How to Finish 7-5

[Captain Kangaroo]

Re-hashing the Zips first 10 games this season, the formula for the Zips success seems pretty simple - play mistake-free ball late in the game, and we win. Pretty much every game we lost, with the possible exception of Wisconsin, we beat ourselves with a late-game blunder.Wisconsin - We're down 24-10, but moving the ball well. Kennedy fumbles at our own 25...Wisconsin goes up 31-10. Game over.Syracuse - 1 INT, no fumbles. A solid 4th quarter...we pull away and win.Ball State - 17-10 late in the 3rd quarter...Jacq drops the ball...it goes the other way for 7 and we're down 24-10. Next, Jacq tosses an INT @ the BSU 37. 31-10 BSU. Game over.Army - 1 fumble, 0 INT's. Clean game and we win.Cincinnati - Down 17-15 @ the 1:30 mark of the 4th qtr, Jacq tosses an INT. Game over. K.e.n.t. - We play a clean 2nd half, and let K.e.n.t. blow it with a fumbled punt return late in the 4th quarter.BG - @ 12:24 in the 4th quarter Jacq lobs a duck that's picked off and returned to the 6 yard line. Breathes life into the Falcons. BG takes the lead 28-27. Rest is history.EMU - With 30 seconds remaining, all we need to do is kick a 24 yard chip shot. It gets blocked. We luck-out, recover it, and get the win. But we put it on the ground in the 4th quarter again.Toledo - Solid 4th quarter and a win.Buffalo - Botched hand-off/fumble in OT costs us a shot at the win.Point your finger at the playcalling...the penalties...injuries...all that stuff if you want. If we play a solid 4th quarter, we always win. If we don't...we pretty much need to bank on the other team helping us out. And good teams rarely do so.

[skip-zip]

Interesting. Thanks for the analysis. You've definitely spotted a trend with late turnovers in our losses. I don't know. Sometimes I'm torn between the idea of making sure you don't turn the ball over, and taking some level of risk to try to make the plays you need to make when the game is on the line and you're behind. If Jac had not thrown that ball up for grabs in the end zone against Can't, we would have never won the game. Yes, it could have easily been picked, but it turned out our way. Would the better decision had been to throw it to someone else and not risk the int? When I look at this season, I see a lot of close games that could have gone either way. We ended up on the good end of a couple of them, and on the bad end of a few as well. That's just the way it goes in a league/division where the teams seem so equally matched this year.

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

I can't stop remembering Jacq's mistakes in many of those losses. He's come a long, long way from last year but he's still very erratic IMO. He puts together stretches of great decision-making, solid throws with good touch, and then Bad-Jacq takes over. When that happens he looks fearful, tentative, and loses touch on the ball. I can't make sense of it, other than that he's a kid and kids are flighty sometimes. I guess the good news is that even against very good programs, there have not been times this year when I thought "Oh man, it's clear we're dead meat and just please let's get out of here without getting any of the kids killed". It wasn't long ago that I hoped for zero injuries and not a 70-7 result in games against name teams. This team could be very, very good with shorter stretches of Bad-Jacq; well, how about less Bad-Jacq and a stronger defense?! Imagine this offense next year, a year older, stronger, wiser, Jacq more mature. Now imagine that offense with a solid D that doesn't get slammed every week. Now you've got something that InfoSumma fans may find very interesting.Oh, and last thing. I thought about Bowser last night when watching Braylon Edwards drop balls, and Bowser clearly needs to get his head out of his Can't State. His obvious and painful drops certainly don't keep Bad-Jacq at bay.

[skip-zip]

It is amazing to me that guys like Bowser and Braylon sometimes make the most difficult catches you've ever seen. Then suddenly, they drop balls from point blank range that hit them right in the numbers.