I honestly don't know what to expect this week. There is no doubt in my mind we can and should beat the living snot out of them. Still, we ALL know this is their national championship game and even though it means nothing to us in terms of the conference, they will want to win more than anything they have done all year long.
We know their secondary should have their hands full with our WR's. I doubt they can afford to load the box and try to force MW to beat them because I think he can with their personnel. So that means that we should be able to score pretty much every time we get the ball. All it will take is some shots down field and they will have to move guys back and that means Hood and Logan could have a field day. So, let's say for the sake of arguments that we score a lot.
Now, realistically, they CAN score, but can they score against us? I am not sure they can score enough to win given what I said above. Even when our defense was really bad, they didn't put up numbers like we did against dook and Miami. Now we have a better defense, stingy DB's and are putting pretty good pressure with only 4 guys rushing. We have had problems against the run, but who on their team would you term "scary" or "unstoppable"? I can't think of a single guy. Their WR's are pretty good but I gotta tell you our DB's have gone against some pretty good receivers and held their own.
If we play like we did against uSC I still think we win because, truthfully, I am not sure moo is as good now as uSC was then. Now? Well, I think they definitely are better, but back then I thought uSC looked pretty good. Then the wheels fell off.
Anyway, I think we win this one. It may not be pretty and it may come down to the wire again, but I think that part of the problem with the VT game was jitters over the Coastal title and perhaps guys looking past VT just a bit, too.
The ONE thing that worries me is not so much moo as us. Watching the replay of the VT game I saw guys on the sidelines jawing a bit at each other and visibly upset when we had some bad plays. Let moo stay close and get us out of our rhythm and I am afraid some of what we saw last year may come back. THAT scares me more than anything or anyone at moo.