South Alabama was the better team. We were flat and completely unable to gather any momentum. We were ugly. Butt ugly. Let us have no more of this ugliness.
Christian Chapman had his most ineffective game as an Aztec. 13/22/159 is as unappealing as a flat beer on a hot day. Yuck. Sure, Christian was rushed (no pun intended) with four sacks and I lost track of hurried attempts which lent to his challenge. Strangely, when reading our rushing stats, you would think we had a chance which we did. Donnel’s line was 25/151 for an average of 6 yards per rush while Rashaad was 9/66 which was just shy of 7 yards per carry. Impressive. But, we could not score those things called touchdowns.
Recall, we were up 24-21 at the end of three. Sadly, only South Alabama played during the fourth quarter. The Aztecs went into self-destruct mode. We were a 3:00 a.m. Trump tweet. The fourth quarter featured 1/5 on third downs. We were 2/10 overall. Only 10 third downs the entire game. The first and second quarters registered a whopping 8:39 minutes of Aztec ball possession. That’s 4:19.5 seconds per quarter. A perfect time frame for a sputtering offense to remain lost in the fog of incompetence. Yet, we ran two more plays than the Jaguars (63-61). The penalty idiocy continues (10/85). Two lost fumbles. The aforementioned four sacks. Ugly.
All of this before mentioning the difficult night of Ryan Simmons. Until that snap over Tanner Blain’s head, we had a chance. The chance stopped dead when the long snap stopped rolling inside the five. Jaguar’s score. Ugly.
The SDSU defense made the South Alabama qb look like a four-year starter rather than a little shaver making his first start. Only five incompletions (16/21/242) to go with 3 touchdowns. He averaged 15.1 yards per completion against the back eight. He stretched us until we snapped. Three times. As for the South Alabama rushing game, they didn’t have one. 89 yards total (2.2 ypc). Yet, they score 42 points! Of course, 7/13 on third down creates a lot of second chances of which they took full advantage as I refer you back to the score.
Kudos to the Jags. They beat us consecutive years.
Now MW play begins. May the boys be angry and focused against UNLV. Feel the sting of losing to a team we coulda, shoulda, woulda beat.
3-1.
tipmypitch 