Air Force Academy – Even with eight games remaining on the schedule, Air Force says the time is now to take control of its season.
The now in the equation is defending Mountain West Conference champion Utah, which the Falcons play Thursday night in Salt Lake City, five days after a bitter 29-28 loss Saturday to Wyoming at Falcon Stadium.
Senior center Jon Wilson, a team captain, spoke with urgency Sunday as the Falcons prepare for a short-week schedule.
“We’re coming into the thick of our schedule, and this is definitely the time to make some decisions as to where we want to end the season,” Wilson said. “If we don’t correct some of our mistakes and do some things better, it could start a downhill spiral. We’re going to avoid that.”
The team leaders certainly will address putting together a more complete game, something the Falcons have failed to do in their first three games.
The Falcons committed three turnovers against Wyoming, two of which were converted into nine points.
A Wyoming fumble resulted in eight points for the Falcons in the one-point game.
“We’ll get together as a team,” sophomore quarterback Shaun Carney said. “I’m going to say that we have to get rid of these mistakes if we want to be a championship football team.”
In their first three games against Washington, San Diego State and Wyoming, Air Force has helped its opponents with six turnovers, including four fumbles.
The Falcons won’t have time this week to look at film of the Wyoming game, but there were plenty of comments to go around a day after the Falcons fell to 2-1, 1-1 in conference play.
Coach Fisher DeBerry mentioned the mistakes along with inconsistency in the kicking game that contributed to the loss to Wyoming, including the Falcons’ 16-yard punt that gave Wyoming a chance to kick a field goal with 11 seconds remaining in the first half. Also, a questionable center snap on a failed extra point gave Wyoming a chance to convert the winning point, and a mis-hit kickoff that put the Cowboys at their 35-yard line to start their winning touchdown drive.
“When you lose three out of the four critical areas of the game, your odds of winning aren’t good, I don’t care who you’re playing,” DeBerry said. “We lost the turnover battle, lost the penalties and, of course, we lost the kicking game. As good as our defense played, we still couldn’t stop them on their last drive.”
DeBerry said that on the extra-point attempt, his kicking team didn’t realize the try had been aborted. Holder Donny Heaton broke to his right, but the outside players on the line didn’t release to become potential emergency receivers.
Heaton took the blame for not getting the ball down, but special-teams coach Tom Miller acknowledged it wasn’t a perfect snap.
“Donny has saved us many times on the snaps because he has great hands,” Miller said. “It is disturbing that he hasn’t been more consistent punting the football. The snap wasn’t perfect. It was on his chin, but he should have handled it.
“What’s frustrating to me and my guys is that we know we have talent, but everybody seems to have one bad snap each in a game.”
DeBerry isn’t ready to say his team is at a crossroads, with games against Utah, Colorado State and Navy on the horizon.
“We played hard, but you can’t have eight penalties, three turnovers and the problems we had in the kicking game,” DeBerry said. “But still the score was by one point. We’re doing some good things, but we haven’t put a complete game together yet. We’ve got some good leadership on this team, I’m not worried about that.”
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-820-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
