An insane streak ended today that not a lot of people have discussed but UCF had not lost a regular season game by more then 7 pts since Obama was President, USF on November 26th 2016. Outside of the BYU game we hadn’t lost any game by more then 8pts (one score LSU Fiesta) since the 2016 Cure Bowl. That is a crazy stat because that streak went through 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and to this point in 2021, three different coaches, three different US Presidents. UCF was in every single game outside of BYU for 4+ seasons. That is pretty remarkable, and I promise you all if we had DG and a few others that missed due to injury we are right there with them this game too. Not to take anything away from Cincy, they are a solid team but we would have hung with them at closer to full strength, playing a true freshman against that defense with the injuries we had on offense (specifically Flash) was always gonna hurt and it did. With that said we did ourselves NO FAVORS in that game…
UCF Fast: None
UCF Slow: A lot
UCF Fast: None
UCF Slow: A lot
- Offensive Game Plan: I love Gus and I am sorry to hear about his family issue and if he was aware of it during the game I don’t know how he would have been able to zone it out. He is also completely hamstrung by injuries, but I do not feel the offensive game plan and play calls helped us at all today. My thought was that our best chance against Cincy was to go heavy run packages with Bowser, MAR and JR with some QB runs sprinkled in there and some deep plays to keep them honest. We slow the game down, make them earn it on defense, nothing risky and we keep it respectable going into half. We have a veteran offense line and our RBs are clearly better then who we have at WR right now especially considering the QB situation. No big mistakes and we got a chance to make it a game, beat the spread. We basically did the exact opposite of that. Gus dropped back to pass more then we ran (especially in first half) and especially on 1st downs. I feel like we passed on virtually every 1st down and short passes or incomplete passes put us in 2nd and long which was basically a death sentence in that game. We also had an odd choice of personnel. Maybe Bowser wasn’t 100% but I thought we would see him with the bulk of the carries with JR being more of a change of pace but they ended up pretty even with JR getting more of the looks early and I thought after how good he looked last week MAR would have been heavily in the mix. I didn’t see him and figured maybe he was hurt but then in the end he popped up and scored. That is a head scratcher for me, I cannot figure out how Gus couldn’t find more carriers for MAR or how Bowser and JR only had 23 combined. Going fast three and outs was not what we needed in this game. I believe we could have had Bowser run the wild knight on EVERY play in the 1st half and it would have ended up being better then a 28pt deficit.
- Special Teams: Good lawd, just gawd awful. It has been bad all year and it continued today. The blocked punt that took way to long to get off like many others this year (2nd blocked punt this year, both basically cost us 7 pts), other shanked punts or just not the field flipping yardage we needed. Returns were horrible, both KR and PR. No one had any impact on actual returns and both JR and Johnson muffed kicks with Johnson’s spotting another 7 pts to Cincy. Special Teams cost us 14 pts in this game and likely more when you factor in field position. Piss poor performance and Johnson dropping that punt after trying to willy mays it inside his own 10 yard line is close to unforgivable. We needed special teams to just not cost us anything in this game and instead they shit all over themselves all game.
- Wide Receivers: I know it is only one play but the 5 Star Johnson dude gets on the field, gets a chance, gets two hands on the ball and just drops it. Got to take advantage of your opportunities and you got to help out your freshman QB. We badly need someone to step up at WR and it seems like the WR room as regressed. I didn’t see anyone helping Keene at all. When Keene was rolling out on a few plays he would throw it away and the camera would pan over and there is no one for UCF coming back to the ball or attempting to make a play. Very little separation (I know Cincy is good) but just seemed way overmatched. Other guys dropped balls, not sure where Titus was. Just getting nothing from that position.
- Pick 6’s: I cursed so badly in front of all my children when this happened and I am not even sorry because something dies inside me every time a team I pull for throws 1st down interceptions, especially on the opponents side of the field and especially for a pick 6. This is the 3rd 1st down int, pick 6, we have thrown this year, all have been brutal, pick 6 100 yard return vs. Boise, pick 6 that sealed game against UL and pick 6 now against Cincy when we had something going (weren’t going to win but we were about to make that a three score game and had a bit of mo on our side). These are absolute brutal plays for the team to overcome. In literally everyone of these situations I was calling for a run in my head. Blame can be shared between players for not executing but I hated the calls from Gus especially this one today. Spreading out our WR that far out against a great defense with speed at corner and putting our true freshman out there after we just got a bruising Bowser first down run to throw that behind the line WR screen crap all the way across the field felt like suicide and completely unnecessary. I felt it was going to be picked the second I saw him release it and I didn’t even see the whole field. Just awful how we have managed to do this three times in 6 games. It is like Gus gets into these situations and tries to be too cute or overthinks it. Just run the ball.
- Production Quality: Not sure if it was just me but I was looking forward to seeing the game on ABC thinking we would have top notch production quality but it kind of sucked. Not great camera angles, picture quality was so so, replays weren’t great. Just seemed kind of meh, not sure what that was about.
- Injury Updates: The good news is that I didn’t see anyone get injured but I wish I knew more about where some of our guys were in the process. I know they don’t give you much in College. Is DG going to come back and if so when? Barber was dressed today but didn’t play so I assume Memphis he will be back? When is Flash coming back? Those are the main interests for me right now.
