It?s not how you start but how you finish!

[basedog]

Winning is all that matters right now. Loved how we got better as the game got going especially the second half.

Got to eliminate the penalties, but not playing our best and winning by 28 points plus being 4-0. I ain?t complaining. We are work in progress.

[DownwardDawg]

Agree. Worst game we've played this year and we covered.

[Mjoelner34]

Last year we lose this game 38-10.

[R2Dawg]

Really good 2nd half, nice response. We have flaws but everyone does. We're 4-0 so we doing something right.

[Todd4State]

Here's my take on it.

Northern Illinois had a gameplan to take the ball on the kickoff, establish the run, and try to keep our offense from having the ball. Then on top of it we weren't hitting our shot plays. Their coach at the end of the first quarter was very giddy- telling the reporter "Now let's see how they do in a 3 quarter game" (paraphrased) because everything was going to plan for them even though they were still down 7-3 at that point.

Well, we won the last 3 quarters 31-7. That really says a lot about the gap between us and them IMO.

Honestly, I think we if we had the ball first and got into a rhythm to start the game I think the score would have been a little more lopsided. That and hitting our shot plays a little bit more. To me, the passing was one of the most disappointing thing about today. But it was definitely better the second half. We need to do a better job of acquiring WR's in the offseason. The other thing that was really disappointing was our special teams in the first half. They were way worse than the offense. We had a horrible punt that led to their only TD, we tried to return a punt that we fielded inside the ten and then got a penalty, kicked a ball out of bounds on a kickoff, and even when we blocked their punt we committed a personal foul basically negated the benefit of blocking their punt.

But hit another shot or two, clean up special teams, and I think we get to 56 on this team with only 3 points allowed. As it is, we have some things to emphasize this week before we play Tennessee.