We held him down long enough to the point where the game was in our hands, and then we took our foot off the gas, unlike LSU did to them the next year. His yardage was all late in the game, when it was already decided.
Riley has that reputation because the media is mostly enamored with a young hot shot that they can write about. hence why you see zero imagination on pre-season award lists, and why a guy can have one great game and they think he's an All-American. You can only write so many articles about Nick Saban before you gotta find a new topic. The Big 12 has produced so many eye popping statistic quarterbacks that none of Riley's make my list of ones that looked very special, maybe outside of Murray. I can't stand the guy, so maybe my feelings won't allow him to have success in my mind, but I still stand by the fact that he isn't doing anything that a lot of others are doing as well. There are a lot of coaches out there winning nine and ten games a year. Mack Brown doing it at North Carolina, Matt Campbell doing it at Iowa State, James Franklin at Penn State, PJ Fleck at Minnesota, Lane Kiffin starting to look the part at Ole Miss etc. He doesn't stand out to me at all, he's just had a very easy path to the Playoff, unlike those in the SEC and Big Ten.