Eric Soza lost a lot of fans tonight. He wasn’t the problem. He was a problem, however. The offensive line did a decent enough job keeping the BearKats from killing him. The bottom line is that Sam Houston lined up to stop the run. They manned up and pressed the wideouts and dared Eric Soza to exploit that and he couldn’t.
Some would say that the onus is on Kam and company to get open and make the catches. A fair assessment as that may be, Soza failed to put his corps in position to make a play. At least three times the Runners were bailed out by a pass interference call. Most often the series involved Soza not seeing wide open guys down field and throwing a poor pass to his intended target.
He is not a complete waste. I actually think he is a solid dude and has mucho potential. In trying to do so much and always make an awesome play, he is not making a solid play.
With that said, lets give a round of applause to the defense. The entire first half was spent defending the red zone or damn near it. Sam Houston’s vaunted rushing attack managed but 8 points and a lot of one and two yards gains. Kurfehs bottled up Flanders and his backups on the options and tosses. It was a thing of beauty.
Later, when Flanders broke free for a long reception on a shovel pass and later the twirling reverse-field score, it was more a symptom of tired legs than poor defense. It was always going to be a tall order to defend a side that wanted to run and stayed committed for the duration.
We availed ourselves well. If the Soza and the offense could have provided a foray or two into enemy territory in the first half this game might have a different result.
It isn’t as simple as that, though. For a 20th ranked FCS team at home, with a nasty run game to only put up 20-something points and allow one score? Well, that has happened twice already. Western Illinois lost 20-7 at Bowers. We lost 22-7 tonight. What does this mean? I posit that it means that we are young and talented and in two years probably would do the damage that I not-so-humbly predicted on the podcast.
It is yet another reminder of the state of the program. We are young and inexperienced. We have talented guys that are trying to figure things out still. Our quarterback is winning the position battle because ostensibly he has a better grasp of the offense than the other guys. After a year or two we should A) Have more competition at the QB spot or B) Have a Soza with a less-happy feet making confident, accurate throws.
Good news is that we are hanging with teams that are considered good. We have three of the last five games at home, where our offense plays much much better. As the week moves on and time begins its healing of wounds we’ll start looking at Soza’s performance in context: Sam Houston’s defense played pretty damn tough. Maybe tougher than Southern Utah’s. That is even while looking forward to SFA in Reliant.
