Saturday, October 30, 2004

High five, more dead than alive.

You know, Jay Davis can be a pretty good quarterback when he's not throwing it to the other team. But you can say that about nearly everyone.

Jay showed a lot of improvement over the last few weeks, but today was another nadir in his season. Pretty much every one of his five interceptions against Clemson were completely his fault, although the pick at the end of the half probably could have been prevented had the WR not quit on his route. It was a pretty ugly day for Davis--along with the pick six he threw, he dazzled us with an improvisational pass-that-was-a-lateral as he was being sacked which ended up costing us about 10 yards.

Despite everything--despite six turnovers, despite having two TDs called back on illegal procedure, despite the penalties--we had a chance right at the end. I'm not sure what that says about Clemson, but it certainly doesn't say much. The Tigers were +5 in the turnover category and couldn't pull away ... but hey, Clemson fans should enjoy their false hope--it's better than no hope.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure what to make of the football program. After years of excellent ball security under Philip Rivers, we've become one of the most error-prone teams in the country. Ten turnovers in the last two weeks. You just can't do that and expect to beat anybody. Considering that our offense isn't that great to begin with, we can hardly afford to gift wrap a handful of turnovers every week. We'd been getting better, but the last two weeks have been a horrible regression on our part.

The coaches have GOT to find a way to make this team play more efficiently. The mistakes we make each week are numerous, and many are fundamental. If we could just play more intelligently, we could actually force the other team to beat us.

The Georgia Tech game next week is huge--a loss means we'll have to beat FSU to have a shot at a bowl. We can definitely beat FSU, but I'd rather it not come to that. I can live with 6-5 ... let's just focus on getting there. It starts with the mediocre Yellow Jackets.