Tuesday Takeaways: A sneak peek of the future for the offense

HUNTINGTON, W.Va.—I must admit I had a “here we go again” moment during the Herd’s 44-14 win over Ohio, although the feeling was fleeting. Darrius Vick connected with Chase Cochran for a 53-yard pass play. Thoughts of the previous three years quickly crept into my mind. However, those were just as quickly erased once the defense stiffened, kept the Bobcats out of the endzone and forced a field goal attempt. From that point on it was all Herd.

Cato performed on his day
Rakeem Cato put up Cato type numbers on Saturday. The timing could not have been better. Cato was featured on ESPN’s College Gameday then turned in a 425-yard four touchdown game later that day. He threw the 100th touchdown pass of career joining only Chad Pennington with 100 touchdown passes in Marshall history.

To put that in perspective, Voice of the Herd, Steve Cotton, did research and found Marshall is only the second school to have a pair of quarterbacks with 100 career touchdown passes. The other is Hawaii. Timmy Chang threw 117 in 2000-04 and Colt Brennan threw 131 from 2005-07.

Angelo Jean-Louis could be next big play receiver
We got our first peek of what the future may hold for Marshall’s offense. Angelo Jean-Louis had five catches for 158 yards and two touchdowns.  Two of those catches went for 61 yards and another was a 77-yard touchdown catch. Jean-Louis has the ability to win one-on-one matchups on the outside and showed he can pull away from the secondary in the open field.

He’s averaging 31.6 yards per catch which is sixth in the nation.

He may be Marshall’s next big-play guy over the next few years.

Perception is reality
The perception is that Marshall is supposed to blow out each opponent, in the last two games that has been the reality. The Herd is averaging 44.7 points per game, 16th nationally, and has total more than 700 yards of offense in the last two games. It had only done that three times ever prior to the start of the season. Through the first three weeks teams have gained 700+ yards ten times. Two of those are Marshall.

The defense has been just as impressive. It is allowing an average of 102 yards rushing and opponents are converting third downs just 29 percent of the time, that’s good for 15th in the country.

Nice crowd at The Joan
The 31,710 fans at the game were loud, excited and pumped throughout the entire game.  Some fans were in the parking lots as early as 4 a.m. tailgating. Some like to harp because every seat in the stadium wasn’t full. Don’t worry about the people who chose not to come to the game (those who couldn’t attend because of work, kids, etc. are excused). Enjoy the experience and enjoy this team.

30 for 30
ESPN’s documentary, Rand University, featuring Randy Moss will air on Nov. 11 and 8 p.m. The film focuses on Moss and his struggles as he grew up in Rand, his troubles at Notre Dame and Florida State and reviving his football career at Marshall.

Should be a good watch.





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