FirefightnRick

Philip "Send 'em to their" Graves. Rick

Ok, Plumm, I understand now. It's ok to bitch about it. But if someone calls for DD's head, then they are Giving Up on the team. Glad I'm still considered one of those who have not given up. Rick

Absolutely true. Handing off isn't going to get a kid to the NFL which all the top QB's look at. But there are others who would come if asked I have to believe. And there is no doubt there are concerns about the depth at QB this year. Yes Andrew's death was untimely, but Byerly's failing was not that much of a surprise and many expected Meager to push him really hard for the starting job. But when discussing depth at the QB position and talking about how hard it is for us to recruit due to our situation regionally or to the style of play, keep in mind Southlake Carrol's Chase Wassom went to Texas State in '04 because of a lack of offers, Chandler Dane, from Decatur, who finish just short of passing for 10,000 yards in his career had to walk on at Baylor due to a lack of offers this year. Wassom had to start against Baylor last year due to an injury to Nealy and nearly lead the Bobcats to a win in Waco. It's no knock on any of our QB's, but when talking about our lack of opportunities to recruit quality talent, here were two top QB's from schools only minutes away from Denton that we did not recruit. Rick

MTSU wins out from here on. Rick

Plumm I'm curious, how do you define "Giving Up"? But before you answer, remember you typed this: Plumm Rick

La Tech is averaging 24.8 points a game. North Texas averages 9. Something tells me the spread will go higher than 19 before weeks end. Rick

At least your able to answer your own questions. That '01 team wasn't coming off of a bowl season with the previous two rushing champions along with 9 other offensive veterans who combined, had 151 games under their belts. No comparison. Because we expect to win like we did that night against Idaho. Or would you rather it continue to be a shock to people when we do win? And when you use that 291 yard example, you do realize that we had to have all of those 291 yards to beat one of the worst teams in the nation. We were only leading by 8 points with 1:40 left in the game. Idaho ended up 3-9, including 2 wins over Belt teams and a win over 1-AA Eastern Washington. Idaho not only was one of the worst teams overall, but the worst defensive team, yet we had to run the $hit out of Jamario to beat them, and that was the game he reinjured himself on his last run in the game, forcing him to miss the ASU game the next week. He's yet to have a game any where close to that since. Rick

The Bulldogs are only giving up 116 yards a game on the ground. We average 111. The Bulldogs are however 89th in pass defense giving up 251.8 yards per game in the air. So there you are, they have a weakness which we can take advantage of! And just in case your wondering what the highest spread in a game could ever go up to, LSU is ranked 3rd in the nation in rushing defense, allowing only 69.8 yards a game. This includes games against Arizona St, Tennessee, Miss St, Vanderbilt and Florida. Rick

And DM doesn't make the call to handoff 4 yards deep on a 3rd or 4th and inches, either. Danny will be a fantastic QB for us in the future. He's showing signs of maturity. His game against MTSU was fantastic for his first game ever. He didn't lose the game for us, but went out and directed a win. Same thing against FIU. What concerns me most is the O line in the future. We lose our two best O linemen after this season if Lineberry doesn't graduate on time in the Spring. If we get them replaced then who knows how good this team will be in a year? But considering how long it's taken 4 veterans and a redshirt freshman to "gel" this season, what happens when we have to insert two more new guys next season? Rick

Congrats to Scott Hall. Currently Scott is working for an insurance company. He is thinking about going back to school for his masters in engineering, but last we spoke he was headed to N.O. to help with claims down there. I wish him the best of luck. He will succeed in anything he takes on in life. Rick

They are going to be without three of their starters against our 5 on offense. So what will the excuse be if Tech routes us this week? "Tech's backups are much better than our starting 5?". Rick

I believe it. I saw a special on EA on ESPN the other day and they interviewed several of their engineers who talked about all the research that goes into the games. Imagine what the D coordinator at LSU is going to do? Geez. Rick

True, and a loss is a loss. But what would you give for North Texas to only be down by 13 to a ranked team going into the 4th quarter, any ranked team? Rick

NMSU racked up 346 yards and 22 first downs against Cal and was only 13 points down to them going into the 4th quarter. NMSU lacks a good defense right now and gave up two long 80+ yard drives in the 4th quarter and allowed it to get away from them. Considering how North Texas has played it's OOC games, to me that is playing well in my book anyday. No it's not, see my post above. Maybe, but they are a hell of a lot better than Tulsa and K State. But to give your mentioning of NMSU's loss to UT credit, I'd take that 66-7 loss over our's last year, considering NMSU took the opening kickoff and drove for the opening score and the lead, giving the 80,000 plus UT faithfull something to worry about, if only for a few minutes. NMSU's coach is selling excitement right now and giving the Lac Cruces community a reason that they will be ablet to compete in the future with the bigger programs and vie for a conference championship. Here's what former Kentucky president Charles Wetherington and former Kentucky A.D. C.M. Newton had to say about Hal Mumme: NMSU is currently 0-7. Big deal, North Texas is 13 gifts away from being 0-5. Considering what the two schools have to look forward to for the future an exciting 0-7 team in NMSU's current situation isn't all that bad. Rick

OSU spends $16 Mill on football and $101 Mill overall on their athletic department. As someone else posted, the NFL understood the importance of competition years ago. I'm not sure how a cap could be placed on a college program, but I'm sure there are ideas out there. Rick

I heard George say that and nearly fell out of my seat. Rick

Considering how NMSU got their heads handed to them against Texas a couple of years back, and how well they played a ranked Cal team under their first year coach this season, gives reason to believe they will improve over time. Rick

I remember 4 or 5 years back when Fort Worth's North Side High School was forced to cancel their season mid way through it because they had to expell 3/4ths of their varsity team for skipping class to attend their QB's bachelor party on a friday afternoon. Rick

Stebo can "expand" on that, but may I as well? The very fact that we have won 4 straight conference titles and are having such an extreme drop off in offensive production speaks for itself. One would expect some drop off, having to insert a rookie QB, losing the leader of the O line, but not to the absolute worst, statistically? I'm not going to discuss recruiting here because of so many variables that go into it, especially one that surrounded last recruiting season. But if you watched this program the previous 7 seasons, you know we do not appear to prepare for the next season. For one, we do not blow anyone out very often in order to get back ups in the game. That's not our system nor is it our coaching philosophy to score a lot of points. Remember, our philosophy each game day is (conservative offense, control the clock, play strong defense to keep/gain field position, keep it close in the 4th and hope for a play to win the game). I see other programs trying to build leads, to put their opponents away early, then get their backups in, but I rarely see us doing it. I'm sure our coaches would love to have a blowout win every weekend as well as I'm sure they don't set out to win by 1 point every weekend. But that is how it feels to me, and if we win by 1 every weekend, that appears to be ok too, just from how I read the comments in the papers and on the radio shows and decisions made during the games. The win over FIU last saturday was our 19th Sunbelt win of 10 points or less, out of the 27. And many of those 19 have been last second wins. And even in the other 8 wins of 11 points or more, many were "struggle till the end" wins, others which were blowouts we rarely put our backups in. Hall took nearly, if not all of the snaps against Arkansas State and Idaho last year rather than Byerly. And that is just the position(QB) that we notice most. Who knows how it's been for our D line, our DB's, our O line? I'm a Mean Green stockholder, have been for years, and personally I freaking hate the "Grinding it out" game plan and have for 8 years now. And I know for a fact that it hasn't excited many of you over the years either but when there has been so few in several years, wins are wins. But I wonder what the common football fan thinks of it? I think I know already. Now, I like the fact that we can grind it out at times in close games that gets us out of a jam. But not all games have to be a jam, and if that is all you do it places you in a hole against bigger, faster opponents. OUR OOC RECORD CLEARLY PROVES THIS!. It's boring as hell, and because of it, our approach is conservative, and many times conservative gets you in a jam or beat, even against lesser opponents. See (Losses against 1st & 2nd year South Florida, or against 1-A transitional teams like Troy and FAU) and (squeeker wins against 1-AA Nichols State, or Idaho who had the worst defense in the universe for several years while in the belt and this past FIU game). I dislike our philosophy and wonder how it's suppose to inspire me and others to invest in and hold out hope of our program moving up to greener pastures in the future? Look at DD's comments in the post K State game about how K State got ahead of us early and how because of that, "playing from behind puts us in a situation where we are not that kind of a ball team". I've heard this same explaination for many years, too many years. It's not much in the way of a sales pitch that would make me want to write a $40 Million dollar check. Would it for you? Because of this hole we have now dug ourselves into with this conservative, power running game, we have NOTHING to fight LSU with. NOTHING. And our kids on defense are going to get slaughtered all night because of it. Tennessee attacked LSU in the first half of their game this year with a 335+ pound average offensive line and the best backs, WR's and QB's an SEC program could recruit, and got destroyed against the Tigers averaging 2.1 yards per carry against them. Only until they opened up the pass did they start to move the ball on them, eventually winning that game. If powerhouse programs like Tennessee, Ohio State, Michigan and others have had difficulty running a power running game, how in hell are we suppose to be affective with it against bigger opponents, which is all we should aim at. Get after the bigger boys, and the Belt games will take care of themselves. Wouldn't all of you like to come to the stadium for once knowing that regardless of how many points put up on the board by the opponent that you know North Texas will never be completely out of it until the final tick of the clock? That's what Boise stockholders have, that's what Marshall, and South Florida, and Central Florida stockholders have. And that's what FIU and FAU's stockholders will have very shortly once they get all their pieces of their new puzzle in. And once they do, then we can count them as two more programs that have blown right by. As I've posted 10 times already about how it is that these other programs understand their overall mission: It's called "THIS IS AN ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS". Rick

...in turnover margin. Hey, we're moving on up there! http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/natlRank.jsp?di...ermrgn&site=org Rick

Hmm, short memory. Rick

One of my favorite players. His motor is alway's running full speed. Rick

The 47% is in yards gained, not points. After Cobbs and Bazaldua leave we lose 43% of our points. Rick

Cerebus I meant that nothing has changed from 1999 until now, in that, with this system, we continue to struggle for the first half of the season for the line, and the offense, to gel. Cerebus And we won't gain two veterans with a combined 15 starts under their belts each year to replace the ones we do lose. This is not to place all blame on Meager, not at all. But I don't consider Byerly's 12 pass attempts, mostly in the third game of last year, all that much more experience than Meagers'. There were many more opportunities for him to get into games, mainly against Idaho and Ark State, but for whatever reason didn't? Secondly, all while knowing Joey was struggling in class, in February none the less, others in Spring training sat and watched him take most of the snaps during the scrimmages. Take Meager and his inexperience out of the equation and replace him with Byerly this year and you more than likely have the same inept offensive system we currently have. Rick

After this season we will only lose 27% of our starting offense, but within that, we lose 47% of our offensive production in yards gained. Rick