PerunaPunch wrote:JasonB wrote:31-7 4th and 4 on their 35 and we punt? What? Morris quit in the second quarter. Disappointing.
I have to disagree with you on this one. Every coach does things that the fanbase isn't going to agree with. June Jones liked to throw low completion % bombs of 4th and short, which drove me crazy. I believe Coach Morris' statistical/analytical brain often defers to punting even when we have some momentum on our side because he's done the math. It's more conservative than I might like, but that's probably why I couldn't even get a job coaching a pee wee team.
I'd like to see him asked this question at weekly presser because I really am curious. My thought at the time was that even though we were down 31-7, statistically the game was much closer and the wide gap was the result of a handful of ugly plays. I really thought our guys still had some fight in them and that we should have gone for it, but I figured he was thinking, let's just not risk giving Memphis another score so hopefully our guys can turn it around in the 2nd half (believing after Tulane that they were capable of mounting a comeback). Once we let them score anyways, it was game, set, match!