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OSU-DNA
12-04-2008, 10:47 AM
I thought would wait until after the dust settled.

Positive Items:
-Crowd noise. Fans were in the game and clearly trying to help. I do not ever remember a team receiving a delay of game penalty before their first snap. Hats off to the crowd.

-Defense forced them to punt early in the game. We had pressure on Bradford that other teams have not been able to generate. Given our performance this year this was a very strong step up. True we could not maintain it, but it provides glimpses of the possible.

-Felt very pleased that we ran the ball on a very tough defense Saturday night. We have had strong running games against OU, UT and MU which moves our lack of strong game against TT as a one off. Historically, we have not had a strong run game against the Thieves so this is very positive aspect and one to acknowledge that we are building the depth to slug it out with them.

-Use of a second receiver. The game plan clearly was meant to bring other receivers into play. Davis did a solid job and created the second receiver threat for us.

-We did not back down in the face of adversity. Typically teams fold against the Thieves, there was none of that despite the numerous bounces of the ball.

-Hunter seemed to even better than earlier games, he was hitting the hole quickly. His stop and hesitation move was outstanding and created nice gains.

-And, very glad we had the ticket policy in place of no individual game tickets, it really worked to our favor of using our place for home field and not just filling the stadium with people in need of dental care.

Things I felt Better about later:
-Could not understand what Zac was doing with his throw on the first series that was intercepted. Gundy explained that Davis did not make his cut in the right spot and hence the throw directly to a DB. That was a great explain, although I still believe that Davis would have been covered and the better choice was a throw away or a run by Zac.

-I was shocked on a 4th down and short that Zac was not under center. Felt that the coaches had missed the fact that we were short on our 3rd down play and we were blowing the call with the shotgun snap. Then to see Zac scramble around end all the way to the end zone really showed to me that our coaches had thoroughly scouted and game planned the thieves.

Things I wished we had done more:
-Great catch by Pettigrew but the use of Gresham showed me we had not utilized the talent of Pettigrew like we should have not only in this game but all year. Effectively splitting him out and getting him on LBs should have been part of game plan all year.

-Finally using a kickoff return that went straight at them instead of running across the field and letting their speed kill our return game.

-Give Dez a few more chances to make plays. The two point conversion should show us that despite triple coverage, Superman can make the play.

JonforOSU
12-04-2008, 02:54 PM
Pretty much summed up my thoughts too. Good assessment, good post.

GoPokes83
12-04-2008, 03:13 PM
Good Post!

My final thoughts are... WTF is with the polls? A team ranked #3 beats a team ranked 9 spots lower than them and we drop a couple of spots. If they think we should have beaten them then why not have us ranked the same? We played them as tough as anyone has this season, and if we'd had our collective heads in the sunshine they wouldn't have scored that last TD. There were no upsets on teams ranked above us the previous week. So why the drop?

cactusjack
12-04-2008, 03:27 PM
Nice wrap up DNA.

My only thought was, at 44-41, if we can only get a stop right here, get the ball and make it 48-44.....put some pressure on Bradford and see what happens. Not in the cards though.

OSUFan
12-04-2008, 03:59 PM
Did anyone else think we should have onside kicked it at 44-41? We weren't stopping them and if we could get it and score again then it would have been the last one to score who wins because we would have been trading leads.