Tequilla
Active poster
Someone else posted this in another thread, but as I was driving back to Waikiki last night after the game, I thought about what the UW track record is with winning games with their first head coach. Slick lost 2 in a row. Gilby laid an egg. Tyrone got beat by Ground Force. Sark had a moral victory against LSU.
Boobs likes to talk about how the season doesn't start until the Stanford game ... you could argue at times last night that the players felt the same way. However, this is one of the big reasons that I was 100% behind a coaching change this year (before it happened) was because this was a schedule set up to allow for a team to have success while undergoing a bit of a transition.
I know people will look at the yards given up by the defense and complain, but they gave up all those yards on 90+ plays. The first drive Hawaii did a good job of picking on the young secondary and that continued into the second drive. The young secondary then settled down a bit and once it was clear to Hawaii that they weren't going to be able to throw the ball with much success (and lots of credit has to go to the front 7 for this as every time I looked down after a play the Hawaii QB was picking himself up off the ground), they really struggled to move the ball consistently. I know a lot of people were pointing out the success that Hawaii was having running the ball, but they only averaged 4 yards per carry (which isn't really that bad) and definitely didn't break anything that was game changing. The defense did a great job of limiting the damage when they did get in trouble and that was arguably the difference in the game.
In the first half, I think Lindy played reasonably well. The best thing that could be said of him during the game was that he didn't make any critical errors - and listening to Petersen in announcing why Lindy was the choice, taking care of the ball was paramount. In the second half, he had a complete deer in the headlight look going on and had absolutely zero confidence. I had a number of people send me questions about the play calling, it being vanilla, etc. My response back was what would you have liked to have seen? Lindy clearly didn't have anything to give and Petersen fully recognized that.
In many ways, the game resembled a NFL style coach job. Get the lead, play field position, protect what you have. By the middle of the 3rd quarter, you could see that Petersen had made a decision to do whatever he could to protect the defense and asked them to go win the game. If you want a bright spot for the offense in the 2nd half, it was having 2 reasonably good drives with 8 minutes to go to limit what Hawaii could do to get the lead.
The good in the game was the defense, John Ross being electric (need to get him more touches), and the emergence of Lavon Coleman who runs very hard. The bad being that Lindy looked like a backup QB that probably should never start another game at this level and the OL that really struggled at times with penetration. The young DBs got their feet wet and by the second half really started to settle into the game. Kelly will be a good one ... he just missed a couple of pick 6's ... think of Peters when he was a freshman.
If there's one thing that was a bit of a concern it was the lack of emotion out of the team. Not really sure what caused that and I'm prepared to just sit back and see what happens next week in that regard. Hawaii is a very strange place to play and it's not a place that you can really build off of the energy - particularly in the first half. Won't have that kind of environment at home for sure. I thought our guys played a lot better in the 4th quarter when the energy in the building got a little higher.
All in all, a win is a win. Not pretty. Credit to Hawaii for playing hard and they didn't look like a 1 win team to me ... but that being said, we shouldn't be beating them by 1 point. Time to come home, have a good week of practice, and rebound with a nice win at home next week as the team develops into the Stanford game. Adversity is never a bad thing ... particularly when you come out the other end of it with a victory.
Boobs likes to talk about how the season doesn't start until the Stanford game ... you could argue at times last night that the players felt the same way. However, this is one of the big reasons that I was 100% behind a coaching change this year (before it happened) was because this was a schedule set up to allow for a team to have success while undergoing a bit of a transition.
I know people will look at the yards given up by the defense and complain, but they gave up all those yards on 90+ plays. The first drive Hawaii did a good job of picking on the young secondary and that continued into the second drive. The young secondary then settled down a bit and once it was clear to Hawaii that they weren't going to be able to throw the ball with much success (and lots of credit has to go to the front 7 for this as every time I looked down after a play the Hawaii QB was picking himself up off the ground), they really struggled to move the ball consistently. I know a lot of people were pointing out the success that Hawaii was having running the ball, but they only averaged 4 yards per carry (which isn't really that bad) and definitely didn't break anything that was game changing. The defense did a great job of limiting the damage when they did get in trouble and that was arguably the difference in the game.
In the first half, I think Lindy played reasonably well. The best thing that could be said of him during the game was that he didn't make any critical errors - and listening to Petersen in announcing why Lindy was the choice, taking care of the ball was paramount. In the second half, he had a complete deer in the headlight look going on and had absolutely zero confidence. I had a number of people send me questions about the play calling, it being vanilla, etc. My response back was what would you have liked to have seen? Lindy clearly didn't have anything to give and Petersen fully recognized that.
In many ways, the game resembled a NFL style coach job. Get the lead, play field position, protect what you have. By the middle of the 3rd quarter, you could see that Petersen had made a decision to do whatever he could to protect the defense and asked them to go win the game. If you want a bright spot for the offense in the 2nd half, it was having 2 reasonably good drives with 8 minutes to go to limit what Hawaii could do to get the lead.
The good in the game was the defense, John Ross being electric (need to get him more touches), and the emergence of Lavon Coleman who runs very hard. The bad being that Lindy looked like a backup QB that probably should never start another game at this level and the OL that really struggled at times with penetration. The young DBs got their feet wet and by the second half really started to settle into the game. Kelly will be a good one ... he just missed a couple of pick 6's ... think of Peters when he was a freshman.
If there's one thing that was a bit of a concern it was the lack of emotion out of the team. Not really sure what caused that and I'm prepared to just sit back and see what happens next week in that regard. Hawaii is a very strange place to play and it's not a place that you can really build off of the energy - particularly in the first half. Won't have that kind of environment at home for sure. I thought our guys played a lot better in the 4th quarter when the energy in the building got a little higher.
All in all, a win is a win. Not pretty. Credit to Hawaii for playing hard and they didn't look like a 1 win team to me ... but that being said, we shouldn't be beating them by 1 point. Time to come home, have a good week of practice, and rebound with a nice win at home next week as the team develops into the Stanford game. Adversity is never a bad thing ... particularly when you come out the other end of it with a victory.
