There's an old football pearl: when you have two quarterbacks, you don't have a quarterback. It's still true. We have three, which compounds the problem.
Offense:
Overall, the offense was nothing but mediocre yesterday. Our score should have been at least double what it was. So, rather than grading the offense as a whole I'm going to grade the three quarterbacks.
Rangle: C-
10-15, 118 yds, 1 TD, 1 int rating 262.12
The interception, throwing off his back foot under duress was bad, but inconsequential. However, it was much of what we had seen out of Rangel last year and the tendency to do such things will cost us against better teams. Other than the TD drive the team simply didn't move.
Bowman: D
13-24, 80 yards, 0 TD, 0 int rating 236.31
At one point Bowman had thrown 9 straight incompletions. With Bowman on the field in the third quarter Central Arkansas dominated the third and we failed to move the football and they were threatening. There simply was no spark, no fire, nothing.
Gundy: C+
7-9, 106 yds, 0 TD, 0 int rating 255.77
I didn't get to see the scrimmage, but have heard from multiple sources (including the radio broadcast last night) that Gundy Jr. looked the best of the three during the scrimmage. He looked the best of the three last night too. He was able to connect on enough passes that it opened the running game and the two straight scoring drives finally put the game away. Had we showed that offense in the first quarter instead of the fourth the *might* have looked like it was supposed to. I went with C+ here just because we didn't see enough of it to go any higher really. Had that last drive been a full drive ending in a score it might have been a B, but it ended in the Victory formation. It's really hard for me to forget what happened when he was handed the ball against K-State last year, basically wetting all over himself. However, based on yesterday's performances, were it me making the decision, I might start Gunner next week and stick with him until he proves me wrong.
Defense: D
Part of this rating is based on their opening drive when they looked like a hot knife going through butter. After that we gave up basically nothing in the first half. There was at least twice where we let them out of 3rd and long without getting them off the field. We can't do that against better teams and expect to win. The two scores we gave up in the third and fourth quarters were as much about our offense's inability to move the football as our defense's inability to stop them. I mean, 13 points isn't an unacceptable score. I'd prefer zero against an FCS opponent, or 13 coming against deep substitutes and not against starters. But 13 isn't an unacceptable score. We had 5 sacks, but we only forced one fumble. We should have had at least one interception.
Special Teams: B
Yeah, we blocked 3 kicks. But those blocks were as much on their long snapper as they were on our rush. Their long snapper was snapping high and throwing the timing off giving us time to get in and block the kick. Our kick coverage was excellent. We downed 3 punts inside the 20.
Looking at the schedule over the summer I thought we would go 4-0 in September. After watching that performance last night now I'm not so sure. I don't know, maybe those saying we lost to much to the portal and graduation were right. Maybe we have a lot of coaching to do to form cohesive units on both sides of the ball, because neither looked particularly good. We have to perform better next week in all phases of the game.
Offense:
Overall, the offense was nothing but mediocre yesterday. Our score should have been at least double what it was. So, rather than grading the offense as a whole I'm going to grade the three quarterbacks.
Rangle: C-
10-15, 118 yds, 1 TD, 1 int rating 262.12
The interception, throwing off his back foot under duress was bad, but inconsequential. However, it was much of what we had seen out of Rangel last year and the tendency to do such things will cost us against better teams. Other than the TD drive the team simply didn't move.
Bowman: D
13-24, 80 yards, 0 TD, 0 int rating 236.31
At one point Bowman had thrown 9 straight incompletions. With Bowman on the field in the third quarter Central Arkansas dominated the third and we failed to move the football and they were threatening. There simply was no spark, no fire, nothing.
Gundy: C+
7-9, 106 yds, 0 TD, 0 int rating 255.77
I didn't get to see the scrimmage, but have heard from multiple sources (including the radio broadcast last night) that Gundy Jr. looked the best of the three during the scrimmage. He looked the best of the three last night too. He was able to connect on enough passes that it opened the running game and the two straight scoring drives finally put the game away. Had we showed that offense in the first quarter instead of the fourth the *might* have looked like it was supposed to. I went with C+ here just because we didn't see enough of it to go any higher really. Had that last drive been a full drive ending in a score it might have been a B, but it ended in the Victory formation. It's really hard for me to forget what happened when he was handed the ball against K-State last year, basically wetting all over himself. However, based on yesterday's performances, were it me making the decision, I might start Gunner next week and stick with him until he proves me wrong.
Defense: D
Part of this rating is based on their opening drive when they looked like a hot knife going through butter. After that we gave up basically nothing in the first half. There was at least twice where we let them out of 3rd and long without getting them off the field. We can't do that against better teams and expect to win. The two scores we gave up in the third and fourth quarters were as much about our offense's inability to move the football as our defense's inability to stop them. I mean, 13 points isn't an unacceptable score. I'd prefer zero against an FCS opponent, or 13 coming against deep substitutes and not against starters. But 13 isn't an unacceptable score. We had 5 sacks, but we only forced one fumble. We should have had at least one interception.
Special Teams: B
Yeah, we blocked 3 kicks. But those blocks were as much on their long snapper as they were on our rush. Their long snapper was snapping high and throwing the timing off giving us time to get in and block the kick. Our kick coverage was excellent. We downed 3 punts inside the 20.
Looking at the schedule over the summer I thought we would go 4-0 in September. After watching that performance last night now I'm not so sure. I don't know, maybe those saying we lost to much to the portal and graduation were right. Maybe we have a lot of coaching to do to form cohesive units on both sides of the ball, because neither looked particularly good. We have to perform better next week in all phases of the game.
