Quagmire

The word that came to my mind after sitting in the Bright House with my boy through the first few minutes of the home game against Marshall Saturday night was quagmire.

Every step on the field of play seemed to be greeted with a small splash of water rising from the lush green field and this was especially true during the second half of the game. When I brought my hands together to cheer for good plays by the Knights, I could see a small mist of spray coming off of them with each clap. It rained steadily and consistently throughout the entire game and did not let up even once. The only break we got from that steady and consistent rain was the three or four times that it started to rain even harder which was greeted with even louder cheering from the home crowd. It was wet. We won 16-6.

Once again I feel that the game was won on the defensive side of the ball. We held the Herd to only a total of 130 yards passing and rushing. From what I have seen so far this year there is no doubt in my mind that we are one of the top defenses in the college football and I think we can defend against any team in the country. We still have to figure out the fast pace offenses that we will see from the rest of our conference opponents but we will do well.

I have been reading some of the reviews of our offensive performance and I believe the critiques are not completely correct. Whatever changes to our offense that were made over the off week were very evident in my eyes. I saw a good mix of running and passing plays with Jeff being very poised in the pocket. Of course that was mostly in the first half of the game with the second half reserved for an ultra conservative game plan. I feel that some people who are criticizing that game plan were not actually in attendance at the game that SpongeBob would have felt more than comfortable at. Holding onto the ball and not fumbling it seemed to be the game plan of the Black and Gold in the second half. That was understandable given the amount of costly turnovers we have had in the two previous games that resulted in us losing two very winnable games. Yeah I know the offense in the second half was about as sharp as a bowling ball and we did not move the ball very much at all but I think the most important thing was to hold on the the lead and the ball and get the badly needed "W". In case I was not clear, I think the only important stat from that extremely soggy Saturday night was the one that we could add to our total wins this year which by the way was a conference win. The wet and sloppy conditions would have grounded even the most high flying offenses that night and I feel we should see a better performance statistically when we take on SMU in Dallas next Saturday.