That game was brutal. Our teams have always started the season slow and in the past have peaked toward the end of October. The first couple of games, we tend to run very vanilla and Purdy has not used his legs much at all the last couple years at the beginning of the season. We lost our two receivers with the most receptions last season and as a previous poster mentioned, Charlie Kolar was out for the first game recovering from hernia surgery.
So basically we had a new receiving core and it was later reported, that there were Covid issues leading up to the game so many players were not able to get in the reps before that first game. Louisiana came out with tight man to man coverage, our receivers were not able to get much separation and we didn't have any of our go-to targets from last year to fall back on. There were some early drops and it led to an ugly game. Louisiana gets credit too. They are a solid team and executed their game plan very well.
Our team has been a resilient bunch this year but we have been our worst enemy with special teams and inopportune penalties in the red zone. Our teams under campbell have been very good when it comes to penalties. But there have been several times when we get in the red zone and have first and goal, we end up getting false starts. Earlier in the season we had a lot of penalties for not having enough or too many guys on the line of scrimmage. Most of these have come when our offense is moving the ball and killed momentum. And special teams have given up huge plays (kick/punt returns, shanked punts, missed fg, botched punts) at times where we had just gotten the momentum. It has totally deflated us at times. Since that first game, we have fortunately done a much better job of recovering through adversity.
If you want to watch a game where ISU plays a complete game against a solid opponent, watch the West Virginia game. West Virginia statistically has a top 5 defense and at the time was around top 25 offense. We played a complete game and it was total annihilation where we did not let up and kept the momentum throughout. The OU/TX games were probably C+/B- games but we were able to find ways to keep the games close and have a chance to win at the end.
Hopefully we will have a well officiated game where there aren't any major injuries on both sides and may the best team win! Thanks for all of the ducks posts. It has been great reading your perspectives.