Game 1: Give me Liberty and Give me death.......

My apologies to Patrick Henry for butchering his quote.

Lets face it folks. Yesterday was ugly, ugly as can be. I was hoping for easy running room coupled with play action bombs, and I all but knew our defense would dominate. Instead we dinked and dunked our way into the red zone until our drives stalled and then settled for field goals. Our defense, despite all the pre season accolades, could not get any pressure, could not cover, and had way too many penalties. I have a great number of things that I want to talk about so here goes.

Passing offense-I thought Jarrett did ok. He kept his head up while scrambling never through a dumb pass, and was pretty accurate. There was a lot of dinking and dunking though and I'm not sure if there were open guys down field or not, but most of my guys that were there say that there were. I guess Arnett was running those routes since he didn't even show up the rest of the day. I thought the post pass to Jock in the second half was a great call and some of the passes to Urban down the seam will definitely keep teams from leaving the deep middle open like they have in the past. I thought Jock caught the ball really well, but Urban had two drops that should have been catches. However, JB definitely got less accurate as the game wore on, and he missed at least two of the third downs that lead to field goals. Thats the difference between blowing this team out and looking so so...or one of them. He checked down too early a couple of times and got Devine totally flattened once. Also, he holds the ball way too loosely when he runs with it and that will cost him with faster defenders knocking it out from behind. Overall I would give JB's performance a B -

Offensive Line- The push was good as it should be...its Liberty and I will discuss this more when I talk about the running game but we sure as hell didn't get any help from number 7. Blitz pickup would be my biggest concern. Seemed like some of the guys were blocking air on the middle blitzes...JB made them miss but I wouldn't expect it to happen all the time. This is a correctable mistake though. Barclay had the most mental errors, but after watching some of the other games this week I think our young Oline did much better than many of the other teams. (Bob Stoops is probably running some of his linemen today for all of their false starts.) At first I thought the left side did a much better job, but I just think that Noel has more confidence on that side and gave them more chances to get their blocks down. We can't be a once sided team though. Capers might have had the best day of all of them. He could very well play on Sundays I think they did well and would give them a B+

Running Game-This was not one of little Daddy's best games. Hist first three plays he bounced outside when there was at least some hole. Sure he got the yardage but you have to press the hole like Rene said. It almost cost us on our first third and short and it did cost us on the last run of the half where he had a hole and bounced it out for a loss. He got much better in the second half and accumulated most of his yards. He really is powerful and hard to bring down and on the TD run he was patient, didnt dance, and exploded through the hole much like his first TD against OU in the Fiesta. Overall grade would be C-

Receivers and TE's- Jock had a great game and was pretty much open all game. The only thing he did wrong was go backwards to get more yards and effectively take the first down away on the second possession in the second half. Urban might have had the worst game missing two catches...one was behind him on third down and would have kept the drive alive before we kicked the long field goal. Its still much better than last season and it shows how good of a coach Galloway is. Overall grade would be B+

Defensive Line-Did Scooter Berry even play? How about Neild? For a unit that gets lots of pre season hype they looked like they were just going through the motions. Julian Miller has a motor and might be our best DE we have had here since Dingle or even before that. Overall grade D

Linebackers-Wow is JT Thomas good. The helmet to helmet collision ting will be a much debated topic in Athens and other towns today and I don't think JT's hit was dirty at all. He was definitely the player of the game on defense. Overall grade A-

DB's-Boogie got out of position at times and totally wiffed on a bubble screen that someone in the press box was calling before the snap. E. Smith played pretty good and had the coverage that led to Sand's interception. Sands played great except for his personal foul...his pick was nice but really that ball was thrown high because Smith had such good coverage on the Mike Brown. Speaking of Mike Brown....I think number 10 on their team could play for our team and contend for PT against Jock. He is that good. Hogan was OK but he got burnt a few times. Overall grade B-

Special Teams-The kickoff team is still terrible. No push, no emotion, no effort. Gillyard would have ran one of those back on us again. Something has to change here and Stew has to swallow his pride and let someone else take care of it. Josh Lider had some terrible kicks too only hurt the situation. Rodgers is our best return man so far. Tavon wanted to Dance more than get up field. (I bet he and Devine are hell at the club). The one bright spot was Tyler. He kicked the ball well for his first game, had good height and distance on all his field goals and of course they were accurate. Overall I would have to give Tyler an A, but the rest of the kicking units get an F-.

Overall I think the defense played without emotion and had no fire. It didn't help that we were not blitzing and such, but I would expect that since they hadn't played in nine months they would want to kick some ass. They let Liberty stay on the field way too long either by penalty or by missed tackle way too many times. The offense failed to produce really any big plays and looked more mechanical than methodical. Noel runs as if he is a band apart at times and I'm not sure if its his desire to make a big run every time or distrust in his line. Lets hope that gets corrected.

I talked about expectations last week and how they really influence your reaction. If we do the same thing against ECU I will be as happy as shit, but we will have to play better than this or WVU will get pounded by the pirates again.