sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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In Orlando International Airport, waiting for my flight back to Syracuse. Thought I would spend my time waiting productively by doing a post.
I flew down Thursday afternoon. Allegiant and Frontier have a couple of direct flights to Orlando from Syracuse, priced very competitively, which makes it a lot easier to do this than a few years ago. I like Frontier more, mostly because they use Orlando International. Allegiant uses Sanford, which is a much smaller airport (I think it is a converted airbase), and which is unfortunately located around 45 miles further from Orlando.
I stayed with a friend, played golf with him Friday morning, and then drove up to Lake City, where I stayed Friday and Saturday night. Lake City is a decent sized city close to the intersection of I75 and I10. I used the Florida Turnpike and I75 to get to I10 (and later Tallahassee), and Lake City is close to the halfway point between Orlando and Tallahassee, and it is big enough to have a good selection of affordable hotels, so it was a staging location for going to and coming from Tallahassee
Ate dinner with TexanMark and his lovely wife Friday night at the Marion Street Bistro and Brewhouse.
www.marionstreetbistroandbrewhouse.com
Nice place near the heart of old downtown Lake City. Had an Armory Square vibe to it. Good food, good prices, mom and pop type place….right up my alley.
I stayed at a La Quinta (a great man once told me this was the chain of hotels I should stay at). It was relatively new and in good shape. Very reasonable prices. Best of all, it was maybe 100 yards from a Sonny’s BBQ.
www.wyndhamhotels.com
Sonny’s BBQ is not a mon and pop place; they have franchises all over the South. But I really like their BBQ and their prices and service are very good. If you like BBQ, find yourself in the South and are hungry, you might want to check one out.
Tallahassee is a nice place to visit. It is the state capital of Florida. Not a lot of tall buildings, doesn’t look much bigger than Syracuse. Looks like they have a decent downtown scene and the campus buildings, mostly brick, are quite nice. We tailgated next to the Civic Center, where the FSU basketball team plays. It is around 10 blocks from the football stadium. Not too bad but I got pretty sweaty walking there and back on a humid, sunny day where the high was around 88.
Mark picked a good place for the tailgate. He got the one corner of the lot with some trees and some shade. That might have saved the live of this guy from upstate NY who is not used to standing/sitting in a much stronger sun than normal for 8 or 10 hours.Mark got Hofmann coneys and franks, someone brought Publix sandwiches, there was a lot of other stuff to eat and a lot of stuff to drink as well. He even brought some Diet Dr Pepper for me. What a guy! I think we had around 50 people there. Good to see a bunch of old friends and to make some new ones too.
Walked to the stadium down Pensacola. Interesting street. Kind of a blend of Crouse Ave and Walnut Park. A number of frats and sororities are located here but also a bunch of high rise partment buildings, presumably for students. There is a lot of commercial development. Weird to see the Greeks in the middle of so much commercial development. I think our setup with Walnut a lot better.
Got to the stadium pretty early. One the way, walked past a big top tent like they use in the circus. I think the tent says on it, FSU Circus Tent. I assume FSU is literally a clown college, teaching students to be clowns, and perform all the other roles needed to put on a circus. That was different. Believe that was there 2 years ago too. So UConn does puppets and FSU does circuses. In case you have a family member with an interest…. T
I like the FSU stadium. Dislike all the crap they have around it. Makes it hard to get around, makes it confusing for visitors; it just an awful mess once you get close to the stadium. But the concourses are wide and you can see it was designed to acccomdate a lot more people than the dome was.
They had a good selection of food avaiable, including Chik-Fil-A. My seat was in section 10. I entered section 10 around row 10. Ha to ascend 65 rows to row 75, where my seat was. I felt the burn. Watching the faces of all the Syracuse people who sat near me, we all felt the burn. It was most definitely not the same experience as Ohio University. But my seat was around the 40 yard line. Kind of shocking to get a seat there against FSU but I guess they have lost a lot of their fanbase in the last few years.
My seat was roughly the same height from the playing field as my seat in row YY of section 302 (the second row from the highest row of the dome). But I was probably 30 yards further from the field. You have to make sacrifices to fit 72K (or whatever the capacity is for Doak) and this is a big one.
That said, I have seen worse.
The FSU fans near me were nice and kind of downtrodden. The FSU band was huge and sounded great. They are one of the bands they makes a point of learning and playing the fight song of their opponent near the start of the game (they have at least done it for every SU game I have attended at Doak). Very classy move. I do not believe we do the same. Not good. Hoping some day, this can be changed.
I am not sure what the attendance was announced at. I guessed maybe 40K were actually in seats at the height of crowd. For the 4th quarter, it was more like 25K left (it was Parent’s Weekend and I think a lot of families skipped out early). SU fans were all over the place but we did not have a great turnout. Guessing we might have had 1000 total.
It was a very hot and humid day. Early on there were some clouds that provided breaks from the direct sun but for most of the sun, it was on us and pretty tough. I sweat a lot on Saturday. Towards the end of the game, the sun went behind the stadium and it was a lot more reasonable.
Let’s talk football.
I have no problem trying to establish the run. I do have a problem though, when the defense is playing 8 guys in the box and we continue to run regardless. Yu have to work in at least a few play action passes. You have to mix it up some. Especially against a defense like FSU’s; where their secondary is a major weak link everyone is taking advantage of.
So I have to give Gilbert a D- for his game plan, which appeared to be to run it up the middle and dominate the FSU defense with a phyiscal power attack. That was complete failure. To his credit, he made some adjustments and incorporated some pass action and rollouts after the first couple of drives and guess what? The offense became a lot more successful.
Seems like Shrader is far more comfortable looking for receivers and passing the ball from outside of the pocket. He certainly is a lot more successful running the ball from outside the pocket as well. And maybe our WRs have an easier time getting open on the roll outs. I think the rollout gives them a little more time to work against the coverage, which is important with our group of WRs. I think almost all of them struggle to get open immediately.
It was good to see Shrader play well and lead the offense to a lot of points. 30 points in 3 quarters is what we are looking for every game. It has been a while since we got it, against a P5 opponent, especially on the road. With the limited talent we have on the OL and at WR, we really need a dual threat QB to make this offense work, You get a QB running around, getting a bunch of big gains, and what happens?
The players responsible for covering our receivers can’t concentrate exclusively on coverage. They have to keep an eye on the QB as well. That leads to players getting open easier and just opens things up for the offense in a way we have not seen since Eric was running the show.
Tommy might have the strongest and most accurate arm I have ever seen for an SU QB, and that is great. But for this offense, and the players we currently have available, it is not enough. It is a shame because I think Tommy is faster than Eric or Garrett, but extending plays is unfortunately not just a function of speed. Slime guys have it. Some do not.
Other random thoughts:
Looking like Garrett’s favorite WR might be Courtney. He is really skinny right now and sometimes gets thrown around like a rag doll, but he is good at getting open over the middle on rollouts, and that makes him very valuable for this team right now.
Really hoping Alford is okay. He brings things to the table some of the other WRs do not. With Taj moving on, we need him to set up now.
Queeley is going to get a lot of targets. Hope he is up to the task.
Get Garrett near the goal line, he is going to get in. Just has a nose for that. Watch the film of the play he ran for a the long TD running to the left and see him accelerate when he sees the end zone. Some guys just have that ability. Great when you have a guy like that at QB.
Garrett almost hit Mang with a little dink for a TD. Nice play we will surely see again. I think he stepped up too fast to sell
the run and didn’t quite have time to get a good pass off. But a nice play.
We really need a TE to step up as a reliable receiver. I didn’t see Benson play at all Saturday. Hope he is able to play a lot and I hope it happens soon. Garrett will hit a TE with a pass a lot when he does those rollouts. Not sure Mang, Rhino or Maher are ready yet.
Thought the OL did well. Shrader had time. We didn’t always have holes for Tucker to run through but we did sometimes. I am no doctor but the injury to Tisdale looked like a torn ACL. I hope not. Hate to see seniors end their careers early Iike that. He was playing the best football of his life when he got hurt.
The worst part about the loss was letting the FSU QB out of the pocket to save a play destined for ruin to become a big gain. This happened over and over. He could not pass. Not sure he threw a good pass 15 yards past the LOS all game. Maybe the TD throw barely got there. He could not throw more than 10 yards or so and really their only hope of winning was him saving broken plays with his legs. Props to the kid for winning the game almost single handedly. But we played into his hands trying so hard to sack him. Of course, we would have sacked him a number of times if the FSU OL didn’t save him by making blatant holds. Sigh.
Tony will get that straightened out. Along with the ACC offices and the problems the refs had with doing their jobs. Really encouraged with how well the defense played overall. That pick by Duce was a huge turnover put up by the defense that should have iced a win for the second week in a row. That is great to see.
Love how many players Tony plays on defense. It really helps on hot days like yesterday. We have gotten worn down and played bad on defense in the 4th quarter on days like that so many times in the past. Thought we did not get tired yesterday.
Coley is doing a good job filling in for Carter but he is not as fast and I think there were times he was exposed a bit by the fast FSU skill players. Hope Carter returns soon.
Encouraged that Sterlin was able to make some adjustments to an awful game plan and get the offense working well with an inexperienced QB, a WR/TE group that is really not close to 100%, on the road. I think there is reason to think the offense might be significantly better from this point forward. Going to need to get some banged up players healthy or to have some young players step up. At the least, it looks like the youngsters have the ability to be successful. This area might be the key that determines whether the rest of the season is a success or not.
Thanks to Mark for doing another great job with the tailgate. Thanks to Sonny’s for the excellent BBQ. I had a great time despite the crushing loss. I think better days are ahead. I hope that starts next Saturday.
I flew down Thursday afternoon. Allegiant and Frontier have a couple of direct flights to Orlando from Syracuse, priced very competitively, which makes it a lot easier to do this than a few years ago. I like Frontier more, mostly because they use Orlando International. Allegiant uses Sanford, which is a much smaller airport (I think it is a converted airbase), and which is unfortunately located around 45 miles further from Orlando.
I stayed with a friend, played golf with him Friday morning, and then drove up to Lake City, where I stayed Friday and Saturday night. Lake City is a decent sized city close to the intersection of I75 and I10. I used the Florida Turnpike and I75 to get to I10 (and later Tallahassee), and Lake City is close to the halfway point between Orlando and Tallahassee, and it is big enough to have a good selection of affordable hotels, so it was a staging location for going to and coming from Tallahassee
Ate dinner with TexanMark and his lovely wife Friday night at the Marion Street Bistro and Brewhouse.
Home | marionstreet
www.marionstreetbistroandbrewhouse.com
Nice place near the heart of old downtown Lake City. Had an Armory Square vibe to it. Good food, good prices, mom and pop type place….right up my alley.
I stayed at a La Quinta (a great man once told me this was the chain of hotels I should stay at). It was relatively new and in good shape. Very reasonable prices. Best of all, it was maybe 100 yards from a Sonny’s BBQ.
La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Lake City | Lake City, FL Hotels
Let La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Lake City be the bright spot in your travel journey with free breakfast, WiFi, and contemporary guest rooms. Book our Lake City, FL hotel for a memorable stay.
www.wyndhamhotels.com
Sonny’s BBQ is not a mon and pop place; they have franchises all over the South. But I really like their BBQ and their prices and service are very good. If you like BBQ, find yourself in the South and are hungry, you might want to check one out.
Tallahassee is a nice place to visit. It is the state capital of Florida. Not a lot of tall buildings, doesn’t look much bigger than Syracuse. Looks like they have a decent downtown scene and the campus buildings, mostly brick, are quite nice. We tailgated next to the Civic Center, where the FSU basketball team plays. It is around 10 blocks from the football stadium. Not too bad but I got pretty sweaty walking there and back on a humid, sunny day where the high was around 88.
Mark picked a good place for the tailgate. He got the one corner of the lot with some trees and some shade. That might have saved the live of this guy from upstate NY who is not used to standing/sitting in a much stronger sun than normal for 8 or 10 hours.Mark got Hofmann coneys and franks, someone brought Publix sandwiches, there was a lot of other stuff to eat and a lot of stuff to drink as well. He even brought some Diet Dr Pepper for me. What a guy! I think we had around 50 people there. Good to see a bunch of old friends and to make some new ones too.
Walked to the stadium down Pensacola. Interesting street. Kind of a blend of Crouse Ave and Walnut Park. A number of frats and sororities are located here but also a bunch of high rise partment buildings, presumably for students. There is a lot of commercial development. Weird to see the Greeks in the middle of so much commercial development. I think our setup with Walnut a lot better.
Got to the stadium pretty early. One the way, walked past a big top tent like they use in the circus. I think the tent says on it, FSU Circus Tent. I assume FSU is literally a clown college, teaching students to be clowns, and perform all the other roles needed to put on a circus. That was different. Believe that was there 2 years ago too. So UConn does puppets and FSU does circuses. In case you have a family member with an interest…. T
I like the FSU stadium. Dislike all the crap they have around it. Makes it hard to get around, makes it confusing for visitors; it just an awful mess once you get close to the stadium. But the concourses are wide and you can see it was designed to acccomdate a lot more people than the dome was.
They had a good selection of food avaiable, including Chik-Fil-A. My seat was in section 10. I entered section 10 around row 10. Ha to ascend 65 rows to row 75, where my seat was. I felt the burn. Watching the faces of all the Syracuse people who sat near me, we all felt the burn. It was most definitely not the same experience as Ohio University. But my seat was around the 40 yard line. Kind of shocking to get a seat there against FSU but I guess they have lost a lot of their fanbase in the last few years.
My seat was roughly the same height from the playing field as my seat in row YY of section 302 (the second row from the highest row of the dome). But I was probably 30 yards further from the field. You have to make sacrifices to fit 72K (or whatever the capacity is for Doak) and this is a big one.
That said, I have seen worse.
The FSU fans near me were nice and kind of downtrodden. The FSU band was huge and sounded great. They are one of the bands they makes a point of learning and playing the fight song of their opponent near the start of the game (they have at least done it for every SU game I have attended at Doak). Very classy move. I do not believe we do the same. Not good. Hoping some day, this can be changed.
I am not sure what the attendance was announced at. I guessed maybe 40K were actually in seats at the height of crowd. For the 4th quarter, it was more like 25K left (it was Parent’s Weekend and I think a lot of families skipped out early). SU fans were all over the place but we did not have a great turnout. Guessing we might have had 1000 total.
It was a very hot and humid day. Early on there were some clouds that provided breaks from the direct sun but for most of the sun, it was on us and pretty tough. I sweat a lot on Saturday. Towards the end of the game, the sun went behind the stadium and it was a lot more reasonable.
Let’s talk football.
I have no problem trying to establish the run. I do have a problem though, when the defense is playing 8 guys in the box and we continue to run regardless. Yu have to work in at least a few play action passes. You have to mix it up some. Especially against a defense like FSU’s; where their secondary is a major weak link everyone is taking advantage of.
So I have to give Gilbert a D- for his game plan, which appeared to be to run it up the middle and dominate the FSU defense with a phyiscal power attack. That was complete failure. To his credit, he made some adjustments and incorporated some pass action and rollouts after the first couple of drives and guess what? The offense became a lot more successful.
Seems like Shrader is far more comfortable looking for receivers and passing the ball from outside of the pocket. He certainly is a lot more successful running the ball from outside the pocket as well. And maybe our WRs have an easier time getting open on the roll outs. I think the rollout gives them a little more time to work against the coverage, which is important with our group of WRs. I think almost all of them struggle to get open immediately.
It was good to see Shrader play well and lead the offense to a lot of points. 30 points in 3 quarters is what we are looking for every game. It has been a while since we got it, against a P5 opponent, especially on the road. With the limited talent we have on the OL and at WR, we really need a dual threat QB to make this offense work, You get a QB running around, getting a bunch of big gains, and what happens?
The players responsible for covering our receivers can’t concentrate exclusively on coverage. They have to keep an eye on the QB as well. That leads to players getting open easier and just opens things up for the offense in a way we have not seen since Eric was running the show.
Tommy might have the strongest and most accurate arm I have ever seen for an SU QB, and that is great. But for this offense, and the players we currently have available, it is not enough. It is a shame because I think Tommy is faster than Eric or Garrett, but extending plays is unfortunately not just a function of speed. Slime guys have it. Some do not.
Other random thoughts:
Looking like Garrett’s favorite WR might be Courtney. He is really skinny right now and sometimes gets thrown around like a rag doll, but he is good at getting open over the middle on rollouts, and that makes him very valuable for this team right now.
Really hoping Alford is okay. He brings things to the table some of the other WRs do not. With Taj moving on, we need him to set up now.
Queeley is going to get a lot of targets. Hope he is up to the task.
Get Garrett near the goal line, he is going to get in. Just has a nose for that. Watch the film of the play he ran for a the long TD running to the left and see him accelerate when he sees the end zone. Some guys just have that ability. Great when you have a guy like that at QB.
Garrett almost hit Mang with a little dink for a TD. Nice play we will surely see again. I think he stepped up too fast to sell
the run and didn’t quite have time to get a good pass off. But a nice play.
We really need a TE to step up as a reliable receiver. I didn’t see Benson play at all Saturday. Hope he is able to play a lot and I hope it happens soon. Garrett will hit a TE with a pass a lot when he does those rollouts. Not sure Mang, Rhino or Maher are ready yet.
Thought the OL did well. Shrader had time. We didn’t always have holes for Tucker to run through but we did sometimes. I am no doctor but the injury to Tisdale looked like a torn ACL. I hope not. Hate to see seniors end their careers early Iike that. He was playing the best football of his life when he got hurt.
The worst part about the loss was letting the FSU QB out of the pocket to save a play destined for ruin to become a big gain. This happened over and over. He could not pass. Not sure he threw a good pass 15 yards past the LOS all game. Maybe the TD throw barely got there. He could not throw more than 10 yards or so and really their only hope of winning was him saving broken plays with his legs. Props to the kid for winning the game almost single handedly. But we played into his hands trying so hard to sack him. Of course, we would have sacked him a number of times if the FSU OL didn’t save him by making blatant holds. Sigh.
Tony will get that straightened out. Along with the ACC offices and the problems the refs had with doing their jobs. Really encouraged with how well the defense played overall. That pick by Duce was a huge turnover put up by the defense that should have iced a win for the second week in a row. That is great to see.
Love how many players Tony plays on defense. It really helps on hot days like yesterday. We have gotten worn down and played bad on defense in the 4th quarter on days like that so many times in the past. Thought we did not get tired yesterday.
Coley is doing a good job filling in for Carter but he is not as fast and I think there were times he was exposed a bit by the fast FSU skill players. Hope Carter returns soon.
Encouraged that Sterlin was able to make some adjustments to an awful game plan and get the offense working well with an inexperienced QB, a WR/TE group that is really not close to 100%, on the road. I think there is reason to think the offense might be significantly better from this point forward. Going to need to get some banged up players healthy or to have some young players step up. At the least, it looks like the youngsters have the ability to be successful. This area might be the key that determines whether the rest of the season is a success or not.
Thanks to Mark for doing another great job with the tailgate. Thanks to Sonny’s for the excellent BBQ. I had a great time despite the crushing loss. I think better days are ahead. I hope that starts next Saturday.
