sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Let’s start with a discussion of the fabled SyraCruz tailgate. It was another large turnout. I will defer to Jeremy but it seemed to me that we had somewhere in the 150-200 range. There were a lot of options out there; something for everyone. Impressive given that it was dark and raining hard for much of the tailgate.
I had a different perspective for this one as I spent most of the tailgate behind the grill. If you went to the tailgate, and had a burger, it was probably grilled by me. Thanks for Jeremy’s mom, Nell, and Kim and Rich for helping supply me with burgers, cheese, rolls, cold drinks, inventory status reports and wisdom.
The team that puts the tailgates on is dedicated, knowledgeable and very professional. Things have come a long way in the last 20 years. Massive grills, adult drink mixers, generators, lighting, propane heaters, lots of eating tables, and tons of beverages (many of the adult type).
I headed up to the dome about an hour before the game. Marveled at the temporary deck built next to the Syracuse player entrance (used by basketball) for the ACC Network visit. FSU had a surprisingly good turnout of fans. Most were in the visitor corner but some sat scattered throughout the dome.
I connected to Wi-Fi when i got to the dome. Had heard reports it was getting better. Have seen all the access points added recently to the walls above the seats on the 300 level. Was hoping that maybe….just maybe the new system had been turned on, at least in my area. It worked far better than my cell provider initially but as the crowd grew, performance degraded to the usual levels. Hoping we can get it in place sometime before basketball season ends.
SUMB had 10 tubas. It appears that we are losing 3 seniors that play tubas. Not good. SUMB was terrific, as usual.
The students were late arriving. Yes even for an 8 pm game. Sometime around the start of the 2nd quarter, the sections for the students on the upper level finally filled up. Alas, the vast majority of them left by the end of halftime. Still have to give the students a lot of credit for showing up, and providing a ton of noise and enthusiasm. This was a special group and I wish the team gave them more to cheer about.
Not sure what the announced attendance was. Haven’t been able to read anything about the game yet. Still too painful. It was a good crowd. IMHO, there were definitely over 40K there. Maybe 42-43. Great to see so many come out to support a team that had lost 3 straight.
Let’s talk about the game. It was great to see Garrett Shrader out there fully dressed and warming up. Props to him for giving it a go. If I know him, he did everything in his power to get back out there. But the magic was gone and the offense was a disastrous failure all game long.
Why?
I think the fundamental problem was that the FSU DL dominated the SU OL pretty badly. They had a group of big fast strong guys that gave us fits. Maybe even more so than Clemson’s DL. I watched Verse against Bergeron a number of times. He is really quick and agile and was also able to bull rush Matthew. MB actually did a pretty darned good job against Verse. Seemed like everyone broke down at one time or another. We started with Cruz at RT. I thought he did a decent job but after a few series, the staff brought in Ellis at OG and Davis moved to RT. Didn’t seem to make a difference. Sorry to see Ellis go down with what looked like a serious injury. Sigh.
Pass play after pass block Garrett had pressure almost immediately. Looked like FSU used a variety of blitzes to supplement the pressure from their DL but Garrett didn’t seem sharp and missed his bailout pressure release pass a lot. And while we were able to open holes occasionally on running plays, most had nowhere for Sean to run to and he was forced to break outside, where FSU’s good team speed prevented any damage.
We tried some RPO but it seemed like FSU knew exactly what we were going to do and had someone in the backfield blowing up the play time after time. We just couldn’t do anything right and had no answers to get FSU off balance.
Mang continued to struggle blocking and Hoeh, who is a key guy picking up blitzes and serving as the lead blocker on run plays, just got beaten on play after play. If he didn’t miss the block, he committed a penalty. The SU offense committed an amazing number of penalties. Most were holds I think. From what I could see, many were legit. We just could not execute our blocks.
To make matters worse, even on the plays where Garrett had time, the SU WRs really struggled to get open. And on the rare occasions where a receiver was open, Garrett usually threw a poor pass. It was very ugly.
On defense, it looked to me as though FSU knew we were vulnerable to runs up the middle and limited their offense to two plays. If our safeties split out wide to support our CBs, they ran it up the middle and got good yardage consistently. If our safeties cheated inside, they threw screens to their WRs, always split wide. Our CBs knew they had no safety help and played this conservatively, giving FSU a 5 yard gain whenever they wanted it. Later, as we fell behind and had to start making stops, we played our CBs up more and to their credit, they have a number of plays to hold FSU to a small loss or no gain. But if we missed the tackle, and we did a couple of times, they had a TD.
The way you stop this approach is to have 2 solid CBs who can cover and tackle. With Garrett and a healthy Duce, this would not work. But Duce was not 100%. He missed some drives, played when he could play through the pain of whatever his injury is, but was a shadow of his normal self. Johnson actually did a good job on his side. They attacked Duce more and when Duce was out, they really went after Jeremiah, who is going to be a fine player down the road, but is playing now when he is not physically ready. And it showed.
Props to Darton for playing hurt. No Linton again. Big loss. Geer makes some plays now but again, it a year away from being truly ready. Jones was terrific again. He is having a great year and it is a joy to watch him compete. Wax is another guy playing hurt and doing a good job given that. McDonald has struggled since he returned. I suspect he is not 100% either. Sparrow probably deserves more playing time.
FSU almost never threw it down field and I think that is largely due to Carter. Of course, they had no need to do it so why bother? I think Barron is doing a good job at rover and gets a little better every game. It is largely because of him that we have not had major issues with TEs since the Purdue game.
Clark has been hurt for a couple of games. He returned to play some last night. Made some plays, it was nice to see him out there again. Thought Simmons had his best game at SU and made 4 or 5 terrific plays. Think he got most of the PT when Clark went down. Coley replaced Carter and played well. Hate to see Carter get hurt (it looked bad) but was glad Eric had a chance to get some PT for his last home game.
Our defense keeps losing starters but they keep fighting and I think they actually played pretty well last night. We have reached a point where the injuries have taken out almost everyone, and the remaining players still playing are playing hurt. What the hell is going on? This doesn’t seem normal. We might need to reevaluate how we are doing our strength and conditioning.
The offense is the biggest issue. We can’t move the ball, can’t even get first downs or simple completions. Struggle to have a single 3 and outer drive without committing one or two penalties. I fear any improvement Garrett made recovering from his injury has been lost. It looks like Garrett’s ability to save broken plays with his athleticism has been lost and that we relied on that far more than any of us thought. Without it, we have nothing. Even Gadsden has suddenly forgotten how to catch the ball and lost his confidence.
It would be great if we could rely on great special teams play to rescue us from this mess but that is not the case. Courtney seems intent on setting a record for the most fair catches on punts inside the 10 yard line. I thought the rule was never fair catch inside the 10. Does Courtney have that rule backwards? Max has regressed significantly and has mastered punting short. low line drives directly at the returner. Or shanks. He did get one good punt last night but I think he is like 1 for 16 kicking good punts the last couple of games. Even Andre missed a 52 yard FG badly.
I don’t blame Dino for going for the on sides kick to start the second half. it was a desperate move but it was a desperate time, and I think he knew if they got the ball and marched down the field for a TD, the game was over. Maybe, just maybe if we recovered the kick and scored, the kids would start to believe and a miracle could happen.
It is hard to be optimistic about the last 2 games. Wake is faltering too but nothing like our death spiral. BC has been terrible almost all season but even they look much improved on offense just in time for us.
I hope we have a surprise left before the season ends.
I had a different perspective for this one as I spent most of the tailgate behind the grill. If you went to the tailgate, and had a burger, it was probably grilled by me. Thanks for Jeremy’s mom, Nell, and Kim and Rich for helping supply me with burgers, cheese, rolls, cold drinks, inventory status reports and wisdom.
The team that puts the tailgates on is dedicated, knowledgeable and very professional. Things have come a long way in the last 20 years. Massive grills, adult drink mixers, generators, lighting, propane heaters, lots of eating tables, and tons of beverages (many of the adult type).
I headed up to the dome about an hour before the game. Marveled at the temporary deck built next to the Syracuse player entrance (used by basketball) for the ACC Network visit. FSU had a surprisingly good turnout of fans. Most were in the visitor corner but some sat scattered throughout the dome.
I connected to Wi-Fi when i got to the dome. Had heard reports it was getting better. Have seen all the access points added recently to the walls above the seats on the 300 level. Was hoping that maybe….just maybe the new system had been turned on, at least in my area. It worked far better than my cell provider initially but as the crowd grew, performance degraded to the usual levels. Hoping we can get it in place sometime before basketball season ends.
SUMB had 10 tubas. It appears that we are losing 3 seniors that play tubas. Not good. SUMB was terrific, as usual.
The students were late arriving. Yes even for an 8 pm game. Sometime around the start of the 2nd quarter, the sections for the students on the upper level finally filled up. Alas, the vast majority of them left by the end of halftime. Still have to give the students a lot of credit for showing up, and providing a ton of noise and enthusiasm. This was a special group and I wish the team gave them more to cheer about.
Not sure what the announced attendance was. Haven’t been able to read anything about the game yet. Still too painful. It was a good crowd. IMHO, there were definitely over 40K there. Maybe 42-43. Great to see so many come out to support a team that had lost 3 straight.
Let’s talk about the game. It was great to see Garrett Shrader out there fully dressed and warming up. Props to him for giving it a go. If I know him, he did everything in his power to get back out there. But the magic was gone and the offense was a disastrous failure all game long.
Why?
I think the fundamental problem was that the FSU DL dominated the SU OL pretty badly. They had a group of big fast strong guys that gave us fits. Maybe even more so than Clemson’s DL. I watched Verse against Bergeron a number of times. He is really quick and agile and was also able to bull rush Matthew. MB actually did a pretty darned good job against Verse. Seemed like everyone broke down at one time or another. We started with Cruz at RT. I thought he did a decent job but after a few series, the staff brought in Ellis at OG and Davis moved to RT. Didn’t seem to make a difference. Sorry to see Ellis go down with what looked like a serious injury. Sigh.
Pass play after pass block Garrett had pressure almost immediately. Looked like FSU used a variety of blitzes to supplement the pressure from their DL but Garrett didn’t seem sharp and missed his bailout pressure release pass a lot. And while we were able to open holes occasionally on running plays, most had nowhere for Sean to run to and he was forced to break outside, where FSU’s good team speed prevented any damage.
We tried some RPO but it seemed like FSU knew exactly what we were going to do and had someone in the backfield blowing up the play time after time. We just couldn’t do anything right and had no answers to get FSU off balance.
Mang continued to struggle blocking and Hoeh, who is a key guy picking up blitzes and serving as the lead blocker on run plays, just got beaten on play after play. If he didn’t miss the block, he committed a penalty. The SU offense committed an amazing number of penalties. Most were holds I think. From what I could see, many were legit. We just could not execute our blocks.
To make matters worse, even on the plays where Garrett had time, the SU WRs really struggled to get open. And on the rare occasions where a receiver was open, Garrett usually threw a poor pass. It was very ugly.
On defense, it looked to me as though FSU knew we were vulnerable to runs up the middle and limited their offense to two plays. If our safeties split out wide to support our CBs, they ran it up the middle and got good yardage consistently. If our safeties cheated inside, they threw screens to their WRs, always split wide. Our CBs knew they had no safety help and played this conservatively, giving FSU a 5 yard gain whenever they wanted it. Later, as we fell behind and had to start making stops, we played our CBs up more and to their credit, they have a number of plays to hold FSU to a small loss or no gain. But if we missed the tackle, and we did a couple of times, they had a TD.
The way you stop this approach is to have 2 solid CBs who can cover and tackle. With Garrett and a healthy Duce, this would not work. But Duce was not 100%. He missed some drives, played when he could play through the pain of whatever his injury is, but was a shadow of his normal self. Johnson actually did a good job on his side. They attacked Duce more and when Duce was out, they really went after Jeremiah, who is going to be a fine player down the road, but is playing now when he is not physically ready. And it showed.
Props to Darton for playing hurt. No Linton again. Big loss. Geer makes some plays now but again, it a year away from being truly ready. Jones was terrific again. He is having a great year and it is a joy to watch him compete. Wax is another guy playing hurt and doing a good job given that. McDonald has struggled since he returned. I suspect he is not 100% either. Sparrow probably deserves more playing time.
FSU almost never threw it down field and I think that is largely due to Carter. Of course, they had no need to do it so why bother? I think Barron is doing a good job at rover and gets a little better every game. It is largely because of him that we have not had major issues with TEs since the Purdue game.
Clark has been hurt for a couple of games. He returned to play some last night. Made some plays, it was nice to see him out there again. Thought Simmons had his best game at SU and made 4 or 5 terrific plays. Think he got most of the PT when Clark went down. Coley replaced Carter and played well. Hate to see Carter get hurt (it looked bad) but was glad Eric had a chance to get some PT for his last home game.
Our defense keeps losing starters but they keep fighting and I think they actually played pretty well last night. We have reached a point where the injuries have taken out almost everyone, and the remaining players still playing are playing hurt. What the hell is going on? This doesn’t seem normal. We might need to reevaluate how we are doing our strength and conditioning.
The offense is the biggest issue. We can’t move the ball, can’t even get first downs or simple completions. Struggle to have a single 3 and outer drive without committing one or two penalties. I fear any improvement Garrett made recovering from his injury has been lost. It looks like Garrett’s ability to save broken plays with his athleticism has been lost and that we relied on that far more than any of us thought. Without it, we have nothing. Even Gadsden has suddenly forgotten how to catch the ball and lost his confidence.
It would be great if we could rely on great special teams play to rescue us from this mess but that is not the case. Courtney seems intent on setting a record for the most fair catches on punts inside the 10 yard line. I thought the rule was never fair catch inside the 10. Does Courtney have that rule backwards? Max has regressed significantly and has mastered punting short. low line drives directly at the returner. Or shanks. He did get one good punt last night but I think he is like 1 for 16 kicking good punts the last couple of games. Even Andre missed a 52 yard FG badly.
I don’t blame Dino for going for the on sides kick to start the second half. it was a desperate move but it was a desperate time, and I think he knew if they got the ball and marched down the field for a TD, the game was over. Maybe, just maybe if we recovered the kick and scored, the kids would start to believe and a miracle could happen.
It is hard to be optimistic about the last 2 games. Wake is faltering too but nothing like our death spiral. BC has been terrible almost all season but even they look much improved on offense just in time for us.
I hope we have a surprise left before the season ends.
