Quote:
Originally Posted by GTAHVIT
OK I can see your point if they scored 30. But they scored 13..
UF's avg. points per game is 35.6.. If they had scored their average they would have won...
So is that your offenses' fault or their defenses' fault???
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Listen, I'm not saying that our offense played without fault. We had way too many penalties, and mental mistakes. However the defense has a hand in this too.
When you give up long drawn out drives to teams that eventually score, a few things happen.
1. You can't really get into a rhythm. This may seem over rated, but certain teams get better as the game goes on because they are able to build an offensive rhythm. Texas is well known for their weak starts and strong finishes.... and that was a theme of this year's season.
2. It eat's up a lot of clock. One drive Alabama had went almost 9 minutes. We got the ball to start the 3rd... dive play, 0 yards. Two dropped passes in a row and its 3&out. punt. The next time we touched the ball, it was in the 4th quarter. That REALLY screws with a team mentally, as well as preventing your offensive game-plan from being established. Because we fell behind so early, and their drives were so time consuming, we were unable to establish the run. We had 14 rushing attempts the whole game... and 10 were with Tebow running. Running the ball is a huge part of our offense (like 60-70%), and we were unable to establish that because of the clock management done by Alabama. Give them credit, but again, our defense needs to step up.
3. Playing against the lead. This has a little to do with what I talked about in 2, but when your down multiple scores and you know your Defense hasn't been able to stop the other team what do you do? You press down field because you know that you can't burn a lot of clock, but you know you need to score. We threw the ball MUCH more than our game-plan intended, and it was because they jumped out ahead. Lets say hypothetically, our defense holds them on their 3rd quarter drive... it's 19 - 12, and we can run anything in our playbook because its a one possession game. When your down multiple scores, you press the passing game, and that's what we did and it didn't work out. It's exactly what Bama wanted, and it played away from the strength of our Offense.