In the blink of an eye
My band teacher in HS had a favorite saying: “woulda shoulda coulda”. He used this whenever we had a bad performance on the field and had so many little faults that if we had corrected we could have came out on top. This past weekend, my birthday, the Clemson Tigers played what has been our closest competition: Georgia Tech. The history behind this showdown is that until last years spanking by the Tigers, the score of the annual meeting was ALWAYS decided by about 3 points. Basically every year a heart attack was eminent when watching the game.
This year the jackets came to our house, and they brought a play book that went off the weaknesses displayed during the Clemson - Wake Forest game: A running game. Their running game tore us up into the second half. By then, the Jackets realized that we had a weakness in short cornerbacks and they had a 6′2′ wide reciever.
So the Tech game went from running to passing while the Tigers went from an effective passing game to an enormous running game. If it wasn’t for our running game we would not have scored as our quarterback was having problems hitting his recievers (high or on the ground) and the recievers, when hit, weren’t catching the ball. We had 2 running backs break 50+ yard TD’s.
Soooo the game comes down to Clemson up by 3 with about a minute left and our QB makes a run and slides at 9 yards. The previous week he was lowering his shoulder and taking out corners and safeties but for some reason he slid…a yard short. All we have to do is steamroll 1 yard and of course we don’t do it. 4th and 1 and we bring out the punting team which had been doing spectacular all night. The snap doesn’t even go in the air but scrambles on the ground past the punter who begins to fantically chase it in hopes of langing on it. He finally covers up on the ball…..on OUR 6 yard line, giving the jackets position to win the game, which they do.
Now this does not only bring back the close games between the two schools but living this close to Atlanta many people have to put up with the crap that will occur over the next week.
And now the review:
-The stadium was the loudest and most involved I have ever seen it, if Clemson had won the stadium would probably have been sold out for the rest of the season
-Our Offense had better wake up and realize that the other teams can play, I am just glad that our running backs showed up as our QB and WR’s did not play well at all.
-Defense was huge this game (we were tied at 7 until right before the half) and they knew it, the Clemson D rallied the crowd perfectly whenever they were on the field.
- Finally, I know he probably had tunnel vision but if the punter had just realized he was on the 6 and kicked the ball through the endzone we would have sacrificed 2 points but been able to kick the ball down the field and give Tech 30 seconds to attempt to come downfield.
Now all I have is a nightmarish image of our punter going fetal on the ball while our longsnapper collapsed on the field and had to be physically removed by teammates.
All I can do is look for positives and hope that it woke the team up as they have a long 3 away game schedule now and won’t have the crowd again for a long time!