Monroe, I don't hate you. Really, I don’t. You are a passionate alumnus of Ohio. I therefore do not have the ability to hate you. However, I do question your acumen when it comes to evaluation of OUr teams. And as a hard core Democrat (you got that one wrong) and someone whose work often bleeds into politics, I get disturbed at the, “if you are not 100% with me, you are 100% wrong” mindset (I CAN feel the play calling yesterday was correct, and still be upset we do not have a MACC). I try to always use facts and figures to support my POV. And (like you) I to become stubborn and a bit of an ass when others simply reply, “those aren't facts.” Or “the only fact I care about is we lost.” And then profess the reason for the loss must be because of XYZ.

We play a more conservative game than TCU or Oregon. We play more aggressive than pure run-oriented teams. That is not going to change. You don’t have to embrace it, but every time we lose it is not because of it. Saturday was not because of it. Anyway, I don't have the time right now to further debate a game you didn't watch – plus it is Monday and time to move on to the next game. I’ll pop you an PM someday when my business is less demanding to reaffirm my critique is not meant to get personal.

The Fact that you feel the result of any single game would validate or dismiss our overall approach, shows your level of football acumen.

The Fact that a sound football approach (at the end of the half – when our QB is hobbled) is not acceptable and doesn't equate to “what YOU want to see” is irrelevant.

You think you are right, I think you are wrong. We can both pull out facts to support our view. Reality is we are just fans so it only matters that we care.

If that thought seems impossible, perhaps you should consider a different possibility. Some of think we did make a legit effort to score on our last possession of the first half of both this game and Marshall. We didn't score at Marshall at the end of the half solely because we missed a kick that you would expect to make. We didn't score at the end of the half at Minnesota, not because we didn't try, because the Minnesota defense had something to say about it.

If Ohio had downs left, but ran out of time before it got into scoring position, you'd have a point, but that isn't what happened in either game. Against Marshall they did get into scoring position. Against Minnesota they ran out of downs, not time.

Rather than learning something, you simply repeat the same erroneous complaint over and over. Let's try this another way, and we'll start by talking about the objectives, and whether they were accomplished or not. In a late drive the offense has three objectives:
1. Do not turn the ball over
2. Make sure that the other team can not score so that you preserve the momentum going into halftime.
3. Either score, or move into scoring position

Now let's look at the drives:
Against Marshall Ohio accomplished all three objectives. Ohio did not turn the ball over. They did make sure that Marshall did not get the ball back. They did move into scoring position. It is not the fault of the offense that the special teams failed to convert the points. The offense did its job, and accomplished all three objectives. Special teams did not, and if you want to complain about special teams (which is what DCF complained about), I can't disagree, but that isn't what you are complaining about.

Against Minnesota the drive was less successful. They accomplished only the first two, but not the last objective. Now, since Ohio never ran out of time, but instead ran out of downs, the only plausible argument that they "didn't try to score" would be to argue that the plays they selected were not conducive to gaining first downs. The fact is that they did get one first down, and thy were sitting in solid shape at 2d and 4 in the second series. They took two tries at making the 4 yards, a run and a pass, and failed both times.

Should they have tried a pass and a run instead of a run and a pass? A pass and a pass? A run and a run? Just a different run, and a different pass? Since I didn't see the actual plays, I can't say one way or the other, but I have no reason to believe that the plays they chose didn't have a reasonable chance of gaining four yards, or that they weren't a reasonable choice for the defense that Minnesota was in.

What would have happened if they had gained the first down? Well, at that point they would have been near the 50, with about a minute to go, which is about perfect. Note that that's where Minnesota was on their final drive. A minute would have been plenty of time to run as many as 5-6 more plays (against Marshall they ran 5 plays in the last minute of the half). Perhaps they would have gotten into scoring position, perhaps not. But, either way, Ohio ran the series in an intelligent, well thought out way, and they created a win-can't lose situation. Had they gotten the first down, they were in excellent position to try to score, but failing, they left not enough time for Minnesota.

The only thing I can guess from your constant complaining about this is that you think that the only proper play calls with under three minutes are passes, and not just any passes, they have to be long passes (against Marshall 5 of the 8 plays were passes, but that wasn't satisfactory, presumably because the passes were mostly short passes). Now, throwing long passes might or might not work, but you have to keep in mind that Ohio's passing game is mostly play-action passing, which is useless in this situation, so throwing long passes would always be throwing into double coverage.

Now, Ohio does have some capability of running the kinds of plays you want. In fact, they ran exactly that kind of a drive at the very end of the game. They ran 3 pass plays in 23 seconds and gained 7 yards. Suppose they had run those three plays at the end of the first half. That would have been exactly what you wanted, and you would have been happy. Yet, the result would would have been Ohio punting from their own 28 yard line with 2:09 left, so Minnesota would have gotten the ball at about their own 30 with 2 minutes left. And that would be better? How? Oh, I remember, it would have been better because Minnesota can't field punts. ;)

Am I only thinking negative? Hardly. I'm simply considering all possible alternatives, both good and bad. Playing Solich's way, there was virtually no chance of a bad outcome, and a very good chance of a positive outcome. Playing your way there is about the same chance of a positive outcome, but a significant chance of a negative one. Thus, Frank's way was clearly right, and your way would have been clearly wrong.

You say "we can never win a MACC with this kind of strategy". Yet, I've seen National Championships won this way. So, sound strategy is good enough to win on the national stage, but doesn't work in the MAC? The fact is that smart football puts you in position to win games. You don't always win them, no matter what you do, but at least you don't give them away.

I fully endorse this &^%$ing course of action.

OK, done.

What happened to the hurry-up? We used it some vs. Idaho but little since.

It's a basic, even conservative, tactic. It's a good change of pace to try to seize momentum, to try to get the other side to react/panic or to catch them unprepared.


Yup, it's another basic one that we don't employ. It's another basic football approach that I point out and that none of you can refute or deny the good sense of. I apologize for disturbing your mutual back-slapping club of checkmate acceptance of missing-the-basics football.

Whatever.

Don't let the FACTS get in the way of your beliefs.

"No signif chance of a bad outcome" is a tremendous philosophy.

FACTS are we lost at Minne and no MACC in 10.

Perfect, except for that.

Guess you never watch the Phildelphia Eagles which is 100% hurry up. College teams run no huddle or hurry up all the time, Oregon, Baylor or even my lowly South Carolina Gamecocks. Almost every game I watch has it at times, depends on if you consider no huddle hurry up which I do and all NFL teams run it. Minnesota just ran it the last two minutes against the Bobcats.

Almost the entire Big 12 runs a no-huddle, hurry up offense. Oregon, Arizona and a few others have perfected it. There is a reason why other offenses are gravitating towards that.

The coaches were not trying to score a touchdown. They were hoping to get a couple of first downs and run down the clock. They called very predictable plays, this has always been their personality. You win and lose with that strategy and you can not fault them for that. Let's be honest, they are very conservative, they need to take more risk in my opinion, but you win and lose taking risk also. I beg that going forward, we stop talking about Minnesota, I am so tired of moral victories. I know this is only wishful thinking because if they play somebody like Ohio State close all these threads will post up about how close we were and the field goal and how we could possibly be a top 25 team on the coattails of Minnesota's performance. The coaches beat Penn State so every call and decision they make is genius, they don't need to progress.