Below are our takes on "Worst of the Worst" for this past week's game in Orlando vs. the UCF Knights.
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1BCMike) Not getting 1 yard on 3rd and 1, 4th and 1
If we are “O-Line-U”, then getting a necessary 3rd and 1 is a foregone conclusion. It should happen. Not some of the time, ALL of the time. On those rare plays that the D just happens to guess right and floods the gap you’re attacking, you TRULY have to be angry enough and embarrassed enough to shove it down their throats on 4th and 1 (presumably less by this point).
With the game still up in the air, down by 13, we went for it under these circumstances and were stuffed twice. Yes, it’s true that we’ve done that to other teams—but other teams aren’t O-Line-U.
I’m not sure we are any longer, either.
2Wesley) CJ Jones injured on kickoff
Now this is football and there are going to be injuries, but ones to people that show a lot of promise, on a team that’s already been through the ringer with injuries is hard, especially in an area that we are already very thin.
3M) 30 unanswered
Agreed that it was tough to see CJ Jones go down—I was looking forward to seeing him develop this year. I hope he’s able to rehab his knee and gets a medical red shirt—I assume he will.
On the same note—what’s up with using our starters on the kick-off team? I shudder every time I see Luke out there. We’re simply not deep enough to continually have more and more starters get injured on special teams.
On Saturday, BC gave up 30 unanswered points. This is clearly bad on two levels. One, we didn’t score past the opening field goal, and two—we gave up a ton of points for the second straight game.
Before Saturday night, that had only happened TWICE in the past 118 games BC has played. By “that”, I mean giving up 30 unanswered points.
Once, as many of you may have guessed, was vs. VT two years ago in Lane where a Spaz-lead Eagles team was thoroughly embarrassed 34-0 at halftime before throwing a couple meaningless scores up on the board. The other was back in 2003 vs. an insanely talented Miami BCS bowl team—and even then, we did answer late with two scores.
This past Saturday was the first time in modern history we gave up 30 in a row without answering, and without scoring a touchdown.
What did that VT team and that Miami team have in common? Both were BCS bowl participants. Will UCF be? They could be, but it’s safe to say that this loss to UCF goes down as one of the worst in the program’s modern-day history.
Tough also not to note that two of these three outliers have come on Spaz’ watch—both away from The Heights.
4W) Losing the time of possession battle
It's not going to be a bit surprise to anyone that BC likes to run the ball first, to control the clock , get the Defense a breather, well BC was unable to come even close to breaking even, so when BC is unable to get its bread and butter, it will inherently lose. Our Eagles lost the time of possession battle almost two-to-one, which I felt like the Defense played pretty strong for the first half, but by the second half with that amount of time on the field were unable to hold the dam, and the water gushed by.
5M) My Dad showing up in a USF Bulls Green T-Shirt
Now, this takes a little bit of explaining.
Here’s some important base facts that are necessary for the story: My parents retired to Bradenton, Florida about five years ago, my Dad likes to cheer for the local team wherever he is, and he’s been to BC away games with us before where fans have booed us for wearing BC colors.
My Dad, believing he was doing the smart thing by NOT wearing BC colors but rather supporting another area Florida school walks up to our tailgate sporting a USF Bulls T-Shirt. Now, as BC fans you might not know this—but USF and UCF hate each other with an impressive amount of vitriol. Think Alabama-Auburn but without the BCS AQ and mutual respect. I mean they *HATE* each other. You would think that perhaps my Dad would have picked up on this living in Florida for a number of years, but no.
So basically my Dad walked in wearing the one thing that would above all else send the drunken UCF fans (to be fair, they’re tailgating for 8 hours before the game, it’s tough to keep anyone sober for that long) into a tizzy while thinking he’s doing the exact opposite. While the UCF fans weren’t BC fans on that one day, they hate USF 24/7.
Thankfully we had packed another BC shirt he was able to wear instead, but watching my Dad’s face as we told him he was walking into an Indian Village with a “I’m with Custer” Bulls Eye T-Shirt was pretty priceless. Glad we had that shirt; otherwise things could have gotten ugly.
6W) Zero WR separation
Hahaha, that is just hilarious! Well it's only funny because you were able to outfit him in some BC gear.. Agreed that would have been a very unpleasant sight if he would have wore the USF colors.
On number six , I am going to go with zero Wide Receiver separation. I am not going to automatically default our WR's on this one, UCF has a very talented group of DB's and does a great job of defending the pass, but the lack of separation made it near impossible for a pass to be squeezed in to move the chains, and made it for one very long evening.
7M) Giving up in the 4th
I hate to say it, but it looked like we gave up in the 4th quarter. Yes, there was an early score in the 4th but the box score doesn’t lie—21 points in the 4th quarter—again, unanswered. Yes, we were beaten soundly but the final score of 30-3 makes it look like it was a thrashing from the get-go rather than the tight, albeit ugly game it was in reality for the first three quarters at 9-3. The offense did increasingly more three and outs and the D, particularly the D-line, just looked gassed once again and the UCF running attack started picking up steam.
It’s easy to get demoralized down by a couple of scores in the 4th quarter, but we expect our guys to fight with every bit of their being on every play. Part of that has to be attributed to the general lack of depth, injuries, and collective age of the unit—but a large portion of this has to be our coach’s responsibility as well.
It was embarrassing being a BC fan on Saturday during that game—but being a BC fan in the 4th was just brutal.
8W) Overall Line play
Now I am aware mike has driving it home as his first pick where he mentions the line. But I want to really drive this point home.
There was not enough holes being made for a successful run, the only successful runs were stretch plays. And Chase was not getting anywhere near the amount of time needed to complete a pass,therefore making have antsy feet. And I do not blame him for having those.
We have a lot of people playing hurt, and a lot of young guys on the line, but to be successful even to hit 500 this year, we need the Offensive line to dominate, or its not going to happen at all.
9M) Rettig firing short-range bullets
Listen—I’m as big of a Chase fan as you’ll find, but Saturday was not his day. While it was true that he wasn’t given much of a line to throw behind and the WR’s weren’t generally getting great separation, his short throws were borderline uncatchable sometimes. It seems that Saturday regardless of how long the throw was, no matter who the throw was to, it was going as hard as Chase could possibly throw it. On those short routes—which by and large was all that we ran vs. UCF, these guys are 3-5 yards away and are having the ball come zipping out at 100 MPH less than two seconds after the play has started.
I’d really like to see Chase put some TOUCH on the short passes. We all know he has the gun necessary to get the ball in to the tight space if need be, but on the routes where it doesn’t have to be 100 MPH it would have been nice to have seen him throw a more catchable ball to our guys.
10W) Starting 0-2 in the season
You know it's hard to dig out of a hole, but 0-2 to start the season, puts a damper on everyone's parade. Maybe we should start with cupcakes? Granted UCF is a talented team. 0-2 to start the season puts the team, fans, coaches and others all at a place they would rather not be.
RECAP:
BCMike drafted: Can't get 1 yard, 30 unanswered, Dad USF shirt, 4th Q give-up, Rettig short bullets
Wesley drafted: CJ injury, Losing TOP, WR 0 separation, overall line play Starting 0-2
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