The first two drives in the 3rd were awful, but selling for FG attempts on our last two first half drives were the killers.
short side option, works every time!
It was simply amazing how we can't break tendencies on our audibles. They show "x defense" we audible to "y play" they get out of "x defense" knowing what we like to do when they show "x defense".
One of the Oregon defensive players did say after the game that the K State offense became "predictable" in the second half. Not sure whether he was referring to the audible or not. I took it as being about the audible calls.
We were predictable when the passing game becomes the high percentage of our offense. There are only a certain number of throws that we made well with Klein in the game and we were at our best when we used our diverse running game as the base and threw to compliment that. Remember, we threw the ball 3 times in the 2nd half to blow out Texas.
That said, as I look back Oregon did a great job of taking away Klein. I think if we had been a bit more committed to the running game with our backs, especially the way Pease was running, we would've been better off. Also, Hubert had a couple of big slips on the turf in the first half because he kept cutting off his inside foot. Oregon wasn't going to let Klein beat them with his legs and they knew are limitations in the passing game; Dimel/Snyder didn't consistently find the adjustments and our offense struggled. We didn't get as pass happy as the Baylor game, but we just weren't efficient enough throwing. I said before the game we needed to approach 9 yards per attempt and we only got half of that and we can't win that way. We ran 53% of the time (which was lower than any other game except Baylor), but we didn't get the big pass plays that were the staple of this offense when we played at our best. Some of that was play calling and prep and some was just Oregon being pretty good on defense, especially the speed to limit big plays.
