Football week 3

Ohhh man. Week 3 brought #7 ranked Western to town. The talk was all about how Western had dominated this series for the last 10 years and about their huge defensive lineman who was being recruited by some Div. 1 teams. I just wanted to see how we'd play against some decent competition. On the opening kickoff our starting middle linebacker got injured. He was done for the game. Other than that the game started well and the guys figured out that the weren't playing against professionals. Earlier in the week one of the starting offensive tackles told us that he was done for the season. Some lousy excuse like being expelled. The new tackle looked like he was about to pee his pants but by halftime he was convinced that he was playing against jr. high girls. Right before halftime our defense made a mistake and left the slot man wide open. The quarterback saw it and threw quickly to his side but either it was a bad pass or the slot man wasn't ready and the corner intercepted it and returned it 85 yards for a touchdown. The score at halftime was 14-7. We had an unexpected lead and the boys were feeling good. Nobody scored in the third and with 6:11 left in the 4th we scored to go up 21-7. We were feeling good. Too good. We went conservative. I hate going conservative. Western scored with 3:54 to play. We tried to run the clock and punted with 1:41 to play. Western scored on a big screen to tie the game and we lost in overtime. Up 14 with 4 minutes left and left with heartache. It was sickening. The good thing though is that the guys know they can play with anybody. This is a team that last year was 6-5 and the year before was 5-7 and in 05/06 was 1-9. So it's a huge confidence boost for them.