Our defense again stood strong on the next possession and our offense responded with our best drive of the day.  We took it 60 yards in 8 plays and everyone contributed.  Tatu and Patrik both had great catches, Otto and Joonas had tough runs and we looked pretty dominant as we took an early 20 - 0 lead.  I will give my props to Kuopio because they sure didn't lie down at all.  They countered our long drive with one of there own making the score 20 - 7.  I scored my 3rd touchdown of the first half on a 4th down.  I caught an out route about 3 yards short of the first down marker and got smacked, but the defender didn’t wrap up and as Coach Keeling would say in his famous high pitched tone  "you don't have to go down", so I kept running.  Three more defenders pursued but they took bad angles and I broke one more tackle before sliding into the endzone behind a good block by Patrik.  27 - 7

At this point the entire game drastically changed.  I don’t quite know what happened but Ryan and I spent about 3 days pontificating about the possible cause of our meltdown.  Our offense just shut if off, we lack that killer instinct that most good teams have; we became complacent.  Defensively we just broke down for about 10 minutes of the second quarter.  They ran the ball right at us and we didn’t have the pride or the desire to stop them.  They scored 3 straight touchdowns and before we knew it we were up by only 1 point at Halftime. 

Halftime 

We straight-up tested their manhood in the locker room.  Ryan and I spent most the time calling guys out.  We had guys smiling, pouting, yelling, and a few that were still hung-over.  Ryan threatened to walk off the field if the defense didn't straighten up and we asked them all the cliché questions "Do you really wanna win this game", "Do you even care if we lose", "Should we just give up and go to Kotka right now" (more on that later).  We actually didn't even make one halftime adjustment, because we didn't need any.  We had the right game plan in, it was just a matter of the guys finding that self pride and focusing on the game. 

2nd half

The second half started off just the way we had hoped.  Defense forced a fumble on the opening possession and quickly gave us the ball back.  After some great runs by Joonas, including the 21 yard touchdown, we took back the momentum and looked like a completely different team.  Score 33 - 26 (PAT was blocked).  On the proceeding kickoff I forced a fumble and Jani was quick to recover.  We took the ball 27 yards to the 9 yard line before they picked off a pass in the endzone. 

This was one of those games that I hate to watch but absolutely love to play in.  The only problem was that Kuopio just showed that they wanted it more.  In the 4^th quarter they started from their own 2 yard line and took the ball 98 yards in 19 plays taking up 10 minutes and scored to make the game 33-32.  Rather than kick the extra point, they successfully converted a 2 point play.  Offensively we had one more chance to respond but our guys were already mentally gone.  They just seem to lack that winning mentality, we have yet to win a close game the entire year and I don’t know if were even capable of it. 

After the game, I was speechless.  I had absolutely nothing to say except I did yell out...."Yeah! Now let's go celebrate".  I said this because our guys were so concerned the entire day with a huge festival in Kotka, they were actually talking about it during the game.  Ryan again gave them a well deserve post-game butt chewing then we went directly to the locker room grabbed our bags and walked home in our uniforms.  We didn't go to Kotka with the team, as we would have looked a little hypocritical, but we were trying to prove a point.  Now we have a bye week then 3 must-win games.