YES--Coach Boom was HOT, and with good reason, no doubt about it. I love the way he expresses EVERYONE'S outrage (well, everyGATOR'S at least) out there. That one was a gutless homer's no-call on the part of the backjudge, just as Coach "told" the umpire.
However, in the larger context of the game, it turned out to be just "more of the same" from our so-called "special teams". While he WAS interfered with THERE, Rainey STILL should have looked it in and made a better play on the ball. He'd muffed the first punt earlier and we were lucky not to lose that one; while he had "help" (otherwise known as "an excuse") on that no-call play, he proceeded to drop the NEXT one as well. When we finally changed punt-returners, Clark (who has been practicing as the back-up since Week One) muffed THAT one! Unbelievable. (I have Rainey marked down in my notes as having muffed FOUR of the 5 total punts we received, Clark the 5th and last...is this correct???)
Remember the snap problems last year (rhetorical question--like any of us CAN forget)? Even when we tried other guys in there (ostensibly because Pouncey was "dinged up"--just as Rainey was "lined up to rush the punter" on the last one Saturday), we got similar results. This is sort of like that: a sign of deeper problems, there and elsewhere. Even Christy, our future All-American punter caught "the bug", missing his own foot when dropping the ball to punt (no wind, no rush, gravity unchanging--he's done it a million times, but in THIS game it's suddenly a challenge?). What is going ON?
This is exactly what begins to happen when a team has a problem at its core, a "cancer in the clubhouse", "locker room poison"--it spreads outward, slowly at first, then gathers speed and begins to get into EVERYTHING, from the locker room to the practice field to ON-field in the game, in that order...and that's where we're at now.
It could get worse, if our coaches were not to deal with it, immediately and head-on. I trust and am counting on our Head Coach to move strongly and quickly now. He's got the 'bye-week, he and Weis will shake things up (behind the scenes, of course), make as many drastic changes as they dare and still leave our team competitive: on the one hand, they'll want to move aside as many of the "5-star Clowns" (=my shorthand for all the swelled-headed "drama queens" and talented-LOSERS Meyer & Co. saddled this team with the last couple of years) as they can and still get the job done--they need to change the culture of this team, but they ALSO need to stop the slide: you don't want LOSING to get to be a habit, something the team gets "used to" in ANY WAY!
