Photo Attribution: US Presswire
1. A few more things on Lunt: he has a freaking cannon. I’m sure all the tape gurus (hey, Trent Dilfer!) will say his delivery is “way too long” or whatever but the kid is certainly not short on arm. I also love that he steps into hits and that he’s big enough to do so. This was one thing Weeden did better than Zac just because he was built for it. If Lunt was scared/nervous/anxious about his first real start, he was sure good at covering it up.
2. One subtle thing at the end of the game I really liked was Tracy Moore refusing to celebrate his 4th TD because OSU was still down a pair of touchdowns. Somebody (maybe Charlie Moore) came sprinting up to hit him on the helmet and celebrate but he just looked away and walked to the sideline. Strong statement.
3. Shaun Lewis looks like a different player this year. He looks bigger and healthier than he did last year. Of course last year we didn’t lose to Arizona by 20 so maybe this isn’t a good thing…
4. It’s scary that of the 85 dudes in white playing last night, the one I trusted the most was taking pre-calculus and eating cafeteria meals this time last year.
5. Do you think Todd Monken kept his “I quit f-bombs after that embarrassing ‘Year of the QB’ performance on national television” covenant tonight1? I would bet the lives of all my family members that he didn’t.
6. I gotta say I liked the uniforms last night a lot more than when we wore them at Tech last year. I think the white shoes really made the gray pants pop. Thumbs up…except now we’ll never wear that combo again2.
7. We could probably hold a 10-hour town hall meeting on which OSU player we miss most from last year’s squad but I’d like to cast a vote for Josh Cooper. Tracy Moore filled the Justin Blackmon role quite nicely but there was nobody Lunt could turn to when he needed 10-12 yards that made me say “yes, that’s cash” like Weeden to Cooper did last year.
8. I wonder if other coaches make fun of RichRod for wearing that quarterback wristband play calling thing. It seems like Mack Brown and Les Miles would totally have a giggle over that at a coaches convention.
9. Underrated: the offensive line play in the second half was terrific. Lunt was slinging’ it but he also had hours to find a receiver3.
10. It’s been well-documented but Calvin Barnett’s personal foul and roughing the passer calls are inexcusable. That’s just not giving a crap about your team.
11. Nothing about last night made sense. OSU started hot, had the bigger, more athletic team, our QB was a better passer, we had a deeper running game…and then just got drilled. I know a lot of that can be attributed to penalties but it seems like the narrative goes deeper than that. I’m intrigued to see what Gundy says this week in his presser about how the team is coming together.
You can check out all my Arizona coverage here.
- Part of me has to wonder if he keeps live animals next to him in the press box and just bludgeons one every time he sees Quinn Sharp going out to punt. These are the things you think when you’re getting routed by an unranked team at 1 AM ↩
- When is it OK to start wearing combos we lost in again? Do we just sacrifice losing combos in games we think we’re going to lose? Somebody needs to take the uniform czar title and help me out with questions like these. ↩
- Apparently next week the coaches need to give all 39 of our receivers a few hours before the game to find their hands. ↩
The worst thing Barnett did was go for the QB’s head. I don’t know if it was really all that late.
The second personal foul right after that was absolute, total BS. The quarterback was bear hugging him on the ground and wouldn’t let Barnett go. When stuff like that happens, the DT will always look like the bad guy.
I will say this though, after watching Barnett decleat people I’m pretty pumped we have a talented DT with a nasty side. That’s something we haven’t had in a long time
Finally I see someone else saying something about that “bear hug” or whatever that was…it doesn’t excuse Barnett totally, but at least shows that he wasn’t just being reckless
Is there video of this somewhere? I saw it live but still can’t believe that personal foul was called. I would like to see it again.
Actually it was worse than a bear hug, the QB was actually humping him like he was riding a horse. I can only imagine what kind of trash talk also transpired during that little incident – I lost all respect for the AZ QB after that. I don’t blame Barnett at all for going off like that. The first roughing the passer penalty was probably unintentional, but justified purely in the interest of safety. The second penalty should either have been retracted or the QB should have had an offsetting personal foul.
When the Az qb was hugged up on Calvin, his hand was in Calvin’s facemask. Should have been at least off setting penalties. Someone also posted two pictures of Jackson going up for the ball and the DB knocking out of the play before the ball got there. He was pushed before the ball was even close. The ball was on target and Jackson was going up and was in perfect position to make the catch in the first picture but in the second, as the ball was getting there, Jackson was having to reach back with the DB buried in his ribs pushing him out of the play. but they show that he was pushed away before the ball got there. At least that what it looked like to me. It was posted on twitter as something like “it was like this all night” or something like that by one of the blogs crew.
http://www.pistolsfiringblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-09-at-11.24.35-AM.png
Exactly! So all these people mad at Calvin look at what really happened. Defense played to relaxed and after that call the refs were calling every little violation
On 11: this game can be summed up in two areas; dropped passes and penalties. That’s it. Both of those areas of the game contributed to momentum changes, stalled drives, negated first downs and gave points away. Cut both the number of drops and turnovers in half (and force 1 or 2) and OSU wins this game, and wins comfortably. No doubt in my mind. Not to mention that if our receivers catch half of those dropped passes (and most of them being the easy variety) Wes Lunt goes over the 500 yard mark. In his first ‘real’ college football game.
I agree.
I was talking about this earlier with some other people, but this was probably the most self inflicted loss from OSU in a long, long time.
I wonder how fired up Trent is about Tannehill after week 1?
Number 1: zrob would stand in the pocket and take a hit from anyone. Not sure where you’re getting the comparison w Weeden dude. 11 was one of toughest cowboys regardless of position and saying weeden was better at standing in the pocket taking hits was just erroneous. You are right Weeden was bigger though…
Wasn’t saying Zac didn’t do it, just that he was more apt to scramble than Weeden because he was smaller/faster etc. I don’t even know that one is more beneficial than the other (throwing and taking the hit vs. scrambling) but I think given the offense we’re running now and the QB we have running it, I prefer the former.
Also, I’m driving the “Zac was a gamer and will go down as a top ten most underrated player in OSU history” bus, no need to sway me there.
I’m HOPING that the D came unraveled due to the late start (9:30 is when the guys are supposed to be hitting the sack) and without Young on the sidelines. Young has been our defensive “Rock” for years. It’s unfortunate that our #2 Salty Dog is a “booth guy”. I don’t even know who tried to fill in for Young on the sideline.
Mr. Automatic Cooper was sorely missed. Jackson was AWESOME except for the 3 through-the-hand-passes. If he can get this fixed, we won’t miss a beat.
It’s not excuse, but I’ll give both the O and D a wee bit of sloppiness slack for the 9:30PM kick-off. Gundy needs to setup a better west coast travel/game prep schedule.
We can NOT schedule another SSU for an opener; we totally lost getting a good opening shake-down for the starting O & D. Yeah, we got homered a bit by the officiating, but that happens. It really screwed up our game rhythm and we’re supposed to have one of the faster no-huddle games in the conference. We really, really need to find another “Coop”….or at least someone that can catch maybe every other ball thrown to him….
Totally agree. Not playing a real game left us flat and unprepared; how are your first teamers going to be ready if they don’t even fucking take a hit in their whole first game?
I think Randle should be required to carry a football with him on campus at all times, with teammates constantly trying to take it from him….a la Darnell Jefferson in The Program.
Not saying he doesn’t have a problem (he got the dropsies all of a sudden 3/4 through last season too), but in his defense I’m pretty sure the replay showed an AZ helmet contact that popped the ball out.
I know others have said this, but I think the combination of scheduling SSU and rolling to 14-0 made our team a little over confident. I was cautiously optimistic after SSU, but then when the team scored at will like that…if they were thinking the same things I was, then they probably got cocky.
I have little doubt Gundy and Company will take care of the over-confidence part…….I really suspect that he’ll have to put Monken in a strait-jacket for the first practice or two after the game to keep him from trying to strangle someone….LOL
Completely agree that we need to find the next Cooper. Missing him bad right now.
Also, Randle looks like a freaking BEAST in that photo, even though the ball is not secure. Looks ready to pop out.
Why would you play 3 linebackers (especially one of them is slower than some of the fast D Linemen) while facing 5 WRs set. They used it again and again and we never adjusted to it. It was totally on defensive staff and I am sorry but #7 is not a BCS caliber safety, put someone else there. Does our coaching staff know anything about press coverage, just wondering? Btw, we scored enough points to win a game comfortably.
Mark, good analogy – but my thinking at the time was that the QB was trying to ride Barnett like a bucking bull, with his knees clenched tightly around Barnett’s rib cage. Barnett used a shoulder shrug and a stiff arm to extricate himself and was called for a dead ball foul.