re: Reason for loss in Oxford

"Am I the only one who thinks the defense played well enough for us to win?"

In any close game, you can make this sort of argument because it is easy to point to a play or two that would have changed things. For example, "the offense had a bad first half but hung 24 on the board in the second. The O played 'well enough to win' if the D could have ever gotten off the field on 3rd down in the second half instead of giving up 6 of 8." The more meaninful question is simply whether the D played well. Unfortunately, the answer is "no, the D surrended 525 yards to Ole Miss in a disastrous outing."

"The gameplan was good enough to win?"

The same, relatively meaningless assertion could be made for the offensive game plan. In fact, it would be more supportable because the offensive failures were more directly tied to poor decisions/throws by Mett. The D was bad for most of the game and dreadful late, which suggests a bad plan/preparation, not just a couple of mistakes.

"And that Mettenberger's first half of not checking down cost us the game?"

Of course, this "cost us the game." But so did "not making a stop when it counted." Hell, the Ole Miss return man almost "cost Ole Miss the game."