Samurai Snippets: Boston College

The Good (contrary to what I said in the open thread last night, this game was not without merit)

Defense. Once again, the defense gets love from me.  They did give up a lot of yards, but they also came through with huge plays when it mattered, including holding BC to 3-11 on third down and the defensive line having one of the most beastly defensive series I can remember seeing.  Also, there was another nice interception by Kevin Johnson in the red zone back when the game was theoretically still in reach.  Good on ya, defense.  Keep doing what you do.

We have a pretty good receiving corps! Michael Campanaro was, well, Michael Campanaro, but he wasn't the only one who had some flashes of brilliance in the game.  Jonathan Williams continued to establish himself as a potential breakout star for the year, and Jared Crump had another solid outing as well.

The Bad

What's the rush? 39 attempts rushing, 55 yards.  Yes, 1.4 YPC.  That is utterly atrocious especially since it's not like we're devoid of running backs with potential.  Joshua Harris, DeAndre Martin, Joshua Wilhite, Orville Reynolds...all of these guys have potential to be, if not stars, at least solid running backs who can at least help to supplement the passing game that, you know, actually works.  Now, I'll concede that some of it has to do with run blocking, and we knew coming into the year that the offensive line might be a question mark, but come on.  We can do better than that, I don't care who we're playing.  Which brings we to another point.

Need to find another "option". Those option looks are atrocious and must stop.  Seriously, let me park here for a minute.  Okay, I get that Tanner played option in high school.  I get that we need a rushing attack.  I get that Coach Grobe comes from a service academy background and therefore has some familiarity with the offensive philosophy.  But forget the fact for a second that it wasn't gaining us any yards.  It gifted BC two touchdowns by itself.  Now, given how frankly horrendous we looked for the entirety of the game on the offensive side of the ball, I'm not going to necessarily sit here and tell you that we would've won the game otherwise, but all other things being equal (which in my opinion is a worst case scenario; I think due to the early fumble and TD on the next play we were rattled and never really recovered) we would've gone into the half up 7-3, and that's with missing a scoring opportunity (more on that later).  Stop the option runs.  Just stop.  They make the entire team look like they don't know what they're doing, something I don't believe, and they also essentially throw Tanner Price to the wolves.

Two first and goals inside the five, three points.  Yeah. Okay, I'm not necessarily going to complain about the "going for it on fourth down" part.  I actually kind of liked the aggressiveness.  But how on earth do you get a first and goal like that not once but twice, and fail to score a touchdown either time?  I'm not going to say our guys didn't play hard, but there's got to be some way to get more confidence or fire into them,  Which brings me to...

The Funny

A poster on another football forum I frequent suggested the following.  Based on the commentary of last night's game, he made a decision.  He simply muted his TV and put the following song on loop:

Seriously, try it.  It's impossible to be in a bad mood.  I think Steve Addazio might be onto something.  If I was Coach Addazio, I would lead the team in a chorus of that before every game.  Either that or take them out to Good Burger.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go take a driving test with Sinbad (seriously, look up Good Burger).

On to the next one.  Go Deacs.