It was a pretty rough day, going 0-2 on our recommended plays with tough losses on Utah and Oregon State. A loss is a loss, but upon further inspection it wasn’t as bad as one might think. Utah outgained SJSU 499-291 (we called for a 400-266 advantage), but suffered some horrible luck. In the 1st half alone Utah coughed it up twice, missed 2 FGs, and turned it over on downs when they failed to punch it in the endzone on 4th and goal at the 1. Utah won by 10 (as a 13.5 pt), so any one of those 5 things (in the 1st half alone) would have pushed us over the number.

Oregon State looked pretty good leading 20-3 late in the 3rd quarter, before giving up two 4th quarter TDs to barely escape with the victory. OSU’s defense allowed only 310 yards (we projected 353) and allowed 30% of those in two drives (13 plays) in the 4th quarter, protecting a 3 score lead.

The Free plays didn’t suffer any better luck. Stanford (as 3 pt dog) was up 17 at the half, missed a 3Q FG, and allowed Wake to march 92 yards with 4 minutes to go in the game to score the go ahead TD (with the game tied) with 2 seconds left in the game on a 3rd and 1 and a 7 pt win. Missouri & Tennessee combined to surrender 6 TOs (1-6 TO margin), which is what ultimately sunk us in those games.

So on a day we went 0-2 on our recommended plays (0-5 overall), we certainly should have been 1-1 (Utah), and probably should have been 2-0. I’ve gone back thru both those games this morning and am certain we made the right decisions. We don’t recommend playing the Free Plays, but even those should have been no worse than 1-2 (Stanford), and with any luck probably should have been 2-1 (Missouri).

We’ll take some consolation in the fact we made the right decisions, and know that over the course of a season this sort of luck should even itself out (meaning we should get bailed out on a couple games thru the course of the year based on the flip side of the back luck outlined above). We are still 3-5 on our Recommended Play which for the 1st two weeks isn’t all bad. Our math system doesn’t really hit its stride until week 4, and we’ve been pretty upfront about the challenges handicapping the 1st couple weeks. We’ve already put this behind us and are moving to next week. The good news is that we learned a lot about over half the teams as we now have two meaningful games (ignoring 1-AA games) to start working on next week.