[Goose]

All is not lost. Actually, the offense didn't play that badly. The killer problem was that we couldn't stop the run. That alone was enough for us to lose the game. The Toejams could dominate the time of possession at will. That also wore down what defense we actually had. We couldn't blitz much because we needed linebackers to stay at home to stop the run (which they mostly didn't, but that was the theory). We also never got any quick pressure on Darnold, which repeatedly gave time for the third receiver to run patterns into the middle of the field with either no Stanford defender visible or one that needed to make a one-on-one tackle and couldn't. The Toejam passing game made the final score look worse, but with our inability to stop the run, it didn't matter. The good news is that UW is probably the only team out there on the schedule that can play that way (I hope). It also appeared to me that our DL was kind of resigned to defeat from the start. I sort of saw deer in the headlights looks. Am I imagining this, or did others see the same thing? Fix that and we probably do a lot better. I am sure that if you had told the team before the game that we would get two INTs, they would be thrilled and expect to win. We had our moments. We were in the game through the first half, even with our problems. Stop the run, and it is all different.

[Goose]

All is not lost. Actually, the offense didn't play that badly. The killer problem was that we couldn't stop the run. That alone was enough for us to lose the game. The Toejams could dominate the time of possession at will. That also wore down what defense we actually had. We couldn't blitz much because we needed linebackers to stay at home to stop the run (which they mostly didn't, but that was the theory). We also never got any quick pressure on Darnold, which repeatedly gave time for the third receiver to run patterns into the middle of the field with either no Stanford defender visible or one that needed to make a one-on-one tackle and couldn't. The Toejam passing game made the final score look worse, but with our inability to stop the run, it didn't matter. The good news is that UW is probably the only team out there on the schedule that can play that way (I hope). It also appeared to me that our DL was kind of resigned to defeat from the start. I sort of saw deer in the headlights looks. Am I imagining this, or did others see the same thing? Fix that and we probably do a lot better. I am sure that if you had told the team before the game that we would get two INTs, they would be thrilled and expect to win. We had our moments. We were in the game through the first half, even with our problems. Stop the run, and it is all different.