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Pretty much every USF game has been ugly these past years. But this one was UGLY. The Bulls looked simply exhausted in every part of the game and could not make whatever gameplan they had work for them. However, B.J. Daniels' pursuit of Matt Grothe's Big East yardage record carried on. Entering last night's Thursday night matchup with Big East (kinda) rival Rutgers, Daniels sat on 8241 career yards, 2218 away from history.
Similar to last week, Daniels gained a good bit of his yardage on long passes. After eluding the defense, he completed a couple Hail Mary-esque heaves in the first half to Andre Davis and Terrence Mitchell for 44 and 58 yards, respectively. Unfortunately, those two plays accounted for 55.4% of the Bulls' total yardage for the first half. A 30-yard completion to Derrick Hopkins in the fourth quarter set up USF's only touchdown. Three interceptions didn't help matters (though it's debatable whether some were really interceptions at all, but that's for another post), but still Daniels managed to put together 242 pass yards.
B.J. also made some plays on the ground last night. Not on the plays that were designed QB runs, but on ones where he had to scramble because his offensive line wasn't giving him much help. Daniels not only led the team in rushing yards, he had almost three times as many yards as the next highest on the team, with 68 total.
That's a total of 310 yards on the night, more than any track I set for him. If the offense can play that horribly and he still breaks past the quota, it's almost impossible to not get the record. His career total is now 8551 yards, 1908 off the record. We're under the 2000 mark. If Daniels can complete the season, with nine games left he'll need to average 212 yards per game. After last night, I'm not even going to do a total for if we make a bowl game. If Daniels ends up getting injured, or increasingly likely, benched, for a game, he'd need 238.5 YPG to reach it. Miss two games, and it's 272.6. Better rack up those yards next week against Ball State.