The University of Buffalo’s 2009 football season officially ended today with a 9-6 win over Kent State that really encapsulated this Bulls season. As has been the Bulls custom the past two seasons, today’s win came in a game decided by a touchdown or less; the eighth such game Buffalo played this season (they went 3-5 in those games). During their MAC championship-winning 2008 season, the Bulls played in seven games that were decided by a TD or less and they won five of those games. What a difference a season makes.
Just about everything that went right in those close games in 2008, went the other way in 2009. Whereas the Bulls defense in 2008 definitely was not one of the better units statistically speaking, but was opportunistic enough to make timely stops or force turnovers when it mattered, the 2009 edition was unable to replicate last season’s success. Last season, senior quarterback Drew Willy, a four-year starter, played virtually mistake-free football, throwing 25 touchdown passes and only 6 picks in 2008. This season, true sophomore Zach Maynard, who gave plenty of indication that he will be a star in the MAC, failed to lead any fourth quarterback comebacks. Maynard finished the season with 17 picks; 11 more than Willy threw in 2008, which helps to explain the Bulls’ reversal of fortune in close games.
While there were some injuries in 2008, it was nothing like what Turner Gill’s squad experienced in 2009. It began with star running back James Starks tearing his labrum before the season kicked-off and ended with future NFL receiver Naaman Roosevelt tearing a meniscus and missing the season, and his UB career, finale. The volume of Bulls injuries this season was so staggering that to even liken them to the undersized football team that used to get lambasted by behemoths in those old Looney Tunes cartoons is to do a disservice to those Looney Tunes teams that finished each and every game in the hospital. I know less about the Bulls’ strength and conditioning regimen than I do about this Twilight nonsense, but I really can’t help thinking that some sort of overhaul might be called for.
If the 2008 UB Bulls season was about a composed and irrepressible football team that made and got enough breaks to win just about close shave that came their way, the 2009 season was about a team persevering through a tsunami of injuries and bad bounces to come within a few plays in any of five games of going to a bowl game for the second season in a row. To the spoiled masses that pledge allegiance to any of the BCS football factories, and the more snide members of the MAC Nation, that may not seem such a big deal. Real college football fans know better.
And so we bid adieu to the 2009 Buffalo Bulls football season. I’d be lying if I said that the season coming to a conclusion on November 27th wasn’t, well, disappointing, but I look forward to the 2010 season with the knowledge that this was a side that was this close to finishing 6-6, 7-5, 8-4, 9-3, or 10-2. There’s work to be done in the off-season, but it ain’t 2002, 2003, or 2004 anymore. The Bulls will be in the mix when it comes time to talk MAC football again in this space.
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