dudeitsaid said:
Seems like these games are often tough games. The majority in the last decade are one score games. That being said, both teams are motivated for this game, and neither team is intimidated for the other. I think UM gets a boost from being at home and having a good season, seems a lot of people believe they are back. Their best wins are MSU and UW. UW is not the team the football world thought they were going to be, and MSU is a rivalry game where history proves anything can happen. They can hang their hats on their better performance against MSU as the indicator they are going to beat the Eags this time, but don't think it means anything. Honestly, EWU can beat anyone in the field if they play their football. My biggest concern is the conservative approach the offense has taken of late. That's not going to get it done against UM or the rest of the field. I think Friday is anyone's game, and it's going to be another classic. It will be a great game regardless of who wins. If the coaches let the offense rip, I'm taking the Eags. If it's the same offense as yesterday, I think UM will win.
I don't totally disagree. The play calling seemed suspect at times yesterday...to the extent that we ran the ball a ton to try to hang onto the lead late in the game, even when it wasn't working all that great and at the risk of not moving the ball very effectively and having to punt a few times. Any times a special teams unit touches the ball I get nervous.
I do think the weather factored into the passing game. It's a rhythm offense and we've seen that when it's not clicking it can be really problematic to get back into synch.
All that said, it's playoff football and we need to be able to grind out wins against these sort of teams that just want to lean on you and sit on the ball to burn clock. It was sort of nice seeing us do that to another team rather than it being done to us as we've seen with a few MVFC teams over the years.