[Goose]

I think the only thing we could do to get them to defend the whole field is to keep passing until they dared us to run it, and they never did.  You can rightfully criticize Shaw for not turning to the pass earlier in the game, but I don't think spreading the field and running out of pass formations would have helped much.

BC

You are exactly correct. Rocky Long is a smart coach. He knew that there was exactly one way that SDSU could win. That was to play cover 0 always and hope we couldn't execute in the passing game. Last year, it worked. Chryst couldn't hit open guys and JJAW didn't play, as I recall. If they play us more "conventionally", it opens up the run, which is what we want to do anyway. So, play cover 0, run blitz, and hope that if we pass, either their blitz becomes a pass blitz and gets there or we can't execute. Last year, they played somewhat more conventionally part of the time and Love got a TD. This year, they weren't even going to let that happen. It didn't. That strategy almost worked. If our defense hadn't played way better than I think many of us feared, we could have lost the game, or it could have been much closer anyway. What would have happened if we had last years passing game? Not pretty to think about. We didn't adjust rapidly, which we probably should have. I think it was somewhat disbelief, as in "They can't play cover 0 all the time. We will pop one soon". Well, yes they could.

[Goose]

I think the only thing we could do to get them to defend the whole field is to keep passing until they dared us to run it, and they never did.  You can rightfully criticize Shaw for not turning to the pass earlier in the game, but I don't think spreading the field and running out of pass formations would have helped much.

BC

You are exactly correct. Rocky Long is a smart coach. He knew that there was exactly one way that SDSU could win. That was to play cover 0 always and hope we couldn't execute in the passing game. Last year, it worked. Chryst couldn't hit open guys and JJAW didn't play, as I recall. If they play us more "conventionally", it opens up the run, which is what we want to do anyway. So, play cover 0, run blitz, and hope that if we pass, either their blitz becomes a pass blitz and gets there or we can't execute. Last year, they played somewhat more conventionally part of the time and Love got a TD. This year, they weren't even going to let that happen. It didn't. That strategy almost worked. If our defense hadn't played way better than I think many of us feared, we could have lost the game, or it could have been much closer anyway. What would have happened if we had last years passing game? Not pretty to think about. We didn't adjust rapidly, which we probably should have. I think it was somewhat disbelief, as in "They can't play cover 0 all the time. We will pop one soon". Well, yes they could.