Game Balls for Boise State versus BYU

Well barnacles.

Guess what everyone? Unless you have not seen the game yet, or saving yourself the agony and are avoiding it, you know by now that we, unfortunately, lost a pretty ugly game on Saturday. Both on the box score, and on the field of play. But despite the negative of the actual score, there were some genuine positives to be gleaned from this loss. So you know what that means?!

Game balls! So lets give some out, shall we?

GAME BALL ONE:

Donte Deayon

This is basically the "Money Season" for Deayon. The chance for him to show NFL scouts that he is among the elite of the cornerbacks in the next draft. And you know a good way of doing that? By being 5' 9" and shutting down any pass his way. So when a "True" 21 year-old starts LITERALLY CHUCKING BALLS TO HIS RECEIVERS it is nice when someone from the good guys catches them. Instead of the...not so good guys. So Donte did his due diligence by taking away two of those passes. He also had five tackles, half a tackle-for-loss, and a forced fumble. Mr. Deayon, congratulations for winning internet kudos!!

GAME BALL TWO:

Sean Wale

Well, if there is certainly a time for the special teams to be really good, might as well be on a night where there was a lot of bad. And Mr. Wale certainly showed up. Punting eight times (ugh) for a 41.5 yards is pretty respectable. Four punts inside the 20 and only allowing seven yards on two returns is solid. Wale did all he could to help the defense and put the BYU deep in their own territory. To which he succeeded. Mr. Wale was a bright spot on Saturday and for that, he gets game ball number two!

GAME BALL THREE:

Shane Williams-Rhodes

Mr. Williams-Rhodes showed up when it mattered. And showed up big. How big? Eleven catches for 107 yards and a long of 23. It is a bummer that I cannot include a touchdown in that total, but thems the breaks. SWR tried his best to help out the pass game by accounting for 36% of the yardage total. Let us hope this trend continues as the season moves forward and we see more scoring from Mr. Williams-Rhodes. Congratulations SWR you are game ball holder number three!

GAME BALL FOUR:

The Officiating

Hey. We at OBNUG understand. Getting EVERY call right is hard. And it is really difficult to assess an accurate penalty when one player, who shall remain nameless, literally physically assaults another human with a fist. Or when another defensive back smacks a receiver in the head when said receiver is out of bounds. Or that false start flags were called, and whistled, in a timely manner (but seriously what was up with all those false starts?!). And the unsportsmanlike on Moxey? Refs had to take control of the game. Much like they were working to make sure they got the penalty right for Taimatuia's helmet INEXPLICABLY POPPING OFF AND HIM MAKING AN INCREDIBLE SACK IN THE REDZONE. Yup. That personal foul penalty was the RIGHT call. So congratulations, refs, for ensuring that the game was being played in a fair and safe manner. You guys certainly deserve a ball of some sort.