After further review

A few thoughts on the UW game....

Coulda, woulda, shoulda scored about two more touchdowns. Settling for field goals too often in one game is a sign that you need to shake things up with a short field...Washington's defense surprised me by being as strong as they were in the red zone. Of course, poor long snaps are just inexcusable. I think that if you just watched our offense vs. their defense, you'd guess that the score would be 49-0. Whereas if you just watched their offense vs. our defense, you'd guess it would be around 13-10. Maybe a 19 point win just splits the difference, but remember that our first team D gave up only 10 to their first team O. Point to the turnovers if you must, but the bottom line is we made those plays on the road and I'll take the production every time. Of course our pass defense is another story. Can we just retire #15, or at least not let anyone in the secondary ever wear it? Oh, and one last thing...did anyone think when McKnight and Stovall were recruited that they would both be passed as the #1 receiver by a white kid from Valpo?

I'm still not entirely sold on instant replay. Have any of the calls they've reviewed this season in our games been overturned? The closest call was the non-TD that we might have had by a toenail, but it was tough to see in the shadows.

The biggest turnaround I've seen in the first four games is the resiliency of the offense. Drive to drive and game to game they don't seem to be letting mistakes get to them as much as the last few years. How many times did it take a perfect drive to score points, and if there was one penalty or one busted play the drive would fizzle? The current level of production should really help when we play good defenses down the road. Already we've scored 136 points, which is more than our 4-game totals the past nine years. Yeah, it's been since 1995 that we've averaged 34 points for the first four games. Ty always took at least six games to get to 136, nine in '03! Only twice did Davie's teams need less than seven games to get to that mark. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is nice to have a real football coach in charge.

All that being said, the Purdue game is a huge one for the rest of the schedule. Lose to them and go into SC at 3-2, we're looking at 3-3 and potentially 4-4 heading into the stretch. But head into SC with a bye week at 4-1 and the table is set for maybe a 9-2 season. Minnesota ran all over the Boilers so hopefully Walker, Powers-Neal, and Schwapp will have a big game. Let's bring back the full house backfield! Run some wishbone option! Just get the win -- beating Purdue could mean the difference between a New Year's Day bowl (with a very slim shot at an at-large BCS bid) and the bullcrap.com bowl.