Frustrating.
That's what I'd call BYU's football game tonight. This was by far BYU's worst game of the season in my opinion. Sure, the defense played relatively well through 3 quarters, but were mostly terrible in the 4th. The offense just looked out of sync all night. Way too many dropped passes by Collie and Pitta. Very little blocking at the point of attack for the run game.
A couple more comments about the game.
I felt that the KJZZ commentators were super pro-Aggie tonight. While I realize KJZZ does cover quite a bit of Aggie sports, for some reason I tend to believe that radio commentators can be as biased as they want, but TV announcers should try to be as unbiased as possible. It just seemed like every other sentence was about how great USU was doing and this and that about them. (Maybe that was just my frustration that they were playing relatively well at the end of the game.)
The bye week couldn't have come at a better time for BYU. They were flat and pretty darn awful (at least by their standards). Thank goodness USU is a bad enough team for BYU to have a bad week and still win by 20.
Retrospectively, I wish Bronco would have just let them go for it on 4th down a few more times. Instead he had them kick field goals (1 was blocked, 1 missed). No one can say he tries to run up the score, even when BYU winning by 40 would have made a bigger difference than winning by 20. I expect BYU to drop in the polls this week if people around them win (see USC).
It's funny how when your team is great you expect them to be great every week. I chimped on how BYU was the model of consistency. Every game the same. Every play with maximum effort. They play hard, they hit hard. They don't commit stupid penalties. They tackle in the open field. Well, Utah State played a great game tonight. This was definitely better than their last outing I watched (Utah). But for some reason, BYU won by 20 and I still feel like they lost.
Oh yea, one more thing, who hired these refs? I swear the ref was especially emphatic on announcing the BYU penalties, almost as if he were excited about them.
2 comments:
Three thoughts.
1. The idiot announcer used to be my uncle. He's just as bad in real life and hates BYU. He doesn't mind the ewe and cheers for USU. KJZZ for better or worse doesn't seem to mind being the station of the inferior programs in Utah since it can't be KSL.
2. You can't discount the effect of the absurd officiating on the flow of the game. The penalties amounted to almost 1/3 of the offense. Or the other way 40% of the defense. From the absurd block in the back penalty three plays in to the unsportsmanlike thrown into the pile after the QB sneak in the 4th quarter, these guys were biased , bad, and dangerous.
3. This game was over long before it got bad. I think that for better or worse, the coaching staff decided it was worth the risk of working on new things given the quality of the opponent. However, that lead to poor execution which carried over.
When BYU was penalized for unnessecary roughness...on Hall, we were actually very proud. How many QBs can draw that penalty? Go Max, go.
And let's hope we play a lot better on Sat.
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