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- That was the worst officiated game I have been to in years. My Dad is a Baylor alum, and he was even yelling and frustrated at the horrible calls going against SMU.

- The 14 point swing on the DJ drop/pick and then the BS fumble call were too much to counter on the road against a decent team.

- I think I know what hurts us in these first games defensively. Our scout team just isn't good enough to challenge the defense. There were a ton of bad calls, but I think the defense as a whole didn't play that great outside of the period from mid first quarter to mid second. Obviously, things start snowballing and the team morale goes down a little bit. But stupid penalties like we had on defense tonight happen because the defense isn't dominating the way they thought they could.

- Safety play was poor. Our corners were supposed to be able to play tight and have safety help over the top. The safeties weren't there on the two long passes, they bit [deleted] the playaction pass.

- Passive play calling defensively. Not many blitzes. SL seemed to occupy blocks okay (Marcus was double teamed all night), but the linebackers seemed to be staying back, playing super conservative. It was really a little odd. Not sure if it was a scheme thing or if they just got juked out of their shorts by the Baylor backs and got tentative. But the same exact thing happened at A&M last season.

- Gilbert was shaky. You can see the potential, but he was flustered for periods of time. A couple of really nice deep balls, though. That is his strength. There were quite a few plays he had more time than he thought and threw the ball away when he didn't have to.

- i thought a pretty poor night for the receivers. JJ Had some really nice plays and catches, but he also short armed a couple of balls. There were a couple of times tonight when Gilbert made a pass and the reciever really didn't make an effort for it, and it wasn't that far off. it could be that Gilbert was throwing with a little extra mustard on it with the adreniline and the ball was getting there too quick. But I think outside of DJ and JJ we have some issues at WR right now. Holman and Thompson were having difficulty getting separation.

- The OL did much better pass blocking than anticipated. They aren't strong on the run just yet though. Baylor did a great job defending the run.

I think next week against SFA, we will see Gilbert get his confidence up and the defense play more aggressive.

Nice analysis. Let me help. Out coached, out prepared, out recruited, out talented especially with respect to speed, out disciplined (stupid penalties), etc.

The gap between a mid-poor B12 team and a non-CUSA winner is significant.

I thought Gilbert looked progressively better all night. Fewer dropped/tipped balls and his stat line would look a lot better. Flashes of huge potential.

very good post jason - agree with all of it 100%. Gilbert is looking at a list of JUCO recievers right now - and trying to see who he can talk into coming here next year. the ones we have are not big enough or fast enough - but they also let him down. Not saying GG was perfect tonight - far from it - but he played pretty well in my view and the offensive line played very well. A few key catches get made and we are basically tied at half instead of where we were. Its not like they stuffed us - we moved down the field almost every possession - only to give it away at the end.

Their first drive - - we kept them alive FOUR TIMES with penalties

Inside the red zone 4 times in the first half and come away with 3 points? Is that even possible?

At the risk of looking like an aggie - worst officiating i have EVER seen. they all went against us. Something was up. Did ESPN hire these guys?

safties were worst ever - they looked short and slow - which is not a good thing in a safety

I noticed on some of the other threads some comments about June not running in the red zone. Our red zone offense has been fantastic the past few years because we were able to run Zach.

At the game, you could see that our o-line was not able to get to the second level for most of the game. Zach got a lot of yards at the end against a worn out team or second teamers. For most of the game, our o-line had no push forward. Zach would slide through a gap, and was met by a LB and four of his friends and get a couple of yards out of it.

That is why Jones didn't call a run inside the ten. I don't think we would have gotten anything out of it. they held three linebackers in the middle of the field to control Zach.

That is why we went to the short outs with the slot receivers. Trying to turn something short into a long gain. The post was there all night from a scheme standpoint, but I couldn't tell at the game if our WR weren't getting open on the patter or if Gilbert was afraid to throw it, because he always checked down off of it to a different read.

I think the big gap in the teams was the lack of aggression by our LB core and the Baylor receivers were way better than ours.

Gilbert played about as well as you should have expected from a guy who has had a month to learn an offense. Passing Game Comments-he released the ball relatively quickly, moved well in the pocket to gain time(June Jones simply Coaches QBs not to scramble-they never do) and that I simply don't believe he should be blamed on that one Int. The ball was thrown low-but that's pretty well where it needs to be in traffic. He had a nice 3rd Down back shoulder throw too that the receiver simply never adjusted to. I also don't think some our receivers are competing for the ball. Now he didn't consistently get the ball down field and SMU's receivers didn't consistently make plays in space-but I was actually impressed with the hard hitting and physical Baylor Defensive Backfield. I'm not going to take a stance on Darius' fumble until I see a clear picture. At first I definitely thought it was a bad call but then kinda wondered if that ball was coming out. I do know that when 2 Baylor DBs lay a big lick on a small WR and a receivers drops the ball whether he was down or not then Baylor deserves some credit for creating their own luck. Hold the ball and there is no dispute. Good hard hitting football play by Baylor-failure to hold the ball by SMU WR-Big Play for Baylor

I forgot about that first quarter 4rd down back shoulder pass.

One other comment - did anyone notice that we played a ton of man in the middle of the field, and actually broke out a true nickel for large parts of the game?

12, Worthen, got burned for the long TD, but I thought Gray actually did decent for the most part in the slot position.

On the downside, I wonder if that lead to a lot of the saftey issues - with one less LB in there, they felt like they would need to support the run and left the long play open.

DJ's fumble was a legitimate fumble; just one more on a long list of plays where our receivers were manhandled by Baylor's secondary

At the game live/jumbotron made it look like he was in posession after being hit, then butt hit ground (down) then elbow hit knocking out the ball (ground causing fumble). Did they show an angle from the up field side on TV?

It was a fumble. One angle made it look like a bad call. All the rest confirmed the call. They mugged him hard. Just happens sometimes. I am much more upset about his missed of the pass on the goal line.

couch 'em wrote:At the game live/jumbotron made it look like he was in posession after being hit, then butt hit ground (down) then elbow hit knocking out the ball (ground causing fumble). Did they show an angle from the up field side on TV?

TV showed fumble.

morning after thoughts. that was depressing, but sun is shining and I think I will go to the beach. good scenery always helps one bounce back. looking forward to next Saturday and hopeful we will have a good opening night crowd and show a huge improvement from week one to wek two. Still hopeful we can compete with A&M and TCU on our home turf.

announcers were very kind to SMU last night. lots of good things to say and they seemed to be looking forward to visiting campus when they come in to do the TCU game

Your analysis is very thoughtful. I will add that there were numerous tangible and intangible factors working against us:

Poor officiating
Playing a good Big 12 team on the road to open
Starting a QB who has only been on campus a short
Starting a QB who is new to the system and who had probably too much pressure to succeed early
An offensive system that places too much stress on the QB
No long passing game until desperation sat in

I want to play as many big time opponents as we can schedule, but I wish we had SFA at home to open the season.

I just seems to me that Jones has the NFL mode of college coaching. He uses the first few non conference games as tunes ups for the conference, as preseason games are in the NFL. He just does not seem to ever have the team prepared for opening day. He uses NC games to get the kids used to the speed and pressure rather than at least trying to emulate it in practice with full speed scrimmages. Lots of bad timing, bad angles, poor tackling etc that will all be better as the year goes on but looked very bad last night. I still think we are positioned to win CUSA but we need to be aiming a little higher in my opinion.

jj is simply trying to bring the fball program down to the level of our losing soccer programs.