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Okay, the official game overview by a not so official person named Jason who drove his [deleted] up from Austin to watch the game on Saturday...
First some general comments on what I have seen elsewhere in the list...
1) Crowd noise. It was quiet at the beginning. Once we had success, people didnt want to get too excited- it was allmost like everyone didnt want to jinx anything or was waiting for the tide to turn. Towards the end of the game, it finally got lowder when people learned to stomp their feet a bit. BTW - I was the guy in section 207, yelling his [deleted] off, and glaring down at everyone around me until they stood up too
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2) The boulevard is awesome. What a great gameday experience. That was really, really neat. I loved following the band up bishop and into the stadium. I think that will end up being a great tradition where it will be a sign to people that it is time to head up to the stadium and close things down.
3) Best camera shot of the night- sky-diver-head-cam. Awesome. wow. cant say enough about that one.
Okay, now for the game itself.... someone mentioned that after the first quarter we lost 17-7. Hogwash. If our coaches had any balls, we would have slaughtered them 54-3. We eased way up on the gas petal so we wouldnt give too much away. Notice how the new wrinkles in the offense dissappeared after the first quarter? Notice how we stopped passing on first down (the passing game was the reason for the onslaught of points)? We were running the ball to kill time. It makes for a boring second half, but it killed the clock and got the win.
Offense: Overall I think the offense was outstanding. Like I said, they started wasting time after a while, but it was because we eased off, it wasnt a reality check. Grade A for the new coach.
Quarterbacks: Mccown was outstanding. He had two bad passes the whole night. Freman made a great play to break one of them up from being an interception. That, by the way, was the correct read on the play, but was underthrown and thrown a little bit too late. But it was the proper read. The touchdown to Hampton was a great throw. best throw of the night was when we were heading towards the south enzone he split two defenders with a bullet in the middle of the field. I think that was before He ran the ball in. Yes, that is a capitalized He because Mccown had a tremendous game. The interception was a fluke play.
Running backs: Briggs looks good- I cant wait till he is healthy. Pipkins struggled against a meaty Kansas line, but he will do well against the wac, just wait. Briggs had a nice catch.
Wide Reciever: Solid job. Anyone else notice we never through deep (one throw to Freeman was it). We didnt show that hand of cards.... we held freemban back for this one, he will dominate later. Cunningham made a great catch over the middle.
Offensive line: Good pass protection. Bad job of opening holes until late in the game. But remember- my cousin from A&M went and mentioned that each team in the big 12 builds a defense against power running with a massive line. They stop the run, but dont put a big pass rush on. And that is what we saw last night...we will run much better against the wac I think.
Defense: Shorter comments here. Actually, I think we got lucky on defense. They had a few bad drops that hurt. Great goal line stand. We have some quick guys in the secondary, but who dont have instincts. For example, there were a couple of long throws where brigs was in position, but never looked back and would have been called for interference if the pass was on target. kansas didnt throw deep enough, and that will be our weakness. I thought our line got plowed over a lot and that was a surprise. Aldridge and Pratt didnt generate enough pressure and had trouble wrapping the quarterback up. I think our defense is our week point of the team this year. With the exception of...
KEVIN GARRET- this guy is a STUD. He is our neon deion. Kansas stayed away from him the whole game and his coverage of the reciever was tremendous. This guy is a player. Amazing job.
On the whole, I think our offense is really sharp. We will score a lot of points. Our defense will give up a lot of points at first, but will gell later in the season.
new predictions: 8-4 record. Bowl game. High scoring shootouts v.s. houston, tulane and utep. Upset predictions: FRESNO- we will win, mark it down. hawaii will be a good game because the defense will be playing well by then. Losses: hawaii, TCU, NC State, Tulane (I know, it is just a gut feeling...).
