I said it once and I'm going to say it again.....

[Rawkhawk73]

this team was lost at the start of the 2nd half against Mich St.

At the time, this was a team that had lost 2 close games to good opponents.....games that could have gone either way. Sparty comes to town leading the Big 10 and we take it to them in the 1st half. We have a chance to bury this team in the 2nd half.....I mean absolutely bury them....something ala Wisky vs. Indiana bury them.

But what does the coaching staff do? Instead of continuing to push the foot to the throat and instill some more passion and attack mentality into the team, we ease up and coast to a win by doing nothing but simply run the clock out.

Take a look at our offense after that game. We go from scoring 30 in a half against the co-Big 10 champs to scoring a total of 83 points in the next 17 quarters to close out the season.

In essence, this coaching staff neutered the team the 2nd half of MSU.

 

[VenturaAce]

this team was lost at the start of the 2nd half against Mich St.

At the time, this was a team that had lost 2 close games to good opponents.....games that could have gone either way. Sparty comes to town leading the Big 10 and we take it to them in the 1st half. We have a chance to bury this team in the 2nd half.....I mean absolutely bury them....something ala Wisky vs. Indiana bury them.

But what does the coaching staff do? Instead of continuing to push the foot to the throat and instill some more passion and attack mentality into the team, we ease up and coast to a win by doing nothing but simply run the clock out.

Take a look at our offense after that game. We go from scoring 30 in a half against the co-Big 10 champs to scoring a total of 83 points in the next 17 quarters to close out the season.

In essence, this coaching staff neutered the team the 2nd half of MSU.

That was also when Robinson was unnecessarily still in the game in the 4th quarter and got his 1st concussion. I won't criticize them for pulling off the pedal late on MSU, actually wish they would have pulled Robinson sooner, just wish we would have played prevent D on the Wisky fake punt!

That fake punt was the play I'll remember the most of this year, probably not the turning point as we came back and played very well yet against MSU the next week. 4th and 10 against OSU, 14 yard gain by Pryor is probably the season's turning point in my mind. Nothing good happened from that point forward.

 

[24HawkTalk]

OP, I agree and I posted almost the same thing in a thread about an hour ago:

"This team changed when the coaching staff put the team in Neutral the second half of the MSU game, unlike Wisky. The air was let out of the offense and we have not scored more than 18 since (today we had a special team TD). The players attitude changed. These are 18-22 year-olds, not pros-you have to motivate!
Ferenz is a matter of fact, execute your assignment, no emotional guy. He failed to recognize this since MSU second half shut down! "

 

[PatrickAdamovicz]

I definitely think there is something to what RockHawk is saying. Your team needs to be coached into the aggressive mentality. This passive aggressive stuff is old. Bielema has it right. Keep attacking.

 

[ICHawk24]

Yet, MSU fans think Iowa tried to run up the score on them.