OK, trot out the cliche: A Win is a Win.
Especially for a team that went 1-11 last season.
Owl Country should be happy, right?
Well, residents of Owl Country also have a right to be concerned after it took a fourth quarter TD to beat I-AA Wagner 7-3 Friday night.
THE GOOD
Love the D. The Owl's putrid first-half of offense kept the D on the field a lot, and in bad situations, but the D rose up when it had to, and held Wagner to one field goal.
Give Graham Wilbert some props. The dude was coming off a miserable season, and likely would have been No. 3 on the depth chart Friday if MG3 had been suited up.
But after Stephen Curtis melted down in the first half, Wilbert got the O moving in the second, and then found Byron Hankerson for the game-winnning 37-yard TD, the first big play FAU has had since, well, forever.
Student showing. on a night when most of the general admission seats were empty, the student section had a decent crowd and was loud, providing some life to the stadium.
THE BAD
OK, where to start....
Special teams -- WTF was Travis Jones thinking on those botched returns? Yikes. And a missed 39-yard field goal.
Protecting the ball -- The score actually could have looked respectable if FAU had not fumbled four times, including twice in the red zone. That can't happen. Just can't happen.
The offense -- With half the scholarship players that FAU had, Wagner was bound to wear down in the second half, and they did. Yes, the Owls ended up with 327 yards of total O, but, again, this was against a I-AA team that was 4-7 last season. We'll assume Wilbert will start against MTSU, and then we'll find out if what happened in the second half was a fluke or not.
I'll stop there.
A win is a win, right?
Now things get tougher, as the only game FAU will likely be favored in is in the books. Now comes the gauntlet....
Later....
Comments
Re: Is a win like Friday's really a win?
;)
Re: Is a win like Friday's really a win?
I've got one question that, hopefully, someone out there can answer. Went to the Wagner game with my Brother-in-law who is in his 70's and suffering from the long term effects of diabetes. When we got to the general area of our $29 seats on the visitor's side we were told "No elevators or escalators on this side of the stadium" by a security officer. With GREAT difficulty, my Brother-in-Law got to his seat. I thought the Americans With Disabilities Act required that public facilities be available to the handicapped, but I guess NOT at FAU Stadium??
TED
Re: Is a win like Friday's really a win?
And Ted - at least we are not MTSU, or Penn St. or Pitt or Cal or Houston whom all lost to lesser opponents or even Iowa or Wisconsin or Northwestern or... the many others who 'sweated out" upsets and got by...some of them somehow!
We sucked last year and who knows if we will be any good this year? But A WIN IS A WIN and we do equal last season already!
Re: Is a win like Friday's really a win?
Also, I'm going to call the FAU Athletic Department on Tuesday and get to the bottom of this.