The Good, The Bad, and The "Really? WHY?" Border War Week

Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:24 pm

The Good-
Brian Hill. For a True Freshmen, he really stepped up his game when Wick went down and ended up with 121 yards and 2 TDs. Not bad for a true freshmen. Given a couple years, and a better o-line, I think we will really have an incredible back after Wick and May leave.

Colby Kirkegaard. Led the offense to a career and season high on output and points. Also had over 330 yards passing, 2 TDs, and no TOs with a decent completion percentage too. And other than their QB, the sheep kept in most of their starters except to give them a rest.

Dominic Rufran. He is now the national leader of consecutive games played where he had a catch with 45 (meaning for the last 45 games he has played in, he has had at least 1 catch).

Kind of in between, but the defense did get a couple of sacks, with the first one by Mertens.

The Bad.
The overall defensive performance. I know we had several starters out going into this game, but there were blown assignments, missed tackles, piss poor attempts at tackling, and let their QB have a career day on us. Just overall bad.

Special teams. Other than punt coverage, they just did badly.

The "Really? WHY!?"
More injuries to key players. Chief among them, Shaun Wick. First series of the game, his hand is broken. Luckily Brian Hill stepped up pretty damn good for him, but man, this was a big blow to the offense. Both our 1 and 2 RBs are done, May confirmed for the season and Wick most likely is as well.

Malkaam Muhammed. He was trying to fill in Mark Nzeocha's shoes (not easy to do at all) and then he goes down with a bad injury.

Sampson, who we just got back recently may also be done for a while, if not the season.

These last few games are tearing through our players pretty hard. Our defense, which had struggled when healthy, is now down to 2nd and 3rd stringers at most positions outside of the d-line (which has remained fairly healthy). And our RB corps is down to having our 3rd stringer as our starter, but he is actually pretty good and stepped up when Wick went down. But after him we have 2 relatively inexperienced guys that were built more for the spread than the pro offense. Not saying they can't be good pro-style backs, but it's a learning curve.

Sun Oct 26, 2014 2:12 pm

The other Board on Rivals said Wick will be back after the Bye week and maybe we get Sampson back. At least we have to beat New Mexico.

Sun Oct 26, 2014 3:33 pm

mwc fan wrote:The other Board on Rivals said Wick will be back after the Bye week and maybe we get Sampson back. At least we have to beat New Mexico.

A broken hand? It depends on if it needs surgery or not.

Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:47 pm

I was not super impressed with Brian Hill as were most, but he definitely has potential. Hill does the little things like pass block well and he always falls forward. It seems Hill didn't make anyone miss with his moves and didn't always find the soft spot to run to. Those things will come w/ experience. Guess I've been spoiled by Wick!

Colby played well, but takes so long to get into any sort of groove. They were bending us over int he1st half and we needed a score to stay in it and nothing, but noodle-arm throw after noodle-arm throw and boom, we're out of the game. He's just got to get going sooner.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 7:38 am

I've been thinking all season, get into the shotgun; 3 Mississippi, release. We went to that formula 2nd half.
Play action is not the means to the end right now. OL played decent in the final stages of this game. Colby has had time he just needs to read/react and throw the ball on time. Defensively, I have no answers. Losing the core of our defensive contingent has left us for severe wanting. My first assignment as a Coach is to find the players to run the scheme. It's painfully obvious our secondary is porous and fundamentally flawed. I'm selling out this off season to find some kids that can cover and lock up and tackle. Bohl and Stanard have to realize this. It's embarrassing to watch us on pass defense.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 10:00 am

I know we want to be successful now…but, scrapping our whole offensive scheme and philosophy will not help us get better in the long run. As painful as it is we need to stay the course with our basic scheme and get better at it. That will eventually get us to where we all want to be…a winning season and a decent bowl.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:29 am

LanderPoke wrote:I was not super impressed with Brian Hill as were most, but he definitely has potential. Hill does the little things like pass block well and he always falls forward. It seems Hill didn't make anyone miss with his moves and always find the soft spot to run to. Those things will come w/ experience. GuesIs I've been spoiled by Wick!

Colby played well, but takes so long to get into any sort of groove. They were bending us over int he1st half and we needed a score to stay in it and nothing, but noodle-arm throw after noodle-arm throw and boom, we're out of the game. He's just got to get going sooner.

Brian did well. Although we saw the difference running against the CSU starters (first half) and the reserves (2nd half) he did well. His vision is not there yet but it takes time. If Wick is back for Utah St that will help the offense a lot. Otherwise Hill will get hammered by the best run defense in the MWC. Colby's game was the same. Bad against the starters good against the backups.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:34 am

mwc fan wrote:
LanderPoke wrote:I was not super impressed with Brian Hill as were most, but he definitely has potential. Hill does the little things like pass block well and he always falls forward. It seems Hill didn't make anyone miss with his moves and always find the soft spot to run to. Those things will come w/ experience. GuesIs I've been spoiled by Wick!

Colby played well, but takes so long to get into any sort of groove. They were bending us over int he1st half and we needed a score to stay in it and nothing, but noodle-arm throw after noodle-arm throw and boom, we're out of the game. He's just got to get going sooner.
Brian did well. Although we saw the difference running against the CSU starters (first half) and the reserves (2nd half) he did well. His vision is not there yet but it takes time. If Wick is back for Utah St that will help the offense a lot. Otherwise Hill will get hammered by the best run defense in the MWC. Colby's game was the same. Bad against the starters good against the backups.

They didn't put back-ups in until 7 minutes left in the 4th (when their starting QB finally bowed out).

Mon Oct 27, 2014 12:21 pm

The good

Mon Oct 27, 2014 12:22 pm

Well, not the music, but dem girls!

Mon Oct 27, 2014 12:26 pm

bladerunnr wrote:The good

That was easily the best part of my day. Definitely makes a Monday a little bit better

Mon Oct 27, 2014 2:09 pm

fromolwyoming wrote:They didn't put back-ups in until 7 minutes left in the 4th (when their starting QB finally bowed out).

Pee Fart was in the whole game, wasn't he?

Not impressed by the way.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 4:24 pm

McPeachy wrote:
fromolwyoming wrote:They didn't put back-ups in until 7 minutes left in the 4th (when their starting QB finally bowed out).
Pee Fart was in the whole game, wasn't he?

Not impressed by the way.

Yep. I think they only switched out their starting QB at that point and only put in backups when starters needed a break.

And Fee Bart has been underwhelming all season.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:06 pm

How the hell did Pee Fart become a 5 star recruit? That is an absolute joke. I thought it was funny when the announcer said how powerful he was and then gets stopped cold on the goal line twice. Looked like he hit a f-word wall.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 6:02 pm

Alabama = 5 *****. But didn't he have knee issues? Could have killed some of his power?

Mon Oct 27, 2014 7:57 pm

http://www.coloradoan.com/story/sports/ ... /17986215/
Interesting article. However, I think Matt Stephens is pretty stale in my opinion.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 8:34 pm

NebraskaCowboy wrote:http://www.coloradoan.com/story/sports/ ... /17986215/
Interesting article. However, I think Matt Stephens is pretty stale in my opinion.

If you read the comments though, the posters there rip him a new one, lol.

Mon Oct 27, 2014 8:40 pm

mwc fan wrote:
LanderPoke wrote:I was not super impressed with Brian Hill as were most, but he definitely has potential. Hill does the little things like pass block well and he always falls forward. It seems Hill didn't make anyone miss with his moves and always find the soft spot to run to. Those things will come w/ experience. GuesIs I've been spoiled by Wick!

Colby played well, but takes so long to get into any sort of groove. They were bending us over int he1st half and we needed a score to stay in it and nothing, but noodle-arm throw after noodle-arm throw and boom, we're out of the game. He's just got to get going sooner.
Brian did well. Although we saw the difference running against the CSU starters (first half) and the reserves (2nd half) he did well. His vision is not there yet but it takes time. If Wick is back for Utah St that will help the offense a lot. Otherwise Hill will get hammered by the best run defense in the MWC. Colby's game was the same. Bad against the starters good against the backups.

CSU was running with the same defensive players at the end of the game as they were in the 1st quarter. They wanted to shut us down. To them, this is not the year you let the young guys play. Maybe our guys figured them out, or the CSU boys got tired, but it was the same players.