As many of you might know, I watched the abortion of a game in person in Madison this past week. Here were my impressions for those interested.
Non-Game Related
Game Related
This was avery poor job by the coaching staff. They made no adjustments and continued with the same shit when they saw it wasn't working. It's like watching someone continually run into the wall. Like Einstein said, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Our Coaches are just plain dumb. We put in a QB that can only throw 5yd slants and crosses reliably while continually starting within our 20yd line. Only way to score would be to string together many consecutive 3rd down conversions which is statistically unlikely. We constantly set ourselves up for failure and constantly make the game tougher than it needs to be with our over reliance on the running game and dink and dunk offense. I like how we kept to the dink and dunk offense with power running while still being down 2-3 scores.
No killer instinct. I had brought a guest with me that knew nothing about FB and had never watched a game before. His observation was that we did not play with any AGGRESSION. I couldn't agree more. We played complacently as if expecting and accepting a blowout loss. This is UNACCEPTABLE and a DISGRACE! :chairshot:
Credit the WI D whom played tight coverage a lot of the game and really closed fast to the ball giving us very little YAC. Their offense was nothing great. If we had a better, more consistent passing game that stretched the field, we likely could have won this game. Our short sighting coaching staff should get a lot of the blame as should OL, QB and receiver execution.
Overall the trip was well worth it including the, $80 per head, game ticket and the 90min drive from Milwaukee. I haven't seen RU play in person since I graduated when GS was roaming the sidelines. So i'm glad I made the trip. :)
Non-Game Related
- Maybe all the hype about Wisconsin atmosphere made my expectations too high but I didn't really think much of State Street. It's pretty much just like Easton Ave at RU. Nothing special. Kind of boring really.
- WI has a nice event to engage the fans each quarter whether that be Sweet Caroline, Jump Around, Buttercup. I wish RU had that. The lack of fans made it less loud and effective than i'm sure it would be for a packed stadium.
- I didn't really think their stadium atmosphere was that great. It was largely quite other than for RU 3rd downs or a WI score. I expected better honestly. It was hyped as one of the best venues to watch a game. It did not feel like it (there were RU home games that were much much better). The crowd was pretty apathetic most times and it wasn't even close to being full. Official attendance was at 74K but was closer to 65K mid way through (a lot of people left when it was clear it was gonna be a blowout) and dropped down to about 55K in the 4th quarter. I thought midwest fans stick it out no matter what till the final seconds (like Nebraska fans are reported to do). I guess it doesn't apply to Wisky fans. I'm sure part of the reason was the shitty weather and shitty doormat of an opponent (****ing Flood :chairshot:) but come on! Overall NOT impressed by the stadium atmosphere. It was ok but not impressive. Majorly let down tbh.
- I'm almost sure they pumped in crowd noise at the game because the crowd was pretty lackadaisical for the most part. The roar of the crowd was impressive, though in brief spurts, when RU was on some 3rd downs or when we were near out own endzone. But overall it was quite. I could definitely see the electric atmosphere it could generate against a marquee matchup with a packed stadium, in good weather. Unfortunately RU shit the bed and so did the weather.
- Nice marching band. I thought the halftime show of Les Miserables was interesting. @AreYouNUTS they had a band of about 300 people. I counted just for you. Nice and loud. [thumb2]
- I really liked how they had very few parking lots and instead had a few big parking decks to accommodate all the cars. RU should do something similar, green most of the parking lots and install parking decks instead. The architecture on builds was all over the place but that didn't matter since it was tied together by landscape. Again RU needs to do this to develop a more cohesive campus. BTW WI also has a bus system so using RU's bus system against it is silly. Other than better landscaping and everything being closer together, there is very little difference between RU's campus and Madison. Don't get me wrong, WI's campus is better but from what now seems like over exaggeration, it's not magnitudes better. All it takes is the money to get rid of the parking lots, put in parking decks and create the boulevards of landscaping between buildings. The buildings themselves at RU are fine. WI had plenty of ugly buildings as well.
- Their academic and athletic facilities look great. You can tell that WI is a rich university. I took a look inside their main engineering building, it was brand new (think the building on Livingston at RU) and looked like a really nice place to study/collaborate. I briefly saw their soccer and practice FB fields, those look great also. A lot of money went into architecture and maintenance of these.
- That ****ing weather at the game was miserable particularly since I sat in HH which is the upper second deck across from the Rutgers sideline and close to the student section. There was a nice windchill going, along with the cold rain and the putrid Rutgers performance on the field made me glance at the clock and internally whine when this bloody game would be over. :thumbsdown:
- It's pretty neat that they have a lake on both sides of campus since the campus is on a isthmus. Must be great in the summer time.
- They had an on campus free zoo there which I took a look at (Villas Zoo or something) after the game. It was the most depressing place i've been at (that includes the game earlier in the day) in a while. For what little animals they have there, their habitats were woefully inadequate. It pretty much looked like I was looking at an animal prison rather than a zoo. I felt really bad for them. :cry:
Game Related
- There were WI fans near me that were rooting for Rettig to get that TD at the end because they felt sorry for us. That's how pathetic our program has become under Flood. Thanks Kyle... [sick]
- I was looking at the RU sideline as the blowout ensued. I saw NO fire, no emotion. Just an apathetic attitude from players and coaches. As if we were a 1aa opponent and a blowout was expected for our collected paycheck (albeit a B1G paycheck but we acted like a bought cupcake). Flood may have lost the team. There is NO winning attitude there. Unacceptable! :chairshot:
- Gause and Longa played well for the most part. They tackled hard and really helped stop the WI running game earlier on with numerous tackles for short gains, no gain and for loss.
- The WI passing game SUCKED. If we had a decent passing game we likely would have won since they wouldn't have been able to focus on stopping the run. Our running game and running backs played well before WI lost all respect for the pass.
- Laviano is not the answer at QB. If you saw, WI were taking away the inside throws and daring CL to throw to the outside of the receiver. That seriously reduced CL's throwing repertoire to just the screen pass (slants and crosses, CL's bread and butter, were completely shutdown). The one time CL threw to the outside was an incredibly SLOW ball thrown to either patton or agudosi on the left sideline where it hit a WI player's helmet and then was picked. I outright LOLed at that in the stands. It was soo pathetic. His arm strength prevented him from throwing that to where the WR could only get it and the throw was just too damn slow allowing the safety to get there and pick it off easily. Also WTF is with all his fumbles? One of the main reasons we lost this game was Laviano's piss poor performance. Laviano went 4/14 of which only 2 were good passes. Terrible.
- Rettig should be starting. I didn't see any of the issues checking in and out of the huddle this game as I saw from prior games. Which is great to see. He was pretty much given the entire 4th quarter with most of the plays being passes. He was pressured a lot but was still able to get the ball off to his receiver quickly. That is valuable to have. He went 2/6. I would say at least 4 were good passes. 1 of the incomplete were a drop and one was a midfield throw to Agudosi whom was too slow to get it due to not fighting the press quickly enough, making it look like an overthrow. That was actually a pretty good throw, splitting CB and safety. Agudosi was just too slow. That long bomb to agudosi in stride off of play action was a thing of beauty. Rettig pretty much self destructed though in the redzone. Don't really know what happened there. I think the OL broke down too much there. Either way, Rettig now gives us the better ability to stretch the defense vertically and horizontally along with our run game. BTW our run game was good today until WI stopped respecting the pass and started loading the box as a result.
- We need more explosive Wrs and TEs. Watching from the stands I could see that the WI DBs were in tight coverage most of the game giving very little room for the QB to throw the ball to the receiver resulting in a lot of contested throws. Our recievers are also not able to make tough catches or to win contested throws. That is a coaching and talent issue. I am worried that we won't have a legit receiving threat once Caroo graduates since our recievers don't make tough catches or create space from DBs consistently. Part of the reasons our QBs had a bad day was lack of receiver separation all while they had a pass rush in their face. It makes it doubly worse for CL because he can't get the ball to the receiver fast enough before any small gap closes or he is hurried/sacked. HR's fast release and arm makes this less of an issue if we had speedy WRs like Carroo.
- Our DBs show flashes but mostly they are too inexperienced to be good. That pick 6 in the flat was nice though. For some reason we like to play a lot of zone (on the coaches). A zone when you don't get pressure on the QB just allows the qb to pick your D apart. We weren't getting much pressure from our pass rush on their QB most of the game. When we played man a lot of the times our DBs were in place to make a play but did not put their hand in the recievers breadbasket to break up the pass. They were too slow. That comes with experience. They should be solid in a couple of years provided they don't get kicked off the team :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:. The DBs still commit a lot of silly mistakes that result it TDs, wether it be poor pursuit angles, lack of tackling (WI's rushing TDs yesterday were due to this). One particular TD play sticks out where our DB had perfect coverage on their receiver and then inexplicably trips and falls down. The result is a wide open receiver that the QB throws to for a TD. That was a perfect example where the issue wasn't coaching but execution. On TV it would have looked like a WR wide open with no DB near him. But in reality the DB with him tripped leading to him being wide open. This happened earlier in the game. BTW I think the DB who tripped was Cioffi.
- OL played well while run blocking earlier in the game but then played poorly. All game our pass blocking was terrible with our tackles getting beat constantly. Denmen had a poor game. The "fab 5" from 2012 turned out to be a real bust when facing legit competition. Disappointing.
- Can we TRY to punt more than 20-30yds? What happened to having a punter that can flip the field? WTF is up with our kickoffs that keep going out of bounds? Any legit college kicker should be able to make that. WTF id with Federico. Can't even hit a 30yd. Biggest goat of a kicker EVER. :flush: We started off mostly on our side of the field yesterday. It is tough to score points when we can't move the ball down field with the passing game while starting within our 20yd line most of the game. This is where Rettig would be the better QB option.
This was avery poor job by the coaching staff. They made no adjustments and continued with the same shit when they saw it wasn't working. It's like watching someone continually run into the wall. Like Einstein said, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Our Coaches are just plain dumb. We put in a QB that can only throw 5yd slants and crosses reliably while continually starting within our 20yd line. Only way to score would be to string together many consecutive 3rd down conversions which is statistically unlikely. We constantly set ourselves up for failure and constantly make the game tougher than it needs to be with our over reliance on the running game and dink and dunk offense. I like how we kept to the dink and dunk offense with power running while still being down 2-3 scores.
No killer instinct. I had brought a guest with me that knew nothing about FB and had never watched a game before. His observation was that we did not play with any AGGRESSION. I couldn't agree more. We played complacently as if expecting and accepting a blowout loss. This is UNACCEPTABLE and a DISGRACE! :chairshot:
Credit the WI D whom played tight coverage a lot of the game and really closed fast to the ball giving us very little YAC. Their offense was nothing great. If we had a better, more consistent passing game that stretched the field, we likely could have won this game. Our short sighting coaching staff should get a lot of the blame as should OL, QB and receiver execution.
Overall the trip was well worth it including the, $80 per head, game ticket and the 90min drive from Milwaukee. I haven't seen RU play in person since I graduated when GS was roaming the sidelines. So i'm glad I made the trip. :)
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