The Tribe Has Spoken

I’ll admit it, I am recycling a title from basketball season, just taking out the “!?!?!?!?!?!”.

That was pretty rough tonight, the defense decided it didn’t plan on tackling Omar Cuff who was flat-out incredible. No matter how much the D helps you you’ve got to be pretty good to rack up 244 yards and 7, count ‘em, 7 touchdowns. Payton award?

The D also had trouble with those short screens. Seemed every attempted screen went for 35 plus yards. The Tribe D-Line got dominated, and even when they made a stop it was still 4 yards.

The kicking game was also pretty bad. That 35 yard FG Pate missed was probably 15 yards to the left. And he also had some pretty terrible kickoffs, to the 35 or thereabouts.

But, breaking news, there were some positives.

Jake was incredible. Completed 63% of his passes for 433 yards! Haven’t seen that out of a Tribe QB for a while. 2 touchdowns too, and another on the ground.

The receivers were also steller. DJ McAulay had 162 yards plus a TD and stepped in for Joe Nicholas very well. Unfortunately, he got injured late in the game, he really can’t seem to stay on the field. Hopefully he is back for next week as he is really blossoming, VMI couldn’t come at a better time. Drew Atchison was also great, they couldn’t find an answer to him. He dropped a few passes but still ended up with 139 and a TD. It is great knowing if you lob it up to him he has a 75% chance to pull it down, he is incredibly athletic and fast for his size. Archer also played well with 5 catches for 58 yards, which is slightly surprising since he spent most of the fall at QB. Talk about a team player.

The running game never really got going. Holmes averaged 3.1 yards per carry and that needs to get better. Marriner was very good though, it will be fun to see him play for the next few years. 5.2 YPC and a long of 38 on kickoff returns.

That’s all I got for now, will be interested to see how the weekend plays out, especially that UNC/JMU game. I am eager to see how Landers does.

Go Tribe!