VIDEO: Highlights and Postgame

Gibbons had not yet discovered brunette girls on the beach.....seriously, the difference between success and failure was in his head.  Hoke, or someone else, was able to get him past that and now we have a kicker who can get us points from FG's.

After missing a FG and your head coach says in the press conference, "Well.....it makes it very hard when we can't kick a field goal," the kid is likely going to struggle.  But our kicking pre 2011 was just like every other non-offensive part of the team.....an unrefined abomination.

Kicking is probably more "mental" than any other position outside of QB.

Rich Rod flat out blamed losses on Gibbons, a young freshman.

Watch Hoke after EVERY kick, make or miss he's encouraging Gibby and getting him ready for the next one. He was pretty fired up after Gibbons' first make (which wasn't an easy kick) and his miss was on line, just 6" short.

Between Rich Rod and Tony Gibson (who was the special teams coach), Gibbons didn't have a shot to be successful when he was being called out and blamed. It is the one part of the RR regime that burns me the most --- you don't blame a loss on ANY one player or embarass a player in front of the team, you just don't do that...EVER. Not for something they did on the field.

If Gibbons had gotten a DUI and you wanted to make an example of him - fine. But not a FG kicker for missing FGs.

Rawls runs angry and definitely should've seen time earlier...BUT...BUT...I think the coaches were desperately trying get Fitz on track. So I can't blame them for leaving him in and giving him so many touches.

He definitely danced too much, but the biggest problem was there were too many zone-read calls. Now, I say that knowing that the objective and there WEREN'T too many when Denard went off like he did. But in terms of getting Fitz the ball, there were too many.

Denard only hands the ball off if his option isn't open...he doesn't hand it because Fitz has an option open. So really that play is more 75% Denard and 25% Fitz rather than a 50/50 read. I'm sure there are times where Denard kept the ball, where he could've given it and Fitz would've had a big run.

With that said, we need more designed runs for Fitz. What about that delayed counter that ND and MSU run so much? What about the HB dive play that Brandon Minor used to run and run over people with?

We run so much zone read and option plays where those aren't RB plays, those are QB plays first and foremost.

That's the "problem." But if Denard is being Denard it's hard to say we should've done something different --- remember, he had a shitty game in his last outing too so we had to get him on track just as much if not more than Fitz.