The D got a few stops

[upperdeck]

but the 2 it didnt get, one on the roughing the kicker and the other the PI? call could have made life a lot easier.

how can you have a press conf and not ask the question about how dumb it was in that type of game to even be trying for the block when your offense is moving the ball

and on the PI call, havent seen a replay other than dome one,. looked like a pretty good play up top did he grab around the waist? still it seemed like a pretty good holding call should have been called as well?

must be something on that side of the field 2 games in a row a dude catches a INT with green turf in front and falls down, cost one the game and could have hurt us too..

 

[reedny]

There's lots to celebrate after this win (I was there). It was one of most exciting and enjoyable games I've attended at SU. But leaving kudos to other threads for all the offensive achievements, the defense was porous until the stretch run when we shut them down. Fantastic effort.

Now the bad news. We've given up over 1,000 yards in the last two games. Finley - a great QB with a knack for quick strikes - tore us up for a career high. I think Harmon also had a career game. Along with busted coverages, those are not marks of a functioning secondary, even accounting for some incredible needle-threading by Finley/Harmon and a defensive strategy designed to give up short passes to avoid chunk plays.

Mission failure - we gave up both. State WR's got behind our secondary early and often. On some plays, we had no one within 5-10 yards. Scoop seems hobbled. Fredricks (our best cover corner) is nicked up (Ankle?), so those issues forced some of our frosh to play. They got schooled. Our safeties, our corners and our LB's in coverage ... wow so much work to do to patch holes. We need our new talent to develop like oxygen.

Still, great win, good pass rush and amazing plays by Cordy down the stretch.

 

[upperdeck]

Fred isnt full speed so he got beat late, and then stayed out most of the game until we ran out of players. Scoop got beat a couple times too. But the NC st kid has NFL burst so it takes NFL talent to stop him on those deep balls.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

There's lots to celebrate after this win (I was there). It was one of most exciting and enjoyable games I've attended at SU. But leaving kudos to other threads for all the offensive achievements in this game, the defense was porous until the stretch run when we shut them down to ice the win. Fantastic effort.

Now the bad news. We've given up over 1,000 yards in the last two games. Finley - a great QB with a knack for quick strikes - tore us up for a career high. I think Harmon also had a career game. Those are not marks of a functioning secondary, even accounting for some incredible needle-threading by Finley/Harmon and a defensive strategy designed to give up short passes to avoid chunk plays.

Mission failure on that - as we gave up both. State WR's got behind our secondary early and often. On some plays, we had no one within 5-10 yards. Fredricks (our best cover corner) is nicked up (Hamstring?) so that forced some of our frosh to play. They got schooled. Our safeties, our corners and our LB's ... wow so much work to do to patch holes. We need our new talent to develop like oxygen.

Still, great win, good pass rush and amazing plays by Cordy down the stretch.

Yeah, it's fair to say that our defense isn't very good.

That said, it can be opportunistic, and that can be enough.

 

[nzm136]

but the 2 it didnt get, one on the roughing the kicker and the other the PI? call could have made life a lot easier.

how can you have a press conf and not ask the question about how dumb it was in that type of game to even be trying for the block when your offense is moving the ball

and on the PI call, havent seen a replay other than dome one,. looked like a pretty good play up top did he grab around the waist? still it seemed like a pretty good holding call should have been called as well?

must be something on that side of the field 2 games in a row a dude catches a INT with green turf in front and falls down, cost one the game and could have hurt us too..

That roughing to kicker call was endlessly frustrating.

 

[upperdeck]

for the 10-20 writers in the room it was a wasted non question.. asking the same question 3-4 times in different ways and then not asking real questions is pointless.

 

[SaltineWarrior]

Without that roughing call, the game takes on a very different feel. I'm not saying our defense is perfect but that one call, followed up by a great aggressive play by NC State, turned the game. Without it, I think we walk away with a 20+ point win and a relatively calm 4th quarter.

 

[PhatOrange]

but the 2 it didnt get, one on the roughing the kicker and the other the PI? call could have made life a lot easier.

how can you have a press conf and not ask the question about how dumb it was in that type of game to even be trying for the block when your offense is moving the ball

He mentioned it in the locker room interview with Park. Simple really. Paraphrasing he thought they could get to it and in that spot he wanted to take a chance. The roughing he basically said it happens. I think that’s pretty much what he said.

In my mind I don’t think he much cared about the offense moving the ball, he took a chance at an early round kill shot. I liked that cause I know when we’re kicking out of our endzone I’m worried to death when the other team is coming for it.

 

[Cusefan69]

I really liked the aggressive version of Wards defense we saw early yesterday. Also we have some really talented but young corners out there. Expect some bad plays to be sprinkled in among the good plays. They are learning on the fly.

 

[Keger03]

The Defense did as they should. They played pretty well against a NFL QB and NFL WR. They are going to score. I think any other QB for State and it wouldn't have looked nearly that good.

 

[shu 49]

I did see scoop get beat quite a few times but he looked hurt or sore.

 

[nzm136]

He mentioned it in the locker room interview with Park. Simple really. Paraphrasing he thought they could get to it and in that spot he wanted to take a chance. The roughing he basically said it happens. I think that’s pretty much what he said.

In my mind I don’t think he much cared about the offense moving the ball, he took a chance at an early round kill shot. I liked that cause I know when we’re kicking out of our endzone I’m worried to death when the other team is coming for it.

My thought is that we were crushing them. All we had to do was maintain. There was no real reason to take that risk.

I’d be all for it if we were losing, the score was 0-0 and we were underdogs, or if it was a 3-6 game, but not with the lead that we had.

 

[dollarbill44]

I'm concerned about our d line. Basically no pressure the last 2 games other than blitzing.

 

[dollarbill44]

The Defense did as they should. They played pretty well against a NFL QB and NFL WR. They are going to score. I think any other QB for State and it wouldn't have looked nearly that good.

Played pretty well? I guess I was seeing something different. They looked good early and got the big stop at the end, but ncsu made d look pretty bad in between.

 

[upperdeck]

I dont think the D played poorly.. it have up deep balls to a good QB/WR combination because we were being aggressive.. much better than gashing holes to the running game and tons of first downs.

The Dline got decent pressure, that is the best oline in the league and while we didnt sack Finley much we did cause some badly timed throws

 

[reedny]

I dont think the D played poorly.. it have up deep balls to a good QB/WR combination because we were being aggressive.. much better than gashing holes to the running game and tons of first downs.

The Dline got decent pressure, that is the best oline in the league and while we didnt sack Finley much we did cause some badly timed throws

I think we saw two different games.

 

[upperdeck]

3 plays for almost 200 yds is bad

70 plays for 325 in this day and age and our D, holding them to 2 yds per carry on almost 30 attempts is pretty solid.

you cant stop both if you dont have elite someplace on D and we dont. factor in 4 dbs playing hurt and its gonna be a long day if you dont get to the QB every time.

not to say that a few long TD passes can ruin a pretty solid effort on D too.

night and day though the Pitt/Clem games and this one.

 

[PhatOrange]

My thought is that we were crushing them. All we had to do was maintain. There was no real reason to take that risk.

I’d be all for it if we were losing, the score was 0-0 and we were underdogs, or if it was a 3-6 game, but not with the lead that we had.

No, it was the first quarter and a 24-10 lead. We had to do a lot more than just maintain. The first quarter is a good place to take a chance at blocking a punt in the endzone and risk the roughing.

Re the maintain part, Babers said they thought they needed 40 points to even be in the game. They knew it’d be high scoring and they knew they’d havre to score a lot to win.

 

[upperdeck]

it was 24-10 we had the lead and great field position.. the block would be great but getting the ball and scoring is the goal, you have a 1 in what 100 chance of blocking a punt and we now have multiple roughing calls.

we score there and its 31-10 without the block.. i would rather give the D what it had just earned and let them sit for 3-4 min and try to score with our offense..

on top of that our block play is riley so other teams know its coming, if you want to do that then dont have him return 2-3 times in a row so its not so obvious.

 

[nzm136]

No, it was the first quarter and a 24-10 lead. We had to do a lot more than just maintain. The first quarter is a good place to take a chance at blocking a punt in the endzone and risk the roughing.

Re the maintain part, Babers said they thought they needed 40 points to even be in the game. They knew it’d be high scoring and they knew they’d havre to score a lot to win.

To be clear, they had a 14 point lead *in* the first quarter.

And, they were tracking well ahead of the 40 point threshold that you mentioned. The first quarter wasn’t even over, and they were 60% of the way there.

And, they were looking at starting field position around the 50 after having scored on the last 4 drives.

I’m not seeing a case for anything other than “maintain.” Randomly betting the house when the game is in control is not a good move.

 

[anomander]

I'm concerned about our d line. Basically no pressure the last 2 games other than blitzing.

DL wasn't that bad. There were more than a handful of plays we were really close to getting a sack. Finley was getting crushed and it was mostly by the DL. I'm not worried about them one bit.

 

[PhatOrange]

To be clear, they had a 14 point lead *in* the first quarter.

And, they were tracking well ahead of the 40 point threshold that you mentioned.

And, they were looking at starting field position around the 50 after having scored on the last 4 drives.

I’m not seeing a case for anything other than “maintain.” Randomly betting the house when the game is in control is not a good move.

Because it’s the first quarter of a football game. There’s not tracking or maintaining anything at that stage of a football game. Things turn on a dime. Syracuse’s offense goes in the tank for stretches of games. You remember the Pitt game right?

Getting the ball at the 50 at that point means nothing.

 

[nzm136]

Because it’s the first quarter of a football game. There’s not tracking or maintaining anything at that stage of a football game. Things turn on a dime. Syracuse’s offense goes in the tank for stretches of games. You remember the Pitt game right?

Getting the ball at the 50 at that point means nothing.

That’s where we disagree. Things are far more likely to turn on a dime if you do something overly aggressive.

And I don’t think that it’s fair to discount incredible field position and a humming offense. The odds of us walking away with 3 or more points were great.

And lastly, I absolutely disagree about there not being a maintain anything in the 1st quarter. I guess there’s no way to prove it one way or the other, so we might have to agree to disagree, but there are good risks, and there are bad risks.

IMHO, you take on more risk when your ship is sinking because it increases the likelihood of you winning. (A similar concept is used in options trading when valuing options.) You don’t engage in unnecessary risk when you’re winning. (Similar concepts are used in loan writing.) But it’s also probably not a great idea to change horses mid stream, which is why I think it’s best to maintain a strategy vs. get extremely conservative.

Net-net, dialing up the intensity seemed like an unnessary risk, and dialing back the intensity seemed like it would have interfered w/ the team’s flow (look what happened in the game when we lost our flow). Spitting the baby and holding steady seemed (and still seems) prudent to me.

 

[Ish88888]

Without that roughing call, the game takes on a very different feel. I'm not saying our defense is perfect but that one call, followed up by a great aggressive play by NC State, turned the game. Without it, I think we walk away with a 20+ point win and a relatively calm 4th quarter.

"Roughing call"? That was 100% roughing the punter, 15 yard version. There wasn't much subjectively to the call. Totally dumb for us to go afrer the punt and not take the field position.

 

[PhatOrange]

That’s where we disagree. Things are far more likely to turn on a dime if you do something overly aggressive.

And I don’t think that it’s fair to discount incredible field position and a humming offense. The odds of us walking away with 3 or more points were great.

And lastly, I absolutely disagree about there not being a maintain anything in the 1st quarter. I guess there’s no way to prove it one way or the other, so we might have to agree to disagree, but there are good risks, and there are bad risks.

IMHO, you take on more risk when your ship is sinking because it increases the likelihood of you winning. (A similar concept is used in options trading when valuing options.) You don’t engage in unnecessary risk when you’re winning. (Similar concepts are used in loan writing.) But it’s also probably not a great idea to change horses mid stream, which is why I think it’s best to maintain a strategy vs. get extremely conservative.

Net-net, dialing up the intensity seemed like an unnessary risk, and dialing back the intensity seemed like it would have interfered w/ the team’s flow (look what happened in the game when we lost our flow). Spitting the baby and holding steady seemed (and still seems) prudent to me.

We could have just as easily taken the ball at the 50 and gone three and out. We could have also not roughed the kicker. We could have fumbled who knows, so we’ll just agree to disagree then. I can’t rationalize being conservative in the first quarter of a football game.

*edit* the block may have been early in the second Q but it doesn’t change my mind.