T5B5 Still Hungover

I wish real life was like a video game; I would love to have been able to hit the reset button at halftime this weekend. Congratulations to Tech for facilitating the ultimate worst case scenario for this season's Texas team, and capitalizing on the vast majority of mistakes made. Even though the game came down to one play, it is unreasonable to expect to win when you get dominated at the line of scrimmage and the other team takes better care of the ball. I doubt Tech would enjoy playing us best out of three for all the marbles, but we sure as hell wouldn't like to play OU or OSU best out of three either.

After playing at an extremely high level for an incredible number of weeks, the "but what ifs..." finally caught up to us. What if Roy Miller goes out for any length of time during a game? What if Brian Orakpo gets hurt? What if Quan Cosby gets hurt? What if the o-line has a 2007 flashback? What if Colt plays like a merely good quarterback, rather than the best quarterback? What if our young secondary gets picked on? We lose by six points in one of the most hostile environments in college football despite uninspired play calling against a team that just couldn't miss.

Top Five:
1. Malcolm Williams: Welcome. We are going to be scary good next year, and you are going to help us. Way to be a man when a major part of the offense in what may be the biggest game of the year was unexpectedly put on your shoulders.
2. Fozzy Whittaker: Even though this game may have temporarily derailed the 2008 season, it really applied the sort of pressure that allowed us to see a glimpse of the future. Fozzy reminds me of Jamaal Charles, but much more of a football player and much less of a pure track star.
3. Tech's Defensive Line: There is no team I hate losing to more than Texas Tech. None, not even any of our actual rivals. Fortunately for my social well being at the office, everyone else at work who doesn't share my passion for burnt orange decided today that they dislike Texas Tech enough as well to not pay me back for the weekly jibing they suffered from me. That being said, their defensive ends made our offensive tackles look like high schoolers. It was like watching the 2007 Longhorns play against anyone not named Iowa State.
4. Curtis Brown: Although he may want to forget about the last play of the game against the Raiders, his performance throughout the rest of the game was the best it possibly could have been against Michael Crabtree. Thank the football gods that we won't have to play against that freak show again.
5. Roy Miller: It's hard not to give Miller-time some love, because even though our defensive line didn't win the war, he won just about every battle. Even losing him for a bit hurt us, losing him at the end of the season is really going to be unpleasant.

Disclaimer: Ordinarily I would use the bottom five to make fun of other teams or our coaches, but once every blue moon I have to rant about the players to keep my negative side from forcefully taking over my thoughts.

Bottom Five:
1. Deon Beasley: I hate to call you out, but watching you get picked on for a full half was excruciating. You're leadership is irreplaceable in the secondary, but Leach correctly opted to even run the ball at you. Fortunately, we all know you are going to come back and finish the season out strongly.
2. The Offensive Line: I had come to expect an unrealistically high level of play out of this group, but it wasn't even that they didn't live up to that, it was that they didn't even come close. Before the season began I noted that this o-line was going to be the strong point of our offense, but at this point they (including the tight ends) just haven't shown up, and they certainly didn't on Saturday night. I can't wait to see how much better they look against Baylor.
3. Zone Coverage: I appreciate Muschamp's willingness to adventure away from previous tendencies (paging Greg Davis), but putting this young secondary in zone and hoping that Graham Harrell has a brain fart is like cheating. But for them.
4. Offensive Play Calling: About as subtle as a clown fight.
5. Colt MyBoy in the first half: I literally feel uncomfortable typing this, but I can honestly say that I believe he played poorly in the first half. True, he didn't get any help from his receivers, young and old, nor did his offensive line even pretend to push Tech around, but some of his throws and decisions just weren't on. I consider Colt off if he throws at the wrong shoulder, but missing receivers by 5 yards is tough to blow off. Thankfully his second half compared to his first half in the same way that Arnold Schwarzenegger's awesome action scenes in Conan the Barbarian compared to his awkward "dialogue" in the same movie. Look for him to set a school record of some sort against Baylor.