roscoeowl said

Offense will be fine this year.  Our d? No comment.

The offense that scored 10 points on last year's pass D #109?

What I noticed is McCoy had forever and a day to throw the ball.  FAU's dline is to slow for these big schools.

I think we needed to score first to have any chance of winning, and it looked like we might, but inexperience at center cost us. Like others have said before, if we were to beat Texas, we'd have to play a perfect game, and also get alittle help with either penalties or turnovers and we just weren't able to do that. Our defense just wasn't there, our offense had some nice drives and some really nice catches as well, so I'm not worried about that at all. Rusty made some mistakes, but then again, he's not perfect. And he did throw for over 250 yards in the first half right? Just some costly mistakes that good teams will always make you pay for, and Texas did just that. I wasn't really believing all the hype, because I didn't want to get my hopes up for nothing.  But I did think that we had a chance but we just couldn't get anything to work. I felt like we played sloppy tonight, that's just my opinion though. When we had the blocked punt, it looked like they just let Texas through the line and started running downfield! Our special teams needs improving, BIG time. The only bright spot was we had some decent kickoff returns. I know we can beat teams like this, but I'm just wondering when? I mean, it seems that every year, one or two Sunbelt teams beat a BCS team and we always have that opportunity, but we just never can pull it out. The only thing that we can do is learn from this. Look at our weaknesses, try to fix them and move on. Hopefully this is a blessing in disguise and our boys have come back to reality and realize that they can only be the great team that they are if they stop reading the about all the hype. Although now, there probably won't be any hype and alot of "I told you so" articles. This is only the first game of the season and we have a LONG road ahead of us so I'm still proud of our boys and proud to be an Owl!

GO OWLS, beat UAB!

I thought the defense did a good job stopping the runs up the middle (which they used to be terrible at). They just can't protect the sides very well… you saw that when McCoy ran in for a TD.

We didn't intercept passes. We let them catch it and tackled them on the spot, allowing them to drive 10 yards at a time like a Sun Belt team. No long bombs from Texas that I can remember.

The new center throwing it to the side is something you feared would happened but hoped it wouldn't. Then it happened. According to Ted, Rusty injured his shoulder trying to fall on it. However, Rusty didn't throw poorly tonight because of his shoulder. He threw poorly because he didn't have time to make his decisions. The pocket collapsed in on itself pretty quick. Lots and lots of dumping off the ball so we didn't lose yards.

Hard to beat up on VanCamp… he had the same collapsing pocket problem that Rusty had. At least he made a run for it and got some yards… just not enough yards for the first down.

Lestar Jean, the Man Who Could Catch Anything In The Preason, made what, one catch and was tackled pretty much on the same spot where he caught it? To his credit, the other throws to him seemed too high or premature.

I'll tell you who was impressive in this game (outside of Rob Housler, The Man Who Couldn't Catch Anything In The Preason and now The Man Who Scored The Only TD Against Texas): Jamari Grant and Jeff Blanchard. How about those guys? Nice work from both of them.

I do have faith for next week against UAB. We need a big showing there to keep people interested. Unfortunately I don't have faith against Michigan State. I'm also a little worried about ASU now too. I guess it's best not to get too worked up about these things. One game at a time.

grayowl said

but it is clear to me that we were solidly beaten on (1) talent, (2) heart – ours didn't make the flight, apparently – and (3) coaching.

ABSOLUTELY!

I told Florida Owl we'd lost 55-17 last week.  Given past efforts on opening games, we do not play flawless ever, and we were WAY TOO full of ourselves, I saw a beat down coming.

It was deserved and earned in my opinion.

I kinda feel like last year after the Okie State game. Went into that game having won the opener and looking for an upset but that clearly didnt happen. but then we came back the very next week and beat Minn. That gives me some definite confidence headed into this next week against UAB and I for one cant wait. The team showed last year it can rebound from tough losses and we'll see if the team still has that mentality.

This team has just never learned to rebound. Instead of fighting harder when down, they throw in the towel and start blaming each other. For a team with 18 starters returning they sure are inmature.


I mean that in the best possible way. This team has the experience and the talent, their heads and hearts are the problem. We better see a serious turnaround next week.


GO OWLS!!!

All well.  I listened to it on radio so I cant complain about wasted money.  Our defense played as expected, no better, no worse.  If our offense has not made mistakes early Rusty would have stayed in and, well, we still would have lost.  We got press, people have at least heard of us, even if its for talking smack and getting it handed to us, they still have heard of us.  Noone has heard of FIU and they lost by a similar margin last night.  Baby steps.  Lets not get too down, lets go out and beat the blazers and learn from our mistakes, heal our injuries, and make a shot for a conference title and better bowl (st pete anyone?).

If we had one nobody would have challenged Howard saying what he did….so who cares, Texas didnt wake up because what he did, they woke up because they almost lost to two teams they should have handled last year and were not about to make the same mistake.

GO OWLS! SLAY THE BLAZE!

SlimJim1219 said

What I noticed is McCoy had forever and a day to throw the ball.  FAU's dline is to slow for these big schools.

It's not that our DLine is too slow.  It's that our DLine is not big/strong enough to compete with a Top 25 teams OL.  Same can be said for our OL vs their DL.  They were able to penetrate quickly.

We need to recruit some hosses up front on both sides of the ball.  Our running game can only go as far as the OL takes it, which won't be far since they aren't very big.

SigEp77 said

SlimJim1219 said

What I noticed is McCoy had forever and a day to throw the ball.  FAU's dline is to slow for these big schools.

It's not that our DLine is too slow.  It's that our DLine is not big/strong enough to compete with a Top 25 teams OL.  Same can be said for our OL vs their DL.  They were able to penetrate quickly.

We need to recruit some hosses up front on both sides of the ball.  Our running game can only go as far as the OL takes it, which won't be far since they aren't very big.

we are ok at DT…its DE we have serious issue with…