Man, we almost had water boys playing in our secondary last night with all the injuries. That plus the BS targeting. YIKES
I’m so damn worried about Motens ankle update and all the players that went down. I love this team, but we are in trouble if they can’t play in Championship game.
plenty of time to rest and recover
Lucas is out for a half, OJ played for like 6 snaps, others went down. IF we down to true freshmen at two corner spots against either of these teams, we in trouble against Oregon or Indiana. Hoping for the best.
Lucas being out sucks. Play was no different than the Ole Miss targeting call where there was no ejection. I hate refs. Sure hope we have some guys ready to step up.
Even thought we revamped our secondary dropping 4 INT’s almost did us in. I like what Mario did on revamping the secondary but it’s still not as strong as it needs to be, especially on the edges.
I suspect they all will be ready to go!
They better be. Watching Indiana pick apart the ducks with ease.
This is my point…Watching Indiana, better pray we have guys get healthy in the back end on Defense! We’ll need to have the same game plan as Ole Miss, but without the dumb ass cute play calling. Need our secondary to step up if they can play and have to be clean like Ohio State.
Gotta hit Mendoza over and over, whatever it takes!
Willy, That’s exactly what we need to do. Indiana had a much harder time with Ohio State, a team with better linemen, than they did against Oregon. Miami was strong enough to defeat Ohio State. Maybe the Hurricanes are strong enough in the trenches to compete with them. I recall when we faced the Nebraska team in our first National Championship game. Nobody gave the Hurricanes a chance. Nebraska had rolled everybody that year, but the Hurricanes beat them and won their first NC. At least, we got to the final game this year. No matter happens, it has been a great year.
PS. NEED TO BE CLEAN OF PENALTIES annnnnd We gotta make it UGLY, just a brutal fist fight where we keep hitting and hitting and hitting…Run the fuck out of the ball! Hammer these motherfuckers. Muddy and ugly brutality.
Oregon defense got shredded against james madison. They also lost both backs to injuries. Their wr room was also decimated. Miami has the best two defensive ends IU will have faced all year. Neither guy has great length.
Honestly, it will take a clean and near perfect game for us to win this. Cignetti is no joke. He WILL have a plan for our DE’s…they will rely on the run mostly and try to wear us down and then hit the WR’s…Heatherman will need to call his best game.
Seriously, I think we all know that Indiana is the best team in the country right now…
Home field advantage will hopefully help us.
But, it’s going to take a clean game on our part, no stupid drive killers, “targeting” penalties, late hits, etc…
Really? I figured Cignetti would change up the game plan from that Rose Bowl a touch. Ran 40+ times vs Alabama with their run defense so he looks at us and tells Fernando to fire up the arm, we’re gonna light up their pass D. And maybe a bit more in the first half with Lucas out.
Is that not what they’d do or is it no matter the opponent, they’re a run first team?
Who knows? I think Heatherman will need to show a few different wrinkles and Bain/Mesidor needs to have themselves a day BUT the key to our D will be our secondary and front 4…need more pressure than just from Bain and Mesidor.
If you look at Indiana’s games this year, you’ll see that they can either lean heavy on the run or go heavy pass. They are really balanced. Against Alabama they went heavy run and they did that a few other games this year too. Against Iowa in one of their tightest games of the year they went heavy pass because the run couldn’t get going.
I expect them to lean on the pass and try to neutralize Miami’s pass rush with quick passes, similar to what Ole Miss did.
That Oregon d line looked SOFT and JJ hold the ball Mccarthy 2.0 back there as well.
I think IU runs runs runs to set up play action. They are almost more of a running team than we are, then athletic tism shreds the secondary, after that sucks everyone down.
Our gameplan should be the same, run, run, run, then pass…
I have to say I’m nervous about this one…we are HOME, yes, but IU has a pretty big support…however, we are also underdogs at HOME so that usually fuels our fire.
I can see mark cuban buying a bunch of tickets for Indiana fans to buy to give them a home field feeling.
IU has the largest alumni base in the US and a pretty affluent alumni. They will buy a ton of the tickets. They had 85% to 90% of the crowd in the Peach Bowl. I hope Miami has a better percentage than that but I am pretty sure we will be outnumbered there.
I do like the underdog role though.
Outnumbered at home for the Natty would stink, but we don’t have the fan base that IU has. We do seem to do better in the underdog role…we will see.