SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- After the LSU game, it seemed we had a coming team. We’d won three bowls in four years from 2010-2013 with limited talent. We went 3-9 last year due to a ridiculous wave of injuries. Now we were really assembling some weapons: Ismael, Estime, Phillips, Fredericks, and a quarterback who could really get them the ball in circumstances that would maximize what they could do with it. We’d won three in a row despite some more injuries and stood toe to toe with a top ten team despite having to use a fifth string quarterback. Nobody else on our schedule looked scary after that and we were going to short out some scoreboards with all of our new weapons. It has now become obvious that, while we have players who may someday be part of a really good Syracuse team, they aren’t on one this year.
- Part of the problem is that it’s a very young team overall, with freshman and sophomores in key positons all over the place. That means mistakes, often at key points during games. Even Zaire Franklin, who his halfway through his true sophomore season, grabbed that facemask to extend Virginia’s fourth quarter drive. It was a true freshman that hit the receiver out of bounds last week. And youth is portably also the reason we could come out as fault as we did against USF. I know there’s been a lot of frustration here, basically since the end of the McNabb Era. But we simply aren’t “back” yet. It’s going to take more time.
- One area of the team that isn’t young, at least not in the starting line-up, is the offensive line. We have three seniors and two juniors up there. I’m very disappointed with their performance this year. They just haven’t been able to open the holes for conventional running plays, which is why we keep running the option. Virginia wasn’t supposed to have much of a pass rush. But Dungey didn’t have much time to throw, which is why we were unable to get anything deep. Dungey only threw for 150 yards in a three overtime game against a team giving up 273 yards passing a game.
- We were shut out for the third straight third period and scored three points in the second half. That’s not a formula for victory.
- I thought when we went up 24-14 that the defense has made a nice comeback from the USF game. But they couldn’t stop anything after that. It was one long Virginia drive after another. Again, we could not over the outside plays. The point of getting small linebackers is that they will be quick and cover territory. But USF beat us to the corner all the time. Virginia initially tried going right at us and we stuffed that. But when they started going outside, we couldn’t stop them.
- Our defensive backs continue to not turn around to look for the ball. That’s why we surrendered that TD after the personal foul had forced them to start at the 40 instead of the 25. It was just a shame we were unable to advantage of that situation.
- Coach Shafer said he wanted Eric Dungey’s running plays to be “in the single digits”. He ran the ball 18 times and was again our leading rusher with 85 yards. He’s a weapon but when he has the ball Jordan Fredericks, Erv Phillips, Brisley Estime and Steve Ismael don’t have it and they can do more with it. A great quarterback is a conduit for the ball from the center to the playmakers. If he’s carrying the ball all the time, the playmakers can’t get into the game. Dungey is a “scoring point guard” on a team full of guys who can score.
- Do we have to be in the pistol or shot gun all the time? I cannot believe that we do not have the capability to run a play with the quarterback under center from where he could run a quarterback sneak or turn and hand off to a runner already “runni9gn downhill” who gets the ball only a yard or two behind the line of scrimmage. It puts us in a very difficult positon on the goal line, where simple and quick is better than complicated and slow. We used to almost automatically get first downs with quarterback sneaks on third or fourth and short. There isn’t enough practice time to get us this extra dimension?
- Our running plays seemed poorly coordinated. Guys were running into each other. Handoffs were being made to people who weren’t there. overall, plays seemed very slow to develop. I’ve checked in on some other games since I got home and the pace of things for most of the teams just seemed to be so much faster than the way we were doing things.
- I watched the game with Accurater and when that call was made on the Dungey throw I told him it was obviously going to be overturned but I was irritated they made such a bad call to being with, since it got the Virginia players and the crowd pumped up. They didn’t change the call, which was utterly unbelievable. Obviously the ending of that game would have been totally different if they didn’t have that gift touchdown.
- It’s only going to get more difficult from here on in. I wrote in my season preview that we could make it to 5-1 and still be legitimate underdogs in every remaining game. We made it to 3-3 and will certainly be underdogs in all our remaining games.
- Part of the problem is that it’s a very young team overall, with freshman and sophomores in key positons all over the place. That means mistakes, often at key points during games. Even Zaire Franklin, who his halfway through his true sophomore season, grabbed that facemask to extend Virginia’s fourth quarter drive. It was a true freshman that hit the receiver out of bounds last week. And youth is portably also the reason we could come out as fault as we did against USF. I know there’s been a lot of frustration here, basically since the end of the McNabb Era. But we simply aren’t “back” yet. It’s going to take more time.
- One area of the team that isn’t young, at least not in the starting line-up, is the offensive line. We have three seniors and two juniors up there. I’m very disappointed with their performance this year. They just haven’t been able to open the holes for conventional running plays, which is why we keep running the option. Virginia wasn’t supposed to have much of a pass rush. But Dungey didn’t have much time to throw, which is why we were unable to get anything deep. Dungey only threw for 150 yards in a three overtime game against a team giving up 273 yards passing a game.
- We were shut out for the third straight third period and scored three points in the second half. That’s not a formula for victory.
- I thought when we went up 24-14 that the defense has made a nice comeback from the USF game. But they couldn’t stop anything after that. It was one long Virginia drive after another. Again, we could not over the outside plays. The point of getting small linebackers is that they will be quick and cover territory. But USF beat us to the corner all the time. Virginia initially tried going right at us and we stuffed that. But when they started going outside, we couldn’t stop them.
- Our defensive backs continue to not turn around to look for the ball. That’s why we surrendered that TD after the personal foul had forced them to start at the 40 instead of the 25. It was just a shame we were unable to advantage of that situation.
- Coach Shafer said he wanted Eric Dungey’s running plays to be “in the single digits”. He ran the ball 18 times and was again our leading rusher with 85 yards. He’s a weapon but when he has the ball Jordan Fredericks, Erv Phillips, Brisley Estime and Steve Ismael don’t have it and they can do more with it. A great quarterback is a conduit for the ball from the center to the playmakers. If he’s carrying the ball all the time, the playmakers can’t get into the game. Dungey is a “scoring point guard” on a team full of guys who can score.
- Do we have to be in the pistol or shot gun all the time? I cannot believe that we do not have the capability to run a play with the quarterback under center from where he could run a quarterback sneak or turn and hand off to a runner already “runni9gn downhill” who gets the ball only a yard or two behind the line of scrimmage. It puts us in a very difficult positon on the goal line, where simple and quick is better than complicated and slow. We used to almost automatically get first downs with quarterback sneaks on third or fourth and short. There isn’t enough practice time to get us this extra dimension?
- Our running plays seemed poorly coordinated. Guys were running into each other. Handoffs were being made to people who weren’t there. overall, plays seemed very slow to develop. I’ve checked in on some other games since I got home and the pace of things for most of the teams just seemed to be so much faster than the way we were doing things.
- I watched the game with Accurater and when that call was made on the Dungey throw I told him it was obviously going to be overturned but I was irritated they made such a bad call to being with, since it got the Virginia players and the crowd pumped up. They didn’t change the call, which was utterly unbelievable. Obviously the ending of that game would have been totally different if they didn’t have that gift touchdown.
- It’s only going to get more difficult from here on in. I wrote in my season preview that we could make it to 5-1 and still be legitimate underdogs in every remaining game. We made it to 3-3 and will certainly be underdogs in all our remaining games.
