"1st down, Grothe under center, give to Ford, 5 yds"

[Rocky Style]

rutgers set the bluprint for beating usf and controlling grothe

I don't think they would have if we had a better running threat and the shorter passes when getting blitzed.

[MJ]

I agree with you guys. The reason we lost this game was our offensive gameplan. Why do we even  have a fullback on the roster? Why can't we go "big" and line up in the I formation with Ford deep and our freshman fullback? Their defensive line was small. That's how you attack a small defense. Keep Ray Rice off the field and burn the clock. Use the spread offense against big and slow defenses. Use the power offense against small but quick defenses. It's not rocket science.

Bingo! That's why I started this thread- what you just said is exactly what I want to see.

[DELdaBull]

It would be nice to establish a running game not named Matt Grothe.  He is a QB, pass the ball.  Hand it off.  Give someone else the chance coach, they can do it. 

How would most running backs do with the 20+ touches that Matt uses up?

[MikeG]

I suppose some here feel losing TJ and Walter Walker had no impact on how our offense operated.

Once those key cogs were gone, we seemed to be out of sync the rest of the game.

I would love to just be able to hand off to Ford and get 5 a pop. I didn't see that happen in this game-- he seemed to be just as flustered by the 8 in the box Rutgers threw at us constantly. If a team is determined to stop the run, you have to hit the short pass routes over the middle-- I feel we failed to try that enough and as a result, Rutgers could continue to dictate what we did most of the night.

I am not sure moving Dile to Walkers position was the right move. The coaches can look at that on film and figure out what to do going into UConn of course better than we can. Some one will have to step up and fill that enormous gap left by Walker-- a lineman I felt was getting some serious looks by NFL scouts this season.

Once Rutgers was up by 10 with not a lot of time left-- we were forced into a passing attack and while we were somewhat successful-- we ran out of time. The key series to me was the one before the last-- when we went three and out. At that point, there was about 3 minutes left in the game. And when we were stopped-- we failed to effectively pooch punt the ball on the short field. I was kind of hoping they would bring Teachey in for one of those rugby style bouncing kicks for the first time this season. Rutgers wouldn't have been ready for it and we could have had them inside the 10 probably. Anyway-- we did get the ball back inside the 50 and failed. That's all you can really say there. I was very unhappy with that Offensive PI call-- Amarri barely touched that guy and certainly didn't push him as far as I can tell by the replays. The downing of the ball after the sack didn't help us either though of course. THe end of that game was very similar to UConn in 2005 in terms of "things that can go wrong" factors. Last time I checked-- we survived that loss. I think we can survive this one too. Life will go on.

[snarling Bull]

Well said Mike!