memory type actions.

It was really a comprehensive loss, and not a fluky one. Cuse was flat-out better than us tonight, and they were honestly more than 3 points better than us. They could've easily won this game by double digits.

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Re: Perfect Storm Perspective

Re: Perfect Storm Perspective

This wasn't one of those fluky games though like the

Re: Perfect Storm Perspective

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