First, OU did not play well, this was not championship level football, period.
Having said that, I thought the first half was more encouraging than the second half. Tech got 2 easy TDs that took a combined 28 yards of offense due to interceptions, thats not on the defense. Take out those two possessions and the Tech offense had 2 TDs, 2 punts, and a FG in the first half. Coming into the game I would have taken that all day, and that's not even including the bogus PIs that gifted them one of those. Once again, defense wasn't great, but did as good a job of "bend don't break" as could be expected (aka the mediocre D this team needs).
Bottom line is we outscored them 28-17 after the 2 interceptions, if you repeat that in the second half thats still a win for us (56-48) and by a bigger margin than what we ended up getting.
I was much more worried about the undisciplined way the team basically refused to put Tech away in the second half. It almost seemed like Riley was trying to score as quickly as possible when Bowman's status was uncertain, like he wanted to get Tech the ball back without him as quickly as possible so we wouldn't have to defend Bowman, which led to some bad playcalls and strange decisions which clogged up our offense and led to frustration. We defended duffey well the first few drives, but once we found out Bowman wasn't coming back its like the defense relaxed, and it was as bad as we have seen it in a while, doing all the things we hate. The good news is that finally made Riley switch to run heavy, but we still had dumb penalties and poor decisions that didn't allow us to get separation.
Ruffin however, went back to the 3 man rush with 8 in coverage that STILL can't cover anyone. It's my single biggest pet peeve. Worked OK a couple times in the first half because Bowman couldn't run, but even when we have 8 guys covering 4 receivers they still can't get it done, all it does is give the QB and WRs more time find a hole in the defense, because in our secondary there is always at least one. The whole point of prevent defense is it's supposed to, y'know, PREVENT something, which ours absolutely does not.
Having said that, I thought the first half was more encouraging than the second half. Tech got 2 easy TDs that took a combined 28 yards of offense due to interceptions, thats not on the defense. Take out those two possessions and the Tech offense had 2 TDs, 2 punts, and a FG in the first half. Coming into the game I would have taken that all day, and that's not even including the bogus PIs that gifted them one of those. Once again, defense wasn't great, but did as good a job of "bend don't break" as could be expected (aka the mediocre D this team needs).
Bottom line is we outscored them 28-17 after the 2 interceptions, if you repeat that in the second half thats still a win for us (56-48) and by a bigger margin than what we ended up getting.
I was much more worried about the undisciplined way the team basically refused to put Tech away in the second half. It almost seemed like Riley was trying to score as quickly as possible when Bowman's status was uncertain, like he wanted to get Tech the ball back without him as quickly as possible so we wouldn't have to defend Bowman, which led to some bad playcalls and strange decisions which clogged up our offense and led to frustration. We defended duffey well the first few drives, but once we found out Bowman wasn't coming back its like the defense relaxed, and it was as bad as we have seen it in a while, doing all the things we hate. The good news is that finally made Riley switch to run heavy, but we still had dumb penalties and poor decisions that didn't allow us to get separation.
Ruffin however, went back to the 3 man rush with 8 in coverage that STILL can't cover anyone. It's my single biggest pet peeve. Worked OK a couple times in the first half because Bowman couldn't run, but even when we have 8 guys covering 4 receivers they still can't get it done, all it does is give the QB and WRs more time find a hole in the defense, because in our secondary there is always at least one. The whole point of prevent defense is it's supposed to, y'know, PREVENT something, which ours absolutely does not.
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