Just a stream of consciousness here:
- I thought that the crowd was pretty poor given the performance last week and the unreal weather for after Thanksgiving. I know that the students were gone, but there were a lot of no-shows.
- The refs did us no favors. I thought that there were some really poor spots and that chop block was a BS call. We definitely got the short end of the calls.
- Kind of a perfect (or not so perfect) bookend to the UNI game...penalties, turnovers, we even had a skill player collision in the backfield. Kind of disappointed in the lack of focus and execution given this was Game 12. They took two steps forward last weekend, but one step back tonight.
- Lanning. My God. How does a player who scored 5 TDs last week get two snaps tonight?? Even if you don't give him a real series or two, he should be in there in the red zone for some plays. Or short yardage. I mean, just last week Campbell called him our best running threat. So you hand the ball off to Mike Warren twice when Montgomery gets dinged? Last week it looked like they totally perfected the 2 QB system and this week they just trash it?? I've said before that one of the key benefits to having 2 QBs is that one doesn't take all the hits or is asked to do too much...and we saw Park pressing, taking too many hits and making mistakes. To me, this is just ridiculous decision making and strategy by the OC.
- IMO this staff needs to streamline their playcalling process. How many timeouts did they burn to prevent delay of game penalties this season? 15? More? Those can and did come back to bite them at times. I can understand that happening the first game with a new system, but the 12th?
- Nice KOR from Nwangwu and a good PR from Ryen. Actually, there were a lot of really good plays. IMO if they would have just used Lanning a little more and cleaned up the penalties, they could have really put some pressure on WV.
- Lots of missed tackles tonight. Harvey and Seeley had poor games.
- I think that the staff got a little lesson on B12 FB tonight. We haven't seen QBs making perfect deep passes on dropping the ball on a dime. Rudolph, Mayfield, Mahomes all had off games (and ISU had something to do with that). This is more what we've been used to. You can recruit tall DBs all you want, but if they don't have speed in this conference, they are going to get burned. The staff had a lot of confidence in their DBs putting them in single coverage and WV repeatedly burned them.
- Warren probably SHOULD transfer. He goes down to easily and fumbles too easily for the OL and system that they're going to run. If I were him, I'd be making a call to NDSU right about now.
- I think at times, Manning got a little too cute. If it's third and 4 from the 40 and you know you're going for it on 4th down, why run the tunnel screen? Put Lanning in and run it. Or give it to Montgomery. I also thought that the onside kick was a chicken shit call. Old CPR we're not good enough to beat you, so we'll trick you. There's a time for that and that was not it.
Overall, I'm still very happy with the improvement of the program. But, the staff needs to take some time to reflect on their schemes and the recruiting needs.
- I thought that the crowd was pretty poor given the performance last week and the unreal weather for after Thanksgiving. I know that the students were gone, but there were a lot of no-shows.
- The refs did us no favors. I thought that there were some really poor spots and that chop block was a BS call. We definitely got the short end of the calls.
- Kind of a perfect (or not so perfect) bookend to the UNI game...penalties, turnovers, we even had a skill player collision in the backfield. Kind of disappointed in the lack of focus and execution given this was Game 12. They took two steps forward last weekend, but one step back tonight.
- Lanning. My God. How does a player who scored 5 TDs last week get two snaps tonight?? Even if you don't give him a real series or two, he should be in there in the red zone for some plays. Or short yardage. I mean, just last week Campbell called him our best running threat. So you hand the ball off to Mike Warren twice when Montgomery gets dinged? Last week it looked like they totally perfected the 2 QB system and this week they just trash it?? I've said before that one of the key benefits to having 2 QBs is that one doesn't take all the hits or is asked to do too much...and we saw Park pressing, taking too many hits and making mistakes. To me, this is just ridiculous decision making and strategy by the OC.
- IMO this staff needs to streamline their playcalling process. How many timeouts did they burn to prevent delay of game penalties this season? 15? More? Those can and did come back to bite them at times. I can understand that happening the first game with a new system, but the 12th?
- Nice KOR from Nwangwu and a good PR from Ryen. Actually, there were a lot of really good plays. IMO if they would have just used Lanning a little more and cleaned up the penalties, they could have really put some pressure on WV.
- Lots of missed tackles tonight. Harvey and Seeley had poor games.
- I think that the staff got a little lesson on B12 FB tonight. We haven't seen QBs making perfect deep passes on dropping the ball on a dime. Rudolph, Mayfield, Mahomes all had off games (and ISU had something to do with that). This is more what we've been used to. You can recruit tall DBs all you want, but if they don't have speed in this conference, they are going to get burned. The staff had a lot of confidence in their DBs putting them in single coverage and WV repeatedly burned them.
- Warren probably SHOULD transfer. He goes down to easily and fumbles too easily for the OL and system that they're going to run. If I were him, I'd be making a call to NDSU right about now.
- I think at times, Manning got a little too cute. If it's third and 4 from the 40 and you know you're going for it on 4th down, why run the tunnel screen? Put Lanning in and run it. Or give it to Montgomery. I also thought that the onside kick was a chicken shit call. Old CPR we're not good enough to beat you, so we'll trick you. There's a time for that and that was not it.
Overall, I'm still very happy with the improvement of the program. But, the staff needs to take some time to reflect on their schemes and the recruiting needs.
