At the risk of being called a whiner, while I enjoyed getting a resounding W over Duke, there was enough sloppiness in this game to cause some concern. Hopefully most of it's attributable to coming off the long break, but we made some pretty major blunders that we wouldn't be able to overcome against a competent opponent. It was one of the sloppiest games I can remember from both teams.
I was surprised to see us lean so heavily on the run. Clearly RB is a position of strength for us, and Duke's run D isn't great, but that hasn't stopped us from trying to force a passing game for the last season and a half. We had some very nice runs, but the OL still seemed like a mixed bag to me. We also had some runs get stuffed, and several times where Sims bailed us out with his feet after the blocking failed around him. We still had a couple of head-scratching playcalls, like the shift-into-wildcat that never had a chance.
The whole thing with the stadium lights was annoying. I guess they're computer controlled, and it seemed like we had to reboot the computer to get them back on (it wasn't just a "turn them off and back on again" fix). The number of AV snafus we encounter every season is embarrassing considering our "brand" as a high-tech school.
I'm not sure whose idea it was to have a couple of kids (Collins' kids, maybe?) lead a YELLOW JACKETS chant on the jumbotron, but that was one of the worst things I've ever seen in BDS (up there with playing "A Thousand Miles" during the UVA game). At least put a GT shirt on the boy, and not some black and gold "Knights" shirt. C'mon, man.
I really don't like our PA announcer. In particular, somebody needs to talk to him about his terrible cadence on "And that's ANOTHER first and ten" or whatever. It's not a great call. He had another mic gaffe late in the game, too, where he called the down and distance wrong and then said something like "oh..." or "oops..." when he realized the mistake.
I don't know if the officiating was actually BAD, but it was certainly frustrating. Confusion among the refs, some odd calls, and some stuff that wasn't communicated very clearly to the crowd, like whatever happened with the running into the kicker penalty on one of our punts.
The crowd was small but enthusiastic, at least in upper east. The club seats looked badly vacant early on (I watched part of the replay on ESPN). But you can really hear the angry loudmouths in the smaller crowd - there are a couple of dudes that sit near me that just bitch about everything non-stop. Every call is not bogus, and every play is not something to be livid about.
JRjr
