10-12-2025, 12:25 PM
1. At least we made a game of it for three and a half quarters. If you told me that going in I would have taken it. Playing on the road at 9am by our body clocks against a top 40 team that was in the playoff last year and is led by a quarterback who has been on an upswing back to his all-conference form had ugly written all over it. The score ended up ugly - and when you dig into the details the game did turn out pretty ugly - but if one or two plays go differently at the goal line we are making SMU pretty nervous. I can only take so much solace in that though when it's clear we're a really bad team. We are now down to Sagarin #101 and SP+ #108 and have had scoreboard outcomes this year befitting #87, #120, #75, #136, #130, and #127. It's sobering that halfway into this season we have yet to have a single good game and our three best results relative to opponent were the first three games while the three most recent were the three worst. If one really wants to squint (e.g., we've slightly ticked up in scoreboard outcome relative to opponent the last few games) one can pretend there are signs of progress, but you have to squint pretty hard. You can't look at results on the field and say this team is improving year-over-year or even game-over-game in any meaningful way. More donations and a new coaching staff can't come soon enough.
2. The score was unfortunately not the only way the game was ugly. SMU had a whopping 2.06 yard per play advantage over us, the most they've dominated any game this season. It's very depressing to match up worse in this respect than East Texas A&M (1.85 yard per play delta) and Missouri State (1.35 yard per play delta). [For comparison to other games, Baylor was a 0.55 delta, Syracuse was 0.79, and TCU was the one opponent to be more efficient than the Mustangs, by 0.8 yards per play.] We scored 1.25 points per non-garbage possession (excluding the two possessions post pick six), making the #58 points per drive defense look like #12. With the pick six the net points when our offense was on the field was really brutal, a net of three points in eight non-garbage possessions. We gave up 3.0 points per non-garbage time possession (excluding the sole play to run out the first half clock and the field goal at the end), making the #46 points per drive offense look like #28. We can tell ourselves the scoreboard was misleading because of the swing of the pick six, the drive we got stopped at the one yard line, and all the costly penalties, but fundamentally the story of the game was SMU significantly outplayed us in two of the three aspects of the game. Again, to the point 1-5 FCS Texas A&M and 3-3 FCS Missouri State were more competitive than we were on a per play basis.
3. Penalties certainly didn't help but were only one aspect of ineptitude that led to such little scoring. Getting shut out in the first quarter was a good microcosm - one possession that never happened due to a muffed punt (with starting field position at midfield no less), another that fell apart due to multiple sacks, and third that couldn't get going after successive holding calls wiped first down runs out. That's the offense's day in a nutshell. I'm proud of the defense for keeping us in it amidst those early calamities and the offense for battling to have better moments at other points, but that first quarter set the tone for how little we could do on offense and how varied the reasons were. The second, third, and fourth quarters all saw drives where we got to the red zone and couldn't score a touchdown. The first and third quarters had drives stifled by sacks. Sadly, these things seem to typify us and are not new. We are 128th in punt return average. We are 126th in sacks allowed per game. We are 96th in penalty yards per game. We are 130th in red zone touchdown percentage. These are things we habitually struggle with, not things that just weirdly went wrong yesterday. I also am not going to pin this game on penalties when we had such a bleak yards per play delta and when the most egregious bad calls in the game went in our favor. Oh my god on the unsportsmanlike conduct call when SMU stopped us on 3rd down in the red zone in crunch time. Gulbranson throwing the pick six on the next play may have been football karma for that. If the ref swallowed his whistle like somebody not trying to screw SMU and/or with the world's biggest stick up his butt, we would have had 4th and goal from the 9 down 14 with 6:25 left, we probably go for it given the two score deficit and dwindling time, and probably get stopped and garbage time arrives just the same. In any case, like others, I don't view the pick six as the pivotal play as much as the touchdown to High that got erased by Brown inexplicably putting his hands to the face of somebody he wasn't blocking.
4. This was a team loss, not in the sense that everything was terrible but in the sense that nothing was good, captured by us ending up with the lowest yards per play anybody other than East Texas A&M has had against SMU this season and the highest yards per play anybody other than Baylor has allowed against SMU this season. In the passing game, we were fourth of SMU's six opponents in both yards per attempt and passer rating, not a good performance but far from terrible. Notably, only having one interception is a very good result as SMU is fifth in the nation in interceptions, true ball hawks. Of course our interception was a massive point swing, but it was the only one and it only came after a big-time fourth quarter touchdown was taken off the board by Brown's aforementioned boneheaded play. The run game was the fourth time in five games we've had 75 yards and 2.27 yards per carry or fewer, but on the positive side those marks came in this game, so at least it was a step forward against an excellent run defense (#16 in yards per carry allowed). We need to be honest, however, that this is improvement from a troubled baseline and not good in its own right, as only Missouri State has had a lower yards per carry against SMU. The statistical clear failing of the game was the run defense, but that was distorted by the catastrophic 87 yard touchdown when SMU was trying to run out the clock on the first half. On paper that meant that this was the first time we've given up over five yards per carry in the last eight games, over a yard per carry worse than SMU's average, and the first time SMU has broken five yards per carry in 14 games. That's bad but outside of the one unforgiveable play SMU only had four other rushing first downs in the game, one in garbage time. They were not effective on the ground outside of that one play, plus that gut punch gave us the urgency to offset that score with the awesome punch back 35 second drill to steal those points back. The pass defense may have been the biggest bright spot, giving up a half a yard per attempt than SMU's average and almost to the fraction identical to their season passer rating. Syracuse and Baylor don't have good passing defenses but out-performing them in this phase that had been failing us the last two games is the biggest silver lining of the game. Ultimately, we weren't more competitive because nothing was particularly good, but I think it's reasonable to think not being terrible in any of the four phases in a 9am body clock game against a team that has never lost an ACC game is a glimmer of progress to hang our hat on.
2. The score was unfortunately not the only way the game was ugly. SMU had a whopping 2.06 yard per play advantage over us, the most they've dominated any game this season. It's very depressing to match up worse in this respect than East Texas A&M (1.85 yard per play delta) and Missouri State (1.35 yard per play delta). [For comparison to other games, Baylor was a 0.55 delta, Syracuse was 0.79, and TCU was the one opponent to be more efficient than the Mustangs, by 0.8 yards per play.] We scored 1.25 points per non-garbage possession (excluding the two possessions post pick six), making the #58 points per drive defense look like #12. With the pick six the net points when our offense was on the field was really brutal, a net of three points in eight non-garbage possessions. We gave up 3.0 points per non-garbage time possession (excluding the sole play to run out the first half clock and the field goal at the end), making the #46 points per drive offense look like #28. We can tell ourselves the scoreboard was misleading because of the swing of the pick six, the drive we got stopped at the one yard line, and all the costly penalties, but fundamentally the story of the game was SMU significantly outplayed us in two of the three aspects of the game. Again, to the point 1-5 FCS Texas A&M and 3-3 FCS Missouri State were more competitive than we were on a per play basis.
3. Penalties certainly didn't help but were only one aspect of ineptitude that led to such little scoring. Getting shut out in the first quarter was a good microcosm - one possession that never happened due to a muffed punt (with starting field position at midfield no less), another that fell apart due to multiple sacks, and third that couldn't get going after successive holding calls wiped first down runs out. That's the offense's day in a nutshell. I'm proud of the defense for keeping us in it amidst those early calamities and the offense for battling to have better moments at other points, but that first quarter set the tone for how little we could do on offense and how varied the reasons were. The second, third, and fourth quarters all saw drives where we got to the red zone and couldn't score a touchdown. The first and third quarters had drives stifled by sacks. Sadly, these things seem to typify us and are not new. We are 128th in punt return average. We are 126th in sacks allowed per game. We are 96th in penalty yards per game. We are 130th in red zone touchdown percentage. These are things we habitually struggle with, not things that just weirdly went wrong yesterday. I also am not going to pin this game on penalties when we had such a bleak yards per play delta and when the most egregious bad calls in the game went in our favor. Oh my god on the unsportsmanlike conduct call when SMU stopped us on 3rd down in the red zone in crunch time. Gulbranson throwing the pick six on the next play may have been football karma for that. If the ref swallowed his whistle like somebody not trying to screw SMU and/or with the world's biggest stick up his butt, we would have had 4th and goal from the 9 down 14 with 6:25 left, we probably go for it given the two score deficit and dwindling time, and probably get stopped and garbage time arrives just the same. In any case, like others, I don't view the pick six as the pivotal play as much as the touchdown to High that got erased by Brown inexplicably putting his hands to the face of somebody he wasn't blocking.
4. This was a team loss, not in the sense that everything was terrible but in the sense that nothing was good, captured by us ending up with the lowest yards per play anybody other than East Texas A&M has had against SMU this season and the highest yards per play anybody other than Baylor has allowed against SMU this season. In the passing game, we were fourth of SMU's six opponents in both yards per attempt and passer rating, not a good performance but far from terrible. Notably, only having one interception is a very good result as SMU is fifth in the nation in interceptions, true ball hawks. Of course our interception was a massive point swing, but it was the only one and it only came after a big-time fourth quarter touchdown was taken off the board by Brown's aforementioned boneheaded play. The run game was the fourth time in five games we've had 75 yards and 2.27 yards per carry or fewer, but on the positive side those marks came in this game, so at least it was a step forward against an excellent run defense (#16 in yards per carry allowed). We need to be honest, however, that this is improvement from a troubled baseline and not good in its own right, as only Missouri State has had a lower yards per carry against SMU. The statistical clear failing of the game was the run defense, but that was distorted by the catastrophic 87 yard touchdown when SMU was trying to run out the clock on the first half. On paper that meant that this was the first time we've given up over five yards per carry in the last eight games, over a yard per carry worse than SMU's average, and the first time SMU has broken five yards per carry in 14 games. That's bad but outside of the one unforgiveable play SMU only had four other rushing first downs in the game, one in garbage time. They were not effective on the ground outside of that one play, plus that gut punch gave us the urgency to offset that score with the awesome punch back 35 second drill to steal those points back. The pass defense may have been the biggest bright spot, giving up a half a yard per attempt than SMU's average and almost to the fraction identical to their season passer rating. Syracuse and Baylor don't have good passing defenses but out-performing them in this phase that had been failing us the last two games is the biggest silver lining of the game. Ultimately, we weren't more competitive because nothing was particularly good, but I think it's reasonable to think not being terrible in any of the four phases in a 9am body clock game against a team that has never lost an ACC game is a glimmer of progress to hang our hat on.