FB: American Rivers Conference

[Fannosaurus Rex]

And when I say, "Another served," I don't mean another, I mean Another. This feels like an old Abbott and Costello bit.

[DriftlessDuhawk]

The Duhawks, led by third-string QB Jacob Richtman, scored 4 fourth quarter TDs to provide a lot of excitement in Dubuque on Saturday. Unfortunately, a blocked PAT following the last score with 1:11 left in the game sent all of the Loras fans home with an unfortunate taste in their mouths...

I had three large takeaways from the game. The first being that Loras has not had a designated Special Teams Coordinator in at least 7 years. The staff breaks up who coaches which unit, and there is no unifying voice behind special teams. This has been apparent for years by subpar special teams play, but certainly showed in the biggest moments over the weekend with two PATs blocked. The next one is that the Loras offense always seems to start as a cookie-cutter offense that just struggles to move the ball, and then as the year evolves, it turns into a multidimensional offense that plays to its players' strengths. While it is always pleasing to see a team get better during the course of the year, the fact that it has consistently taken 6-7 weeks for the offense to best utilize its players strengths is concerning.

And the last point is one of math and just changing with the times. It has pretty much become common practice that if you are down 14 points late in a football game that upon scoring a TD you should go for two. If you get the two point conversion you are now down 6 points and can win the game with a TD and a PAT. If you do not get it then you will have to score another TD and get the two point conversion the second time. Because the data has shown over time that statistically two point conversion plays are a 50/50 chance, you are statistically probably to get at least one of these chances. If you get the first one you now have set yourself up to win, if you do not get the first one then you are "due" to get the second one. Does it work every time? No. But more often than not the teams you see do it benefit from it. Loras not taking advantage of this cost them the game, and it was something that was completely avoidable.