My Take

[sutomcat]

i was not expecting to make this post until,this afternoon, but it is a crappy morning in CNY, cold and wet, and my foursome decided to bail.

First, let’s talk about the broadcast. Thought Wes was off some last night. He knows Syracuse well and I thought he was pretty neutral in his comments. Very diplomatic discussing the troubled referees. Thought Tom Luginbill, a recruiting guru ego has been trying to learn to be a broadcaster, was again bad. Unqualified, doesn’t understand the rules, and appeared to be rooting very hard for NC State. Was surprised to find he played (briefly) at z Georgia Tech, where he was a QB and led them to a 1-10 record. Checks out.

They did some nice features and the sideline reporter was good. Thought the pregame, postgame and halftime shows were good. Just couldn’t get past Luginbill and his bumbling, always confused comments.
The cheesy commercials we all know and kind of love are still there. The penetration for Romcomattic products (or whoever it is that makes this stuff) in ACC markets must be extreme.

20 tubas. NC State supports their program in a big way. Nice crowd, they were pretty loud. What is up with the festive gestures dome of the crowd was doing with the arms extended and moving up and down? How did they get heterosexual men to do this? Maybe it is the vinegar they put in their BBQ? Not that there is anything wrong with that.

The NC State band plays before every play SU has the ball, which is normal (and something SU also does). They are supposed to stop when the QB sets his position and starts calling signals. They did this most of the time but had a bunch of ‘accidents’ where they kept playing even after we had snapped the ball. I hope SU makes a formal complaint.

Tony Gibson, the long time State DC, has a reputation for blitzing a lot and he lived up to that last night. Props to the SU OL and RBs for picking up almost all of these. What a vast difference from the way we tried to handle blitzing under the previous coaching staff, where blitzers routinely ran untouched and destroyed our QBs.

The constant blitzing did limit Syracuse to running short, fast developing routes almost exclusively. But this team is very good at running these patterns and moving the ball down the field this way and NC State was okay allowing it to happen. They appeared to mix up their coverages a lot but McCord consistently made the right read and made them pay.

All that blitzing left NC State vulnerable to runs up the middle and we ran LeQuint, who has a way of making one guy miss and getting to the next level, on a regular basis. I think he is still banged up some from UNLV and the rest of the season and is a half step slow but he was a factor and hurt at least one safety by running him over. That guy is a madman.

Pretty much all the SU receivers had man coverage most of the night, which the exception of OG. They tried to man him early and had to stop after three defenders spontaneously combusted.

Props to all the SU receivers for fighting hard against good coverage to get open and make plays. OG, Pena and Gill all did a good job but the main man, once again, was Jackson Meeks. What a misnomer. He was Kyle’s safety net time after time and when we really needed a play, it was usually Jackson that made it. Someone has been touting a new stat for something called ‘big time throws’ and I think they are usually long passes, or passes thrown at the seam of a zone, but that one pass Kyle made to Jackson on that broken play when he threw it just to his right, away from coverage, was really sublime. It had to be in a square 1 foot by 1 foot and Kyle hit it perfectly on the fly.

Spoon in the red zone. Bad things keep happening. My guess is that he is out of shape enough he gets gassed and his issues here are really to that.

I think the biggest testament to how good LeQuint is are the struggles Willis is going through playing the same position. Right now he is good when he breaks outside. Not so good running inside the tackles. He will get there.

I debated whether to post this. I have known about it for a while now. Pretty sure we still haven’t lost a fumble all season. Pretty that this is really rare and something everyone on the offensive unit, especially LeQuint, should be proud of. Hopefully we do not blow the streak against Bye State.

Some of my friends were losing their minds over our insistence on only rushing three guys. And yes, we were surely too conservative here. But I think we really wanted to protect our slowish secondary against long passes by using a lot of Cover 2 and Cover 3 and you can’t do that stuff when you send 5 guys. Facing a young QB, I think we wanted to make him work for yardage and knew of we had safeties back, CJ would be instructed to go with short dumps.

When Coach says some people still have not bought in fully with the culture, I suspect one of the guys he is talking about is Devin Grant. That is all I will say about that right now.

Great hit by Brady on the one KO they returned. Props to him for not sulking and still hustling out there.

Justin Joly scored a TD for NC State. He is a TE out of Iona Prep in NY. Transfer from UConn. The best player on the field in the Pitt game against Cal was Jimmy Scott (#44), a DE from Buffalo. He is going to be a problem in Pittsburgh. So glad this has been addressed for the future.

Will we be ranked this week? I doubt it. But we should be close. I think will some luck, we will sneak into the top 25 after the bye week. It would be really cool if both teams were ranked for this big game. It is nice to have the game have a bit of extra meaning this season. It has been a while since both teams were playing at this level.

War Damn Otto! Hope to see everyone in Pittsburgh!

 

[orangenauburn]

First off love the posts.

In regards to Luginbill, he has never been a Syracuse guy. Has never in my recollection ever given any sort of praise to the program in any sense.

If his dad wasn't who he was you'd most likely never had heard of him.

 

[rocklloyd]

I think Willis doing doing a bit too much east-west dancing at line of scrimmage after he gets ball. He needs to run north south, asap

 

[nycfan]

You're so right about Meeks -- he seems to be the man on nearly every big play (with a few to Gadsden sprinkled in). It's ironic that his sudden explosion over the last 3 games (29 catches for 344 yards) has coincided with his fellow Georgia teammate Haynes being out.

 

[Symphony Steve]

i was not expecting to make this post until,this afternoon, but it is a crappy morning in CNY, cold and wet, and my foursome decided to bail.

First, let’s talk about the broadcast. Thought Wes was off some last night. He knows Syracuse well and I thought he was pretty neutral in his comments. Very diplomatic discussing the troubled referees. Thought Tom Luginbill, a recruiting guru ego has been trying to learn to be a broadcaster, was again bad. Unqualified, doesn’t understand the rules, and appeared to be rooting very hard for NC State. Was surprised to find he played (briefly) at z Georgia Tech, where he was a QB and led them to a 1-10 record. Checks out.

They did some nice features and the sideline reporter was good. Thought the pregame, postgame and halftime shows were good. Just couldn’t get past Luginbill and his bumbling, always confused comments.
The cheesy commercials we all know and kind of love are still there. The penetration for Romcomattic products (or whoever it is that makes this stuff) in ACC markets must be extreme.

20 tubas. NC State supports their program in a big way. Nice crowd, they were pretty loud. What is up with the festive gestures dome of the crowd was doing with the arms extended and moving up and down? How did they get heterosexual men to do this? Maybe it is the vinegar they put in their BBQ? Not that there is anything wrong with that.

The NC State band plays before every play SU has the ball, which is normal (and something SU also does). They are supposed to stop when the QB sets his position and starts calling signals. They did this most of the time but had a bunch of ‘accidents’ where they kept playing even after we had snapped the ball. I hope SU makes a formal complaint.

Tony Gibson, the long time State DC, has a reputation for blitzing a lot and he lived up to that last night. Props to the SU OL and RBs for picking up almost all of these. What a vast difference from the way we tried to handle blitzing under the previous coaching staff, where blitzers routinely ran untouched and destroyed our QBs.

The constant blitzing did limit Syracuse to running short, fast developing routes almost exclusively. But this team is very good at running these patterns and moving the ball down the field this way and NC State was okay allowing it to happen. They appeared to mix up their coverages a lot but McCord consistently made the right read and made them pay.

All that blitzing left NC State vulnerable to runs up the middle and we ran LeQuint, who has a way of making one guy miss and getting to the next level, on a regular basis. I think he is still banged up some from UNLV and the rest of the season and is a half step slow but he was a factor and hurt at least one safety by running him over. That guy is a madman.

Pretty much all the SU receivers had man coverage most of the night, which the exception of OG. They tried to man him early and had to stop after three defenders spontaneously combusted.

Props to all the SU receivers for fighting hard against good coverage to get open and make plays. OG, Pena and Gill all did a good job but the main man, once again, was Jackson Meeks. What a misnomer. He was Kyle’s safety net time after time and when we really needed a play, it was usually Jackson that made it. Someone has been touting a new stat for something called ‘big time throws’ and I think they are usually long passes, or passes thrown at the seam of a zone, but that one pass Kyle made to Jackson on that broken play when he threw it just to his right, away from coverage, was really sublime. It had to be in a square 1 foot by 1 foot and Kyle hit it perfectly on the fly.

Spoon in the red zone. Bad things keep happening. My guess is that he is out of shape enough he gets gassed and his issues here are really to that.

I think the biggest testament to how good LeQuint is are the struggles Willis is going through playing the same position. Right now he is good when he breaks outside. Not so good running inside the tackles. He will get there.

I debated whether to post this. I have known about it for a while now. Pretty sure we still haven’t lost a fumble all season. Pretty that this is really rare and something everyone on the offensive unit, especially LeQuint, should be proud of. Hopefully we do not blow the streak against Bye State.

Some of my friends were losing their minds over our insistence on only rushing three guys. And yes, we were surely too conservative here. But I think we really wanted to protect our slowish secondary against long passes by using a lot of Cover 2 and Cover 3 and you can’t do that stuff when you send 5 guys. Facing a young QB, I think we wanted to make him work for yardage and knew of we had safeties back, CJ would be instructed to go with short dumps.

When Coach says some people still have not bought in fully with the culture, I suspect one of the guys he is talking about is Devin Grant. That is all I will say about that right now.

Great hit by Brady on the one KO they returned. Props to him for not sulking and still hustling out there.

Justin Joly scored a TD for NC State. He is a TE out of Iona Prep in NY. Transfer from UConn. The best player on the field in the Pitt game against Cal was Jimmy Scott (#44), a DE from Buffalo. He is going to be a problem in Pittsburgh. So glad this has been addressed for the future.

Will we be ranked this week? I doubt it. But we should be close. I think will some luck, we will sneak into the top 25 after the bye week. It would be really cool if both teams were ranked for this big game. It is nice to have the game have a bit of extra meaning this season. It has been a while since both teams were playing at this level.

War Damn Otto! Hope to see everyone in Pittsburgh!

It's, of course, routine to like your posts. The posts themselves are not routine. This one is a great example. Covers everything from the announcers to the game, to the games within the game, to the upcoming opponent, to the NYS connections, to, of course, the tuba count.

I honestly can't imagine this site without your work here. Just great analysis.

 

[bballbeadle]

Pretty much all the SU receivers had man coverage most of the night, which the exception of OG. They tried to man him early and had to stop after three defenders spontaneously combusted.

Hilarious! What a fun GIF that would make!

The NC State fans were clearly doing the Go Go Gorilla dance from the 1960’s. The song went like this: “Go, go go. Go gorilla go now.” Pithy lyrics. You would bounce up and down and then move your arms like you were milking a huge cow. My four year old brother could do it to perfection. Much better than those NC State kids.

 

[stuckinbig11]

Thanks, Tom.

 

[OrangeTarheel]

Meeks was preening for the fans after some of his best plays - and the Orange fans specifically I thought - and I loved the attitude. We screamed in support even as he did it for a lot more than when his own number was called toward the end of the game.

Allen is an absolute beast. Second game in a row trucking into the end zone after being stopped initially. It’s funny that he averages around 5 yards per carry because I feel like his run yardage typically goes 1, 1, 2, 20, 1, 25 etc.

McCord makes our offense possible and fun. How will we ever replace him?

The priorities in the game seemed to me to be #1 score points and #2 run clock. And it was OK if we didn’t hit priority one all the time as long as we got priority two. Almost hit 40 minutes time of possession for a second straight game. Reminds me of those Bill Parcells Giants teams with Otis Anderson. I’m so happy Nixon is our OC, we are putting on a clinic for how to run a short yardage offense.

 

[Dmcnabbrules]

Brady Denaburg with the best hit of the year?