Jordan Byrd – KABEER THIRTY

Juwan looks for daylight on another zero-yard gain, probably. via GoAztecs.com

Due to extremely unfortunate employment-related circumstances, I was not at the Rose Bowl to witness the San Diego State football Aztecs’ historic first win over UCLA. Nor was I even able to watch the game, despite the vast reach of the mighty Pac-12 Networks. Therefore, ergo, I only caught updates of the proceedings via the interwebs and radio play-by-play.

As the game progressed in the 2nd half, Uncle Teddy, in his usual….distinctive manner, effusively complained that the Aztecs continually and predictably ran the ball on first down.

But did they really? Is Coach Horton’s spread offense still Ground Jeff? To drill into this crucial issue, I did what any extremely healthy-minded person would do: Collate all the Aztecs’ first-down play calls.

Continue reading “Do the Aztecs run on first down too much? Well,,,,,”

It’s getting to the point where we need to remind ourselves not to become numb to this.

Less than two years ago, in the wake of the Aztecs’ 2016 Mountain West Conference Championship Game victory, I spent a week leading up to the bowl game running a silly bracket-style tournament of the best wins of the Rocky Long era (hooray, content!). Have a look at the eight games I chose. The winner of the tournament as selected by you, the fans, was — I shit you not — a regular season win over Nevada.

In the 22 months since, we’ve been thoroughly spoiled with the following:

A bowl victory over Group of Five darling Houston in which D.J. Pumphrey broke the NCAA rushing record.
A win on the road at Arizona State in Rashaad Penny’s national coming out party.
The Stanford blackout.
ANOTHER win over the Sun Devils, who were ranked this time.

And now this.