Give me your AFA snowflakes

If you do you will be "neged".

LOL.

and seeing highlights, we are just as good as anyone else in the conference right now. Purdue - Suffers from QB dyslexia but coupled with Wisconsin's issues, they are a reasonable pick for the B1G championship game. Illinois - Defense cannot carry the weak offense MSU - Need to see them play ND to fully judge them Nebraska - The Martinez arm punts continue Minnesota - Still young Northwestern - Defense is still suspect Iowa - Ferentz is officially on the hot seat Ohio - They look like a mirror image of us. So I will enjoy our victory and depend on the coaches to continue to help our team improve each and every week. Our goal to win the division and conference are still very realistic.

Roundtree was a system receiver when he was productive ... and our lines are awful. Luckily the B1G is in the dumps, or we could be looking at 6 wins. I think ND will roll on us unfortunately. They should get 5 YPC all day, kind of like last year but without Martin & RVB. It could be very ugly & frustrating. ND has a legitimate O-line & defensive front 7. I HATE seeing Michigan get manhandled physically. It should never happen at a school with our recruiting abilities. Mike Martin saved our ass the prior 4 years. Things could have been much uglier.

I have come to accept what Denard is as far as the passing game. He will throw a few balls he shouldn't. He will throw a couple in the dirt. Even a couple to Tacopants. However, when your best asset if your feet, and there is a lane to moonwalk to a first down; JUST GO, DENARD!!

I don't buy the Fitz had no holes argument, I think it was more of a timing issue waiting for blocks and taking what they give you. I understand Denard is a freak, but 200 yards rushing is 200 yards. There was room to move. Fitz will find that, hopefully soon.

The D line missed penetration, but I am not so sure that that was not a game plan to prevent running by plays. Did the coaches seem upset with the two BWC holding calls? No. Why? Because I am sure it was in the game plan to stay with the O-Line and let them take you to the play. BWC just got caught. I bet it happens a lot with AF and is something thier coach harps on the officials about.

Just my 2 cents.

The defense is a concern, but it was a concern at this point last year too.  Look what happened by the end of the year; we had a top 20 D.  I believe that we will see something similar happen this year.

The offensive line is far more concerning for me.  We should have one of the better starting 5 in the B1G, but right now they look mediocre.  They will need to start gelling, and do it fast because we have ND in 2 weeks.

At least we don't have to worry about Fitz leaving for the NFL at the end of the season anymore.

D line rarely got penetration.  I don't know what the hell BWC was doing to get two holding penalties.  Indicates something is clearly amiss there.  The freshman were as effective as the older guys which is a good news, bad news story.  Great to have good freshman play, but the veterans really should be overshadowing them.  Freshman play like freshman.

Early in the game, it was the Jordan Kovacs show.  He was cleaning up a lot of plays.  Later in the game, his number wasn't called as often because the linebackers were finally getting to the ball...except for the wide option pitch when it was quite often "2 against one Michigan guy" who had to make a choice.  Linebackers were getting caught in the wash or just weren't reacting fast enough.  Joe Bolden looked good.  He was reading better.  I assumed it had to do with talent and since he was in high school last year, he's played against this type of offense more recently than the rest of the D.  Ross looked good, too.  Ojemudia made some plays.  Ondre appeared to have a better push than BWC, but he seemed to be single blocked.  I think double teams were eating up BWC.  Air Force QB made some great fakes and many times the defense as a whole bit on the fake, such as the pass to a wide open receiver totally behind the secondary.  I know the defense is glad they won't see AFA any time soon.

O line had the same problem.  I didn't see any lineman past the line of scrimage on Fitz's carries.  Yikes.  Scofield has problems with the smaller faster guys lined up across from him.  He had some critical missed blocks, then again, others did, too.  Mealer has got to watch his head timing.  Head down, head comes up, one beat, ball is snapped.  That is going to get eaten up by a good line that can time things.  I don't know what else to say about the blocking given you never really saw lineman downfield if Denard wasn't hiding behind them.

DFunch is going to be a weapon all season.  He's made for scoring in the red zone and getting big mismatches on LBs and safeties.

Devin Gardner did look much better.

Denard's passing was pretty good, but he squeezed some balls in when other guys were more open.  He's just got to feel more comfortable going to his second and third reads.  Still pressing a bit.  He doesn't look like he's totally comfortable out there, but with wheels like his, he can run away from lots of problems.

Jake went beast on the last series and saved the day after he had an up and down afternoon himself.  He is sneaky fast.

I think the jury is still out on our defense. We all need to consider the situation. Alabama is just flat out on another level, and after a deflating, humiliating loss, to have to come back and prepare for the rarest offense seen in football, which has managed to give a lot of ranked teams fits over the years. This was a bigger challenge than we all give it credit for.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief in that next week is a tune up. We're taking on a team that Indiana manhandled. Indiana, fergodsakes. UMass is in for a bloodbath.

Still really concerned about our defensive line. Man do we miss Martin and RVB.

Dunno if anyone's mentioned it yet, but we gave up 207 yards at 4.5 YPC last year against Eastern. 

Obviously, no Mike Martin or RVB this year, but considering that EMU isn't even close to the specialty team that Air Force is, I think its still too early to judge. 

(Watching the ESPN EMU highlights from last year: Did you know we had guys named Kevin Codger and Drew Delayo on our team last year?)

due to son's Pop Warner game.

Just saw the highlights.

We looked great. I'm going to pretend the other 150 plays looked the same.

Here are my snowflakes:

-With the interior line on offense looking as bad as it has, I wouldn't be shocked to see Kalis coming in sometime in mid-season.  The guys seem to be getting pushed around all over the place.  Given Fitz seems to be a known commodity, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt and place blame on his lack of stats on the line.  Denard had some big runs but anecdotally it seemed like he was making something with very little on a couple of plays.  We now know how important having Molk in the middle was.

-Ironically this year the passing game seems like it may eclipse the running game.  I definitely think Denard has looked more crisp and polished to date this year than he has in years past, and with Funchess and Devin emerging, along with the fact that right now our pass pro > our run blocking, we might see much better success through the air this year than on the ground.

-We should be a little worried that we only put up 31 points with very few sustained drives on this team.  Realizing they chewed clock on us, but at the same time this is probably the smallest and maybe the worst defense we should face all year.

-On defense the jury is still out.  I think overall we were bad, but it's always hard to tell how bad against a team like this.  I think people who use the argument that AFA have put up yards/points on good teams from time to time are citing too small a sample size and ignoring half the data.  I'd like to know if good defenses shut them down sometimes as well.  Unfortunately I'm not sure where to find game by game data, but it would be nice to see where we stack up vs. all of their BCS or top-25 opponents.  Still - seeing two experienced linebackers get yanked for two freshman is not encouraging at this point in the season.  Hoping for now that it was meant to send a message to the starters, but we'll see.

1. Our OL is a serious concern. The interior is just not holding up. True freshmen linemen are rarely the answer. This will be a problem all season. How much of a problem will really determine our offensive success.

2. Passage attach -2 games in and Denard really does look like a real qb. Way more accurate and much better decision making. Yes, he gets passes batted down ad yes there are still a few wobblers, but overall way better.

2a. The receivers look ok against crappy DBs. If Devon can play like this against real defense (ditto fuchness) we may have a better passing offense than our non-Denard rushing offense.

3. Running backs - let's jus hope that this is a 1 time crappy performance form fitz. He should be fine throughout the season but wow did he look crappy. He had better be because after him I have no faith in our rb situation (ther than Norfleet).

4. Defense - read nothing into this or bama or umass. We will get a real read after ND.

I think the UFR is going to show a lot of "almosts" on the OL.  Maybe not on the Fitz runs - for whatever he reason he seemed to be swallowed immediately - but on the QB runs I think there was even more there to be had.  The classic "a different guy on each play missing his assignment", whereby if they would have reached just a little more Denard would have broken even a few more times.  

My biggest worry - Those insider bits saying the D Line was looking good was just due to the bad o-line rather than the D performing against a good line in practice.

After seeing upsets and the B1G playing terrible as a whole, I'm glad that we came away with a win against a tricky opponent.

After the first two games last season, Western and Notre Dame, I remember thinking that it was going to be a very long season.  Out DL wasn't getting any push, and the only way we could pressure the QB was by blitzing linebackers and safetys.  We had no running game outside of Denard.  Things changed as the year went on.  

The season is still young, and we clearly have a long way to go, but i'm not ready to lose hope just yet.  We have a lot of freshman playing who will have more chances to make big plays.  Right now, I'm really worried about playing Michigan State, Nebraska, and Ohio State, just as I was after two games last year.  

You should do it again next week. And not just because it gives me a place to throw in this- What was that hot mess they called a halftime show? The music was appropriate and sounded fine, but you had the flag carriers and dancers dressed like they were there to turn on our troops overseas (the men and lesbians only, apparently, because the drum major wasn't in a swimsuit) who were stuck behind the enemy lines of Michigan Stadium (and no, those outfits don't flatter your ass, no matter the size or shape); you had the band doing this random dance that made them all look like they were having seizures (somewhere the Delaware State band is sighing); and they finish it with the odd scoreboard fireworks (what, we couldn't afford the real thing? Ask my neighbors to do their 4th of July show for you) that were so loud (as is everything on those speakers) that you could barly hear the band anymore. My WTF moment.

It's interesting to listen to Devin G in interviews and pressers. He makes a real effort to remind people he's a QB, but just doing WR to do what's best for the team. Re:Funchess "it's gonna be great when I throw to him". It's probably hard to make that switch in your mind when your identity has been something else for years. He still lists himself as UM QB on his twitter. I'm sure he'll continue to grow and improve at WR but until he truly embraces that he's going to be a WR he probably won't be able to reach his full potential. It's clear the writing is on the wall for him to be at that position next year, it's just he hasn't accepted it yet.

I agree on a lot already stated, the dlineman and oline definitely look concerning but I think our coaching staff will make some adjustments or the guys will slowly improve every week. To me, the turning point of the whole game was near the end of the 1st half. We were driving and then Denard misses Vince or Vince drips it, whatever you want to call it, course AF drives down and scores....couple that with the Les Milesque time management flaw and we go from being up 21-3 or possibly more at halftime and getting the opening kick in the 2nd half...to it being 14-10....at 21-3 or even 28-3, the game is probably over and more than likely we roll...seemed like a big swing...

my snowflake opinion on the d-line: I'm not terribly concerned about the lack of penetration. the combination of cut blocking with an option look means the flow of the play is horizontal instead of vertical. pushing up the field creates seams in the line. stringing the play out into the contain defenders is preferable it seems. too bad our contain sucked. it takes time to shed a cut block and it gives time for the option play to run by you on the line. there is a reason air force racks up 300-400 yards on the ground often. this stuff works. people seem worried about our interior line d. the fullback dive (air forces seeming only between the tackles play) never went for more than 3 yards. the line did a good job there. it is their edge d that is worrisome from what I saw yesterday.

Interesting that the coaches stuck with the same five offensive lineman the whole game. They're clearly trying to build chemistry amongst those five. I wonder if this is the proper approach, though. Rotating in other guys (Kalis, in particular) here and there might show them that there are better options. They seem to be going all-in with the five starters. 

Yr. In terms of a complete lack of running game. It's probably more pronounced this year though. The success/failure of the offense is going to depend on how GAB adjusts to the shortcomings of the OL. Im not a coach but here is what I would do: 1. Get the RB's especially Fitz some touches other than POWER, ect in the form of screen passes, draw plays. This will prevent teams from becoming overly aggressive ( see moo U) 2. Have to get Gallon involved on a more consistent basis. Not only is he trouble in the open field, but he can run by people in the vertical passing game. 3. Funchess and Gardner are weapons - Funchess particularly poses some unique match-up problems for all BIG defenses. 4. I think it is time to give Norfleet some reps on offense. That kid is elusive enough to make our OL look decent. Fwiw, on Denard's 1st TD, if he gives it to Fitz , Fitz goes a long way, possibly scores.

I got this:

Our line play is terrible.  O-line got no push against Air Force's defensive line that weighed, on average, 40 lbs less per person than we did.  Defensive line is generating no pressure whatsoever.