UConn Huskies football coach Bob Diaco needs to go back to the drawing board on kick protection for his special teams.
Since Bob Diaco took over as head coach for the UConn Huskies football team, one of his focuses was to eliminate the things that caused losing. You heard that on a weekly basis during his first year in 2014.
So if you think that Diaco’s call for the fake field goal was the reason for why the UConn Huskies football team lost to the Missouri Tigers 9-6 on Saturday, you’re sadly mistaken.
It was because the special teams did things that cause losing.
Let’s start first with the blocked that gave the Tigers a 2-0 lead over the UConn Huskies.
“They poured through the left shield and the person protecting,” Diaco said. “It was just fundamentally poor on the snap and Justin [Wain] was a little slow and a little long, pushed too close to the shield, so we’ll get that cleaned up.”
Then you have the fact that Bobby Puyol had an extra point blocked for the third time this season. This one happening after Ron Johnson had given the UConn Huskies a 6-2 lead.
Last week after the win over Army, Diaco stated that he wanted to make sure this was fixed. Obviously it wasn’t.
And the fact that the extra point was blocked seemed to play a factor in why Diaco went for a fake field goal to try and give the UConn Huskies the win instead of a tie.
“I didn’t feel great about the guts of the protection,” said Diaco.
While hindsight is 20/20, you have to wonder what Diaco would have done had Puyol’s extra point not been blocked earlier in the game. We can only speculate.
It wasn’t all bad for the special teams though as they did have two nice plays, one from punter Justin Wain. The other from Brice McAllister who saw the ball hit the foot of Tavon Ross and then recovered it to set up UConn in good field position.
For now, Diaco and the UConn Huskies need to go back to the drawing board on kick protection for the punter and place kicking.
They also need to clean up the two kick catch interference calls as well. While they didn’t end up hurting the UConn Huskies in this game, they are something that could in future games.
