Thoughts on offense after rewatching Mizzou game

Last night I watched the Mizzou game again and focused on the offense, particularly the offensive line. I'll never be confused for Longhorn Scott or other more knowledgeable authors so perhaps others will have different opinions. That said, I was surprised that our pass blocking was actually okay. A couple of times Ash got pressure from his right as he was throwing, but that was generally after he had held the ball for a while. I wouldn't go so far as to say he had all day, but this game was nothing like OU when it seemed like there was a sprint to the quarterback. When I was watching it live I had the sense that part of Ash's problem was he didn't have time. On further review, that simply wasn't the case.

I was also surprised to notice that Ash only attempted a few intermediate throws. I wasn't taking notes so I may have missed one or two, but I only remember 3 intermediate throws and he completed 2 of them. His deep throws... ughhhh. The angles didn't allow me to see whether receivers were open or not, but it looked like Ash had plenty of room to run. It wasn't really clear why he didn't pull the ball down and run more. We also regressed on on screens. On the first one Davis had a terrible whiff and another defender stayed home. The next one I remember, the linemen were so concerned about defenders running down the play from behind that they actually move upfield.

Finally, the run blocking seemed passable in the first quarter and then got worse as the game went on. Early on we weren't racking up yards, but the plays were consistently positive - a yard here, three yards there, then break something for a first down. I don't know what happened at half-time, but in the second half we couldn't run block to save our lives. Unfortunately, it didn't look like blown assignments either. Mizzou wasn't doing anything fancy - they were just flat out beating the man in front of them. But only on running plays. That's why is seemed so strange that our pass blocking was okay. I hope that was just a one game deal in response to Fozzy going down.

So, I feel a little better after rewatching the game. Not because I think we're going to light up K State, but because I think we could be at least somewhat decent in the short and intermediate passing game. If one of Brown or Bergeron can go and we stick with the passes that Ash has shown he can make, I think we can do well enough to win.