Solar

I agree with the title of this thread. What I saw: Moore is a QB that doesn't have a natural aptitude for real time situational awareness of everything going on around him. He's made great strides, but against the best teams' defenses he's got a long ways to go. We wouldn't have been any better on offense if we had Whittington and Davison. Harris produced every bit as much as they would have. He played so good somebody is going to pay the man next year whether it's us or some other team. Our offensive line continued to play very very slow. Seemingly always getting beat to the block point by the defender. Maybe injuries, maybe just too big and a bad fit for a system that requires a lot of agility from the blockers. Our defense played really, really well. We shut down their run game on 1st and second down forcing 14 3rd down with the majority 3rd and long. And our 2 best cornerbacks and nickel played elite level coverage. How did they play so well despite getting over 50 points scored on them??? There is no defense for the perfect pass and Mendoza threw about 15 of them. What are you going to do except tip your cap to him? We gifted them 3 scores straight up and a fourth they took away and had to drive less than 30 yards to the endzone, totalling 28 points. That's about how much we lost by right? If we played mistake free football we would have had a chance against a generational level team, just like we thought...but it simply wasn't realistic to expect that. If there is one thing this team was consistent about all year was leaving a lot of meat on the bone due to mistakes. It's obviously easy to look at the final scores of the Rose Bowl and Peach bowl and call it a pattern, but that's crazy levels of intellectual laziness. We were obliterated for completely different sets of reasons. This playoff Dan Lanning resolved the issues that caused us to be blown out in the Rose Bowl. He now has a new set of lessons to learn and solve for next year.

I guess I wasn't be honest with myself. This loss really bothered me. I was willing to take the L with a smile if we were competitive, but we gifted them 28 points. It's hard not to let that piss you off.

There is a saying, "Old age and treachery beats youth and ambition every time."

I agree with you fwiw. People are upset right now and rightfully so. In a game where we couldn't make mistakes, we made the biggest mistakes of the season. Coach Cig won't have a roster full of seniors his staff has been coaching for the last five years forever.

It means the TEs give a good hard shove to the DE before heading out on their route. It makes the LBs think you are blocking for a run and slows down the DEs' rush for half a second.

I said I wouldn't mind losing, but this is no fun to watch. I fear the team has already given up. I'm glad I'm not stuck in the stands with a several thousand dollar travel bill waiting for me when I get home.

Beat me to it!

Are we having fun again? Great drive. OL playing good. Dante Moore poised. Excellent play calling too. Tie game.

It is definitely interesting how every talking head unanimously are picking IU, when the spread is down to -3 for IU, and smart money bettors have been gobbling it up picking Oregon to cover. I guess mere mortals can't conceive of a team that beat Ohio State and beat down Alabama ever losing again.

Definitely a lot of red. Never seen so many bandwagon fans in my life, but that's human nature. It definitely shows how much more prohibitive it is to make fans fly vs drive. I'm just happy it's a late afternoon game with no weather to worry about.

I'm not nervous about the Peach bowl. Not because I don't think we can lose, but because I don't mind if we lose. There are fans for 128 team sitting at home, with their season over. I'm grateful to see our team get to play one more time. If this was basketball, we'd be saying "final four" non stop. I'm grateful that we are the 2nd best rated team in the country by power rankings at the end of the season and in the final four despite having the closest thing to a rebuild we'll ever have in the current era of Dan Lanning, NIL and the portal. We made it one level deeper into the playoffs than last year, which always feels like progress. We are playing with house money at this point, so instead of being nervous and worrying, I'm just going to enjoy watching the game, win or lose.

I think Miss wins. Beck shows his flaws and Chambliss dazzles again despite the pass rush. I'm honestly not sure who I'd want to face in the Natty.

I'll be watching Dante Moore most. He has the highest ceiling and lowest floor against this team.

Some misinformation in this thread. Dan is the one that prevents portal players from playing in any more games. The portal window is just the window to enter. You can still be picked up by a team after the portal closes.

I just know the constant post snap movement and pass rush from the IU defense left Dante looking like a deer in the headlights. And IU is still doing it as much as they ever have. So he has to figure that out or it's nearly impossible to win.

Our new OC is always up in the box and wired directly to Stein and Lanning. I wouldn't mind if Lanning allows him to assert himself at times for critical plays. Dante is a heck of a ballplayer. If he can keep his eyes up and see the coverage properly AFTER the snap, a huge if, we have a decent chance at winning here.

He's the closest runner we have to Davison since the beginning of the season. Not nearly as much wiggle, but he has the size and speed. He should do a commendable job replacing Davison in 2 RB sets, pass blocking and bruising runs up the middle. This is probably his last chance to play in a game of national significance. He could play out of his mind increasing his NIL/portal stockon the biggest stage. It's like Lanning says, any given week someone new will show up. Let's hope it is Harris. Lanning isn't saying why he made this exception for Harris to play despite being in the portal. I assume he saw the need was significant and Harris is a fellow Show Me State individual with good intentions who could potentially be the difference maker in this game. I just saw Whittington is from Georgia, so he is excited about playing in front his hometown. I really hope he plays out of his mind too. He's done it before and been unstoppable as a runner and receiver.

If Oregon is going to win we need to hold IU under 20 and Dan needs to kick a field goal on every 4th down in Automaticus' range Oregon wins 19 (4 FGs 1 TD) - 17 2 TOs 2 Sacks 234 yards passing.

He needs to send Cristobal a thank you note for letting him stay in the USA..

As much as it annoys us to see HCs whining and throwing tantrums like a spoiled child, it is indeed one of the jobs of the HC to make sure the refs know it when they blew a call, even if they can't get it changed. Why? Because of 2 things: Pointing out recurring borderline behaviors by the other team that are giving them an advantage so the ref start calling them (lik Cig did with the D PIs) Make up calls are a thing even though no ref would ever admit to that publicly. Perhaps the no call push off TD Surrat got late in the game was the makeup call for him getting mugged earlier that killed a drive.

"If you're good enough, you'd better be old enough too." It took otherworldly play for a 2nd year player (Becker) to crack the two deep. I do seriously wonder how good IU is going to be when they run out of JMU super seniors. Certainly the portal is an instant way to increase experience, but there is no way this level of seniority and continuity within a system can be maintained. This year is IUs window to win it all way more than it is anyone else's, because they won't be able to replicate this situation again.

Nasir Wyatt was moved over to RB for practice this week. As others said Harris not being listed as our means he will be available. We will likely see some use of Grace in the 2 back sets in place of Davison. I think the bigger impact is protection schemes. Hill has had all season to work on his blocking. He'd better be ready to pull his weight blocking the pass rush. Silver lining is sometimes when great players are out everyone feels like they need to pick up the slack and the overall affect can be positive.

This. If he doesn't do his job looking down the field to who he should be throwing to, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy to hold the ball too long and get sacked. Dante needs to maintain better eye discipline after getting punched in the face so to speak. He will someday, but if he doesn't do it Friday night, our season will be over regardless of how good the rest of the team plays.

I think Brock Thomas is better at handling pass pressure than Dante. If Dante gets too rattled maybe we make the swap? (Relax, I'm only half trolling)

Wrap it down from under the shoulder, take pain killers and off you go?