I feel bad for Brett. That is first and foremost. The dude literally gives his body for our school and our team.
I was deflated last night. Now, I’m not. Aveon proved he could get MAC wins last year. It wasn’t always pretty but last year the team figured out ways to beat teams when it needed to beat them. Sure, most of those wins came against bad teams. Well, that defines most of the MAC every year. It’s even more of a team effort now. Aveon isn’t going to be finishing a game 30/35 with 400 passing yards and 5 passing TDs. Fine. Use his strengths and set up the game plan to further highlight the talents of the other guys. Defense, keep doing what you’ve done for most of the season. After a bad first half, they dominated Toledo. Rourke will be a challenge but overall no offense we’re seeing the next few weeks is as talented as Toledo. Special teams… keep kicking ass.
When Brett went down last year, I was concerned that we wouldn’t get to 6 wins. Well, we’re already at that mark this year. Now, we still have everything in front of us. Maybe I’m delusional but I’m not deflated.
Toledo gets into the “other teams receiving votes” in today’s Coaches Poll—2 votes. With a win, Miami would have gotten that same recognition…maybe even a few more votes.
Now we’re down to just a single healthy QB with any meaningful playing time. Whomever is out #3 needs to see meaningful practice reps this week. He could be just one play away from starting for us. Keep Aveon healthy and give him by far the most reps this week but get the #3 ready.
To be clear about my prior posts I do not believe any coach or staff would ever knowingly put a player in harms way. If the Miami staff called a play having Brett run from the Toledo 2/3 between the tackles that was exceedingly poor judgement for reasons discussed in various posts. If Brett was given the discretion to attempt such a run that was also exceedingly poor judgement by the staff. He clearly should been told not to take such a risk. More importantly we should have developed a short yardage package with AV earlier in the year and we would not be in this position. CM clearly should also have given AV more minutes in other formations earlier in the year so he was more game ready. Finally as I said previously stated in my post earlier today the decision to ask AV to throw a deep fade route late in the 4th Q when we were third and 2 toward midfield and moving the ball was inexcusable and representative of the lack of common football sense CM and perhaps members of his staff have shown over the years. We had two opportunities to gain two yards, continue moving to a scoring position and to run the clock. I have personally attended games, watched on line and gone back a watched the replays and I have . . gone back through play-by- play reviews of games. It is obvious to me ( and I believe anyone else that has done the same ) that CM is not a " game " coach. Yes we can beat weak teams but when playing competitive teams we often play not to lose and often lack sound coaching. Further CM as noted frequently over the years has not prepared back up QB’s and when they are put in a game due to injuries he asks them to do things that they either are not prepared for or are not in their skill sets. I left Oxford Sat evening extremely disappointed esp knowing how close we are to having a great football program but also
realizing how far away we are due to continuing poor game day coaching judgement and mistakes. Hopefully next Saturday will be better - BEAT OU!
I don’t think anyone thinks or have suggested that Coach Martin “willingly hurt him”. Coach was clearly hurting as bad as anyone during and after the game. Many are questioning the Coach’s judgement in this particular area. Chuck simply is old school in that he will go with his starting QB through thick and thin and does not even consider any variations of that thinking, even when the evidence is there that he should.
Pretty good road environment from my end. Also the largest traveling UT crowd besides to BG, ND, Michigan or OSU I can remember. How typical is it for visitors to bring that many fans. I bet Ohio travels well.
UC will bring quite a bit more next year for an early season Saturday game. They will also bring their band. It has been over a decade since we played a Saturday home game vs Ohio but they would bring a very big crowd if it were our home game this weekend. A big home game on a Saturday can also bring a big crowd from Ball State or BG.
An unusual one for us will be a first game of the year at Northwestern next season where we will have a huge road crowd, then our third game is at Notre Dame. Miami has a huge alumnae base in the Chicago area.
Yes, when we have good teams we see a good turnout in Evanston… as related earlier by many on this board, we probably had upwards of 8,000 Miamians there when our Big Ben 2003 team rolled into town and flattened NW.
We had over 700 for the game at Washington in 1984. We were a 4-7 team that year and had just been blown out 40-14 by BG. We’ve had big crowds at UNC back in the day, too.