Aggies win! It was closer than I really hoped it was going to be, but the Thunderbird defense was no joke and was causing chaos in the offensive backfield all night. No turnovers at least! On to conference play!
If that't the case, we'll go 4-4 also. They played us even and actually ended up with more totally yards: 381 to 349. The Aggies benefited from 5 first downs from SUU penalties and the Thunderbirds really shot themselves in the foot on that last drive by the Aggies that resulted in a short FG which put us up by 9.
Davis’ D really dominated the SUU offense until Davis got what seemed to be a comfortable lead. Even in the Commerce game Davis let up in the second half and let them put up respectable stats even though they were never in the game. Last year Davis was actually the best team in the big sky as far as points allowed in league play, but near the middle of the pack in other defensive stats. The defense either loses focus, or plays soft when they have a bigger lead.
I really don't understand why we went to such a spread-out, prevent defense after we went up by 9 in the 4th. SUU went right down the field and scored by completing pass after pass underneath our DB's. What good is a soft, prevent defense that allows 10 to 15 yard passing plays while they're driving down the field?
I noticed that too. The defense got lax when the offense got a lead. I saw shades of Cal State Hayward in 1971 when I left the game because the Pioneers had a 15 point lead. I wonder how the defense would have done if the T-birds onside try had succeeded?
On the third game if the season they are are still copying the same error and listing a defensive lineman as #70 in the list of starters in the box score.
70 Roncevich,Luke DL
Should be 70 Eli Simonson OL
This game just always felt like it was more of a defensive battle with the defenses of both teams shutting down the ground attack and making it hard to put up points. SUU is a tough team and their 0-3 record is deceiving since their first two losses were to FBS Arizona and BYU.
However, I'm still not sure how potent our offense is. TAMC was overmatched so they weren't a good barometer of our offense and OSU overwhelmed us on both sides of the ball so that didn't tell us much either. So last night I felt like it the game was a much better indicator of where we stand against pretty good FCS teams and, from my perspective, we don't seem to have that explosive passing attack that we often associate with Aggie football over the years.
We appear to have more of a short, possession type passing attack that depends on yards after the catch rather than deeper pass patterns and the occasional long ball. I haven't seem that burner speed and the ability to create separation deeper down the field from our receivers and we haven't seen Hastings connecting on the deeper patterns very often. So I'm left wondering if we just don't have that more explosive passing attack in our arsenal?
On the bright side our kicking game looks solid, Hastings didn’t have any pics, and Larison is turning out to be a game changer.
Miles was under a ton of pressure and had to roll out to stay away from the rushers. On the other hand, SUU #12 had more time to pick his shots. We didn’t get any sacks (and neither did they). While this was a better game for Miles, I thought he was putting a lot of fire on his passes, sometimes being a little behind the receiver. Gale had several drops that i think were related to that.
The “no call” interference on the north west endzone where the suu defender pushed our receiver from behind likely would have been a TD.
SUU is looking good. Right now we look to be a middle of the pack big sky team. On to EWU. I really dislike their coach, and while I would like to see us embarrass them, I’m not so sure we have the ammo to pull it off.