Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Fresno State - Boise State: What to Look For

I tried to download a picture of LSU's running back scoring a TD against the Dogs because that is going to be something we should all expect tonight with respect to Boise State. Ian Johnson is going to run and he is going to run often. However, I feel like the Bulldogs interior defense on the line will do a good job to hold Johnson down. Where the problem's begin are when Johnson runs to the outside, coincidentally the same problem the Dogs have had over the past two years. There was a reason USC chose to run Reggie Bush against the Dogs instead of Lendale White. Although White was as dominant a runner as the college game had last year, the Trojans realized the Dogs stop the run well inside of the tackles and are horrible outside of the tackles. This primarily comes down to team spead, something the Dogs have been severly lacking this season. I would not be surprised to see Boise State line up Johnson and try to get him to the corners early and often. With that being said Johnson will go for near 150 yards in this game and will be the workhouse for the Broncos.

Fresno State is the team that tries to force the defense to respect their run game. Tonight that approach will not do the job. Boise State only yields 2.8 yards per carry on the season and a depleted offensive line for Fresno State is not going to open the holes that Wright needs to get large amounts of yards. I know this sounds unrealistic but I would expect Norton to throw the ball over 30 times tonight. The Dogs have had ten days to figure out where Boise State's weaknesses are and we all know that the Broncos secondary is weak at times. If the Dogs can go vertical over the middle and give Norton time to throw the ball they are going to find the yards are easy to come by against Boise State. Hawaii, New Mexico State, and Idaho all went with this philosophy and the lowest amount of passing yards of the three went to Idaho as they threw for over 320 yards. I would not expect Wright to carry the ball more twenty times the entire game. I really feel like the Dogs believe they can stop the Broncos and win this game. I also feel that they realize this game will not be won on the ground. The last two years of the Dogs losing streak to Boise they tried to run too often and it ended up biting them in the ass. The Broncos can score quite fast so the Dogs will have to score in the thirties to have a realistic chance tonight.

Most have picked Boise State to run away with the game tonight. I have gone on record as saying I feel like the Dogs are going to challenge in this one tonight and come away with an upset win. You can call it idiotic optimism, but I think the Dogs match up very well with the Broncos in every aspect of the game. The cold is not going to be too much of a problem because if it is pouring rain the Broncos will be affected just as much as the Bulldogs will. On defense expect both teams to show similar weaknesses in the passing game. Each team is bad when it comes to stopping the deep plays to the corner or over the middle. The difference may be that Boise takes plenty of shots down field while the Dogs offense seems to be mild and inconsistant when trying to throw deep. Tonight expect West, Moore, Williams, and Fernandez to be downfield often. In order to beat Boise you have to take shots down field. I wouldn't expect too many turnovers from the Broncos as the Dogs are terrible at forcing turnovers. I think the only way the Dogs get an interception on the year is if we play against UTEP and Jordan Palmer. We have a great week of football ahead and the Dogs are going to start it all off for us tonight.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lou Holtz just toasted our DBs. They absolutely SUCK. How PH ever put us in a place to rely on these guys says a lot about his lack of attention to detail, and poor recruiting. This is Boise St. lighting us up, not LSU. They certainly have no recruiting advantage over us, so what is the excuse this time???

Also, PH was chastised by Holtz and the other ESPN commentators for not making adjustments on defense. Just what many of us have been saying all along.

We look so bad, it is soooooo embarassing!

Steve Burnes

Anonymous said...

This is ridiculous. Pat Hill showed a lot of faith by yanking Norton for Brandstater after one half, that is just dumb. He never did that at the beginning of the season when Tom sucked. Give the guy a chance, he is not playing defense, but maybe he should be. I hope Norton transfers so he can get a fair chance to play somewhere else.

Anonymous said...

where are the youngsters? the whole season is lost. Hill, Brown are terrible. This is embarrassing.

Anonymous said...

Do you think Tom is going to be the starter?

Anonymous said...

Many of us are sick and tired of hearing about this so called NFL prospect #17 Marcus McCauley and how he tries to cover for everyone else. He cannot even handle his own job. He gets burned inevery game. He is soft and cannot cover. He is highly overrated. Enough is Enough.

Anonymous said...

During spring practice in May, I remember reading on this blog that the defense was way ahead of the offense. As we can all see now, our offense is horrible and our defense is even worse. It is embarrassing for the Fresno St. football program.