Back down to earth

[Rekdiver]

We pissed the voters off with the loss.....no, zero, nada vote

[ncman071]

part of the ongoing issue is having to play the only triple option offense on our schedule on a short week. if i'm not mistaken we've had several short week games against georgia southern. this year GS was tremendously better than they've been since they've joined the sunbelt. And i for sure believe we are still better than half the acc. We have an excellent team that just had a terrible game. I think we go down and beat coastal. It will be a decent game...then we go and take care of texas st. We still have a chance at 10-2 with a bowl win. I mean honestly most folks here thought we were like a 7-5/8-4 type team this year given the loss of Lamb. But i think we roll and finish really strong this year.

[AppUSMC]

We pissed the voters off with the loss.....no, zero, nada vote

Yes we did. A lot of voters went out on a limb to support us. Right when everyone was watching on ESPNU we let them down, and made them lose credibility.

It will be a long time before they stick their necks out for us again. Overtime losses to strong teams won’t cut it anymore. We gotta start beating the big boys.

[AppSt94]

You guys read way to much into the ramifications of losing.

[WASU 93]

I have seen a few comments indicating that our backup QB looked overwhelmed. I think if you take away the 10...yes 10 penalties in the first half that had him facing 2nd and 20+ yards...or 3rd and 20+ yards, he would have been fine.

Emotions were high and maybe the change in QB made the count rhythm different resulting in the off-sides. Maybe the guys were over compensating. I don't know what caused it, but ti prevented our offense from ever establishing a rhythm. Despite that, the game was close until later when our D started getting slashed after being left on the field for way too long. One issue leads to another.

In-game QB injuries are always hard to accommodate because that's not what you practiced for...especially on a short week game. The loss of a stud ILB against a triple option team was also a bigger factor than people think. We did ok without him for a while but we not longer had the rotation....see the fatigue reference above.

The Apps are not done. We were never guaranteed a spot in the CCG despite all the kudos heaped on us all season. I do think our depth is improved but we still don't match the major programs, and likely we won't any time soon. Boise State doesn't match the depth on the top P5 teams. Neither do the top AAC teams.

Now we have to hope for GS to stumble. They are feeling invincible right now and frankly, that's pretty dangerous for them because they still have a ways to go. We just need to win our remaining games. We only have two losses (one conference loss) and there are 4 games remaining. No reason to give up yet.

GO APPS!

Our 2nd String QB was overwhelmed regardless of what the down and distance were. Basically he looked at he first progression, and if he felt any pressure at all he either tucked it or panicked and couldn't make a pass that connected. He just did not respond well to the situation. That made us one dimensional and we could not get the run game going. The penalties did not help, but if we substitute two red zone interceptions with field goals, it's a different game.

Great analysis on the loss of our ILB. They wore us down eventually.

Plus, we couldn't scoop and score on the blocked punt, nor recover any of their three fumbles. Add the catch interference on the Duck return and it was just a bad day to have a bad day.

There's no reason we can't go 9-2. We don't control our destiny, but we are still a very good football team.

[WASU 93]

We pissed the voters off with the loss.....no, zero, nada vote

Yes we did. A lot of voters went out on a limb to support us. Right when everyone was watching on ESPNU we let them down, and made them lose credibility.

It will be a long time before they stick their necks out for us again. Overtime losses to strong teams won’t cut it anymore. We gotta start beating the big boys.

Do you really think the voters hold grudges? We didn't give them a reason to continue to vote for us. However, I don't think we harmed their reputation. Six or seven teams exited the Coaches Top 25. It was a week of churn.

Win out and we start getting votes again.

[WataugaMan]

We didn't piss the voters off, we simply proved we are nowhere near a top 25 team. The voters had nothing to do with the situation, we are totally responsible for our current status!! Personally, I have no problem with receiving no votes, we've earned nothing! Until we can finish the job, it is what it is. Case Closed!!

[appchicago]

We pissed the voters off with the loss.....no, zero, nada vote

Yes we did. A lot of voters went out on a limb to support us. Right when everyone was watching on ESPNU we let them down, and made them lose credibility.

It will be a long time before they stick their necks out for us again. Overtime losses to strong teams won’t cut it anymore. We gotta start beating the big boys.

As others have said, I don’t think the voters took this personally in the least. Most didn’t vote for us until our resume supported doing so, and after Thursday, it no longer did.

I am prepared to say that almost no voters took our loss personally.

WE are taking the loss, the resistance to rank us, before and after, personally.

Plus, it’s not as if the points are some separate metric, right? To get at least one vote, at least one voter would have to put us in the top 25, no? As much as you love App, would you do that?

Plus, remember that many of these voters know nothing about us. Imagine Buffalo or NIU had an equivalent report card, but in the MAC. A close loss to Penn State and big wins over Ball State and Kent State, OOC routs of schools like Rice and Southern Illinois, etc. You don’t know the schools all that well, but they get some attention and you rank them. Then they get their butts kicked by a good— but very under the radar this season— Miami (OH) or Ohio squad.

They were already your 23 or 24 vote. Do you even consider putting them in again?

Don’t take it personally. We haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt.

[Rekdiver]

It was a tongue in cheek comment fellas not to be taken literally

[AppSt94]

We didn't piss the voters off, we simply proved we are nowhere near a top 25 team. The voters had nothing to do with the situation, we are totally responsible for our current status!! Personally, I have no problem with receiving no votes, we've earned nothing! Until we can finish the job, it is what it is. Case Closed!!

Washington, Oregon, NCState, USF, and Wisconsin all dropped out. Does that mean they have earned nothing and are nowhere near a top 25 team? The bottom line is that we were going to be in until we lost. That was probably going to happen at some point. We are way to young as a team to play at a high level week in and week out. We have a great deal of talent on this team, but it is all young and when one, or in this case, two starters exit the game, they are being replaced with more youth with even less experience. We had a perfect storm of penalties, injury, ejection, and turnovers. The great ones can overcome one of these, but no one can prevail against all of these things in one game.

[APPdiesel]

Great news is the next time we get ranked, be it this year (doubtful), next year, or 5 years from now we can say we've been there. We won't have as many fans tweeting players patting them on the back, hyping them up. I personally love teams who's players vote no social media during the season. One less distraction. It has to come from the players. Coaches can't do it.

[WataugaMan]

"The bottom line is that we were going to be in until we lost. That was probably going to happen at some point. We are way to young as a team to play at a high level week in and week out."

Therefore, we were nowhere near a top 25 team. Teams at this level do play at a high level on a constant basis. Well, at least longer than 4 days at a time. (insert sarcasm) Anyway, maybe I was to quick in my judgement, how this team responds from here on out will reflect if they belonged in the top 25 or not. Good teams bounce back from adversity. The jury is still out, we'll see. Hopefully, they respond this weekend by beating the beach chickens.

[AppSt94]

"The bottom line is that we were going to be in until we lost. That was probably going to happen at some point. We are way to young as a team to play at a high level week in and week out."

Therefore, we were nowhere near a top 25 team. Teams at this level do play at a high level on a constant basis. Well, at least longer than 4 days at a time. (insert sarcasm) Anyway, maybe I was to quick in my judgement, how this team responds from here on out will reflect if they belonged in the top 25 or not. Good teams bounce back from adversity. The jury is still out, we'll see. Hopefully, they respond this weekend by beating the beach chickens.

I disagree. Given the body of work to that point, we were deserving of that designation. They had a bad game which does happen. Again, look at my example above, Oregon has a pretty good team with a likely high draft pick at QB. They turned the ball over this weekend and only managed to put up 15 points to a sub .500 team. It happens. This team has done nothing to show that they can't overcome adversity all year. Down 14 to Penn St, losing their best player. Thursday night was just too much for them to overcome in one event.

[AppSt94]

Great news is the next time we get ranked, be it this year (doubtful), next year, or 5 years from now we can say we've been there. We won't have as many fans tweeting players patting them on the back, hyping them up. I personally love teams who's players vote no social media during the season. One less distraction. It has to come from the players. Coaches can't do it.

Unfortunately, I don't think that the been there attitude is going to stop the social media train wreck. I don't know that it was the culprit this time. We had a game where a lot of too many bad things happened. I doubt social media played a hand in our QB going down and our middle lb being disqualified. People have been pumped up how good this team has looked for the 5 weeks prior to this game and it didn't have any adverse affects.

[hapapp]

I think we weren't as good or as deep as we thought we were but not as bad as we played Thursday night. After a handful of games against weak competition some had declared our second team could win the Belt and that this was the greatest App team ever. None of that is likely true but there is certainly enough talent on this squad to win out. We'll get a sense of this team's destiny beginning Saturday in Conway. This is a very young squad, they are far from achieving what they are capable of accomplishing. Hopefully, the experience of the last week will serve them well in the future.

[AppSt94]

Good post hapapp. I can get behind this. I still think that we are better than most, but I also have said that the only team on our schedule that could beat us is App. We imploded under a mountain of adversity on Thursday, as many teams would have done the same. Just prepare and play to win out and see what happens.

I realize that some of the competition has not need great but in those cases, we have to look at how we beat them versus by the margin of victory. We beat teams like we should have. Are we closer to the team that won on the road in jonesboro than the team that lost to the Stink? Appsolutely.

[Rick83]

It always amazes me how quickly the negativity comes out if we don't win every single game. Negativity against each other, against the team, and even specific players. It's going to be the extremely rare, special season, where we go undefeated. These teams we play against work all year, just like our guys and we haven't cornered the market on talented athletes either. There are great athletes on these teams, I believe we tried to get Werts even and he chose GS. These other schools are working just as hard to win games and when 2 teams are on the field somebody's going to lose and sometimes the ball doesn't bounce your way or the refs blow calls. There are only what, 4 undefeated teams left in the country? My point is that we're going to lose some games, it just hurts more because of the way the last loss happened I guess, but let's see how this young team responds...this season is not over yet.

[Stonewall]

We turned the ball over 5 times. You lose when you do that. Credit the opponent .

[hapapp]

We turned the ball over 5 times. You lose when you do that. Credit the opponent .

We'll see how GS does the rest of the way but I think the Eagles are better than many want to acknowledge and deserve credit for the win. It wasn't like they won on a last minute field goal. They were able to do to our defense what no one else has. They took advantage of the opportunities given, what good teams do. That has been our MO as well, hopefully we'll see that this weekend.

[AppSt94]

We turned the ball over 5 times. You lose when you do that. Credit the opponent .

We'll see how GS does the rest of the way but I think the Eagles are better than many want to acknowledge and deserve credit for the win. It wasn't like they won on a last minute field goal. They were able to do to our defense what no one else has. They took advantage of the opportunities given, what good teams do. That has been our MO as well, hopefully we'll see that this weekend.

We did hold them to well below their average for rushing. They took advantage of personnel changes. As it was stated earlier, remove the TOS and we win 9 of 10.