No one was in the mood to sugarcoat Saturday’s 33-28 victory over Brazil.

While acknowledging that Brazil played very well, have a superb scrum, and took the opportunities, USA coaches and players also have to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The game at Dell Diamond was rife with USA errors—completely avoidable errors—and even more avoidable penalties.

Since when do the Eagles start punching opponents because those opponents lock them into a ruck, maul, or scrum? It’s starting to become a habit.

Harnessing The Intensity

John Quill, a big ball of intensity and a superb player, was lucky to stay on the field after giving away a series of penalties that advantaged his team not a bit.

Hanco Germishuys, another massive contributor, had a tackle on his back and yet though he could get up and keep running.

Ben Landry punched a guy who was holding him, rather than try to get out of the ruck and let the officials see it.

Mistakes You Don't Usually See

Blaine Scully, as intelligent a player as you could want, twice muffed kick covers—once sliding on the ball and failing to secure it, and another time opting not to slide onto the ball, and because of that, conceding a penalty got not releasing.

Mike Te’o and Cam Dolan had pretty strong games, but when Dolan basically had one guy to beat and could be off down the sideline, he lined up way too flat, and Te’o rewarded him by sending a pass two yards forward.

They Should Have Known

These are not bad luck errors. These are completely avoidable mistakes. And when you add in the fact that everyone—everyone—was talking about how Josh Reeves of Brazil is a superb kicker who gets full value for his kicks to touch and his penalty attempts, you would think that avoiding penalties would be a priority for the USA players. 

It wasn't.

Players: 'It's Under Our Control'

“Discipline let us down in that second half,” said center Bryce Campbell. “We just need to look after the ball … control the things we could control. Their scrum was unbelievable; there were parts of that that we couldn’t control, but we could control being offsides, we could control high tackles, we could control our temper.”

In the end, said Campbell, “we were lucky the get away with a win the way we did.”

Scully tried on a number of occasions to get his team focused on the game, not the injustice of it all.

“Rugby is one of those games where it’s actually tough to find those moments to reconnect and reset, but they’re hugely important,” Scully said. He took a moment (you’ll see it in the video) when he ordered some players to help calm the team down. 

“Our ability to reset, try to park all that stuff and then move on to the next task is something that we’re going to need to do … I’d probably echo Gary [Gold] and say we’re pretty disappointed.”

We made a video for you above, and it spells it out. Every single Brazil point came from a USA penalty or mistake, while at least one and as many as four USA tries were lost because of a USA penalty or mistake.

Now What?

So, moving forward, the USA will play two teams, Uruguay and Canada, who can easily get under your skin. Here’s what you do.

1. Hanco Germishuys actually sort of had the right idea, he just excepted it poorly. Don’t dive, don’t embellish, but when you’re held in a ruck or obstructed, let the assistant ref know it’s happening.

2. Punching someone to get them off you is going to get you a card. Don’t do it.

3. A high tackle won’t fix the fact that you dropped the ball ten seconds ago, it will make it worse.

4. When you’re close to the tryline but not quite there and you feel that urgency, you’ve got to chill, relax, take your time, and trust that your teammates will get it done. In the last two games the Eagles have committed penalties right on the opposition tryline.