Before I get into the game I have to note my vehement disappointment with ESPN. I’m totally demoralized that they now have Billy Mayes doing promotional work for them, primarily for ESPN 360. That guy has to be one of the most annoying people I’ve ever seen on TV. I didn’t know all you have to do to hawk a laundry detergent is to yell for 45 seconds about how great it is. I hope that whole campaign is a bit of a joke by ESPN and it doesn’t last long. If they get the Shamwow guy on there, I might have to personally boycott ESPN for a while.
Okay, now for thoughts on the game.
Top notch win for the Noles. At half-time I wasn’t feeling all the comfortable with where we were, but we definitely stepped things up a little bit in the second half to secure a very solid win. I think Bobby stated it as succinctly as possible after the game when he basically said it came down to blocking. We weren’t blocking well in the first half and started blocking well in the second half and we got it done.
No question the defense won the game for us. Obviously we got 14 points from the defense on fumble returns, the first play being a pretty exceptional one, and they had an additional fumble recovery. They also played pretty solidly the entire game holding Wisconsin for 2 of 10 on third-down conversions, which has been a strong area for us the whole season. In an interesting move, Mickey Andrews, the defensive coordinator for FSU, was named the player of the game in recognition of the overall performance of the D.
The offense was nothing spectacular, but we did what was needed to be done to win the game, and we also won the time of possession by 10 minutes, which is something most experts were predicting Wisconsin was going to try to do to win the game. Christian Ponder wasn’t bad, but he’s going to have to really improve his passing game if we’re going to have a bigger presence in the conference and national conversation. That is likely to improve some with better protection from the offensive line and good lord do our receivers need to be more consistent catching balls. Its almost like they only want to catch passes that are hard to catch.
Um, Graham Gano is a beast. I know its sort of funny to call a kicker a beast but he singlehandedly won the field position battle. If I remember correctly, he downed 3 punts inside the 5 yard line, two of them on the one yard line, and averaged 48.2 yards per kick with a long of 58. He was also perfect on his PATs and he put two kick-offs in the endzone which weren’t returned. I don’t care who you are, that’s an impressive performance. Given our history with kickers, we’re really going to miss him next year.
Now begins the offseason game of who leaves early and recruiting rumor. Everette Brown is probably going early, which is going to hurt. Myron Rolle is also leaving for Oxford to take advantage of his Rhodes Scholarship, which will open another pretty important gap in leadership on defense. We’re also going to lose a handful of playermakers on offense at receiver, but we played alot of our young guys this season, so hopefully that fact and a more experienced offensive line will lead to some big strides for our offense next year.
