The first play of the game was a 67 yard touchdown pass from Quinton Flowers to Rodney Adams. Cortez Broughton blocked the extra point, things never got better for the Cincinnati Bearcats tonight. 6-0 was the closest the margin Cincinnati could manage. Hayden Moore, in because Gunner Kiel lost his helmet, was sacked and fumbled at the UC 10. As quickly as the game started, it was 13-0. Thus began one of the worst quarters in Cincinnati history.
The Bearcats gave up 27 points in the first quarter. That’s the most they’ve given up in a quarter since 2002. I say 2002 because that’s as far back as the ESPN box scores go. It’s hard to pin the blame on any one thing. The team was taken aback when USF jumped out all over them, never recovering from the two touchdown hole. The offense was a mess all night. The defense was, well, the defense tried very hard.
A hot knife through butter is about the best way to describe the USF offense. The Bulls hit on their first 9 third down conversions. The Bulls ran for over 200 yards in the first half. The Bulls didn’t punt until the third quarter. Two of the three USF turnovers were because Quinton Flowers lost his mind and tried throwing deep balls down the middle. In his defense, they worked all night.
Speaking of Flowers, he threw 4 touchdown passes. His previous career high was two. Three of the four TD passes were to receivers that were uncovered. They were 3 of the easiest touchdowns he’s probably ever thrown in his entire quarterbacking life.
Speaking of easy, 11 carries for 106 yards and 2 touchdowns for Marlon Mack. The star running back was held to 106 yards by the USF coaches, not the Cincinnati defense. USF also got great games on their own by Darius Tice, 15 for 94, and D’Ernest Johnson, 11-71. That’s also not accounting for 48 yards by Flowers. Cincinnati’s horrible run defense was blown through yet again.
It doesn’t matter if it’s purely talent or purely scheme, the defense has been awful in every single road game this season. UC has given up an average of 44.4 points a game on the road. Miami and Houston each scored 33, BYU 38, Memphis 53 and now 65 to South Florida. The last four road games have all been lost, two of them in blowout fashion. None of them as humiliating as tonight.
There are a lot of people clamoring for Tommy Tuberville to be fired. There are a lot of people unhappy with the direction of the program in year three. There are a lot of people who look around the league, see all the great young coaches and wonder how Cincinnati has been passed by. Even objectively, if one were to rank the AAC coaches, where would he rank? Fifth? Fuente and Rhule have experience and have led their teams to multiple successful records. Tom Herman’s team is undefeated. Ken Niumatalolo has Navy doing what no one else does.
Everyone has prime years, one wonders out loud if Tuberville’s are behind him. One could, and some have, said this back when he was hired. Quick, what’s your favorite sustained period of success Tuberville had at Texas Tech? Since he resigned at Auburn, Tubs’ teams are 25-24 in conference play. His teams haven’t won 10 games in a season since 2006. In fact, the only other 10 win team he had was the 2004 undefeated squad. The period of success he had from 2004-’06 was great. It can’t be ignored. It also was, ya know, a decade ago. Hell, a large part of why Tubs ended up leaving Auburn was because the SEC had passed them by.
I’m not saying that Tuberville is a terrible coach and that he should quit tomorrow. What I’m saying is that Tommy Tuberville isn’t the man who is going to take the program to special places. Yes, they can win the league. Yes, they can win some impressive games. I just don’t have faith that it’s going to happen consistently. I hope that I’m proved wrong. I hope that these words are shoved down my throat when Cincinnati runs the table next season. How many times have we heard Tubs say that Cincinnati was outcoached after losses? The answer is too many. At some point, the worm has to turn and the question becomes ‘why are you getting outcoached so often?’ That’s something that the coaching staff has to answer.
There aren’t really any answers after a game like this, only questions. Why didn’t the players respond after falling down 13-0? If the players don’t respond, doesn’t that say as much about the coaches as it does the players? Is there any reason Cincinnati should be getting demolished, period? There’s no reason Cincinnati should be giving up 65 points to anyone. USF came into the game averaging 29 points a game. They scored 65. They could have scored more.
That’s just on the defensive side of the ball. It’s November 21, who is the quarterback of this team? We really haven’t had an answer for that since Gunner Kiel went down against Memphis. Not knowing who the quarterback is, not knowing who the man is raises questions both with the fan base and the team. There are fans that want Kiel to start, there are fans that want Moore to start. You know that there are players that prefer Moore starting and some that prefer Kiel starting. Tuberville being pretty non-committal about this all season long has raised questions as we close the season. You know one of the questions is going to be who starts against East Carolina. During the run up to the bowl game, there are going to be stories written about who’s taking most of the first team snaps.
You can see why Tuberville would play both sides. He doesn’t want to turn the keys over to Hayden Moore, then have Gunner Kiel possibly graduate early and leave the program. He doesn’t want to commit to Kiel, then see Hayden Moore go somewhere he would start. Obviously it wouldn’t be as easy for Moore to transfer out, but after the year he’s had, he would have options.
Of course, not picking a quarterback has created a lot of controversy this season and it will for next season. No matter who starts the last two games, we are going to have a battle on our hands this summer. It doesn’t seem like Hayden Moore is fully ready to be your starting quarterback, my god the turnovers, but it kind of seems like UC wants to go in that direction. If they want to ride with Kiel, I don’t think you can yo-yo his playing time like they did tonight. Yes, he threw two picks. USF didn’t score after his second pick. The score was already 27-0. The switch makes it seem like Moore is starting next week.
In a way, it doesn’t matter who starts because neither quarterback has protected the ball well. Cincinnati turned the ball over 6 times. Moore and Kiel each threw two INTs, Moore fumbled twice. This team has been plagued by turnovers the entire season. This one was no different.
The only bright side coming out of this was that Chris Moore set the all time touchdown record. Moore had 131 receiving yards. Ti’on Green scored a pair of touchdowns. Andrew Gantz hit a pair of field goals. In a game with modest offensive production, those three really shined.
That’s not to say no one on defense shined, Mark Wilson recovered a fumble, Linden Stephens and Zach Edwards had picks, Carter Jacobs made a lot of tackles, but overall there were more lowlights than highlights.
At no point did we think that we would be looking at a 6-5 record. There seem to be new lows every single time you think the season couldn’t get any more disappointing. This team didn’t just not handle expectations well, they collapsed under the weight of any kind of expectations. Given a chance to win the division, they were flat out dominated by a team that clearly wanted it more.
Something is happening when the Bearcats go on the road where things just don’t go well. I have no idea how to fix this. I have no idea what the root of the issues are. From the looks of things, no one on the Cincinnati sideline does either.
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