Before this game started, I was telling people I knew that we were going to lose. My father, whose opinions regarding college football I always respect and take heed of, was warning those around him that "It's going to be a lot worse than you think." I don't know what kind of responses he got, but what I heard varied from contemplative silence to "Well, I don't know..." to "But we're favored by 14!"
If there's one thing I've learned after researching betting lines and college football, it's that no one predicts better than 60% consistently. There were games this year that the bookies had right on, and there were some betting lines I saw that made me stop and say, "What? Are you kidding?" (e.g., the Oklahoma State vs. Texas Tech game on Oct. 16 where the line was Tech -3.5; if those who make the lines had actually watched each of these teams play, they would have clearly known that OK State wasn't going to lose). It would seem that too many betting lines are created by people who only look at overall statistics and not those who actually watch the games. So, when I heard that Nebraska was favored by 14, I knew once again that no one with any clout was paying attention.
How did I know we were going to lose? Four pretty obvious reasons:
1) Washington was coming off a three-win streak at the end of their season
2) They wanted Nebraska blood spilled for the embarassing loss we gave them in week 3 on national television and were hungry for revenge
3) They had plenty of time to prepare for our now totally predictable offense and research the weaknesses in our defense
4) With Shawn Watson as our offensive coordinator, we have nowhere to go but down
Remember the way Texas beat us on Oct. 16? Washington did the exact same thing, but they did it better. Once again, we waited until we were desperate to go to our extremely talented tight ends/slot receivers. Once again, Taylor Martinez displayed his inexplicable ignorance with his dangerous short forward passes to avoid yardage losses (on the second one, he would have actually gained two yards as he ran out of bounds had he held on to the ball). Once again, instead of throwing an opponent a curve ball by starting a quarterback other than Taylor Martinez, we put all our chips on T-Mart and kept on playing that hand until he couldn't run any more.
We have seen that once given a little time to settle into a game, Cody Green can perform well enough to keep opposing defenses off-balance even with his sporadic efficiency. I actually feel sorry for him. He works hard and has a good attitude, and there he has stood, ready and able on the sideline, having to play a strict second fiddle to T-Mart because of T-Mart's ego and the coaching staff's lack of cojones. We could have been using them in a tandem attack that would have turned our season into something to truly remember instead of another black mark on our scarlet hearts that we will pray to forget for years to come. Congratulations to Steve Sarkisian and his staff, Jake Locker, and the Huskies.
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