New year, same mess I guess.
Game Recap in Three Sentences
After three straight turnovers on the first three drives, Tech’s offense finally settled in and was able to run the ball all night.
Tech struggled to get out of their own way with multiple penalties allowing Colorado to continue dead drives that ended in points.
Haynes King called game, running in the winning score with just over a minute left.
Above The Line of the Week
- Haynes King. Can he toss his hat in the Heisman ring specifically as a RB?
- The US Open. NYC always brings the drama, but this year has been truly special. We’ve seen awesome matches, incredible meltdowns, career comebacks, and it only gets better here in the second week.
- Malachi Hosley. In his first game as a Jacket, the former Penn star was a fantastic changeup from Jamal Haynes. He caught a huge pass on our first TD drive, and 7 for 47 is exactly what we want out of the second back.
Unformed Thought of the Week
Why is clock management so hard for coaches? Our last drive before the half was uniquely infuriating and then a couple hours later
Deion and Salter didn’t seem to understand that the clock even existed. Over and over and over again this keeps coming up and I just can’t understand why there isn’t one person on these huge staffs whose secondary responsibility is “know how time works”.
5 Star (7 Star, 5 Star) Developmental Program Haiku of the Week
Air too thin, can’t think
“Indifference to running”, ha
Not for the Jackets
The Wrong Foot
Look man, Colorado seems bad, straight up, and I am not happy with the implication of that. I am struggling not to over-react here; that was a pretty disappointing performance against a team we should’ve probably beaten comfortably. Deion’s technically right that we “survived”, but it was a survival of our own foot-shooting tendencies more than it was of Colorado’s mediocre offerings.
The only positive thought I have is this: it can’t get worse…can it? It’s hard to imagine a worse first quarter, and yet we came through it. I wouldn’t quite say we locked in and took care of business for the rest of the game, but at least we mostly held on defense and got something going offensively.
Still, things obviously need to get a lot better from here. I can’t envision “just let King bash his head into the defense” being a sustainable offensive strategy, and I am not thrilled at the prospect of watching 11 more games where seemingly no one on defense can wrap up and tackle. It’s the same stuff we’ve been talking about for years: the talent is there but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and it feels pretty easy to place the blame on coaching. The team that we saw on Friday night did not look like a well-prepared team, more like a squad of self-organized kids in the schoolyard. We relied on heroic efforts and a few big plays to dig out of a hole of our making, and that is just not going to work in the long run. I’m hoping most of it was a combination of altitude/road game/first game jitters but yikes y’all, I am not feeling confident at this point.
Look Ahead
Up next is the tune-up game, Gardner-Webb (9/6, 3:30pm), and boy do we need it. Let King play two drives to get some pass attempts in and then throw in Philo for the rest of the afternoon. Rotate the defense and figure out who can actually tackle. As a bona fide member of the media, I’ll be on the sidelines for this one as the FTRS photography correspondent so look out for some (hopefully) cool 35mm pics later.
