I don’t think anyone who watched yesterday’s game either in-person at the Rose Bowl or on TV somewhere will disagree that the game began as kind of a sloppy mess. Unfortunately, that’s just the way a football game goes sometimes.
Frequently, those types of mistakes are caused by weather or the opposing team making plays. Your guys can’t control the weather, for sure, and to a lesser extent, you can’t control what the opponent does. To be sure, you can look to minimize your own mistakes by holding onto the ball better and not making mental errors which prove costly.
Usually, the team which makes the fewest mistakes, or which causes their opponent to make more mistakes, will win a game.
Former NFL head coach Mike Shanahan used to say that he wouldn’t accept something in a win which he wouldn’t accept in a loss. Over the years, both here and on the old site, we’d reference that quote when talking about an ugly win.
Well, it’s refreshing to hear a Bruin coach talking the same way finally, even if his actual language is a little different.
Coach Chesney opened his postgame press conference admitting this:
Obviously, anytime you have a a win, it’s a they’re not easy to come by. So, to be able to end up with a win is a big deal. Seven and oh…obviously, a big deal. Um but, you know…and that first half was just not our type of football.
Not really how we want to play the game. The two fumbles for them to have a hundred and some yards of returns on those two. But what a great job by the defense to step up and get a stop on one.
And then Donnie with the interception and flip the field right back again. That was a big time deal. That’s 14 points.
Let’s talk about Ty a little bit in that situation, too, because he’s the one that actually runs down the field and then holds the kid up and then the pursuit of B. Rowe and Aiden Mizell never ever quitting [and] playing to the whistle. That matters more than anything almost that we did today. It was sloppy, but in the end got a win and proud of our guys.
A bit later, he touched on it again:
Yeah, it’s really important. I mean, it’s look, it’s two fumbles, two drops, two holding penalties, right?
That’s ultimately what happened out there. Two fumbles, two drops, two holding penalties. You can’t do it.
You just can’t do it if you want to win really close games. Again, we we’re taking three, four touchdowns off the board by doing that. So, the holds, we’ll go back and look and just see. I didn’t think one was. I thought that we helped guide the guy up field. The second one definitely was or the first one was the second one I don’t think was and it was a big run by Wayne at that point in time.
The two drops can’t happen and then you know ultimately the two fumbles…just a shame.
Now, they’re good at this. This is what they do. They punch the ball out. They just haven’t recovered it. Now, they were not only recovering it but they were scooping and scoring it for the tune of 120 some yards. So, that’s a problem and we will get better.
And he still wasn’t done. He mentioned it one more time during the interview. Coach Chesney offered a final glimpse into his thought process, saying:
So, the thing for me is like when you see it hit a couple different people, you think, “Hey, I could fix this one guy and fix his situation,” and then it happens to somebody else and then you see it like almost happening with the ball coming out too.
So, we’ve been great with it all year and we work on it and there’s ball security things. There’s all the times we go against the defense. We are making sure iron on iron and punching the ball out and doing everything else. We just have got to put a little bit more of an emphasis on it.
And, I think that you need a game like this once in a while to allow you to say, “Okay, damn. This is week seven. Maybe over the past week, I kind of got a little lax on it. I’m never going to let this happen again.” That’s what you ultimately need.
It seems pretty clear that he means what he said and look forward to seeing the improvements which will come as a result.
And, I fully expect the Bruins to demonstrate those improvements next week against Nevada.
Go Bruins!!!
Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.
We’re fortunate to have such an awesome coach in Chesney. He’s all class, all accountability, and all in!