[laker20]

Rowe is playing, done been told that.

I stand by what I say:
Russell to less than 150 rushing
rock wins by 2 tds

Rowe is playing, done been told that.

I fully expect that Rowe will be playing and I'm looking forward to watching these two backs in action.

I stand by what I say: Russell to less than 150 rushing

It really doesn't matter how many yards we end up with, it's how many scores we can come up with. This game will probably come down to field position, special teams, and turnovers.

If we can force Rock to have to go 80+ yards on every driver, I like our chances (even if we're held to 150 yards rushing). They have to decide: do they kick/punt to Britt and risk a return or do they squib kick and leave the short field. Some teams have chosen just to kick it out of bounds and let us start from the 35 which means we only have to move the ball 30-yards to be in FG range. Either way, the result is a shorter field for us to work (which attributes to our high scoring games w/ lower yardage).

The post I made comparing our performances against the Maroons shows how similar the Lakers and Rockets are. If we had taken care of the ball in the first half, we would have had two more opportunities to score and they would have had two less. We finally settled down in the game with about 9:00 remaining in the 3rd (score was 29-27 Russell). So we went on a 27-6 run in the last 20 minutes or so. We have yet to put a good 4-quarters of football together in a game.

We can't have the same thing happen here. We need to play our best game out of the gate. If we play sound, fundamental offense, then we will score. Rock may make it more difficult, but we are hard to stop when we aren't making our own mistakes.

^The same could be said about Rock's offense, which is what makes this such a good match-up.