Can’t even say anything else. I mean… damn. The Eagles QB is such a beast. We adjusted and had them on the ropes but once again, the offense just sputters a bit late and EWU burns our porous pass D. EWU will pose a huge challenge to MSU and the rest of the Big Sky, while their rush D is shaky their offense is just incredible. With Adams at the helm this team might just be unstoppable.

I’m looking at our three losses, App, NAU, and EWU – all ranked teams, two on the road. I expected some challenges and I did expect the EWU loss even pre-season just b/c I knew they’d be good, but this is a tough pill to swallow. Especially after seeing the Griz adjust and look so much better on offense today. Trent looked good, and the OL just wrecked this eastern defense that was supposed to be good against the run.

Our pass defense has really just killed us this season, the inexperience and unfortunate safety play has been our achilles heel. Our defenders did really well adjusting in the 2nd half and played a great 3rd qtr but just melted down late. Lebsock is now out for the season so our options are pretty much what we have.

That last play? Oh man, Ellis just get down on the field.

The pivotal point, IMO, was after the Adams fumble. Rosy just goes SUPER conservative and we go 3 and out. Going conservative last week set the tone for NAU. We had the ball at mid-field with 4 min left and were up by 9 and we go 3 and out and never see the ball until we’re down 7…. I just… don’t know what to say. We’re seeing errors that are crushing this team.

Was that the hands team with the on-sides? We looked totally caught off guard. That’s the point where you need to be ready, and from the TV the St didn’t look prepared for it.

Two fumbles (one questionable) inside the EWU 10 yardline. We should’ve beat this team, we gave them the ball back too many times when we had chances to set the tone and/or take the lead. This feels like a 2010 game, out-played the opposing team for the better portion of the game but costly turnovers caused such a big point swing.

If EWU’s Kaufmann doesn’t go pro it’ll be a damn shame

Great blocking game by the OL – this was just what we needed to win in a tough environment. The team came up short but this was the right recipe to win a game. Unlike last week the offense was ready and had a good game-plan. McKinney looked really comfortable and ran the zone pretty good. He’s progressing and you really can’t fault him at all in this game – he did just about everything to keep this team in place to win.

How about our defensive line? Especially our D-ends. Wags and Harris were great, I think each had 2 sacks, right?

Finally a pick for our DBs – Hermanson’s pick came at a good time.

Safety play is really hurting the passing defense. So… what do we do at corner and safety? I’m at a loss. The 3rd qtr gave me more hope, but the late 4th was just more of the same.

Great game from Nguyen and Canada. Fumbles suck yes, but their running and refuse to quit efforts made up for the vast majority of this offense tonight. To get this team back on track we’ll need a big dose of these two moving forward.

One interesting thought – the App game I got texts saying that if we had JJ the Griz win that. NAU, I didn’t really hear that since the Griz got blitzed in the 2nd half. Tonight though… I can’t really say that having TMac vs JJ would’ve made the difference or not. Obviously we would’ve had a down-field game, so that might’ve been the tipping point.

———————-

Well, the Griz are 2-3 and out of the top 25 for the first time since I think 1994 or 1993. I’m not giving up on this team, we’ve barely lost two tight road games against very good football teams and a 3rd home game where this team found out a lot about itself. The Griz fought hard tonight and never quit. Their margin of error is now just 1 game, they need a long streak here in the regular season to get their mojo going here. Northern Colorado is this upcoming weekend, lets get down there and stomp them into the ground and Griz Nation had better show up big time to welcome the guys back.

These losses sting like hell but the team can chose to really just do two things. Learn from it, build on it, and get better – or give up on themselves and their teammates. I can’t imagine a single man on this team will give up. There’s too much work that goes into these seasons to just give up, and there’s good leadership in this group that will not allow that to happen.

The sting of this loss will hopefully motivate the Griz to keep getting better. This was a better team tonight overall than the one we saw last week. I can imagine that Mick right now is telling them he’s still just as proud of them tonight as he is/was of them at the start of the season, as am I. Losing sucks – and this team knows that.

Lets Go Griz!