Not cool bro. My heart & soul do not need that shit to happen to me. For those of us that came up in this rivalry playing usf is just different. I said on multiple occasions back when usf was dominating us that i would rather go 1-10 with a win over usf then 10-1 with a loss to them. That is how crazy usf made me. It was so visceral back then and UCF has undoubtedly won the war but if we would have lost this game it would have been bad on an epic scale. I have an annual tradition where me and my usf buddy get together for this game every year and i was sitting in his season tickets in usf section as i always do when we play in Tampa and the first half was kind of what we expected. I said i was cool if he left in the 3rd to get a jump on traffic. If you told me at half time that UCF would be losing at some point in the 2nd half of that game i would tell you it was not possible. Little did i know JRP wasn't coming out for the 2nd half, our defense would forget how to tackle and our offense would fumble the ball to usf 3x on their side of the field and allow multiple 2pt conversions. I literally could not believe what i was watching. It was like we were in a simulation or something. In the end the boys found a way but dear lord. My voice is completely gone and i think i only screamed for the last few minutes of the game. It was just such a primal scream that it is just gone
UCF Fast:
UCF Fast:
- JRP: My buddy said it as well watching him that having JRP at QB is like having a cheat code. That 3rd and long i told my buddy this is our weakness and JRP has a better chance of running for it and JRP goes 64 for a TD on 3rd and long. That was nasty. Dude had 133 yards in 8 carries in the 1st like 4 drives. 9/9 passing. I agree JRP shows out more against teams like this because of how hard it is for bad defenses to shut down a mobile qb but still you have to admit he looked unstoppable.
- Keene: You just got to love this guy and i said it multiple times this season UCF was LUCKY to have both of these QBs and we could see why in this one. At first when MK came in and turned the ball over and had another 3 and out i was nervous as shit because you could see we were giving momentum to usf and Keene wasnt able to take over the game like JRP had but MK dug deep and pulled it out. Baker was at fault on the one big throw, Keene put that ball where it needed to be and Baker seemed to stop running but the 2nd one to Baker was a great throw and MK had several other gutsy plays and even ran it when he needed to. I dont know why the dungeon is at all concerned that MK may not play next week to keep the redshirt in tact. There is no way that is the type of player MK is. If JRP cannot go MK will play. MK is the anti sock boi. He aint quittin on us.
- Alec MFin Holler: ummmmmmmm, that catch though. Goodness that was one of the nastiest ones i have ever seen and it did not appear at all he touched in bounds until you saw that toe hit. What a crazy catch in a crazy moment. It was like for that play he was going to catch the ball no matter what. He wasnt going to let us lose.
- Baker: This is another one play fast. That big catch to put us in fg position at the end of the game was incredible. I thought in real time he had dropped it. That was an impressive grab and he atoned for the earlier mess up.
- Barber: Defense was atrocious but Barber continues to stand out making plays.
- UCF Fans: That was like a home game.
- Defense: I will cut the defense a bit of slack for a few reasons. First they played a great first half, held usf to 7 pts. Second, usf has some athletes on offense and that QB is really impressive. Hard to know what those coaches were watching in practice that he was the 4th string all year. Third, we kept giving usf the ball on our side of the field. 3 turnovers and the one time we kicked off to them after that 2nd half fg we get a personal foul and they are basically on the 50. We put them in so many short field situations. If someone can look up what their avg starting field position was in the 2nd quarter my bet is that it was on OUR side of the field. That is tough for any defense to stop but the poor tackling was evident. That one play where Brash had the running back stopped and just used all shoulder with no wrap up and the running back bounced it out for a TD or the 3rd and 8 option call where the freshman qb kept it for a 30+ yard td run. Those were tough moments to watch. Not sure what was up with JJB. He played but only registered 1 tackle where as Johnson had 10 tackles. Maybe JJB only played a few snaps, i couldnt tell from where i was and havent watched the game back.
- Turnovers: Like i said above, it felt like it was a simulation of a game. How in the world we could turn the ball over 3 x on our side of the field and all of them lead to touchdowns plus 2 2pt conversions. It was like we were spotting them 20+ pts just to make it interesting in a game we had full control over. ROK cannot fumble that ball in that position. He just let them rip it out and he is too good and too experienced for that to happen there. Harvey has fumbled a few times this year and that one was huge, literally almost cost us the game.
- Gus: Just like the defense above i am going to cut Gus some slack here for a few reasons, one, he didn't fumble those balls and the three play calls where it happened weren't things you can really trash Gus for making. Two, Gus called a pretty solid game, the balls on him to throw that Holler pass were incredible and you could see the difference in coaching when usf had a chance late in the game to put us away and they were super conservative with three runs up the middle and gave us a chance. Gus doesn't hesitate which sometimes backfires but in this situation worked out really well. Few things i will be critical of though... Richardson again with only 3 touches yet averaged 8.6 yards per touch. Really hard to understand how he doesn't get more looks but at least Gus used him before the half when he was likely the only one that could pop one. Gus clock management in the end, again i haven't watched the game back but it seemed like after the Baker catch the clock started running with the whistle and we snapped the ball after only a few seconds ran off. I feel like we could have run off another 20 or so seconds. But most importantly for putting me through that 2nd half. Again i know it isn't all Gus's fault but the fact we were down by 1 with less then 8 minutes left to play in the game to a 1 win usf team with the 131st ranked defense, that was unacceptable, especially after the navy loss but he did pull it out and we are going to the CCG so i guess i need to shut up and enjoy the outcome.
