We will have to see what Troy does the rest of the season, and especially how they perform against South Carolina a couple months from now, but right now I think we saw two talented, young teams perform like talented, young teams perform. The offenses swayed back and forth between impressive attacks, and disjointed turnover machines, rarely performing in the middleground between the two extremes. Neither secondary was overly effective or consistent as was evidenced by the 75% completion percentage both quarterbacks enjoyed, but each defense had their moments, and I mean.. some of those turnovers were actually forced. And both teams made a few mistakes on special teams, common to inexperienced teams, which allowed dangerous return men to shine.
After most games, there is typically a lot of complaining or praising, but usually not a lot of both... or there is not much hyperbolic commentary as a team may have played just average. Last nights game, as was highlighted by the previous paragraph and recap post, was nothing but extreme positives and negatives. It is a difficult reaction to manage for most of us as we usually like to react to a game by saying things like, "We won/lost because of the defense/offense/specific player". The Troy game left us with the option to blame almost every facet of the Cowboys performance for the close call, as well as the option to credit each of those same facets for the victory.
Brandon Weeden threw for 348 yards and 2 touchdowns and looked great hitting every underneath route in stride and showing some elusiveness when the protection wasn't there, but he also missed the mark on quite a few deep balls that could have sealed the game early. On some drives the linebackers and secondary were aware and in position to stop the end arounds, screens, and slants before they could turn into long catch and runs, on other possessions the DB's would focus way too much on the WR and not even see the ball in the air or the play developing before it was too late. And you can keep going right down the list....
In the end, I think a game like this is good for a young team to experience. The film reviews have to be a coaches dream. On almost every play the coaches will be able to point out either something that they did well and should repeat, or something that was awful and should never happen again. It will be a good game to learn from for a team that needs to do some learning quickly if we don't want this to turn into a rebuilding season.