Those Corner Routes Were Open

Some thoughts on the AAC Title game

Time, as it tends to do, marches on. The championship game is long in the past, and we are already seeing reports of Drew Mestemaker’s “likely” leaving. North Texas had been preparing a seven-figure offer before Morris went to OSU, but he looks like he is the target of some very deep-pocketed teams. It is ridiculous money and North Texas simply doesn’t have the resources to compete at that level. So it goes.

In any case, we went through the tape (a few times) and while there was plenty to like (Dorner, Coleman) for me, I kept coming back to these throws again on game day and after. These were the biggest misses from Mestemaker, and indicated something was just not clicking. That is sports sometimes. Here are the missed corner/out routes, including that end-zone interception.

One or even two seems normal — especially the first toss of the first drive. Maybe you just have to get used to things. Normal. He missed a few times and it was most evident on the end zone interception.

Mestemaker played pretty well, all things considered. He put the ball on time and on target on throws across the middle and on other throws, but the deep stuff and corner routes were not working for him.

Outside of that, we should again credit Tulane’s defense for their preparation. They had North Texas’ mesh and screen game pretty well scouted and were not fooled at all. They got two negative plays on those in this one — an interception (dropped by Young) and the big sack preceding the fumble from Hawkins.

Wyatt Young had an off day, but Dorner and Coleman were awesome. Also some credit goes to Terrence Lewis, who looks very good and has a bright future. We’ve been going through some WVU ‘24 cut ups to see what the Neal Brown offense looks like, but we’ll save that for the summer. For now, we’ve been looking at some San Diego State stuff.

GMG