Zipsrifle

Exciting win for the Zips. We OWNED them in the 1st half, but I'm not sure what happend for the first, oh, 22 minutes of the 2nd half. JD has totally changed the mentality of this program. 3 years ago, we would have folded in the same situation. This is one of those intangibles that JD has brought to the program. It started with Marshall 2 years ago, kept rolling throughout last season, and is here again this year. Make no mistake, we are a team that will find a way to win if there is a way to win. That is a complete 180 from just 3 years ago. As I mentioned last week, I was worried that Kennedy wouldn't be able to fill Biggs shoes. He's doing a great job. I just wish the guy could get a few breaths during the game. I was also VERY impressed with Harvey. That kid is gonna be HUGE for us. Getsy is clutch. He was frustrating me a bit during the game, but stepped up in the end, as did Jabari. I wish I would see 12 get his hands on the ball more. I don't understand why we imploded in the 2nd half. We were having so much success running the ball in the 1st, but we were pinned deep in our territory most of the 2nd half. Instead of sticking with the run, we put it up, which didn't get us very far. This might have been a good thing as 3 might not of had much steam for that final push at the end of the game. I think the worst part of our game right now is our pass blocking. Getsy always had someone breathing down his back or in his face. Granted we've had some great athletes on the other side of the line the past 2 games, but we've got to give the plays time to develop. I am impressed with the run blocking. Seems to me we get a good push and open up some holes. Defense is the real deal. Our backfield showed up today. Broke up (and intercepted) passes that in the past, would have gone for TD's. Run D continues to impress. We didn't get much pressure on the QB, but that will change in MAC play. We are SOLID! It's odd for me to see us dominating on D and sputtering on offense. Penalties continue to hurt us....was that a problem last year???? Special teams needs a lot of work too. Sure Stec dropped a few balls, but the snap's are low, and he is under a TON of pressure!! Overall, we were the better team today. Numbers show it and IMO, we looked it for 4/7 of the game. MAN IT FEELS GOOD TO GO INTO AN ACC TEAM'S HOUSE, AND STUN THEM. ESPECIALLY after what I thought was a HUGE insult. Early in the game, I couldn't believe the audacity of the NC St. player to pick up the ball after the punt, RUNNING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, and expect to turn +ve yards!!!!! THAT, IMO, showed that NC St. didn't think that we were good enough to stop them, even under what is typically a formality. We made them pay, and wish I could have been there! GREAT WIN!!!! GO ZIPS!!!

CMU is gonna be TOUGH. We had the UofM vs. CMU game on right next to the Akron vs. NCSt game, and Central looked tough. They were making some good plays on offense and making some bigtime hits on Defense. It is gonna be a BATTLE next week!

Yea, with the miss early in the game, knowing he was hurt, it wasn't an option. Personally, I would have gone for 3 if I knew Domonkos wasn't hurt. But, they don't pay me the money to coach so what I think doesn't matter. HUGE confidence boost for the team!

Geeze guys, there's 10 games left! We just had a huge win and all you can look at is the negative! This is an OOC game most of us thought we could win, and we did. That is a HUGE improvement from the past. We had some lapses, but people stepped up when we needed it, we had a never say die attitude, and pulled off the upset...just like we should have. Central is gonna be TOUGH next week! Great Game!

I would have to say, in my 12 years of following the Zips, it is probably the biggest OOC win. The '99 win against Navy is #2. Went into their house, Homecoming I believe, and stuck it to them.

THAT WAS AWESOME! The best part was that at the end of the game, I was thinking, how are we gonna stay in this one. Of course, this was after I thought "Here we go again, blowing a lead late in the game". Glad JD is around. We've definately turned the corner.

A HUGE upset for our program, and I bet we'll be on the 2nd page tomorrow. One article for Akron, and 10 for OSU.

Relative to my point of view, it can't be that old. The ballpark is there, Inventors HOF and the "New" building (I think it was Summa??) across from the federal building in Downtown is there. I think the last one was built maybe 6 years ago.

I made some phone calls tonight and it looks like the Michigan Chapter of the Akron Zips Fan Club will be meeting at the BW3 in Novi, Mi to watch the game this Saturday (Since they have ESPNU). Since the UofM vs. CMU game is at the same time, I will guarantee we'll be relegated to one of the smaller TV's on the side, and we may have to fight for it at that. I have a backup place in mind if we are having a hard time. Game starts at 12:00, and I figure we'll show up at about 11:30 to get a seat (It's usually pretty packed). Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.

Great Summary Cap'n. I'm amazed at what JD has done with the D. It's too early to be drawing comparisons for Anderson/Jones to D. Smith, but to hear you say that those two as Sophomores along with Corner compromise the Best DB ever, that's impressive. I hope the D keeps improving every week. We'll be suffocating the MAC opposition!

Ok, I'm a hypocrite. I bash the Stinkin Urinal, but I did find this article on their website. Apparently the Zips are on the "Dirty Dozen" list of schools that need to average at least 15,000 home attendance this season. I'm a bit miffed by this. I know this is entirely the fault of the UA Athletic Dept for the schedule, but this is a bunch of BS!! We have to import North Texas to a home game when the schedule changed to 12 teams. We will get very close to ZERO of their fans in attendance. We have only 5 home games this year and the home opener is late in the season. We basically have no option of where we will play the "Big Schools", and they can meet this mark in one game. Look at OSU next season. To my understanding, they will play in Cleveland. They will probably have 7 home games, and the Cleveland game will be an away game in for them in name only. So essentially they have 8 home games next year (2/3 of their schedule)? While we have to beg, borrow, and steal to get 5 home games. If one of these games has crappy weather (God forbid two!...Cough, Cough Army, Can't, Cough), we are screwed!! Couple this with being forced to start late in the season, and we run into what happened last year.....low attendance numbers. Maybe the Mid Majors should boycott playing the bigger schools unless they return the favor. That would help our record, hurt theirs, we would get into more bowl games. Of course, that wouldn't necessairly help the Mid-Majors get any better.

OK, a little help here. Is ESPN-U just one channel, or a series of channels? I'm going to try to find a bar around here (Michigan) next weekend with ESPN-U (BW3 doesn't have it) to watch the game.

Oops, sorry, I forgot, whenever I go to Cow-lumbus I often hear OSU fans speaking so fondly of the school in Michigan just off US-23. Just let me know where to send the shirt that says:"OSU-Michigan Best Buds Forever!"

I think that little memory should go into the HOF!

THAT WAS GREAT!!! I never heard of that one before. Classic!!

Boy, what the hell is happening to this board!?! What a bunch of crap. I don't care how many times you read it, this is nothing but a backhanded comment!1) -- Why does it take Tammy 2 years after his first letter to JD to write his second one?!?!?2) -- I'm sure JD needed Tammy's reassurance in that he's doing a good job. WTF does he know about MAC Football? 3) -- I love how Pluto "Reminds" JD not to forget the previous two games at Happy Valley when watching the tapes this week. REMEMBER YOU GOT YOUR @$$ KICKED IN THE LAST TWO TIMES IN HAPPY VALLEY, SO GO EASY ON THE KIDS FOR THIER MISTAKES.4) -- That was the worst closing I've ever read. USUALLY YOU POOR, LITTLE, CRAPPY MAC TEAMS GO TO THESE OTHER WONDERFUL SCHOOLS AND GET BRUTALLY MURDRED, YOU ONLY GOT BEAT UP AND YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY FOR THAT. I'm sure Pluto (remember, Pluto was recently demoted to a "Dwarf Planet"), jumped at the chance to go to Happy Valley to watch the game. I challenge him to attend all of Akron's OTHER away games. If he did really care about what is going on with this program he would. But he is just got a good excuse to go watch another Big Ten game. This is NOT a good article about Akron, it is a huge backhanded comment that continues to put down this program and promote it as second rate. We don't need this kind of news from the hometown press!!!

I'm thinking about having some shirts made that say:F-OSUGo Zips!Short and to the point!

Unfortunately, JD isn't going to hang around Akron, no matter how much money we throw at the guy. REMEMBER, this is the guy who left a 6 figure salary at 30 to work for FREE with the Denver Broncos. JD has dreams and I'm sure that list includes winning an NCAA National Championship or a Super Bowl. In a few years, we'll continually be one of the top teams in the MAC, and a BCS School will come calling....JD, unfortuantely, will answer.

Though I won't be able to make the trip to Panini's, it sounds to me like you may be able to get a critical mass started at that place. Money talks, Bull $#!+ walks, and if Akron fans start pumping money into that place, the manager will change their tune. The other option is if enough Zip fans show up, and start chanting "AK-Rowdies" or something to get the place going. I'm sure they would rather have a bunch of happy drunk Akron fans watching the game than a bunch of pissed off drunk Akron fans.

It was Stec's first game, in a hostile environment. The kids is what, 18 years old. I think he did fine. Ball was wet, guys on the other side of the line are twice as big as the ones that usually are on the other side of the line. What I liked the best was his hustle after the kick. He was down there trying to put a helmet on someone, not being a wuss about it. We've had some pretty good kickers/punters over the past few years and I think Stec/Dominkos will be fine.

Overall, I'm disappointed with the outcome. We did not seem as prepared as we were for last seasons for the opener at Purdue. I expected us to have the PSU fans agitated at least a few times today, but the game was just a joke for them. The early strike really disappointed me. Going into the game, I was expecting our experience to at least keep us playing on the same level with PSU's inexperienced talent. That was not the case. As someone else mentioned, our DB were giving huge cusions. TURN AROUND AND FIND THE BALL! Maybe later in the game we were giving huge cushions because of what happened early. I was also having flushbacks to the Lee Owens Era where we would hit people, but not wrap up. If we could actually wrap people up, we would have made a lot more stops. On the up side, I was VERY impressed with Andre Jones. That guy is going to be BIG! Our D is just going to get better and better. On Offense, Getsy only had a few times where he could sit in the pocket and wansn't rushed. I think the biggest disappointment was how easy it was for PSU to get to Getsy or Kennedy. I thought our experience would have leveled the playing field in this area, but apparently not. Kennedy did a HELL of a job. I had a lot of reservations about him filling in for Biggs, but he did an excellent job. He's not quick enough around the end, but he keeps bouncing for a hole and gets what he can. I was VERY HAPPY to see Getsy actually find Kasparek over the middle. Jabari IMO had streaks of greatness. I've never really been that impressed with him, but he showed up for about 5 minutes today and played great. This guy could be huge if he can put on that type of performance for an entire game. I was also disappointed with how we packed it in at the end of the 2nd Q. I would prefer that we kept on fighing till time was out. For all the talk I see on this page about jumping from the MAC to bigger, better confrence, we didn't show it today. We needed to capitalize with every opportunity we had. We were the MAC's last hope of putting up a respectible fight against a top team this weekend and as the defending MAC champs, we didn't deliver. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for anyones job, we did much better this time in Happy Valley than the previous two trips, but this weekend the MAC only encouraged BCS Schools to schedule us early in the season. To end on an up note (which I typically try to do), one thing I noticed as I referenced the Depth Chart througout the game was that there were a LOT of people involved that weren't on the 2-deep. This really gets me excited for the future. If we're putting in guys in such a big game that aren't on the 2-deep, when we're still in the game, JD must have confidence in them and they are also getting big game experience. My offensive game ball goes to Kennedy, my defensive game ball goes to Andre Jones. I hope the team learns a lot from this game, and we kick NC State's @$$ next week. GO ZIPS!

Rowdy Zip, like the License Plate......I'll have to get mine up there (I had the pick of the litter here in Michigan)

I agree with Ryno. Lets blow some people out of the water and get some EXPERIENCE for the Backups! I'm out for BLOOD next year! We have to be careful what we wish for. A GREAT year means JD is LONG GONE, and then we're done for sure in Cow Town.

I still think it should be "Proenza Field" at XXXXXX Stadium!

Lets hope for clear skies.