Quickzips

Kennedy opens up the drive with a 9 yard run which actually LOWERS his YPC for the day. Figure that one out.

Zips get a break right there. Time to open up the lead some.

Kennedy with 10 carries for 100 yards, 10 YPC and a TD in the FIRST HALF!Welcome back Dennis.

The shootout continues. Kennedy for another TD. Glad to see someone finally woke up the early 2006 Dennis Kennedy and told him to get on the bus and head to the games.

I have to question EMU's special teams coaching. I understand that you don't wanna risk the big return from B.Will, but these guys are giftwrapping us AMAZING field position.

Too easy, EMU drives it down the field for a TD. Our defense looked so good to start the game, but again, as the half approaches EMU loosens us up.Got another shootout on our hands boys.

I have a hard time believing that anyone is outright giving up on Steve. I wasn't at the practice last night, so I can't say one way or another how he is looking, but we have to remember, this IS the first practice of the season and Steve did have a pretty major ankle injury coming out of high school. I would imagine there is still quite a bit of rust to knock off.The one thing I do wonder about is how well our bigs are going to do in more of an up-tempo system? Bardo and Steve both seem more like big bruisers inside than athletic guys who are going to run the floor a lot. I guess we can always run small more, but I'm really hoping with 2 guys in that 6'10" range we can figure out a way to use that to our advantage.

TD AKRON!Have to wonder what EMU was thinking w/ that onside kick? Either way, Zips make them pay with the downfield throw to Jones for his second TD of the quarter.

And as soon as we do something good on offense our defense loosens up and we're back to a 3 point lead again.10-7 Akron.

TD JONES!!!On another note, how long are we going to allow Elliot Bates to continue to put up these 8 foot tall shotgun snaps? Jacq almost turned the ball over b/c he could barely get to the snap on 2nd down.10-0 Zips.

Bout the same kind of game as last week. Kennedy torching the EMU defense so Moorehead in his infinite wisdom decides to put the ball in Jacq's hands and starts getting too cute, looks like we might have another Jacq scrambling fumble. So far it is 3-0 Zips, but the Zips have dominated the game. EMU can't do anything on offense.

Nothing like that good old, Akron, defeatist, settle for mediocrity, hopefully we can compete in the East attitude.

Six does NOT guarantee a bowl bid. The MAC has three bowl tie ins and Ball St., Western, Central and probably Buffalo and BG are in line ahead of us for those spots.Five wins MIGHT get JD another year, but I wouldn't guarantee that either.Look, it very easily CAN get worse. The other way to look at that though, is it going to get better? If it isn't going to get better than hoping for .500 seasons every year then it's time to move on. At that point we can't concern ourselves much with it getting worse. Count me in the category who has serious doubts that it is going to get better.

Probably not. He's got the rest of this year at least to prove me wrong, but for now, I'm sticking to what I've been saying for over 2 years now. JD isn't that good a coach. If we're going to get to where Ball St. is, or even to where a team like Western Michigan is we are going to need to shake things up. I don't like instability in the coaching staff as much as the next guy, but sticking with a guy who isn't getting the job done just for the sake of continuity is insane.

Classless d-bag fans?How about the group of BG fans that found it necessary after the game to stand in the middle of walkway of the vistor side exits and chit chat, choking off half of the exitway and backing up fans that wanted to get out of the stadium? How about when those fans were asked politely by a number of fans to please move out of the isle way so that people could get through they responded with profanities and threats?

I was too pissed to even come on and post last night. I've settled down a bit today, but here are my thoughts.This games is ALL on the coaching staff. From an offensive prospective, we were gaining 6, 7, 8 yards plus running the ball right up the middle of the BG defense. They were doing absolutely nothing to stop it. So what do we do in the third quarter when BG is starting to gain some momentum, we're down deep in our own territory and we really need a long drive to swing the momentum back to us? We put the ball in the air on the shoulder of Jacq's erratic, choke artist arm. Now you can blame Jacq all you want to. God knows he's not the kind of QB who is ever going to have any kind of consistency for us. The problem is that everyone in the damn stadium last night knows that. The coaching staff knows it, our fans know it, BG's coaching staff knows it, the players know it, hell Jacq himself probably even knows it. When your running game is shredding BG's defense, and you have a QB who you know is a liability, you don't start throwing the ball in crucial situations. The other problem I had was with the 3rd and goal call from our own two. Again, we've been VERY successful running right up the middle of BG's defense. So what's the call? Fake the end around to the right and Jacq hands the ball off behind his back to Tuzze going left. Result, High snap, timing is off, Jacq is nowhere near Tuzze when he tries to make the behind the back handoff and fumbles the ball. We settle for a FG where we really needed six. We got far to cute for our own good when some good old, smashmouth, pound the ball up inside football probably gets us 4 more points. Ohh, and don't get me started on our ridiculous defensive scheme. Hats off to BG for exploiting it's biggest weakness. Turner lined up for quite a few direct snaps and made us look like a fool on more than one occassion. Sure, we stopped him once or twice, but they were patient and kept going back to it and it paid off quite a few times. Other thoughts beyond the coaching staff:Kickoff coverage unit was pathetic. BG started way too many drives from the 35 or 40.Jeremy Bruce officially has the worst hands of any D-I WR I've ever seen. Our defense often forgets the number one rule in tackling. Run THROUGH the ballcarrier, not too the ballcarrier. Too many poor tackles last night. And bad angles as well. BG's first touchdown was a direct result of a DB (I was at the other end of the field and couldn't see who) overrunning the play.Dennis Kennedy looked more like Dennis Kennedy circa early-2006 than Dennis Kennedy, well any time since then.

I hear Geno Ford recently made a recruiting visit.

I think Buffalo might have something to say about that still. As far as the game. Like someone else already stated, it depends on which teams show up. Both teams have shown the ability to play Jekyl and Hyde football. Looking like world beaters at one minute and primed for the Bottom 10 the next. I hate to say it, but I just can't see us shutting down BG's high powered offense to much. I think we are gonna have to try and keep pace on the scoring end which worries me. Our offense is particularly inconsistent and if we don't get Andrew Johnson back we seem to become much more one dimensional. I would love to see us keep the ball on the ground a lot more and not throw 35-40 times per game. I think the best way to counteract BG's offense (or most any offense for that matter) is to keep them off the field.

I love how at the end of the thread they have now gone on to reminiscing about the days when they had Cribbs. Typical Can't State, always longing for the days when they had an outside shot of playing .500 football...if they counted IAA wins.

It's fun to bash them but the additions they made look pretty good. Nice video screen although it could be larger.Their "visitor" side stands certainly look like your average high school stadium stands. I use visitor losely because for some reason they sit all of their fans there and that is the home team sideline, strange. The videoboard was underwhelming and they removed a large chunk of seats to put that up if I remember correctly. It was very small, and they had a hard time keeping up with replays (when a play is under review, most of the fans in the stadium would like to see the replay too, not just a big red sign saying that the play is under review).

This conference as a whole is pretty wacky.Ball State looks like a team that should hit the top-25 soon and may have an outside shot at sneaking into a BCS bowl.Western is right behind them. They are a very good team as well and should easily take one of the MAC bowl bids.Central has fallen off just a bit, but they are still right there in contention for a bowl spot.After that you've got a crap shoot.We've been very Jekyl and Hyde. Difficult to predict, but still one of only 4 teams in the conference at .500 or above.Buffalo seems to have finally turned it around. NIU is getting things back together and had an impressive showing today against Tennessee.Bowling Green is alot like us. Jekyl and Hyde. They can win just about any game, but they can lose just about any game as well (Exhibit A: Losing to EMU). I don't know what to make of EMU after today.Can't is a pathetic excuse for a football team and is only in games because of a pesky QB.Miami has fallen off the face of the earth.Ohio has gotten to the point where they look so demoralized from the close losses that they've just given up.Temple has a great defense, but injuries are killing them on offense.Toledo had one nice game against Fresno St., but still managed to lose and have done little of anything else all year, getting shut out by Ball State today.At this point it is pretty clear that the West is the superior division. That said, the East will still have a representative at the MACC. Right now it seems like the East champion is just going to have the right to get slaughtered on national TV by Ball State. You just never know though.

They have a REALLY nice high school football stadium.

Anyone have a replay of Bowser's catch there? I was in a bad spot to see what happened. I saw him get his hands on the ball and then after that he went out of my view behind the Rowdies. I'd like to see what exactly happened there.

I was more looking at it in terms of what we knew about the kid coming in. We took on a kid (as a walkon mind you) that, to my knowledge, didn't have any legal problems. I guess some might have questioned his maturity, but there wasn't any indication that he would be an off the court problem. Can't on the other hand is taking on a kid with a pretty extensive rap sheet. By no means are drug charges and sexual assault charges worse than shooting at the cops, but we had absolutely no way of predicting that Brooks would get caught up in something like that. IF Evans gets involved in some legal troubles at Can't, everyone is going to be saying "I told ya so." Cause he's got the history of having problems like that.

That was as ugly a win as I've ever seen, but at the end of the day all that matters is that it was a win.Jacq had a HORRID first half. He looked lost at times and made some truly terrible reads. The second half didn't get a whole lot better, at least until right at the end. I'm afraid at this point he's still our achiles heel.Defense did an excellent job in the second half. The first half was pretty ugly. Still gave up a lot of yards, but when we needed it they stepped it up.Looks like the kicking game finally got straightened out for us. Although I'd still wish we could find someone who could get the ball past the 10 yard line on a kickoff.If we can't get those high shotgun snaps figured out we need to either change the center or put Jacq up under center more often. I still don't think Jacq is a great QB, but it isn't helping anything that he has to climb the ladder to get to the snap. That second, second and a half that he spends going up to get the ball would be really helpful.Again, ugly win, but a win none the less, and over our rivals. Anyone else think this MIGHT just spell the end for Dougy Martin???