A tape to learn from, a game to bounce back from
Sometimes, after a one-sided loss, coaches won’t even bother to show the tape of the game to their team.
But that wasn’t the case in Moscow this week, after the Idaho Vandals were shellacked 79-13 at Fresno State in their season opener.
“Because we’re a young team, we needed to watch it,” Idaho coach Paul Petrino said earlier this week, in his weekly news conference with area media. “Sunday, after a day like that, is a pretty miserable day. As a coach you watch it yourselves, then you watch it with your assistants, then you watch it with the players. But we had to see it, we had to learn from it.”
Idaho (0-1) will see what it learned from it on Saturday, when NCAA Division II Western New Mexico (0-1) visits the Kibbie Dome.
Petrino said the Vandals played well against Fresno State in the second and third quarters, amassing around 300 yards of offense.
But Vandal quarterbacks also threw five interceptions — one returned for a touchdown. And Idaho had two field goals blocked and returned for scores.
“You’ve got to eliminate mistakes, got to eliminate turnovers — that’s the bottom line,” Petrino said. “You can’t have two good drives and end up getting field goals blocked. We’ve got to come back to work, bust our tails, work hard as we can get everything corrected, and improve.”
Idaho also missed a PAT after its first touchdown. That was due to a bad snap.
On the first blocked field goal, one of the wings missed an assignment, and on the second block, “we got overpowered,” Petrino said.
He said the Vandals, in addition to making some changes in personnel on those units, have been working “live” on PATs and field goals this week. They’ve always practiced them, he said, though not at full speed for fear of injury.
Idaho’s quarterbacks, junior Mason Petrino and sophomore Colton Richardson, were a combined 14 of 33 for 205 yards with the five interceptions. Richardson was 3 of 11 for 106 yards and three interceptions, Petrino 11 of 22 for 99 yards and two picks.
“Obvously there were some things the quartebacks didn’t do well, but one thing they did do well is they didn’t take sacks,” Paul Petrino said. “Some quarterbacks will take sacks because they don’t want their stats to look bad, over an incompletion. They did a good job throwing the ball away. Sometimes we need to give them a little more time to throw it.”
Vandal QBs were sacked just once by Fresno State.
Junior college transfer Jeff Cotton’s first Division I reception was a 73-yard touchdown pass from Richardson in the first quarter. He finished with four catches for 96 yards.
“I wasn’t expecting my first catch to be for a touchdown, but I’ll take it,” Cotton said.
He said from his standpoint, the Vandals’ shuffling of the two quarterbacks “hasn’t been a big issue” in his eyes.
Former Idaho football coach Dennis Erickson will be one of seven people inducted into the 2018 class of the Vandal Athletics Hall of Fame on Saturday.
On Tuesday, Petrino said he had just spoken with Erickson’s son, Bryce, who was an assistant at Idaho under Petrino, before serving as head coach at Lake City in 2016 and ’17.
“I always thought the world of coach Erickson — it’ll be great to have him around,” Petrino said. “He’s going to be in every hall of fame in the United States, before it’s all said and done.”