forums

How different would the conversation be if we had stepped on the gas and stomped ND?

SinCityCane

SinCityCane

Recruit
Joined
Aug 1, 2017
Messages
1,595
We were well on our way, then let up and end up with a 27-24 win that lets people pretend it wasn't a big deal & lets them say ND has won or been in every game...which is just not true. It would be a much tougher argument to have ND at 9 & Miami at 12 if that had been a 38-10 win...which we could have had if this staph didn't play scared to lose. Ironic that it might have lost us a spot in the CFP.
 
Advertisement
Except for the last game for Faust at ND, we've always tended to not run up scores. Maybe if we started it might give us more credibility yet I prefer not rubbing it in. This year ND game we were not agressive enoughat the end and needed a FG to win it when we should've won by 2 scores.
 
fraggle said:
Except for the last game for Faust at ND, we've always tended to not run up scores. Maybe if we started it might give us more credibility yet I prefer not rubbing it in. This year ND game we were not agressive enoughat the end and needed a FG to win it when we should've won by 2 scores.
Click to expand...
I prefer rubbing it in for the situation we’re in right now.
 
We give people a reason. The only way to remove all doubt is to completely decimate the opponent. No sympathy; no remorse; no care in the world. At some point, if the want us to be the villain, then go all in and be the villain.
 
Advertisement
You know what's funny, is we didn't play the ND game any different than we played any other game all year. It's crazy to go back and think about how it played out. It's incredibly consistent to how the entire season has gone.

To your original point, I think it's a good one. I'm usually a "just win" guy, but I do think there's validity to what you're saying. To be clear, I still don't think a bigger win against ND would've vaulted us above them. They're 3 spots ahead, and we do have a head-to-head win, so would let's say a 10 point win do anything? Probably not. But it is a valid question.

But on the whole "playing not to lose" thing....look at this:

We go up 21-7 after playing the middle 8 perfectly. Long drive to start the 3rd quarter, we score halfway through, it's a 2-score game.

We get a 3 and out. Now it's time to pile on.
Run for 6.
Pass for 3.
It's 3rd and 1....anyone have any guesses on what we're gonna do??
Yayyyyyy, it's heavy personnel run, Marty slips (there wasn't much there anyway), and we punt.
We did this ALL **** YEAR. Short-yardage, just run into a pile of humanity and hope you get 2 yards. This was very much a harbinger for things to come.

But OK, we punt, and ND gets a TD. Now it's 21-14.

Fletcher run for 6 on 1st down. Holding call. Where have I seen this before???? It's literally a microcosm of the entire season. Now it's 2nd and 14, we get a pass for 7, it's 3rd and 7, we get sacked. A good play on 1st down, and then a drive is totally torpedoed by a penalty. Think we'll see that ever again going forward?? Nahhh, probably just a one-off LOL.

But wait, we get a pick! It's 1st and 10 on their 28, and we're up 7, about 5 minutes into the 4th quarter.
Fletcher run for 6. OK.
Fletcher run for 1. Now I'm sad.
3rd and 3, what do we do? Fletcher run for 1. I'm gonna throw up.
We did this every goddamned game for the first 9 games of the year.

Field goal, go up 10, they hit a 65 yard pass on the first play of their drive, and now you're in a dogfight. No blowout, let's just hold on and try to win the game.

It's insane to me how this game played out exactly how the rest of them did. Zero creativity in short yardage. Zero tendency breakers. Penalties killing drives. At the time, we all said (me included) "Well, it's Game 1 for Beck. It was raining. That's a really good team, you just do what you need to in order to get a win." But the staff never adjusted once from that game. We did the same exact **** in the same exact situations for the next 3 months. We continued to get awful, backbreaking, drive-killing penalties to totally torpedo drives. Just maddening to go back and play that game over in your mind and realize, holy ****, we really thought we could just play the exact same way over and over and over again and it wouldn't bite us in the ***.
 
No doubt it is true...if it were successful.

You can't assume that the game would have continued that way. One bad interception and it could have turned into a loss.

I am in favor of always being aggressive but let's not pretend that it can't go south as well.

Let's also admit to ourselves that this place would have gone ape-**** if that had happened.
 
Its funny when a few of us bought this up, that the mentality was off/wrong we were shouted down that it doesnt matter. There is a reason it was bought up and of course it played out, it sucks because bumping post when people talk crap or calling it out doesnt matter because we in same boat..

You need to be aggressive, you cannot shut down operations and go prevent defense, 4 minute offense for ENTIRE 4th qtr. It sets dangerous precedence in entire team. Shannon actually commented on it in presser low key. Anyway, some did call it out, more aggressive mindset, killer instinct, style points, eye test, whatever you want to call it. IT MATTERS. It matters for personality of team down the road, the way we played those early games, tight, letting teams creep back in, was dangerous and got us clipped multiple times like mentioned. SMH.
 
genxcane said:
No doubt it is true...if it were successful.

You can't assume that the game would have continued that way. One bad interception and it could have turned into a loss.

I am in favor of always being aggressive but let's not pretend that it can't go south as well.

Let's also admit to ourselves that this place would have gone ape-**** if that had happened.
Click to expand...
Disagree, there is a difference between being over aggressive and staying with gameplan that worked and continuing to set expectations to score and not just sit on the ball. ONE interception would not change game because we had a decent lead, you cannot lay football thinking omg maybe interception, lets sit on lead and play off for entire 4th qtr. Because the lead evaporated and we put ourselves in bad position
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
You know what's funny, is we didn't play the ND game any different than we played any other game all year. It's crazy to go back and think about how it played out. It's incredibly consistent to how the entire season has gone.

To your original point, I think it's a good one. I'm usually a "just win" guy, but I do think there's validity to what you're saying. To be clear, I still don't think a bigger win against ND would've vaulted us above them. They're 3 spots ahead, and we do have a head-to-head win, so would let's say a 10 point win do anything? Probably not. But it is a valid question.

But on the whole "playing not to lose" thing....look at this:

We go up 21-7 after playing the middle 8 perfectly. Long drive to start the 3rd quarter, we score halfway through, it's a 2-score game.

We get a 3 and out. Now it's time to pile on.
Run for 6.
Pass for 3.
It's 3rd and 1....anyone have any guesses on what we're gonna do??
Yayyyyyy, it's heavy personnel run, Marty slips (there wasn't much there anyway), and we punt.
We did this ALL **** YEAR. Short-yardage, just run into a pile of humanity and hope you get 2 yards. This was very much a harbinger for things to come.

But OK, we punt, and ND gets a TD. Now it's 21-14.

Fletcher run for 6 on 1st down. Holding call. Where have I seen this before???? It's literally a microcosm of the entire season. Now it's 2nd and 14, we get a pass for 7, it's 3rd and 7, we get sacked. A good play on 1st down, and then a drive is totally torpedoed by a penalty. Think we'll see that ever again going forward?? Nahhh, probably just a one-off LOL.

But wait, we get a pick! It's 1st and 10 on their 28, and we're up 7, about 5 minutes into the 4th quarter.
Fletcher run for 6. OK.
Fletcher run for 1. Now I'm sad.
3rd and 3, what do we do? Fletcher run for 1. I'm gonna throw up.
We did this every goddamned game for the first 9 games of the year.

Field goal, go up 10, they hit a 65 yard pass on the first play of their drive, and now you're in a dogfight. No blowout, let's just hold on and try to win the game.

It's insane to me how this game played out exactly how the rest of them did. Zero creativity in short yardage. Zero tendency breakers. Penalties killing drives. At the time, we all said (me included) "Well, it's Game 1 for Beck. It was raining. That's a really good team, you just do what you need to in order to get a win." But the staff never adjusted once from that game. We did the same exact **** in the same exact situations for the next 3 months. We continued to get awful, backbreaking, drive-killing penalties to totally torpedo drives. Just maddening to go back and play that game over in your mind and realize, holy ****, we really thought we could just play the exact same way over and over and over again and it wouldn't bite us in the ***.
Click to expand...
A lot of that is because I’m thoroughly convinced Dawson doesn’t have a big bag of plays or ideas to pull from along with him and Mario not having a good feel for the game. Look at the game plan Brohm had for us vs what we came out with vs them. And then we struggled with the same against Stanford and did the exact same against SMU. Either our staff is lazy at planning or they just don’t have it.

How often have we seen head scratchers on 3rd and medium, like a tunnel screen after we draw the safeties and LBs in with our A gap runs and then throw right into that pile of humanity.

As I’ve said multiple times, Mario’s inability to evolve and get an OC who runs a system that benefits our talent gap and then gets out of his way, he will be limited in his success.
 
Advertisement
genxcane said:
No doubt it is true...if it were successful.

You can't assume that the game would have continued that way. One bad interception and it could have turned into a loss.

I am in favor of always being aggressive but let's not pretend that it can't go south as well.

Let's also admit to ourselves that this place would have gone ape-**** if that had happened.
Click to expand...
I mean it did go south, we won at the end of the game with a game winning FG
 
PennsylvaniaCane said:
A lot of that is because I’m thoroughly convinced Dawson doesn’t have a big bag of plays or ideas to pull from along with him and Mario not having a good feel for the game. Look at the game plan Brohm had for us vs what we came out with vs them. And then we struggled with the same against Stanford and did the exact same against SMU. Either our staff is lazy at planning or they just don’t have it.

How often have we seen head scratchers on 3rd and medium, like a tunnel screen after we draw the safeties and LBs in with our A gap runs and then throw right into that pile of humanity.

As I’ve said multiple times, Mario’s inability to evolve and get an OC who runs a system that benefits our talent gap and then gets out of his way, he will be limited in his success.
Click to expand...

I've said it for weeks but our success last year really screwed us this year. Which is INSANE that a coordinator would just pretend that what happened last year carries over, but that's exactly what he did. We ran the ball a ton on short yardage plays last year, and they were almost always successful. I pointed it out a million times. 1 or 2 yards to go, we ALWAYS ran for a first down. So coming into this year, this guy really thought we'd just do the same exact thing. But it's been far less successful this year. Again, going back to the first game. But did we adjust, at all? **** no.

I stopped keeping track because it was making me physically ill, but at one point we ran the ball on short-yardage situations 26 times in a row. 26!! And it's not just "running the ball". It's all the same plays. None of those were jet sweeps, or tosses, or wildcat runs, or zone-read where Beck keeps it. No, they were 26 consecutive interior runs to a running back. What planet are you on where you think it's OK to be that predictable?

I praised the **** out of Dawson last year. He has been BAD this year.
 
Back
Top