GP1

Not really. I would call it "expected". The back-up QB is always the most popular player on the field on gameday. I'm old enough to remember when Clipboard Cliff Stoudt was a back up to Terry Bradshaw in the early 1980s and everyone always wanted him to play. After Bradshaw retired, Stoudt got his chance and promptly played his way out of Pittsburgh. Funny how life comes full circle. Stoudt's son is Cole Stoudt at Clemson and the back-up everyone always wants to play.

Good post. I was surprised by Hundley's as well, but he is pretty good with the the ball in his hands. JC7 was very good though and earned the extra playing time this week. Bickley is a sore subject with me because I don't think he belongs on a D1 field. In fact, I think his fumble is more predictable than understandable. I totally understand why it happened and I find it unacceptable. He is 5' 6" and the internet says he weighs 147 pounds....my foot. In D1 football, one has to be able to compete against the other humans. What does compete mean and does Bickley have ALL of the tools to compete? Well, one must be fast...Bickley sure is fast. One must be able to catch.....Bickley is mostly good at catching, but has had some drops. How else must one compete? Well, when one catches a pass, one must be able to be strong enough to break a tackle of someone he is competing against and he doesn't have that ability because there is no muscle there to overpower anyone. If the competition is Bickley vs. a strong gust of wind, the line might read as EVEN. Since he doesn't have that ability, he doesn't really offer a lot of opportunity for big plays, which are critical to winning a football game. Strength is another way a person must compete. When another player is trying to take the ball away from you, you must be strong enough to hold on to it. The Miami defender easily stripped the ball from him. Every other MAC defense will see that and go for strips against him and turnovers become a risk. It was too easy. Giving up turnovers is another way to lose a football game. I don't want to seem too disparaging about Bickley. I do think he is putting forward 100% effort and competing as hard as he can. We should all applaud his effort on the field. I just don't think he has the raw tools to really be able to be a big play guy every week and the upside is very limited. I don't think it would be difficult to develop a player behind him to take his job NEXT YEAR or even bring in a transfer to easily remove him from the slot position. For a guy with the third most yards receiving (173), he has almost nothing to show for it. His longest play is 21 yards and he has zero TDs. If Terry Pluto still wrote for the ABJ, there would be weekly articles about him. That's all we need to know. In closing, regardless of what our wives and girlfriends tell us, size matters in football......

Link The mega churches around Summit County always struck me as a little strange at best and cult-like at their worst. Strange in not only with how large they are for being outside of the south, but cult-like for how they are able to manipulate the lives of otherwise intelligent people by not only making the church the spiritual center of a persons life, but also the social center of the persons life in a way that they are fearful of breaking from the social circle. The manipulation can be very interesting.

When you are the back-up to the back-up and the back-up has to start, then you automatically become the fan favorite and will have the spotlight on you.

That is the Pohl status line.

I respectfully disagree. If Woodson is the starter for the remainder of the season, they will struggle to go 3-3. Woodson is like a closer in baseball. He only has one pitch, the fastball. There is no finesse on any of his passes and they are frequently inaccurate. His accuracy is bad to the point that it will result in a lot of the one thing that always kills teams, turnovers. In order for him to be successful, they are going to have to move him around the pocket so he can do some running if needed, but that is easy to stop over time. They did some of that Saturday and it worked OK enough. A good football team must be good as all three phases of the game: offense, defense and special teams. The Zips are good on defense and special teams. With Woodson, they will become average, if not below average, on offense. If Pohl doesn't play the rest of the year, we are going to find out how hard it is to replace a player who went 8-3 in his last 11 starts. My concern over Pohl's injury is great.

The o line had a good day yesterday. Only two sacks, both qbs had enough time to throw and they had another good day on the ground.

It was a lot of guys.

By my calculations, the Zips have 6 goals in 11 games. Yike .

I love it. Nothing more dangerous than a team with confidence and momentum. The Zips are a dangerous team right now.

Some Miami news.

That's really a great story. The one thing Bowden has always done so far is give credit to the guys who stuck around from the Coach I years. They do deserve a lot of credit for their efforts and for him to recognize it must have created some sort of emotional lift for those guys. Those two years must have been absolutely brutal.

I'm not a very trusting person. Especially of the opinions on this board. Frequently I read the opinions on this board and then wonder if I'm watching the same teams as everyone else when I see them play because what I see is normally the opposite of what everyone else sees. You're going to have to earn some trust back after your inability to put this red zone stat into perspective over the past two weeks. I expect more out of one of the boards better posters.

I don't think that website is correct. Makes me think my third down efficiency link is wrong as well because it came from the same website. Maybe Elton Alexander is managing that website. It was quick check so I could be wrong, but I went back and looked at the play-by-play. The Zips were in the red zone three times last weekend and scored TDs two times and a FG once. Their other scores were from outside of the red zone. I think another one was a 22 yard run and the other was a long pass. In the Pitt game, they were in the red zone three times. They had an INT and two running TDs. Their third TD was a play from outside of the red zone. EDIT: The reason I don't look at the whole season is there are too few opportunities to make whatever the stats may be statistically relevant. With so few tries, it is easy to move the success ratio down with less than a handful of tries (sort of like worrying about the batting champion batting .063 after five games). One blow out loss against Marshall on a day when nothing seems to go right and some missed chip shot field goals (this problem seems to be solved as well) can quickly drive down the stat. If this statistic was truly relevant at this point in the season, the Zips would be 1-4. The Zips have more of a third down problem than a red zone problem at this point in the season. I anticipate continued improvement throughout the season.

I'm much less concerned about our scoring TDs in the red zone. We seem to have that under control. 80% in the last two games isn't Michigan's 100% level for the season, but it's pretty darn good. We are 83% successful in the last two games counting TDs and FGs. My concern is our third down efficiency. NFL teams spend 75% of their practices on third down offense and red zone offense. Can't score in the red zone if you don't get there. We are at a point now where scoring in the red zone isn't a problem. Getting there against good MAC teams will be a bigger problem if we don't improve third down efficiency. If we have to punt, I'd rather us use our punter to punt the ball inside the 20 than to punt for distance. Our best defense is played when the other team doesn't have the ball and we don't have turnovers. Our defense is good now, it could become great if we improve our third down efficiency on offense.

Interesting that the AD at MSU would be embarrassed about students not showing up. Let's examine. The game was to start at 8 PM, which means the show came on at 8 and everyone had to listen to announcers spout off 15 minutes worth of cliches before opening kick off. So, the game probably started at 8:15. It was a Saturday and a big deal on campus. This means that the drinking started early. Early enough that there might not have been many students standing by 8 PM. Quite honestly, there is no good reason for a college football game to start any later than 7 PM. Unless, of course, television revenue is more important to an AD than attendance. So, when ADs complain about a prime time game not getting students to show up on a Saturday, they should look in the mirror to see who is at fault. The enemy within is always the most dangerous and for universities, the ADs are the biggest enemy on the field of battle.

Let me defend the WRs the same way I do KP. The search for perfection leads us to overblow mistakes. Saw a lot of games last weekend. Saw a lot of drops. In a game played by humans, there will be mistakes. We are experiencing normal problems good teams experience. Isn't this discussion better than the one about the coach kicking off both halves?I just don't like the coaching staff benching the QB when their play calling is preventing the offense from getting into a rhythm.

Who would have thought that the light at the end of the "building process" tunnel was a train coming at universities conducted by the very ADs who talked them into the "building process". Well done taxpayers.....

Fortune tellers tell you where you are going. Cumulative stats tell you where you've been is true. Trend stats put the cumulative stats into a timeline.

You can't cover up a stench like that, you can only hope to move it somewhere else with a Big Ass Fan. Not one of the residential ones either. It would require one of the industrial size ones.

My bad. I was referring to the game Saturday. He had a TD throw and a run for a TD. He also had a long throw for a TD, if one considers 28 yards a long throw. When given the opportunity, he produced. I'm less concerned about his mistakes and more concerned about him (and everyone else for that matter) not being put in a better chance to succeed. EDIT: And in the category of "what have you done for me recently". The Zips are 4 of 5 in their last five trips to the red zone while KP was at QB in games against Pitt and EMU. They are 5 of 6 counting the FG they got last Saturday after a turnover, but KP was not on the field. So, I guess the question is....If the Zips have won the last two games and the team has shown improvement in the red zone, why should I care about what the season average is? My expectation is improvement over the course of a season and I expect the Zips to be better at the end of the season than at the beginning of the season. The wrong stats can paint an inaccurate picture as to where a team is in the course of a season. Another example would be, if someone measured a human every year of their life on January 1, for 18 years, what would the average height of that person be and why would it matter? The Zips may just be late bloomers this year. It is critical that one goes beyond reading stats to using their brain to interpret the stats. My most positive thought about the Zips is, we are a really good team with room for improvement. We are already better than the team that won the MAC. There is no doubt we should be competing for the league championship with a realistic shot at beating any team in the league.

Goes to show what a failure the War on Drugs has been...

Akron needs to get off to a faster start. QB needs to play better early and play calling needs to be better. If not, they could find themselves in a shoot out against a team with a QB who can throw the ball around decent enough to be dangerous. Miami has averaged 31 points per game the last three weeks and their offense has improved. The bad news for them is their offense now has three games in a row on film. The good news for us is we have defensive coaches who know how to watch film and exploit teams. The Zips are a solid team and will continue to play well this week. However, I can see this game being closer than expected with Akron holding Miami to a lot of field goals and Akron getting one more TD than Miami with some scattered field goals. Akron 34 Miami 33

Thanks LZip. In an effort that produced two easily forgettable drives, I forgot one.

Thanks for posting this Dave. Glad to see he is getting the recognition he deserves. KP does what it takes to win. Some want perfection. Not sure if those people ever turn on another college game. I watched several games yesterday. KP does what every other winning qb does. He makes big plays for touchdowns (28 yard pass yesterday. He limits turnovers. He scores in the red zone, one running and one passing yesterday. Does he mess up sometimes? Sure, but I think the entire offense was off track in the first half. KP may be getting thrown under the bus. ThebOC had better be better next week or they could easily find them on the wrong side of an insurmountable lead if Miami gets off to a hot start. In addition, KP averaged over 8 yards per attempt and 10 yards per completion. Those are winning numbers. I'll take those and zero interceptions over passer rating all day. Better yet, I'll take the winning.