Game thoughts:
Newman had a huge day last week, throwing for close to 300 yards and running for 150 or so. In many ways, he reminds me of Eric Dungey. Big, strong, confident. Great leader. Can beat you with his arm, his feet or his head.
The WF coaches must be licking their chops after watching the UL film, where it seemed like Cunningham was able to run 10 yards before anyone on the Syracuse defense would get close to him. I expect to see a ton of plays featuring Newman running the ball today.
WF has nowhere near the talent at WR that UL has especially with Sage and Washington out (I assume Washington the 6’7 WR is still out; he hasn’t played in a couple of weeks). So the play action deep balls that UL used with such great success might be harder to pull off. But with our secondary, it might not matter.
It will be interesting to see if our troubled defensive staff will be able to make adjustments to take away the QB run. The WF RBs are also not nearly as good as the UL RB but they aren’t bad either. In theory, this is a largely one dimensional offense that should be fairly easy to defend. Their best WR is a converted QB (Hinton), who is having a good season, but is not close to an all conference type player.
Their pass rush is not strong. They have one good pass rusher guy at DE and a bunch of untalented strong slow guys to fill out their DL. Hoping Servais can handle their good DE and we can have some time for Tommy to throw.
They have two solid CBs and a couple of not very good safeties. Team have hurt them more through the air than running but WF is not very good in either area on defense.
Their PK hasn’t missed a FG or PAT all season but he has a weak leg and has only even attempted 2 FGs longer than 40 yards, and only 6 longer than 30 yards all season. He is unlikely to get the ball into the end zone kicking off as well. Their coverage teams are among the worst in the conference and they were absolutely gouged last week against Duke, as Duke rolled up big numbers running KOs and punts.
On the positive side, Maggio, their punter, is having a great season. I believe he is averaging over 47 yards a punt, which is even better than Hof. Sage was a fine return man. Without him, they aren’t very good here.
So special teams is a place we should have a major advantage.
It is a shame that just as Jordan starting making a big impact, we have to shut him down. He could do damage against these weak WF coverage units.
I think a key to the game is the health of Tommy. Really worried his injury is worse than people think, and Clayton is going to be our starter.
To roll up big numbers on offense, we need to have a good balance between running and throwing the ball. I am optimistic we will be able to get some yardage running it now that we have a decent OL in place. But we need to throw it some too.
Hope we feature our best skilled guys when we throw: Trishton, Hackett, Benson and Courtney Jackson. Nykeim and Sean have had their chances and just haven’t done the job. Learn from what Jawhar showed you last week, get your most talented players on the field and give this team a chance to finish with a win. It is okay to throw it to the RBs a lot too. Mo can do damage as a receiver
cuse.com
www.foxsportsgo.com
www.espn.com
