sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Sorry it is so late. Went to the game, didn't get home until late on Sunday, work, yadda, yadda.
Tailgate was a great time. Tons of food, everyone came through bigtime, kudos to TexanMark for doing a great job coordinating. Out of all the stuff there, my favorite was the grits with shrimp. It had also had bacon, cajun spices and a 'whole lot' of butter. Met a bunch of people on the board, mostly lurkers, for the first time and renewed acquiantences with a bunch more.
Stadium is nice but as Mark said, it is getting a bit outdated. The replay scoreboards are grainy, bad resolution and they do not have ribbon scoreboards. Not a lot of game stat info available. Crowd was very small. Turnstile count was reported to be 23800 or so. I would say about 8K of that number were SU fans. As always, our fans were louder than theirs. USF is the 8th largest public university in the country (I believe their enrollment is 47K+). They had maybe 6K of students there...they were the only USF fans making noise.
We had a good time talking trash with USF fans on the way to the stadium, walking in the stadium and in our seats. They tend to be good natured and have a sense of humor. Much nicer place to visit than say East Hartford, where for some reason there is a high concentration of bitter and angry fans that have mental issues.
Didn't try any of the food at the stadium but it looked overpriced and very generic.
Strange, strange game. SU had been dominant stopping the run game the last few weeks. Against USF, they couldn't stop a simple option draw play all game long. USF is actually quite good at running the game, especially with Lamar playing RB but still...it is extremely disturbing that we were unable to stop the run, and really had no answer to this all game long. Though the running plays drifted more to QB draws and Daniels scrambling for long gains on passing plays in the second half.
Credit to the USF OL for dominating the SU DL and holding off the SU linebackers. They are the first team to do this well in quite a while. Credit to Lamar and Daniels for being very fast and athletic once they got into the open field.
The natural response to the problems with run defense would have been to put 8 or 9 men in the box and dare USF to pass. Given USF hasn't been that great passing the ball and doesn't have great WRs, I am surprised we didn't do more of this, relying on Daniels' issues throwing the ball downfield and his poor judgment to get the ball back. We did this to some degree in the 2nd half, and had some success with it. but I think the game plan to play them neutrally, use cover 2 and try to avoid giving up big plays was ill conceived.
Wasn't happy with the way we defended in passing situations either. The good news is that we got a lot of pressure on Daniels and did it consistently. The bad news is that we did a really bad job keeping the pocket intact and keeping Daniels in it. He broke out of the pocket right up the middle or run outside of it whenever he wanted, and had his choice of a long gain on a run or a long gain on a short pass. I think with a QB like Daniels, you have to put a spy on him, keep him in front of Daniels and force him to pass the ball, giving up some pass rush in the process.
The issue of defending a mobile QB is really important given we are going to see one in all 4 remaining games (I assume UM's QB, who has been injured twice already, will be healthy for our game).
Wished we had stayed with the 4 WR set we used so successfully on offense against UConn again against USF but instead, we used 2 and 3 WR sets, even used 2 TEs at times and tried to attack South Florida with a power running attack for most of the first half. It was successful, we moved the ball, but as we have found in past years, it is really hard to score TDs with this kind of an offense. You make a single mistake, an offsides, a hold, a missed block, get into a passing situation, and have to punt. That happened some along with continued problems in the red zone, leading to a 3 point first half.
USF has a terrible secondary and cannot rush the QB. You can't ignore that. They have no quality CBs. Putting only 2 WRs out there helps mask this weakness...really wish we used 4 WRs all game long. Not calling for passing the ball all the time...I realize you need to establish the run and continue to use the run to open up the passing game. But you can run successfully out of sets with 4 WRs, as we have seen much of the season.
Also was disappointed with the pace of play in the first half. Didn't see the urgency that this offense seems to thrive on.
In the 2nd half, I thought we went back to spreading the field more, definitely executed better, definitely increased the pace of play. Nassib threw the ball better, mistakes were minimal and we saw one of the most remarkable turn arounds for a unit in SU history. The offense went from 3 points to 34 points and seemed to score a touchdown just about every time they had the ball.
We really attacked the sidelines against USF in the 2nd half, in direct contrast to the UConn game, when we were most effective throwing the ball over the middle. I attribute that to the good play of the UConn CBs and the awful play of the USF CBs.
Cincinnati runs the ball really well and pass the ball decently. They are 19th in rushing offense and 32nd in total offense. Their defense is excellent against the run, as usual, ranking 25th in rushing defense. They struggle against the pass, ranking 89th in passing defense. This weakness is exaserbated by the injury to Walter Stewart, who was by far their best pass rusher.
They are great at returning punts (17th nationally) and kickoffs (20th nationally) and have a fine placekicker and punter.
We should be able to move the ball on them in the air and score some points. The keys to the game, I think, are to neutralize their special teams return units by doing a great job with coverage (we have improved here by leaps and bounds as the season has progresseD), stop the UC rushing game, keep Legaux in the pocket and force UC to beat us by passing the ball. Legaux appears to have an extremely weak and erratic arm. He is not good at all throwing the ball.
The two most memorable drives of the Marrone era, IMHO, were the 98 yard TD drive to ice the win against USF in Tampa 2 years ago using a power rushing attack (perhaps that was what DM was thinking of when he devised the game plan) and the 75 yard TD drive with no timeouts left to win the game on Saturday. Great moment for the team, very encouraging to play so poorly in so many ways yet still find a way to win the game. It is something that happened a lot in the mid 1990s but has rarely happened in recent years.
The USF drive in 2010 led to a bowl game. Let's hope the 2012 drive does the same.
Tailgate was a great time. Tons of food, everyone came through bigtime, kudos to TexanMark for doing a great job coordinating. Out of all the stuff there, my favorite was the grits with shrimp. It had also had bacon, cajun spices and a 'whole lot' of butter. Met a bunch of people on the board, mostly lurkers, for the first time and renewed acquiantences with a bunch more.
Stadium is nice but as Mark said, it is getting a bit outdated. The replay scoreboards are grainy, bad resolution and they do not have ribbon scoreboards. Not a lot of game stat info available. Crowd was very small. Turnstile count was reported to be 23800 or so. I would say about 8K of that number were SU fans. As always, our fans were louder than theirs. USF is the 8th largest public university in the country (I believe their enrollment is 47K+). They had maybe 6K of students there...they were the only USF fans making noise.
We had a good time talking trash with USF fans on the way to the stadium, walking in the stadium and in our seats. They tend to be good natured and have a sense of humor. Much nicer place to visit than say East Hartford, where for some reason there is a high concentration of bitter and angry fans that have mental issues.
Didn't try any of the food at the stadium but it looked overpriced and very generic.
Strange, strange game. SU had been dominant stopping the run game the last few weeks. Against USF, they couldn't stop a simple option draw play all game long. USF is actually quite good at running the game, especially with Lamar playing RB but still...it is extremely disturbing that we were unable to stop the run, and really had no answer to this all game long. Though the running plays drifted more to QB draws and Daniels scrambling for long gains on passing plays in the second half.
Credit to the USF OL for dominating the SU DL and holding off the SU linebackers. They are the first team to do this well in quite a while. Credit to Lamar and Daniels for being very fast and athletic once they got into the open field.
The natural response to the problems with run defense would have been to put 8 or 9 men in the box and dare USF to pass. Given USF hasn't been that great passing the ball and doesn't have great WRs, I am surprised we didn't do more of this, relying on Daniels' issues throwing the ball downfield and his poor judgment to get the ball back. We did this to some degree in the 2nd half, and had some success with it. but I think the game plan to play them neutrally, use cover 2 and try to avoid giving up big plays was ill conceived.
Wasn't happy with the way we defended in passing situations either. The good news is that we got a lot of pressure on Daniels and did it consistently. The bad news is that we did a really bad job keeping the pocket intact and keeping Daniels in it. He broke out of the pocket right up the middle or run outside of it whenever he wanted, and had his choice of a long gain on a run or a long gain on a short pass. I think with a QB like Daniels, you have to put a spy on him, keep him in front of Daniels and force him to pass the ball, giving up some pass rush in the process.
The issue of defending a mobile QB is really important given we are going to see one in all 4 remaining games (I assume UM's QB, who has been injured twice already, will be healthy for our game).
Wished we had stayed with the 4 WR set we used so successfully on offense against UConn again against USF but instead, we used 2 and 3 WR sets, even used 2 TEs at times and tried to attack South Florida with a power running attack for most of the first half. It was successful, we moved the ball, but as we have found in past years, it is really hard to score TDs with this kind of an offense. You make a single mistake, an offsides, a hold, a missed block, get into a passing situation, and have to punt. That happened some along with continued problems in the red zone, leading to a 3 point first half.
USF has a terrible secondary and cannot rush the QB. You can't ignore that. They have no quality CBs. Putting only 2 WRs out there helps mask this weakness...really wish we used 4 WRs all game long. Not calling for passing the ball all the time...I realize you need to establish the run and continue to use the run to open up the passing game. But you can run successfully out of sets with 4 WRs, as we have seen much of the season.
Also was disappointed with the pace of play in the first half. Didn't see the urgency that this offense seems to thrive on.
In the 2nd half, I thought we went back to spreading the field more, definitely executed better, definitely increased the pace of play. Nassib threw the ball better, mistakes were minimal and we saw one of the most remarkable turn arounds for a unit in SU history. The offense went from 3 points to 34 points and seemed to score a touchdown just about every time they had the ball.
We really attacked the sidelines against USF in the 2nd half, in direct contrast to the UConn game, when we were most effective throwing the ball over the middle. I attribute that to the good play of the UConn CBs and the awful play of the USF CBs.
Cincinnati runs the ball really well and pass the ball decently. They are 19th in rushing offense and 32nd in total offense. Their defense is excellent against the run, as usual, ranking 25th in rushing defense. They struggle against the pass, ranking 89th in passing defense. This weakness is exaserbated by the injury to Walter Stewart, who was by far their best pass rusher.
They are great at returning punts (17th nationally) and kickoffs (20th nationally) and have a fine placekicker and punter.
We should be able to move the ball on them in the air and score some points. The keys to the game, I think, are to neutralize their special teams return units by doing a great job with coverage (we have improved here by leaps and bounds as the season has progresseD), stop the UC rushing game, keep Legaux in the pocket and force UC to beat us by passing the ball. Legaux appears to have an extremely weak and erratic arm. He is not good at all throwing the ball.
The two most memorable drives of the Marrone era, IMHO, were the 98 yard TD drive to ice the win against USF in Tampa 2 years ago using a power rushing attack (perhaps that was what DM was thinking of when he devised the game plan) and the 75 yard TD drive with no timeouts left to win the game on Saturday. Great moment for the team, very encouraging to play so poorly in so many ways yet still find a way to win the game. It is something that happened a lot in the mid 1990s but has rarely happened in recent years.
The USF drive in 2010 led to a bowl game. Let's hope the 2012 drive does the same.
