sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Sorry I didn’t post last night. Chose to watch more college football and some baseball.
I will start by noting the Fine Mess tailgate was well run and well attended. Guessing we had about 70 there. Everyone is doing a great job especially Nell. Oh Nellie! (Always wanted to post that).
I brought my sister in law and 2 nieces to the game. It was the first time all three of them have been in the dome post renovation. They liked everything about the changes. Especially the center hung scoreboard.
We got to our seats early but there was a dude in one of my seats already. He had a camera. I didn’t have to ask what he was doing there and did not kick him out of my seat because I knew what he was doing and wanted to support it.
He was there to film the SUMB performance just before the start of the game. They film each home game and actually break down the tape much like the football coaches do, looking for gaps in formations, timing issues and other problems. I have run into various others doing the same thing in previous years so there was no need to ask him why he was there. He had a small camera capable of doing high quality videos. Lamented not having a good quality microphone….the built in the camera has is low quality. If you want to do a good deed for SUMB, buy them a good quality microphone.
On the subject of the SUMB….they did a terrific halftime performance based on songs associated with the service academies. And added in ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ for good measure. They are back to 12 tubas, I like what they are doing with free lance bass drum dancing in the NYS formation and they sound better than they have in years. Not bad after essentially talking last year off.
Let’s talk dome renovations a bit more. The sound system continues to sound very good when the woman sings the alma mater and NA (not sure who she is but she can sing). The reason I am not sure who she is is because when she was announced, the PA announcer was unintelligible. Pretty sure anything he says is unintelligible. It has gotten so bad that they have actually started firing up close captioning everything Mr Excitement tries to say something. The quality of the sound when videos are played seems somewhere between these extremes. Not seeing any progress the last couple of games.
I believe the same thing has happened the first possession of the first half for Syracuse. The defense sends a CB blitz at Shrader. Both times, he saw it coming, and checked out of the called play to go to his hour route, which was a dump to the RB who ran to the area vacated by the blitzer. Big gain both times. Almost immediately shut down of aggressive blitzing by the defense both games. IMHO, Garrett’s ability to recognize and take advantage of blitzing is one of the fundamental differences between him and TD.
Haven’t read any posts, haven’t seen a replay yet. With that said, here are some random thoughts on the game….
Another really close, really exciting game. At some point, we surely are going to get really good at finishing these types of games. Practice makes perfect, no?
The last 2 games, it appeared that Shrader got gassed pretty badly towards the end of the game. Either we have to find ways to stop using him so much or find ways to get hm in better condition.
You can already see teams looking to get hits on Garrett regardless of whether it is legal or not. Very reminiscent of how teams messed with Eric. He is taking a lot of big hits each game and even with his big frame and unusual strength, this is surely one of the reasons he is not the same late in games as he is early.
Shrader has shown good judgement on passing plays….i can’t remember seeing him force a pass into a place he shouldn’t throw to. Though he has thrown long into double coverage a couple of times. His throwing accuracy has been okay. He has had a few throws behind his receiver and a few throws that missed their target by a disturbing distance. But generally, if he has a receiver open, he has hit them. His judgement regarding when to run has been very good. So far I haven’t seen him take off and run and give up on a passing play too early. That is pretty rare for a dual threat guy.
No doubt defenses are keying on Sean right now, and that has benefited Garrett greatly. He is doing a good job with handoff fakes and gets a lot of yards running outside after faking a handoff to Sean up the middle.
Thought Wake changed the focus of their defense from Sean to Garrett in the second half and that helped slow our offense down some, but we eventually adjusted and started featuring Sean again.
Shrader’s relatively low completion percentage is partly a function of him making bad throws, partly because our receivers continue to drop too many passes and partly a function of a passing attack that features a significant number of down, low percentage type throws.
We continue to have some issues with the WRs getting open. I believe Jackson has emerged as Garrett’s favorite WR in part because he tends to be open the most. He isn’t very strong but he is fast and gets the job done when he is thrown to. Queeley is getting the opponent’s best CB now and it looks like he is having problems getting open. Really need another WR to step up. Alford is probably that guy. I know he has been banged up. Hope he gets healthy and stays that way. Probably still not 100% where he needs to be physically (muscle and strength) just like Courtney. I have high hopes for Gadsden, but it looks like we are going to have to wait until next season to see what he can do. S Johnson also looks like he is struggling some to get open. Another undersized not super strong guy, even as a senior.
Not sure we are going to get a lot more help at WR this season. Hope we are able to get a big, strong guy who can run as a transfer during the off season. Could really use someone like that.
I think our best bet to get another reliable receiving target this season is Benson. He isn’t getting many targets and the ones he is getting are badly executed slow screens, where the LB covering him has plenty of time to cut him down before he gets past the LOS. Need to use him to attack the middle of the field. Hope we use this resource better the rest of the season.
Losing Tisdale hurt some, but Vet is a veteran, and we survived that loss pretty well. Losing Bleich really hurt. He is solid on pass blocking and run blocking. From what I saw, Ellis did a relatively good job filling in. Pretty amazing for a true frosh OL to do relatively solid work so early in his career. I think it is going to be hard to get him off the field for the next 3 or 4 years. I saw him destroy a couple of guys when he pulled and ran to the other side of the line. He is a bad man.
Losing Servais was the far more serious loss. Ilaoa is going to be a good player some day but he got dominated pretty badly when he came in. He shot gun snaps were very good but his blocking, especially pass blocking, was not. I think one of the big keys for the rest of the season is whether Servais is going to be able to play or not. I pray he is not seriously hurt.
Elmore has elevated his play and is looking good from what I saw live.
Thought the play calling was relatively good last night. One thing Sterlin has been able to do pretty consistently as an OC is establish a strong running game. We certainly are seeing that this year…what a change from last season and the previous couple of years. He is mixing things up; some power runs inside, some sweeps, some tosses. Looks like he is making a concerted effort to get Sean the ball in space, but defenses have seen our success with screens to him in the flat and have taken that away. Loved that call that got our last TD to tie the game up. Fake to Sean running up the middle, fake run by Garrett, then he pulls up and passes to Sean over the middle. We need to use that play a lot more. It will work and when Sean gets the ball with daylight, that is a very good thing for our offense.
Thought Wake was shocked at how physical we were and how hard we came at them with our running game. We got a pretty good push on their DL pretty consistently. They looked soft at LB and safety and we took advantage. Thought their CBs were good at press coverage and we were rarely able to take advantage of the one on one coverage.
Wake had a terrific punter. We….well, we did not. This was one of the key factors that allowed Wake to stay in the game. Not good that we got caught with so little at the punter position. I hope Williams, who might be playing hurt, ,starts showing more than he has to date.
It seemed like every time there was a big decision for Dino to make (and it seemed like he had a ton of tough calls to make), he did the opposite of what I wanted him to do. Yes, I agree with some of my friends. Dino appears to just be bad at this and he needs to do something to address this. The easiest solution would seem to be hire a consultant who specializes in helping him with game day decisions. Get a retired coach or some stats nerd who has an analytics background and can advise him on the same decision based on probabilities. I heard Liberty’s HC reference analytics regarding his decision making. I assume most all major football programs use analytics to help out in this area. Haven’t ever heard our staff talk about it. Do we have any analysts on staff with a background who can help out?
I think both teams used press coverage a lot but it looked like their CBs were a lot more physical and strong than ours (and our WRs were a lot smaller and weaker than theirs). When they threw it long into single man coverage, they had a man open all the time. This was a huge advantage for Wake and another key reason they won. Our CBs are young and probably not 100% physically ready to cover some of the big strong, fast athletes in this conference.
Thought our defense did a great job stopping that weird slow down delayed run attack Wake has used so effectively for years. That was really encouraging. We have some athletes on defense and I think we are one of the fastest defensive units in the conference. The DL holds their own, the LBs are very good and our safeties are getting better. Especially on run defense. Barron has made such a big difference here. Looks like he has taken almost all the PT from Hanna at rover. Hanna got beat bad almost immediately when he got in. Barron is knocking down passes, making big hits, and looking like he is a perfect fit for the rover position. Love his size and athletic ability here. Williams looks like another fine athlete but is a liability on pass defense. Coley looks to me to be doing a pretty good job. Seems to be in the right place at the right time a lot. That one time Garrett Willams was beat deep and the WR changed directions on him, I was really disappointed that the safeties did not hustle back and help him. Not seeing much ball hawking or help from the safeties on passes period. All those good plays Andre used to make are just gone now. Not good.
When I look at the future, I see a bunch more close games. This season is going to be tough on our hearts; Hope we are able to stay relatively healthy and get though the gauntlet we are in the middle of. Wish we had a bye this week. Hard to play Clemson on a short week with them coming off a bye. Doesn’t seem very fair.
But what we have seen is that the ACC is not about being fair. You get breaks by being good. If we want breaks, if we want fair treatment, we have to win more football games on the field. That will bring some respect and maybe some fairer treatment.
I hope that starts Friday night.
I will start by noting the Fine Mess tailgate was well run and well attended. Guessing we had about 70 there. Everyone is doing a great job especially Nell. Oh Nellie! (Always wanted to post that).
I brought my sister in law and 2 nieces to the game. It was the first time all three of them have been in the dome post renovation. They liked everything about the changes. Especially the center hung scoreboard.
We got to our seats early but there was a dude in one of my seats already. He had a camera. I didn’t have to ask what he was doing there and did not kick him out of my seat because I knew what he was doing and wanted to support it.
He was there to film the SUMB performance just before the start of the game. They film each home game and actually break down the tape much like the football coaches do, looking for gaps in formations, timing issues and other problems. I have run into various others doing the same thing in previous years so there was no need to ask him why he was there. He had a small camera capable of doing high quality videos. Lamented not having a good quality microphone….the built in the camera has is low quality. If you want to do a good deed for SUMB, buy them a good quality microphone.
On the subject of the SUMB….they did a terrific halftime performance based on songs associated with the service academies. And added in ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ for good measure. They are back to 12 tubas, I like what they are doing with free lance bass drum dancing in the NYS formation and they sound better than they have in years. Not bad after essentially talking last year off.
Let’s talk dome renovations a bit more. The sound system continues to sound very good when the woman sings the alma mater and NA (not sure who she is but she can sing). The reason I am not sure who she is is because when she was announced, the PA announcer was unintelligible. Pretty sure anything he says is unintelligible. It has gotten so bad that they have actually started firing up close captioning everything Mr Excitement tries to say something. The quality of the sound when videos are played seems somewhere between these extremes. Not seeing any progress the last couple of games.
I believe the same thing has happened the first possession of the first half for Syracuse. The defense sends a CB blitz at Shrader. Both times, he saw it coming, and checked out of the called play to go to his hour route, which was a dump to the RB who ran to the area vacated by the blitzer. Big gain both times. Almost immediately shut down of aggressive blitzing by the defense both games. IMHO, Garrett’s ability to recognize and take advantage of blitzing is one of the fundamental differences between him and TD.
Haven’t read any posts, haven’t seen a replay yet. With that said, here are some random thoughts on the game….
Another really close, really exciting game. At some point, we surely are going to get really good at finishing these types of games. Practice makes perfect, no?
The last 2 games, it appeared that Shrader got gassed pretty badly towards the end of the game. Either we have to find ways to stop using him so much or find ways to get hm in better condition.
You can already see teams looking to get hits on Garrett regardless of whether it is legal or not. Very reminiscent of how teams messed with Eric. He is taking a lot of big hits each game and even with his big frame and unusual strength, this is surely one of the reasons he is not the same late in games as he is early.
Shrader has shown good judgement on passing plays….i can’t remember seeing him force a pass into a place he shouldn’t throw to. Though he has thrown long into double coverage a couple of times. His throwing accuracy has been okay. He has had a few throws behind his receiver and a few throws that missed their target by a disturbing distance. But generally, if he has a receiver open, he has hit them. His judgement regarding when to run has been very good. So far I haven’t seen him take off and run and give up on a passing play too early. That is pretty rare for a dual threat guy.
No doubt defenses are keying on Sean right now, and that has benefited Garrett greatly. He is doing a good job with handoff fakes and gets a lot of yards running outside after faking a handoff to Sean up the middle.
Thought Wake changed the focus of their defense from Sean to Garrett in the second half and that helped slow our offense down some, but we eventually adjusted and started featuring Sean again.
Shrader’s relatively low completion percentage is partly a function of him making bad throws, partly because our receivers continue to drop too many passes and partly a function of a passing attack that features a significant number of down, low percentage type throws.
We continue to have some issues with the WRs getting open. I believe Jackson has emerged as Garrett’s favorite WR in part because he tends to be open the most. He isn’t very strong but he is fast and gets the job done when he is thrown to. Queeley is getting the opponent’s best CB now and it looks like he is having problems getting open. Really need another WR to step up. Alford is probably that guy. I know he has been banged up. Hope he gets healthy and stays that way. Probably still not 100% where he needs to be physically (muscle and strength) just like Courtney. I have high hopes for Gadsden, but it looks like we are going to have to wait until next season to see what he can do. S Johnson also looks like he is struggling some to get open. Another undersized not super strong guy, even as a senior.
Not sure we are going to get a lot more help at WR this season. Hope we are able to get a big, strong guy who can run as a transfer during the off season. Could really use someone like that.
I think our best bet to get another reliable receiving target this season is Benson. He isn’t getting many targets and the ones he is getting are badly executed slow screens, where the LB covering him has plenty of time to cut him down before he gets past the LOS. Need to use him to attack the middle of the field. Hope we use this resource better the rest of the season.
Losing Tisdale hurt some, but Vet is a veteran, and we survived that loss pretty well. Losing Bleich really hurt. He is solid on pass blocking and run blocking. From what I saw, Ellis did a relatively good job filling in. Pretty amazing for a true frosh OL to do relatively solid work so early in his career. I think it is going to be hard to get him off the field for the next 3 or 4 years. I saw him destroy a couple of guys when he pulled and ran to the other side of the line. He is a bad man.
Losing Servais was the far more serious loss. Ilaoa is going to be a good player some day but he got dominated pretty badly when he came in. He shot gun snaps were very good but his blocking, especially pass blocking, was not. I think one of the big keys for the rest of the season is whether Servais is going to be able to play or not. I pray he is not seriously hurt.
Elmore has elevated his play and is looking good from what I saw live.
Thought the play calling was relatively good last night. One thing Sterlin has been able to do pretty consistently as an OC is establish a strong running game. We certainly are seeing that this year…what a change from last season and the previous couple of years. He is mixing things up; some power runs inside, some sweeps, some tosses. Looks like he is making a concerted effort to get Sean the ball in space, but defenses have seen our success with screens to him in the flat and have taken that away. Loved that call that got our last TD to tie the game up. Fake to Sean running up the middle, fake run by Garrett, then he pulls up and passes to Sean over the middle. We need to use that play a lot more. It will work and when Sean gets the ball with daylight, that is a very good thing for our offense.
Thought Wake was shocked at how physical we were and how hard we came at them with our running game. We got a pretty good push on their DL pretty consistently. They looked soft at LB and safety and we took advantage. Thought their CBs were good at press coverage and we were rarely able to take advantage of the one on one coverage.
Wake had a terrific punter. We….well, we did not. This was one of the key factors that allowed Wake to stay in the game. Not good that we got caught with so little at the punter position. I hope Williams, who might be playing hurt, ,starts showing more than he has to date.
It seemed like every time there was a big decision for Dino to make (and it seemed like he had a ton of tough calls to make), he did the opposite of what I wanted him to do. Yes, I agree with some of my friends. Dino appears to just be bad at this and he needs to do something to address this. The easiest solution would seem to be hire a consultant who specializes in helping him with game day decisions. Get a retired coach or some stats nerd who has an analytics background and can advise him on the same decision based on probabilities. I heard Liberty’s HC reference analytics regarding his decision making. I assume most all major football programs use analytics to help out in this area. Haven’t ever heard our staff talk about it. Do we have any analysts on staff with a background who can help out?
I think both teams used press coverage a lot but it looked like their CBs were a lot more physical and strong than ours (and our WRs were a lot smaller and weaker than theirs). When they threw it long into single man coverage, they had a man open all the time. This was a huge advantage for Wake and another key reason they won. Our CBs are young and probably not 100% physically ready to cover some of the big strong, fast athletes in this conference.
Thought our defense did a great job stopping that weird slow down delayed run attack Wake has used so effectively for years. That was really encouraging. We have some athletes on defense and I think we are one of the fastest defensive units in the conference. The DL holds their own, the LBs are very good and our safeties are getting better. Especially on run defense. Barron has made such a big difference here. Looks like he has taken almost all the PT from Hanna at rover. Hanna got beat bad almost immediately when he got in. Barron is knocking down passes, making big hits, and looking like he is a perfect fit for the rover position. Love his size and athletic ability here. Williams looks like another fine athlete but is a liability on pass defense. Coley looks to me to be doing a pretty good job. Seems to be in the right place at the right time a lot. That one time Garrett Willams was beat deep and the WR changed directions on him, I was really disappointed that the safeties did not hustle back and help him. Not seeing much ball hawking or help from the safeties on passes period. All those good plays Andre used to make are just gone now. Not good.
When I look at the future, I see a bunch more close games. This season is going to be tough on our hearts; Hope we are able to stay relatively healthy and get though the gauntlet we are in the middle of. Wish we had a bye this week. Hard to play Clemson on a short week with them coming off a bye. Doesn’t seem very fair.
But what we have seen is that the ACC is not about being fair. You get breaks by being good. If we want breaks, if we want fair treatment, we have to win more football games on the field. That will bring some respect and maybe some fairer treatment.
I hope that starts Friday night.
