Just my quick, instant impressions from the game.
- Obviously we came out very flat. You could tell right away there was no fire in our players outside of maybe a couple of them and UTSA came out for blood. I honestly expected as such as we have many young players and this is very common for a young team.
- In the first half the defense was bad, but the offense was worse.
- Ballage should not have been out there for punt return, IMO. He has never shown that ability. Obviously we all know Hayes record. We need to groom someone in case white goes down. Perhaps Harvey or someone who can at least secure the ball.
- The muffed punts made the defense look worse than they were.
- Athletically UTSA could not keep up with us and resorted to a lot of holding on both sides of the ball that went uncalled almost all night.
- The defense dared Manny to beat him with his arm all game and by and large he couldn't. Lindsey made some good adjustments in the second half to take some pressure off of Manny and get him into a better rhythm.
- On both sides of the ball in the first half there was a lot of confusion and players not being where they were suppose to be. This tells me that many on the team did not take this game seriously and were unprepared mentally.
- Demario needs another shout out for another solid work horse performance.
- Gonzales was stellar again! Glad to see him make more progress toward that national FG record though I wish it would have come more in a garbage time scenario with a big lead.
- Outside of that first UTSA drive in the second half, the defense played much, much better.
- Defense was nails in the fourth quarter, you could see the desperation/fire get under them finally realizing that they could indeed lose to UTSA.
- I do wish we would have kicked the extra point at the end of the first half. I don't mind going for two but prefer the extra point in only the 2nd quarter. Wish we would have used the Sparky formation there since we did go for it.
- Physically we beat them down on both sides of the ball in the second half. We've done this all three games now. Granted, it's been against "soft" teams, but still nice to see. This hasn't been the case in years past.
- Rhodes, I believe, had a bad missed tackle in the first half but otherwise seemed to play very well.
- Harry is a freakin beast. That catch at the end of the first half was amazing, fighting through some major pass interference/holding to make the grab. This kid is going to be scary in the next couple of years.
- Gammage seems to do much better with the new OC's system.
- With that said, Epps seems out of place in a power run scheme. Physically he's very gifted but doesn't quite seem to get his assignemnt in his head at times.
- Biggest impression was that Manny needs to get his timing better on the down hill throws. He also continues to put himself into danger at times with how he moves around/out of the pocket without keeping his eyes down field. Flip side obviously is that he can make some plays with his feet. He's a work in progress but will need to really improves by week 5 if we want to get passed the LA schools.
