The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Woo! What a day. UAB got a much-needed redemption win over what is expected to be one of the better east teams. Club 125 was a clam bake. Two weeks in a row I came home in wet clothes. Last week, rain. Yesterday, sweat.

The BlazerTalk tailgate was a blast as always. Seriously, if you enjoy eating too much, laughing a lot and spending time with like-minded sports fans, it's the place to be.

Anywho, on to the observations.

Overturned laundry truck reported downtown

Yeah, we get called for a lot of penalties. I get it. Nobody likes them, and plenty of us have been pretty vocal on the subject, but bear with me here. I don't get as upset as some of you guys do over it. To wit, if you want an aggressive, attack defense that will get in a quarterback's grill and make him miserable, you're going to have some roughing the passer calls. If you want to play physical man-coverage because you trust your corners on an island, you're going to have some pass interference calls.

Rant about it all you want. I'm not going to.

That said, we've clearly got a reputation. It seemed as though on every FAU third down, the officials had a hand on their hankey at the snap.

Blazers. Spell it with a D

8 sacks
11 tackles for loss
Let's look at that a moment before we move on. That's 19 times FAU snapped the ball further away from our goal line than they did the play before. They had 75 offensive snaps. That is one quarter of their offensive snaps that they went backward. Wow. Our defensive line treated their O-line like an old dish rag.

4 forced turnovers. How'd we manage that? See above.

They finished with 52 rushing yards. Yeah, I know. Sacks count against it, but still.

Shut them out in the second half. This was a team that racked up 700 yards last week.

Speaking of depth, we had 24 different guys record at least one tackle. That's a lot.

DHop

He's quietly, without a lot of fuss or fanfare, become a pretty good QB. He's got a good live arm, decent set of wheels, and his decision-making seems to get better every week. It'll be interesting to see if he plays with a chip on his shoulder given his last Hattiesburg visit.

Cash and carry

Grayson Cash's coast to coast pick 6. Turning point in the game. FAU was on the doorstep of taking a lead, and generally feeling pretty good about things after tying it up. It was a potentially 14 point swing, and FAU never recovered. Speaking of...

To disagree with Yogi Berra, sometimes it's over before it's over

Anyone besides me think FAU just gave up in the 4th quarter? I realize Perry had thrown 3 picks, but I still thought he gave them a better chance than that other guy. They had us backed up deep in our own territory after that offensive interference flag with about 7 minutes to play and two timeouts. They let us eat up over 3 minutes without calling a timeout. The game ended and they still had those two timeouts. Weird.

Attendance

We're averaging 31K a game. Best in CUSA and better than several AAC teams. That's both our current peers and our aspirational ones. Stop navel-gazing about it. We're doing fine.

So, what does this mean, Barbara?

Well, we still hold our destiny in our hands. Undefeated and tied for first in the west. The UTSA game is shaping up to be a doozy, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We've got Southern on the road in 6 days. The last time we were down there, Dylan Hopkins was making his first start, looked like a deer in the headlights, and we got our asses kicked. We've owed them a whoopin' for two years now. This week, we collect.

That's all I got. For now. I think.

I’d like to see Hopkins connect on a higher percentage of those long passes. People around me always say he should put more air into his long throws. They do look like line drives at times.

A better piece of writing than most sportswriters covering any college team. I love what you put together about the TFL’s

(10-10-2021 02:13 PM)KevMo4UAB Wrote:  I’d like to see Hopkins connect on a higher percentage of those long passes. People around me always say he should put more air into his long throws. They do look like line drives at times.

You have a point, but in his defense, he's put it right in the bucket and had it dropped more than once.

As my friend and I were leaving the beautiful area of Uptown and Protective Stadium yesterday, this was after the game and after helping a bit at the tailgate location, the sun was setting in the west. It was a glorious sunset. I then turned to my left and the remaining sunlight was reflecting off the windows of all the buildings downtown. It was just as beautiful as the sunset.

I felt blessed to be alive and to be a Blazer fan.

One thing to add…. Two games in, singing Birmingham has started to grow on me. It’s a lot catchier a tune when you are up 17.

Everything's better when you're winning.

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(10-10-2021 03:04 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  One thing to add…. Two games in, singing Birmingham has started to grow on me. It’s a lot catcher a tune when you are up 17.

The song touches my heart because a friend of mine, who passed away a few years ago, loved Randy Newman’s songs. I wish he would have lived long enough to enjoy a game or two in our new stadium - in Birmingham.

To further illustrate the defensive adjustments at the half, FAU went 6/8 on third down in the first half. They finished the game 8/19, meaning they went 2/11 in the second half.

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(10-10-2021 03:04 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  One thing to add…. Two games in, singing Birmingham has started to grow on me. It’s a lot catchier a tune when you are up 17.

At least we're not telling different schools to **** off while we're singing it. Keeping it classy in Protective.

(10-10-2021 04:27 PM)BlazerGreen Wrote:  

(10-10-2021 03:04 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  One thing to add…. Two games in, singing Birmingham has started to grow on me. It’s a lot catchier a tune when you are up 17.

At least we're not telling different schools to **** off while we're singing it. Keeping it classy in Protective.

It is my hope that we never stoop to such low rent trashy behavior.

I want two things from our opponents. I want them to love to see us and I want them to hate to play us.

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(10-10-2021 03:58 PM)Smaug Wrote:  To further illustrate the defensive adjustments at the half, FAU went 6/8 on third down in the first half. They finished the game 8/19, meaning they went 2/11 in the second half.

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Once they put Tronti in at QB in the second half, our D was able to get to him more than they did to that Miami transfer Perry, who was killing us on 3rd down ( along with help from all that laundry left on the field).














who was killing us on 3rd down ( along with lots of flags to help).

(10-11-2021 11:34 AM)BlazrDawg Wrote:  

(10-10-2021 03:58 PM)Smaug Wrote:  To further illustrate the defensive adjustments at the half, FAU went 6/8 on third down in the first half. They finished the game 8/19, meaning they went 2/11 in the second half.

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Once they put Tronti in at QB in the second half, our D was able to get to him more than they did to that Miami transfer Perry, who was killing us on 3rd down ( along with help from all that laundry left on the field).














who was killing us on 3rd down ( along with lots of flags to help).

That's what I was saying. I get why you pull a guy with 3 picks, but Perry was so much more scary than Tronti.

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(10-10-2021 02:13 PM)KevMo4UAB Wrote:  I’d like to see Hopkins connect on a higher percentage of those long passes. People around me always say he should put more air into his long throws. They do look like line drives at times.

This is the #1 thing I saw that needs to be worked on this week. As long as we're stuck with Vincent as our OC then it's going to require a QB that can consistently connect on deep balls. If Hop is the QB going forward then he absolutely needs to work on his timing with the receivers.

One thing I'm amazed by is just how often our guys are open. I'm sure it's a pre-snap read to check for the additional safety, but every time we try to go deep our WR is running by himself...just need to work on connecting.

Smaug - think you've got a solid point on the penalties. I'm not too upset about the defensive ones, it's the offensive miscue ones that get to me. Shouldn't have false start or illegal motion with as much seniority as there is on that side of the ball.

12 different blazers caught passes Saturday. Only 9 of those play offense.

(10-11-2021 01:56 PM)Dracorex Wrote:  12 different blazers caught passes Saturday. Only 9 of those play offense.

(10-11-2021 12:48 PM)Auburn_Blazer Wrote:  Smaug - think you've got a solid point on the penalties. I'm not too upset about the defensive ones, it's the offensive miscue ones that get to me. Shouldn't have false start or illegal motion with as much seniority as there is on that side of the ball.

...I've dang near given up on worrying about penalties... it is just the M.O. of a Clark team... ...well, at least the 'aggressive' ones... yeah, the 'miscues' definitely need cleaning up, but those 'after the whistle' ones are just gonna be there... as well as the PIs. I am also somewhat giving a 'mulligan' to some of these younger guys on a few of the PIs - heck they may have saved some points on a few of them... not that I want to see them make a habit of it, duh... ...but when the D gets back full strength, we should have better depth there.

...on the other hand, this game may have set Coach's record for the deepest we have gotten into a game before a timeout called (about halfway thru the second quarter, I believe)...

(10-11-2021 04:36 PM)GreenFreakUAB Wrote:  

(10-11-2021 12:48 PM)Auburn_Blazer Wrote:  Smaug - think you've got a solid point on the penalties. I'm not too upset about the defensive ones, it's the offensive miscue ones that get to me. Shouldn't have false start or illegal motion with as much seniority as there is on that side of the ball.

...I've dang near given up on worrying about penalties... it is just the M.O. of a Clark team... ...well, at least the 'aggressive' ones... yeah, the 'miscues' definitely need cleaning up, but those 'after the whistle' ones are just gonna be there... as well as the PIs. I am also somewhat giving a 'mulligan' to some of these younger guys on a few of the PIs - heck they may have saved some points on a few of them... not that I want to see them make a habit of it, duh... ...but when the D gets back full strength, we should have better depth there.

...on the other hand, this game may have set Coach's record for the deepest we have gotten into a game before a timeout called (about halfway thru the second quarter, I believe)...

I noticed that as well. I believe we had timeouts left towards the end of the game too.

Anybody remember a team that went through all its timeouts in the first five minutes of each half?

Was it Tulsa?

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(10-11-2021 09:18 PM)Smaug Wrote:  Anybody remember a team that went through all its timeouts in the first five minutes of each half?

Was it Tulsa?

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I remember tulsa doing that in a basketball game in the Anderson years. We just completely killed them with the press and they kept calling timeouts when they were trapped or to avoid 10 sec calls.