Manchester Matt
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I don’t see us beating Missouri State.
Youngstown St. - (Be Like Bouman)
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Virginia Redbird
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It was an entertaining game and as the announcers alluded to early...it came down to who had the ball last. I was also wondering why ISU did not take some time outs at the end of the game. The offense was entertaining and productive. The defense had some moments but overall were not nearly good enough. One of these days the Birds will get both offense and defense playing well at the same time, maybe. I think it will be lucky if this team makes the playoffs now. Not impossible but I really thought they needed to win this game today. I have not seen the final stats but the Birds appeared pretty well balanced on offense. Some big runs and pass plays. How many of us would expect to lose when a Spack team puts 38 points on the board? I wonder why not call some timeouts and try to conserve some time at the end to try to get another possession but for whatever reason they chose not too. I cant get upset about it anymore. It becomes almost an expectation to me at this point. I am fearing the 6-5 monkey on Spack's back. Lose to UNI & UND and beat Mo State & Murray State and it is 6-5. Four games to go.
You would think on a 3rd and 6 the last drive they would have call timeout with 5 min left and crucial moment in game. That last series started was garbage when u go deep on 1st down get no yards then go run get 4 yards now 3-6. You throw high slightly pass to Carr across middle with safety playing over top. Why not run 1st down! Rather have 2nd-7 in a crucial part of game with a time out.U would think they would have a big man package of Preston-Sobeick-Charles-Gandy those guys can get open just like Carr but bigger targets in that scenario . Thought they should have muller more in some run situations and also TE Gandy today out of all days only 3 targets. Guess they thought they need him to block. Also D Sob had great game but Annexstad is basically reading only one option on some of those throws. Others are open ! Defense basically secondary was a disaster along with the ref’s ! The INT was on standby with the outside comebacks routes just CB just tell safety I am going to try to go for INT if I miss itt tackle WR. Fair Catches on 12 yard line we are playing to be close or ok in a game. Lol afterthoughts…
redbirds2000
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Yep. The best way to deplete the fan base. Football and basketball have made it their identity.
fourthandshort
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Most of today's conference results have no rhyme or reason in terms of comparative scores. Literally only NDSU v WIU makes sense.
Virginia Redbird
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I did not see UNI pounding UND today. Not surprising they won but that they won so big. I cant even begin to guess what will happen next Saturday.
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Most teams are tougher at home and YSU is one of them. Their coach said that they haven't gotten calls on the road. That's why this would have been a big win for the 'Birds if they could have gotten the W in Ohio. Close.
South Dakota's win at North Dakota St. has been the most noteworthy Valley game of the year. It showed that the Bison have truly dropped back to the pack. The margin of defeat at North Dakota was a confirmation.
Back to our game - you have to like the way the offense kept us in it. Annexstad to Sobkowicz (or Zack to Dan if you're close friends lol) continues to amaze because Dan doesn't get a lot of separation. He did get open deep once, but he didn't do with speed. Dan sold a move to the inside and then angled back deep to the outside. A well run route can make up for speed. The offensive line may have had their best game of the season. There were openings for Blakemore and Wright.
Defensively there were obvious breakdowns in the secondary and some disappointing tackling by our usually stalwart inside linebackers. Gaines and Abdullah were very active on the edges. Jalan Gaines in particular put it all out there and the effort was appreciated.
I'm now on record as saying that home teams have the advantage. Let's protect the Nest. A very talented and physical N. Iowa team is up next.
Reggie Redbird
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Did you mean more Blakemore? He was running well, Mueller not. I’m thinking of us needing to move the ball, and we subbed in Mueller. He was bottled up pretty quick, and we gave the ball back right away. Sadly Mueller has been a step slow since coming back. That has been the difference in getting a couple yards vs what Blakemore has been able to do.
Like the EIU game, I am concerned about clock management. How Spack allows the game to be played in the 4th quarter sets up our opponents nicely to be able to come back or pull ahead. This one seemed to be a must-win for the playoffs considering how tough the MVFC is and with this team’s inconsistency.
We will start hearing about the community not showing up to support this team, but that’s a tough argument after a poor finish that led to losing a game we should have won. The community has most of its schools in the HS playoffs, and a good chunk of them have a chance to play multiple/many games.
fourthandshort
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Agreed here ... though I was very high on UNI in pre-season. But UNI neither shutting out UND nor winning by 27 makes any sense. I get it was home game and I am far less surprised they could beat UND .. but shutting UND out was so unexpected. And just when many including me had thought UNI was fading an done for the year, they smoke a top 8-16 level team. A team that just smoked NDSU ... who contrary to the rumors, is still a very good team .. that is top 8-16.
But USD beating ISUb by score of 17-3 makes absolutely no sense ... only scoring 17 and only winning by 14 is unbelievable. USD is now considered a top 8 seed team. We just destroyed ISUb .. kudos to them for bouncing back, defensively at least.
SDSU only beating SIU by 17-10 score is amazing after YSU smoked SIU 21-3. It looked like SIU was starting to fade. Granted it was home game for SIU, but still ... only 17 points from SDSU ?
Even MoST only beating MuST 28-24 at home makes little sense. MoST should win this game by more and certainly score more than 28 against this team at home. It was a beautiful day in springfield, so weather was not an issue. They got outperformed statistically by a bad team, and we're down or tied the whole game .. needing a late TD to take their 1st lead of the game.
Anyways .. other than our EIU game, and even including the SDSU and YSU losses .. and even acknowledging our defense is one of Spack's worst ever .. rivaling 2010 and 2013 (first half of season). But even so, we're still right there with the mid tier 2 & 3 teams in MVFC. UND and USD both look less dominant, while UNI and YSU both looking stronger.
Tier 1: SDSU
Tier 2: NDSU, UND, USD, SIU
Tier 3: YSU, UNI, ISUr ... now if we can beat UNI, it will mean more given they smoked UND
Tier 4: MoST, MuST, ISUb, WIU
But us losing by 3 on road to YSU by itself is not a big negative - they are a good team. We proved our offense is very legit, SIU only scored 3 pts against them. But sitting 4-3 at this point, given how deep MVFC looks right now, is not good. We will have to in out now to ensure a playoff bid. The most discouraging part about yesterday was how much they exposed our defense, like SDSU game did. We all had hoped the defense would have developed into something by now. But like 2011 season, the EIU road loss could be what pushes us off the bubble.
Now we turn our attention to UNI at home this week. Suddenly, they are in the mix as they are 3-1 in MVFC. So we'll get a good measure of where we are at, with a chance to knock off a good team and turn this back into positive direction.
As for our playoff chances .. we needed a win yesterday. As this weekend proves ... everyone lays an egg once in a while. Sometime you lay an egg and barely win a bad game. But we lost the EIU game, so our backs are against the wall.
Spack and Neikamp need to right this ship on defense ... we lost a lot, but have had 10 months and 7 games to develop these guys and figure this out. YSU was THE game I had circled since back in August. Offense is better than I expected. Defense is much worse when we line up agaist a real offense. I figured we would struggle, but though/hoped we would be at least solid by now on defense .. we are not there, and this is concerning.
Turns out the weak SOS allowed us to pile up defensive stats, and probably deluded out guys into thinking they were all that. I had hoped it would buy us time. But we're much further away than I would have hoped 7 games in.
Good news go forward ?? Both UNI and MoST are much stronger passing than running ... so we won't have to deal with what we did against SDSU and YSU .. this is obviously favorable. Hoping his buys us time to be ready by UND is last week ... uh, assuming we win out until then.
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CaliRdBrd
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It’s the Redbird way. I had zero faith we were gonna pull this out. Deep down inside, I’m sure everyone else felt the same.
Somehow, someway, we need to create a culture of winning.
Time for a change in my opinion.
ChiRedbirdfan
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a reasonable argument can be made that we are not in the same tier as uni and ysu....we will know this time next week
fourthandshort
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I would love to hear your reasonable argument ?
Not is same tier as YSU ? We just took YSU down to the very last second at their place with a chance to win. How are we not in same tier ?
We'll see about UNI when we play. They very recently beat ISUb by just 7. A week later, we beat ISUb 44-7. so it's not like we beat them by 14 and they beat them by 7. We destroyed them a week after UNI barely won. How are we not in the same tier right now ?
I think like some others chiming in, you like to see the worst and hold us to a higher standard in comparison to others. With zero consideration for the problems and inconsistencies most teams struggle with playing in the same dominant conference, where everyone is basically competing for 3rd place before the season in starts. And this includes the rest of FCS as NDSU and more recently SDSU are regularly in the finals or final 4 most seasons. That is our reality along with every other team not NDSU or SDSU. And there are objectively 5 more MVFC teams who could very realistically be playoff caliber.
Yes, our defense sucks right now. But it is usually good to very good most years, playing in the top conference in MVFC. Yet we played SDSU as tough as most teams. Yes, our defense failed us against YSU .. but so did theirs fail them. But you seem to infer it doesn't count when our offense does really well and makes their defense look really bad .. a week after they held top 8 SIU to just 3 pts .. while we scored 38 points after slow start. And USD, another top 8 team potentially, just beat same ISUb 17-3.
So again, I would love to hear your or anyone's objective argument that we aren't in the same tier as YSU or even comparatively with common opponents of UNI ?
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ChiRedbirdfan
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Using your tiers, at this point in time we are:
Tier 1. 0-1
tier 2 DNP
tier 3. 0-1 and likely a 7 or so (?) point underdog this week vs the only other tier 3 team UNI
tier 4 2-0 but that wiu team we beat has not won a game in nearly 2 years. further we did not have a convincing win vs wiu as i believe it was a one score game in the 4th qrtr before we made a couple of big plays
beyond that our body of work is weak as we lost to what now appears to be a marginal OVC team (EIU) and the rest of our competitors have no substance. So at this point in time it to state the Redbirds are in the same tier as uni and ysu based upon accomplishments seems a bit homerish, IMO. we beat uni then yes isu has earned a tier 3 placement.
At this point in the season, there's an argument to be made that UNI's loss vs Weber State by 17 at home is a worse loss than our loss by 1 on the road vs EIU. Weber State is 3-5 with their only wins over UNI, 0-7 Northern Colorado, and DII Central Washington. EIU is 5-3 and could easily be 6-2 if it weren't for a failed two-point conversion vs FCS top 20 UT-Martin.
Manchester Matt
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ISU very easily could win Saturday, but UNI has played the toughest schedule in the country and has a massive quality win now.
We are 4-3 with wins over Dayton, Lindenwood, Western and Indiana State.
I look forward to the days when we aren’t arguing points about how mediocre this program has become and we actually beat someone worth a damn when it matters again.
It is true UNI has played a tougher schedule. I was responding to the point that ISU lost to a "marginal OVC team". There is no reason we should've lost that game (it was the worst game we've played this year) and it is a stain on our resume. My point was the losses are of roughly equal value. If we are going to highlight one team's bad loss, we should highlight the other team's.
Virginia Redbird
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Maybe the Birds make the playoffs and maybe they don't. We will find out in the not too distant future. I thought they needed to win this game to be in the driver's seat. The game was evenly matched from what I saw. Nether team had very much defense in the first half. Both offenses put points on the board and gained a lot of yardage. Not as much offense in the second half but still very close game. I think the big mistake was in not using their time outs at the end of the game. YSU was in field goal range and ISU only needed a field goal to tie it up and send it to over time. I get they did not want to help YSU by calling time outs but did it make more sense to just watch the time click off as the Penguins got closer and closer to a winning field goal. Kick the ball...game over and no chance at all for the Birds to attempt a tie or a win. I don't get it. I really don't get it. YSU was not the better team and ISU did deserve to win. Two evenly matched team slugging it out and one won by 3 points. The Eastern game is what will kill their playoff chances I think and the end of that game still makes me mad as hell. Kind of a pattern with coaching decisions at the end of the game, huh?