You know, I had already become overwhelmed with the crushing frustration and disappointment of the ongoing game STORY and gone out for a calming walk-in-the-dark around my neighborhood when that occurred...
I wasn’t aware of some of the details of those last moments until, well, until just a moment ago when your comment here spurred me to finally steel myself and take a (ff-aided) look at all that; glad I WASN’T watching at the time, too:
YIKES! All that was even more excruciating than I thought based on what imagination (and zero change on my phone’s scoreboard, or the lack of texts from various individuals who were aware of my self-imposed late-game “blackout”) seemed to indicate!
I KNEW that, just having driven down to their 10 yd line TWICE in the waning moments with only 3 points gained in the score, somehow showed a terribly frustrating “close failure” there at the end...but THAT!
It was everything I surmised regarding both our poor preparation and play-calling in the end letting us down.
Sure—so MUCH “woulda/shoulda/COULDA”:
Enough THIS time to last a LIFETIME!
But it was a game-long PROCESSION of questionably over-CAUTIOUS (and surprisingly conservative) calls on offense, tactically and strategically, that somewhat inevitably doomed us on this night—PUT us in that position where we NEEDED “a break”, multiple “more fortunate outcomes”, in the FIRST place!
Never should have COME to that, imho—you see?
Frankly, LF, I THOUGHT coming INTO this one that we had progressed, had finally grown into more the kind of squad that DIDN’T “beat ITSELF” that way anymore...
Man, was I wrong!
Hence my proposed “retrench and build BACK as quickly as possible”-plan. Maybe there is a “more publicly acceptable”, “more pc” route to the same “fast track learn, apply, evolve, ADVANCE”-sequence of future events...some more likely way by which Mullen & Co. could get it turned around THIS season and thus be able to make a properly full-blown successful run NEXT season after ALL.
But my fear of course is that I am truly in fact just “blowing smoke” now: That our CHANCES were lost, blown away like that “smoke” our play in the UK game amounted to the other night, in the final analysis. Neither mine nor any potential alternate plan is likely to be even tried now.
Instead, it’ll be a return to “the usual”, “the same ol’ SAME OL”:
But “9-and-4 and a place in the Gator Bowl”, or WHATEVER, won’t fix or CHANGE ANYTHING! Only a bold shift of method, approach and DIRECTION, our very ATTITUDE towards ALL of it and how we direct our own DESTINY can truly see us through to accelerated recovery and realistic success anytime soon.
THAT is my fervent belief and hope.
