Outback Bowl Snowflake Thread

back and letting USC pick us apart.  I have no problem with Mattison's aggressive blitz strategy.  You don't beat Spurrier-coached teams by playing conservative.  We did rush their QB into a lot of bad throws, forced them out of the pocket, and should have had a number of more sacks if not for poor tackling.  Give USC a lot of credit for good blocking and making the tough throws.    

Bad execution.

I you keep saying this in every thread, maybe it will become true.

And if we'd gone prevent and S.Car had marched right down the field, I suppose you'd have been OK with that?

Mattison's calls got us a couple of free shots at the QB and we incredibly could not wrap him up.  A sack on either one of those plays and we win.

Sometimes, you just have to give credit to the other guy.  This is one of those times.  Giving up all of those big plays up the middle pissed me off, and it would have been nice if they could have blocked Clowney better, but Michigan lost to a team of superior athletes today.  I was there, and honestly, the score could have been far worse than it was.  I was quite pissed when I left, but in retrospect, MIchigan did the Big Ten proud today.  

Also, Steve Spurrier runs a clean program.  It's probably why he hasn't won more National Championships.  If Michigan has to lose, it's a lot easier to stomach when they lose to a clean program.  Congrats to SC on a great game.

Did you watch the same game as everyone else because all of your comments have been terrible.  You have stated that Borges called a terrible game despite us putting up 28 points on a very solid defense and great pass rush.  Our blitzes nearly ended any chance for SC to win when Black got to the qb but just couldn't finish the sack.  That's not on Mattison.  The last TD was a bit of a blown coverage by Kovacs.

So you just wanted them to continue to sit in zone coverage and give up 5-7 yards at a time until SC got well within field goal range? They had to generate a pass rush somehow on that final drive, and on the last play the blitz was executed beautifully, but the QB made a spectacular throw and our rag-tag secondary just couldn't hold it together.

Also, how can you blame Mattison for continuing to blitz, when the blitz got through to the QB every single time? We just couldn't bring the guy down.

But the defense did get to the QB a couple of times, they just didn't tackle them when they had the chance.  That's no on the playcalling.

And regardless, this team doesn't have a line that can get consistent pressure on the QB.  That's what RVB and Martin gave the team last year - players who could get some pressure on the offense without bringing the blitz every down.  That way, when Mattison called one, the offense wasn't always ready for it. 

There were no good solutions. As color analyst Gruden noted, Mattison was doing a great job of mixing up the defenses, including the last drive. Gruden rightly commented that our defensive ends were just not doing a good enough job of getting to the QB. You can't blame Mattison for our secondary, or for the failure of the defensive line to be more disruptive. With Demens and Floyd gone, and even worse, Countess, along with the defensive line not getting in, what was Mattison supposed to do? As it was, with the blitzes, we came so close . . . if only Black had wrapped up their QB, but "if only" and "coulda, woulda," doesn't get you very far.

after Nik Stauskas.

Was just espn feeding on its own hype. Ace sanders won them the game.

Thanks for pointing that out.  Devin looked very impatient out there and seemed to take off on multiple plays if his first read wasn't open.

...are pretty serious.  It afflicts guitarists (Dave Mustaine being one of the more high profile sufferers) to the point where they literally can't play the instrument, can't even pick one up, for months.  I was afraid it might be something like that when I saw him flexing his hand after the hit.

But yeah, Team 133 was pretty thin at some vital aspects of the game.  I hate that Denard and all the other outgoing seniors from the RichRod era had to go out like this.  But as Brian says, they died like Vikings and have nothing to be ashamed of.

We are indeed heading in the right direction.

I think the game hinged on more than one play, but Carolina is a talented team and they just had a little more than we did.

Next year will be a very good one!

if Black plants the QB, we have an excellent chance to win the game.