Last Friday night was a great example of how a coach can lose a game for his team. After battling back from a 30-16 deficit with 12 minutes to go, Mizzou failed to win the game in regulation because Grant Ressel missed a 47-yard field goal attempt after his coach called consecutive timeout. The ESPN announcers were baffled and I’m sure every Tigers fan watching the game was dumbfounded as to why Gary Pinkel called those timeouts; Ressel had been very accurate from that range. Pinkel explained that they were trying to draw the Sun Devils’ defense offside, which is silly. An extra 5 yards would have been a first down, but there was no time left to try to score a touchdown or run another play. The extra 5 yards would have been negligible to Ressel, who has made longer more pressured kicks (50 yards to beat Kansas in ’09). Don’t even get me started on the play-calling on the previous plays. Second-(and third-)and-five with 30 seconds left of a tied game while in field goal range is no time to throw the ball. And while we’re at it, the conventional logic is to play defense when you win the toss in college overtime, but I believe that when you’ve got the momentum and are the team that came back to tie, you should take the ball and keep the flow going. By allowing Arizona State’s defense a chance to rest and get motivated by the offense scoring, the coaching staff gave that game away. The Tigers won that game and their coaching staff gave it back to Arizona State. They better put up 50 on Western Illinois.
This week’s picks:
South Carolina over Navy
Nebraska over Washington
Ohio State over Miami
Oklahoma over Florida State
Stanford over Arizona
Auburn over Clemson
Texas over UCLA
Michigan State over Notre Dame
Pittsburgh over Iowa
BYU over Utah
Last Week: 6-4 (40 pts.)
Season: 15-5 (91 pts.)
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