Some Thoughts

Kovacs has 3.5 tackles for loss yet 0 pass break-ups. What position does he play?

Floyd is bad.  He does so many things wrong and the opponents know it.  He is going to be picked on all year.

I categorize long passes into two categories.  a) Those that the QB tosses up for grabs and lets the receiver out maneuver/out jump/out whatever the defender to get the ball.  And b) Those where the receiver gets a step on the defender and the QB throws a pass that the receiver can get and the defender can not.  Sometimes a not-so-good pass turns a b) into an a) (like yesterday's last long bomb).  For any a), unless the receiver is significantly better than the defender (see Braylon Edwards vs MSU), then there is an element of luck involved.  For M, I'm confident DRob has a strong enough arm to throw these long passes, and we've seen the receivers have made some plays, but I'm concerned with two things here.  1) DRob misses too many of the b) passes.  Yesterday they were overthrows, but underthrows happen, too.  and 2) Even though we've had some success these past two games, I'm still not confident in the abilities of the receivers to beat good defenders to create b) passes or when they end up being a) passes.  In the Lindy's sports pre-season mag, Indiana's secondary was projected as the 11th worst in the league.  MSUs was 4th.  We'll see how this goes.

Gallon just needs to catch the ball.  He isn't successful at that one thing.  Please replace him.

Stonum seemed to like to run into his blockers on KO returns yesterday.  Were they getting pushed back more than usual?  I still expect him to break one for a TD this year.

M is last in passing D (yards) in college football.  The best pass D yesterday was when Chappell (incorrectly pronounced Chapel) looked like he thought he was being pressured and made bad throws.  I remember from last year, too, that he got rid of the ball a lot sooner than other QBs would because he thought the rushers were right there.  He still had a pretty good game (yikes!). 

Indiana appeared to have something figured out on how to stop DRob and the offense.  It worked for about a quarter.  Then, it looked like DRob said to himself and his teammates "Let's win!" And he did.  I'm not sure if it is bad that teams are able to figure out ways to stop the O, or if it is good that when a score is needed Drob and the O can put it into high and WILL score. 

Drob got hurt again.  Again, I wasn't concerned and I don't know why.  Maybe it was because the way he got up looked like he had just had the wind knocked out of him.

I was annoyed with some of the play calling on O.  I know that RR's success was not made on being conservative, but when you are up by 7, have 3rd and 8, need about 2 first downs to pretty much seal the win, and have a suspect defense, throwing 20 yards downfield doesn't make sense.

I didn't really watch the MSU game (though it was on at the bar/restaurant where I watched the second half of the M game), but what I did see was MSU was gutsy on 4th and 1, up by 3 late in the game.  They went for it and got the TD.  Also, I saw that the first half stats showed MSU dominated by yards, but had three TOs, resulting in 10 Wisconsin points.  I'm not sure what this means other than I think M has a better chance at beating Wisconsin this year, and I'm not quite as confident against MSU.

If Israel was serious about these peace talks, they would extend the moratorium on building new settlements.