Well, the two biggest numbers are 40 and 1.

40 points.  1 opening night win.

But there were some other numbers to consider from the Cajuns after their win over Lamar Saturday night:

+3—You can beat a lot of teams when you’re plus-three in the turnover margin category.  The Cajuns capitalized on three fumbles and an interception, all in the first half and turned all four turnovers into points.

8-8—The Cajuns had eight possessions.  They scored eight times.  Um, that’s good.

12—The number of TFL’s by the defense. What’s that you say?  TFL means thrown for loss.  Tackles behind the line of scrimmage.  Twelve is a pretty big number.  Justin Hamilton had four of them.

0-As in number of points scored by Lamar.  It’s the first shutout in a decade by the Cajuns at home.  It’s hard to stop the other team from scoring for sixty minutes.  The impressive thing was, Lamar didn’t really come close.

6=The number of touchbacks by Brett Baer and Hunter Stover.  Did the Cajuns have six touchbacks all of last year???  I know the kickoffs have been moved up five yards.  But these guys were booming them.

15- The number of consecutive field goals made by Brett Baer, a new Cajuns record.  Baer was 4-4 including a career long 52 yarder against Lamar on Saturday.  Baer was really good last year even though he was never completely healthy.  He’s healthy now.  Good for the Cajuns.  Bad for the opponents.

2—Plays that went for 20 yards or more against the Cajuns’ defense.

0—Number of times Cajuns quarterbacks were sacked on Saturday.

NOT SO GOOD NUMBERS

38.9—Blaine Gautier’s completion percentage on Saturday.  He had a couple like that early last year, too.  Gautier missed some wide open receivers on deep balls and had a couple of other throws that didn’t have quite enough air underneath.  Over the last ten games last year, we got used to seeing Gautier do some incredible things.  He was very pedestrian Saturday.

44—For the most part, the Cajuns kick coverage was good.  But one of the returns went for 44 yards and brought back visions of last year.  I think they’ll be better in that category this year, but that one return brought back some bad memories.

3—Maybe we’re spoiled, but the Cajuns only had three plays on offense that went 20 yards or more.  We’ve just come to expect more.

0—Points in the second half.  I know the Cajuns were playing a lot of people and were sticking mostly with their ground game, but it would have been good to see those guys have some success.

95—Total yards in the second half for the Cajuns.

4- Number of first downs the Cajuns collected in the second half.

10:15—Total possession time for the Cajuns offense in the second half.

1—Apparent serious injury—Montrell Carter went down with a knee injury in the first half.  Almost immediately, the report was “knee injury—will not return.”  I’ve been around long enough to know when they make that determination that quickly, that is not a good thing.  I’m hoping for the best for the redshirt freshman, but I’m not optimistic.

 

 

 

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