Charley Molnar bemoans UB's defensive chatter for his offenses woes

Part of being a Quarterback is dealing with noise while you manage the game. Sometimes that noise comes in the form of a hostile road crowd, that was not the case this past weekend when Buffalo hosted the UMass Minutemen.

Buffalo sold more than 18,000 tickets for their fourth home game of the year but bad weather severely cut down the actual turnout. The Students did their best, and it came across on TV, but the home filed crowd noise was not a factor.

UB's defensive chatter, on the other hand, crippled AJ Doyle's ability to run his offense early on in the game.

"There was a tremendous amount of yelling by the defensive players in the front seven to the point where our center couldn’t hear the quarterback, Couldn’t snap the ball.  The clock is burning down, so what do you want? You’ve got to take a time out or you’re going to get a penalty. That’s just the way it is." -- UMass coach Charley Molnar

My football playing days ended with in the Tyro league as a tight end for the "South Buffalo Tigers". If my head coach "Boots" O'Shea had a quarterback and center come off the field complain that the defensive chatter was too much to handle he would have had them spend the rest of the game running laps.

It's a part of football and you need to deal with it in a better manner than calling timeouts and complaining after the game.  If UMass has not seen it yet this season they can bet that anyone playing them who reads masslive.com will tell their defensive front seven to make a lot of noise. Apparently noise lets you live rent free in the heads of the Minutemen.

"I honestly don’t know what they were yelling. Some of the times, they were just yelling things that they thought might be happening that we were running. Other times, they were making their own calls. They were loud enough that they kind of got into some of our guys’ heads." -- AJ Doyle

Buffalo so got under the skin of UMass that early on that Minutemen's most potent offensive weapon, Rob Blanchflower, was ejected for taking a swipe at UB Lineman Jake Stockman.

Stockman had locked his legs around Blanchflower and was a bit slow in letting up after the whistle. The NFL prospect tight end took a quick swipe at Sotckman and that's what the refs saw.

Bush league on Stockman's park? Maybe it was, but its always the guy taking a swipe that gets called.

For UMass fans the score is not the worst thing to come out of yesterday's game. The poor game prep done by their coaching staff should seem much more menacing.