Dear Dabo, et al:
First off, we’re sorry to bother you during an off-week, and congratulations on the win. We’re contacting you via open letter because it seems like all of our previous attempts to communicate with you were stopped at the source.
The thing is, we feel like there was a mix-up somewhere, because we were trying, desperately, to give you the game, and you didn’t seem to realize it.
That’s not to say that the defense didn’t have some idea what was going on. They held us to a total 19 yards rushing and managed two interceptions and five sacks. And one of our quarterbacks, Kyle Bolin, is going to be seeing defensive end Shaq Lawson in his nightmares for weeks.
But we still had to miss a field goal to win the game, for heaven’s sake! How could we have not made it clear after losing to a weak Auburn team and an are-you-kidding-me Houston team that we weren’t anything for you to worry about? Did our complete inability to decide on a quarterback throw you? Because the actual quarterbacks we used didn’t have many chances to throw at all. But your secondary obviously didn’t get the message that we’d decided to let you have this one, which became especially clear on the rare occasions that our QB Kyle Bolin wasn’t buried beneath a pile of large, angry defensive linemen. He managed three 20-plus yard passes, including a 55-yarder.
But we’re OK with the defense occasionally letting the game look like, y’know, a game. But how do you let your quarterback DeShaun Watson throw two interceptions against us? How did you only manage one touchdown in the first half? How could you not at least get one first down off that turnover in the third quarter, instead of throwing into double coverage?
But we really wanted to talk to you guys for a sec about special teams, and we’re not even talking about that 100-yard runback score by a freshman wide-receiver (Traveon Samuel) that you somehow allowed to happen. We’d like to know what Clemson wide receiver Artavis Scott was thinking trying to return that kickoff out of the end-zone in the first quarter. We’d like to know how you could weaken your kicker’s already-shaky confidence by taking a time out to decide if you trusted him enough to kick a 36-yard field goal on 4th-and-3.
We probably shouldn’t even mention this, but you know that Notre Dame and Georgia Tech are better than us, right? And that if you continue to sputter on offense early and make seemingly no adjustments to special teams, you’re going to get eaten alive, right? Just sayin’.
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The Cards
