I thought the game was great actually.
YES, there could have been sacks and YES our pass D got shredded. Still though, we played opportunistically enough to only allow 9 points. We kept them out of the end zone. That's terrific. We got turnovers. Another terrific thing. Had we got shredded, AND not gotten any turnovers AND given up 20+ points, I would've been more worried. Under the circumstances though, I'm okay with how our defense performed yesterday. Assuming, of course, that it improves. Which it will.
Re. the offense, especially in the first half - it looked really bad, because we weren't really running "our" offense. That's not to say we were being vanilla, because we weren't, but last year, our offense worked because we ran Klein 30+ times a game, most of which were by design. How many designed runs did Klein have in the first half? 2 or 3 maybe? My point is, is that in the first half, we tried to pass more than we did last year. That's not what our offense will do this season, but it was an opportunity to go out and get some live practice in with little risk. It didn't look pretty, and that's certainly not a good thing, but our passing offense could have significantly improved over the off-season, but we won't be able to really tell, until we pass within the parameters of our offense.
Loved Sams.
Was REALLY excited for Hubert. I thought for sure that bastard was going to tackle him at the Missouri State ~40 or wherever, but he didn't! Hubert FINALLY broke one! Good for him. He showed that he at least has the capability for a big play. I still think by the time he's done here, a lot of people (Manhatter, and others) are going to be sorry for suggesting that he's a liability in the backfield.
Thompson had a very, very good game yesterday.
Fan, it seemed like our offense was running at a much quicker pace. I was pretty pak'd during the game, but it seemed like we were snapping the ball with ~15 seconds left in the playclock. Also, I didn't notice any check with me stuff. That, along with our insistance of passing in the first half seemed like the pace of the game was just out of character for us. Do you think that had any impact on the defensive numbers? Looks like Mo State got 77 snaps yesterday. Is that significantly more than our opponents got last season?