I didn't re watch the game but freeman's lack of mobility after he tweeked his ankle or knee was the biggest problem. No matter what squawks or nubbs say he showed esp in this game that he is very moble and very accurate on the roll. I'm not sure that doubling that dude would have made a whole lot difference when we was lining up so wide. He was just better than anyone we had. Derrick thomas got doubled every play and still registered a ton of sacks in his career. Same with suggs when he was at AZ st.
We couldn't run on them, i'm not sure that the very best ksu rushing teams would have had a whole lot of luck running on them. See 02 texas/ 04 Ohio State. The plan was clearly to dink and dunk them. that went south when freeman was unable to move or roll out.
QFT. Lot's of things played into that last series. Alesana was obviously winded, the crowd noise was much greater than it had been much of the game, and maybe most importantly a huge part of our gameplan going in was taken away. When Auburn figured out that we weren't going to take chances moving Freeman in the pocket b/c he was dinged, they were able to use Groves on the edge to exploit the issues above mentioned with Alesana.
Besides, IMO that is not the drive that "lost" us the game. Sure, we had a chance to tie/take the lead back, but the drive that really cost us was the one before where we needed to use the clock but couldn't manage a first down. We overcame the roughing the kicker to get the ball back, but couldn't move the football despite decent field position. That was what allowed Auburn to basically have a final chance to win the game, and that is not something you want to do against a decent team in their stadium. If you keep giving people chances, eventually they'll probably take advantage.
Part of that was the lack of a running game, but we knew that going in. We weren't able to maximize the short passing game at that point thought b/c we couldn't get Freeman moving. We were able to get a lot of people open during the course of the game b/c of Freeman's ability to buy extra time, sometimes by design and sometimes on his own. Plus, had he not had the slide issue, we may have been willing to run Freeman again on a draw, which was going to be open the way Auburn was defending us.
If we are going to pin this loss on "one thing" (which IMO is silly in the first place) I have to say that if Freeman doesn't tweak whatever he tweaked we win this game. His lack of mobility put is in a huge disadvantage, especially considering that this was a big part of our gameplan going in to negate Auburn's rush was to get him moving. A close #2 would be the number of penalties which really came back to bite us down the stretch and flip flopped the field position advantage into Auburn's favor.
