Loss

[fgs44]

As a longtime Terrier fan and former player that loss hurt badly for several reasons:
1- We had dominated in every game this year, regardless of the score, in implementing our will on the opposition.
2- We have a new coaching staff that looked as if we were getting our players buy into the new culture without missing a beat. Something that is very hard to do.
3- My personal expectations were extraordinarily high. I anticipated an uninterrupted run through the SoCon, and very deep play-off run, if not the complete package.

I remember the same feeling back in the day, when we were ranked number 3 in small college football rankings, and went to PC and stunk up the joint.

However, we are back down to earth today, and we are going to learn from this and move on to what I believe will be a very successful season. Our coaching staff is very, very good; and very, very young with the exception of our offensive coordinator. Everyone is going to learn from this and come back stronger, smarter, and better. I have no doubt!!!!!

That game is now in the rear view mirror, and East Tennessee is the next game up---

[youngterrier]

When I say "I really wish we passed the ball more," something like Furman's offense is what I have in mind. They are going to continue to light up the scoreboard this year and the foreseeable future. They can run the option, pound the middle, throw a bomb deep, quick passes play action, etc. It's just more flexible. They have a different OC this year, but the fundamentals of their offense are the same and they're playing to the strengths of their personnel. Harris Roberts won't destroy you with the option on his legs, but he can do enough to get it done.

I'm not anti-option, I'm pro-innovation. The offense has definitely improved this year, but I continue to think there's a ceiling on it, like we lack the playbook to make those defenders on the perimeter think twice when going on their assignments. At the very least we didn't execute on those plays or we failed to call them. Furman has and effectively calls and executed those plays.

I think having it as a main or strong component of the offensive arsenal is important, but we run into problems when it's the entire arsenal or 75% of it. I don't know enough about our offense and the fundamentals of it to say for certain, but the way Furman defended us in the first half made us look predictable as CJC said which makes me think we are giving that 75% look.

Furman's DC was at Charleston Southern when they played us and beat the citadel x many times in a row. They have a young team and are only going to get better. If you look at the highlights of the UTC, GW, and VMI games they don't seem to have a good game plan to defend the option as a lot of guys are either slow to get the pitch man or meet the QB on the perimeter. I was at the game and heard many people say "put Moseley in!" but they didn't see that a lot of our offensive success yesterday was solely because Newman beat his guy on the perimeter in an otherwise well covered play. It's not like Chattanooga where Newman would beat his guy and they wouldn't cover the pitch man effectively. No matter who the QB is you can tell our option isn't running as effective as possible when the QB is our main ball carrier. It's no coincidence that Lennox only had 3 carries going into the fourth quarter.

And Furman is at our talent level. We can dismiss these sub par performances on offense in the playoffs, but I hope this is an eye opener. You can say "YT you just hate the option" (I don't) but Furman's consistent and overnight offensive success, balance, and flexibility compared to our own bothers me and it's indisputably better at this point.

And even then, this game was lost on defense and on third down defense. As CJC said, we failed to adjust. It's not like we got pulverized at the LOS, we held them to like 4 ypc and a lot of their run game came as a compliment to the pass in the second half. Failing to adjust, youth at outside linebacker (that I underestimated), overconfidence, and giving the Furman offense some short fields is what lost us this game.

And in all of this, I still don't feel terrible about the loss because everything I've said is either fixable, bad luck, or I feel better about our chances of improvement than years past. Some of it won't be fixed (lack of flexibility on offense), but it's still easily more improved than years past and will continue to evolve and improve.

Hopefully, this game will be a wake up call that we can point back to as a turning point for our team. As I said in other threads, this game will probably make our coaches learn more than our players. I believe that.