Who coaches special teams? I'd put this loss at their feet.
Who coaches special teams? I'd put this loss at their feet.
I really don't have a problem "playing for the FG" on that last drive. It was turning out to be just like the WKU game. Everything worked beautifully until Barnes froze up. There were two UAB timeouts taken right before Barnes' final kick. I guess the 2 TO's along with the two previous missed PAT's was just too much for him to handle mentally. He was iced.
The sad part is, it's really easy for almost anyone athletic to kick a FG under 30 yards. If you recall, Trent Taylor went out and did it last year, just for fun. I went out to the local field a couple of years ago with my kids and did it myself. No, it was not under game conditions, but just for fun. But it was EASY to do. A 30-yard FG is really difficult for any grown-up to miss.
With yesterday's events, Barnes might have blown any chance he has to make the NFL. I seriously doubt they'll even give him a look now. Sad.
Fake an inside handoff and have J'Mar roll right and take a shot to the corner of the end zone. Throw it away if he's not open. At least that would give us another shot. Do it on second down so we can run the clock down on 3rd down
Watching the replay, from two different angles, Barnes did not miss, it got blocked. The guy who blocked it is 6'7" with a good vertical leap and no one in the OL got into his chest to prevent him having a clean leap. But, you're right, Barnes sucks and Smith is great! Probably the best QB in Tech history. From now on, no more kicks, no more FG attempts, go for it on 4th down, and always go for 2 on the conversions.
Of course....if Smith is so good, we may never have a 4th down again. We'll either score or surely get a 1st down in a play or two. Who needs 4 plays to go just 10 yards with such a super QB?
Well, I did notice him engineering a nice drive until we decided to take the air out of the ball. How do think we got down that close since you've watched it a couple of times?
Unfortunately, J'Mar has a bad habit of waiting until the last two minutes to play football. He was mostly horrible the other 58 minutes against UAB. And make no mistake about it, he got very lucky on that last TD pass. He just chunked it to a spot and Oliver made a great, circus catch. It was a great effort by Oliver. It could have easily been intercepted.