In which we sorta just throw our hands up.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Game Recap in Three Sentences
Poorly timed mistakes drowned us – a fumble from our own 9 returned for a TD and a blocked FG returned for a TD were pivotal.
The defense didn’t look great, but they did hold Louisville to 2-9 on third down and only 17 offensive points.
The offense was awful on the ground; running backs only rushed for 39 yards while the team averaged just 2.6 yards per rush.
Above The Line of the Week
- Haynes King’s legs. In our last two ACC games the RBs have rushed for just 40 and then 39 yards, but King has kept the ground game somewhat alive by himself. He’s currently only 22 yards back from being our leading rusher (with 19 fewer attempts mind you).
- Chicken parm tacos. Hadn’t seen them on a menu previously, they were every bit as good as they sound.
- Wide receivers. We currently have the #1 (Rutherford) and #5 (Singleton) leading receivers in the ACC. Rutherford is #10 nationally and already only about 100 yards away from his 2023 yardage total. He’s on pace to have one of the best receiving years we’ve seen in the last 15 years.
Unformed Thought of the Week
There are more than a few college (and NFL) head coaches out there that are known for being bad with in-game decisions like timeouts, 4th down attempts, or penalty acceptance. Why don’t more programs hire a 19 year old Madden weirdo for 35k a year to stand next to the head coach and help them make those 3-4 decisions per game that have huge effects? It feels like such a solvable problem to have someone on staff that can be responsible for stuff like that (surely someone like the TEs coach can handle the extra responsibility, right?), yet week in and week out a double digit number of head coaches are doing dumb things with timeouts. It’s insane given how much staff sizes have grown in recent years; you have 10 billion analysts, make one of them understand situational decision making at a deep level.
5 Star (7 Star, 5 Star) Developmental Program Haiku of the Week
Bird with teeth, weird guy
We can’t fly, can’t run either
What are we doing
The Void Calls
Look, I certainly could write another typical “I’m mad that we threw away yet another winnable game” article but honestly, who cares. I’m doing nothing more than screaming into the void, my complaints are nothing more than grains of sand blown across a vast empty shore. Every third article I write is the same, and creatively that feels very unstimulating. These are champagne problems of course, but it’s kinda not that fun to come up with a haiku every week when the program isn’t doing much to inspire me. I looked back at some of my earlier writing when I started this column and it was way more joyful and diverse; now I just feel like an insane person with their stupidly emotional brain trapped in an endless cycle of small hopes and large disappointments.
So here’s what we’re gonna do. For every future loss this season (fingers crossed there aren’t that many but hey, who am I kidding), I’m (probably, at my discretion) gonna write about anything but the game or the program at large. Wins will earn a football-based article, but losses will earn something completely unrelated. Let me know in the comments if you have any topics you want covered.
Look Ahead
We’re finally on a bye week and will return against Duke on 10/5 (8:00pm). We really need that to be a win if we want the season to not fall apart.