Interesting that Whipple went max protect on that play call, and kept the I-Back and TE in to block. There were only 2 WR's downfield and Alante went back into the flat after being on the circle motion. I actually think Alante's motion helped draw the safety's eye up to him as a potential run threat, and the safety was no help on the deep pass.
We apparently watched 2 different games. I know you love the 90's but.... NW eliminated the running game fairly well. Whipple noticed it, just as easily as so many other people did. That is a reason why you have to throw, especially when you are in 2nd and long or 3rd and long. We had 7 productive runs from the RB - all game. Case in point (effectiveness):And you don't have to just go off of a guess or a feeling for how much we passed - we threw it an unprecedented 58% of our plays.
Again, Whipple doesn't seem to want to run the ball much to move the chains. Hence why he only called run plays 42% of the time. That is way below our average from last season.
But when Grant got his chances, at least he:
-Broke a long one
-Ran one into the end zone from inside the red zone.
-Averaged 5.3 YPC
I'm not sure how it matters whether or not Grant gets the 46 yards from the long run doing it that way or chunking that up across 8 different carries (to stay consistent with the 5.3 YPC average that way).
Basically, our players and coaches made mistakes that cost us the game.
