Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2334430, member: 289"] - We came out slinging from the “empty backfield”. It illustrated the limitations of the empty backfield. The quarterback has no protection and all he can do is “throw darts” to the first guy who looks open. It’s a formation that limits you to short passes- unless you send your quarterback on a roll-out to avoid the rush, which means he has to throw on the run, which makes it hard to throw accurately far downfield. Pat Narduzzi devised a blitz designed to tear up the empty set and it did so. Dungey got sacked three times for 20 yards lost and was forced into some bad throws until the second half adjustments got him back on track. - I loved the adjustments, especially the throws to Pierce over the middle. But I kept wondering when we were going back to our bread and butter: Ismael and Phillips. Pitts’ concertation on them opened up the running game the passes to Pierce. They had to be shifting to stop those threats and it should have opened things up for our best options. We threw once down the stretch to Ismael and it produced what turned out to be the winning touchdown. But we could have done more of that. There’s still a sense that once we start doing something, we keep doing it beyond its effectiveness and are slow to exploit what it opens up. - The shovel pass on 4th down was a terrible play call. The idea of a shovel pass is that the defense is going to spread out to cover other options so a pass to the middle might surprise them and leave the receiver with room to maneuver. On 4th and 1, everybody going to be in the box and the receiver is going to think he’s in grand central Station during the rush hour. it’s not even clear Pierce would have gotten the first down if he’s caught it. And it’s not a “Safe” play I it gets intercepted, which could easily have happened. - We still make too many mistakes. Today they were primarily 5 yard penalties but they came at odd and critical times, out of time outs, on third or 4th downs, etc. Often it’s stupid things like lining up wrong or not getting off the field fast enough when being replaced. - There were some strange no-calls when we seemed to have caught Pitt jumping or substituted. There were also some strange spots. - Does the Clemson-Wake Forest score tell us about Clemson, or does it tell us about Wake [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?