I agree. My main point was that a 9-2 Big Sky team with an FBS win and a win over Weber is getting a home game. 9-2 where we don’t beat anyone good by virtue of lucky scheduling is a different story.

This team would have to win out to get a 1st round bye like the 2018 team did. Of course we’d probably believe in them more then we do now if they did win out.

Yeah, we couldn’t sell out the first FCS playoff game we’ve ever had. I mean, I know it’s FCS but it’s not like we have a 25K seat stadium.

9-2 in the Big Sky with wins over Weber and Tulsa and we’d almost definitely host a game. It would probably be a first round game though so we’d be seeded 9-16 rather in the top 8 like in 2018.

That also assumes Weber continues to at least be decent also. Weber’s next two are home to Montana State and at EWU. If they get blasted in those games, all of a sudden our win over them doesn’t look that great anymore.

8-3 I bet we still get in assuming we don’t get annihilated in those two games though. Very unlikely it would be a home game though.

Our 2018 resume wasn’t that great either if you just look at who we played. Beat a 1-11 San Jose St team (Tulsa already has 2 wins) and San Diego, who made the playoffs but lost their first game. After that our best wins were Montana and Idaho State at 6-5. But San Diego was the only playoff team we beat. EWU annihilated us. Now, the difference is that team was putting up 40 every game besides Stanford and EWU, and besides Idaho State, was hammering teams. So it’s not a perfect comparison. But that team still got a 6 seed and proved in the playoffs that it deserved it.

It wasn’t a bad call in retrospect. It was just a bad call that ended up having the worst possible consequences come from it.

If they get the ball at the 20, maybe they don’t even try to move the ball since they’d need to get 50 yards just to get into field goal range as opposed to 25. I don’t think Idaho Stare was thinking TD there at the beginning of the drive. They probably would have been happy with 3 to make it a three score game.

It’s 4th and 17. If we had Patrick Mahomes as our QB the odds would be slim of picking that up. How many passes did we complete in the 1st half? Wasn’t many. If it’s 4th and short you could sell me on it. But the slim chance of actually picking that up isn’t nearly worth the risk of what happens from giving Idaho State good field position.

Plus we got the ball to start the second half. Go in down 17-3, regroup like you said, and hopefully put 7 on the board. We did drive down into the red zone too. I like our odds if it’s 17-10 (so punt deep and then don’t throw a pick on that first drive of the 2nd half) to actually pull the game out.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before…

Yes, Bob, we’ve heard it before. It was two months ago. From you.

Going to be some shakeup in the rankings this week with 2, 3, 7 and 9 all losing.

If only we were down just 7 instead of 14, a FG wouldn’t hurt so much.

Was thinking yesterday with BlueGoldAg’s post about how good we are about the turnovers. We’d picked off 11 and only thrown 2 or 3. So we were +8 or 9 in the turnover margin. Fumbles are completely lucky but interceptions are to some extent also. We weren’t going to continue being +2 on the turnovers week in and week out.

Going for it on 4th and 17 with 1:10 left when you get the ball to start the second half is incredibly dumb. Like “attempting a FG down 7 with 4 minutes left” dumb. Just punt it deep, go into half down 14 and regroup getting the ball first. If it’s 4th and short then I get it. But 4th and 17? Nope. That could cost us the game if we make a comeback in the second half.

Just checked the score. Looks like things aren’t going great.

It's tough to tell. You could also say our other three games that were close, one was against an FBS team and one was against a good Weber team (2-3 but lost to Utah and JMU). And we don't really know how good Idaho is either. They hammered a bad DII team and lost to two FBS teams. I think you're right that we're probably not the 7th/8th best team in the country but I don't think we're way overranked.

Yeah. Would probably have to be a day where a lot goes right, get a little lucky and those teams are off their games a bit.

I can't remember the specifics of how we actually looked in the game am going off the box score for the 2019 game. But we were only down 20-16 and forced NDST to punt three times and got the ball back with the chance to take the lead. We went 10 plays for 37 yards before punting and then went 11 plays for 61 yards including a 1st and goal from the NDST 4 but threw a pick on 3rd down. And that was the 16-0 year with Trey Lance at QB. And the previous year we were one stop against EWU from hosting a FCS Semifinal game.

We're close enough that pulling off an upset isn't a ridiculous proposition.

Crawford's QB rating is comical at 665. — Zander

I've always loved the college QB rating simply because it's uncapped. If you complete 1 pass for 99 yards and a TD, it's 1261.6. Conversely, if you complete 1 pass for -99 yards, your rating is -731.6. NFL is boring since it goes from 0 to 158.3.

Decided to go through some schedules. These purposes I'll include FBS games as games against ranked teams.

Closest I got were Youngstown State and Western Illinois.

Youngstown gets all 6 MVFC teams plus Michigan State, so 7 total. Western Illinois only got 4 of the ranked MVFC teams (missing NDSt and No. 15 Missouri St) but they played Montana and Eastern Washington in the FCS and Ball State (ranked behind 3 FCS teams in Sagarin)

In the Big Sky, Idaho State and Idaho both have 4 FCS and 2 FBS while Northern Colorado gets all 5 ranked Big Sky teams plus Colorado.

I only went through those three conferences since it was unlikely another team could rack up that many quality opponents while still playing a conference schedule.

Doesn't get much easier either. They still also play Stephen F Austin (#23), Delaware (#9), Sam Houston State (#1) and Missouri State (#15). Rankings from the Stats poll since it's on the NCAA website.

So they play the current #1, #2, #6, #7, #9, #15, #19, #23.

Even if you're one of the unranked teams in the Big Sky, CAA or Missouri Valley, and got super unlucky (since there isn't a true round robin in any of them), it wouldn't be this bad. Big Sky has 5 ranked and 4 in the top 10, CAA has 5 ranked and 2 in the top 10, MVC has 6 ranked and 3 in the top 10. So you'd have to get unlucky with the schedule and then add on one or two other top-10 teams in the non-conference to top it off.

Yeah, that one is odd. Eastern Washington was behind us and jumped from 10 to 5, which makes total sense. But dropping us behind Delaware, who beat a now 0-4 Albany at home doesn't make sense. Seems like we should have stayed in front of them.

There isn't really a good logical explanation for it.

The main reason is you still need a TD anyway so you're not changing anything on that front. Yes, you win the game then with a TD rather than going to OT but that's not that big of a difference. The other big reason is there's only 4 minutes left so there's no guarantee you get the ball back. You're also going to need to get a stop anyway, might as well take two shots at getting the TD rather than 1.

I know their defense played well for most of the game so maybe he did have faith in his D. Problem is, most of the game we had a different QB in. Tompkins comes in and we march it right down their throat two times in a row. You've got to factor that in. I know they got the stop but we did pick up one 1st down on that drive and had only a 3rd and 3. Pick that up and it's game over.

It's also a bad decision because it was 4th and 4 and they ended up gaining nearly 500 yards in the game. 500 yards and you don't have faith in your offense to pick up 4? You averaged 6.8 yards per play in the game! Just a bad look. Even if their offense was performing poorly on the day, that would be even more reason to go for it since you'd be no lock to get the ball back down to our 17 yard line again.

About the only situation you could justify kicking a FG down 7 with 4 minutes left is if it was 4th and very long (like 15+ yards). Even like 4th and 8 to 10, it's still a decent bet you pick it up.

4th and 7 up 3 with 3 minutes left from the Montana 23 and Eastern Washington goes for it. They picked it up too.

Not sure I would have made that call (I don't know anything about their kicker) but Petrino could learn something from that.

Haha.

FG
Get a stop
FG
Onside kick recovery
FG to win by 2!

It really is hard to express how bad of a decision that was there. But you know, Petrino's aren't exactly known for making good decisions, on or off the field!