The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Buffalo Bulls Football at Northern Illinois

Football is on an extreme downtrend and wins are looking impossible to come by. The Bulls have now lost and gave up 31 points or more in the past four games with their most recent showing. A 1-6 record isn't pretty by any means and UB Football is getting — and looking — worse with each passing week. Northern Illinois had this game all but wrapped up by the end of the first half with a commanding 30-7 lead.  Anyway, let's try and trudge through this weeks Good, Bad Ugly post:

The Good

Jordan Johnson-

Johnson had 97 yards and UB's only touchdown of the day. What's even better: he averaged 7.5 yards per carry. Keep reading to find out what I'm frustrated about with this effort.

Kyle DeWeen-

I don't think I need to explain why

The Bad

Abandoning the run game....again-

Take a look at what was said back in September of last year:

Leipold's offensive philosophy can be summed up in one word: balance.

I'm waiting for someone to tell me that's a joke. Jordan Johnson only ran the ball 13 times. How can you justify shorting an incredibly serviceable back like Johnson with the stats he put up and continues to put up? You simply can't. Once again under the Lance Leipold tenure, the Bulls have abandoned the run game. Tyree Jackson should not be throwing the ball 41 times a game and it's frustrating when he has a running back that will never reach their true potential right behind him in the backfield (or more likely on the side because we'd rather just do the whole draw play up the middle thing four times in a row).

Tyree Jackson-

Well, he was forced to throw it a ton and did a mediocre job at it. Let me also mention that he had 4 interceptions on the day (although we can argue that the first two weren't necessarily his fault). I feel like it's self-explanatory for why he's in this category.

The rush defense-

UB got BURNED by the rush. It's fine to give up almost 400 yards to Army and it's slightly justified when you give a ton up to Kent State and their QB that's actually a running back. BUT, when you give up 312 yards to a team that's 1-6 and lost to an FCS team, something is wrong.

The Ugly

UB Football-

This doesn't look like football. No one looks like they have their hearts into it. When I'm in the student section and the players walk by before the game starts their faces are stoic and lifeless (with the exception of 3-5). Nobody looks like they're ready to play. It looks like that these players are taking their free college and grinding it out one week at a time.

I never thought I'd say it, but this program was in better shape with Jeff Quinn at the mantle. Yeah, we were faltering mid-season in Licata's junior year, but the product still looked like football. We weren't in danger of only having one fluke win at the end of the year. This is probably the worst football team in FBS football and it would probably lose to a ton of teams in the FCS top-25.

Lance Leipold is in trouble. Earlier in the season I thought it was just offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki but the ship is sinking incredibly fast. The worst part is everything seems fine at the Leipold camp, as every press conference is the same talk of looking for consistency. It's getting harder and harder for Bulls fans to accept that this program is heading into the right direction and it's probably going to take a dramatic shift in something to change that.