Week 5 Preview - Wake Forest

It seems this week that most people are assuming GT will have an easy win up in Winston Salem. There are still a few Tech fans who are holding out, saying we are so bad that every game is losable and they expect a dogfight.

I am not really sure that I understand why those Tech fans think we are so bad. Nobody was saying things like that in 2008, and if you think about it, this season isn’t all that much different. The N.C. State team we just lost to is probably at least as good as the VT team that we lost to early in 2008. Yes, that was on the road and a close game, but its not like State blew us out. It was a 3 point game with ten minutes to go. And a few games after that, we almost lost to Gardner Webb. Surely that loss would have been worse than losing to Kansas this year. Later on that season, we barely beat a Clemson team that was 3-3, had a loss to Wake Forest, had been embarrassed by Alabama, and just got its coach fired.

I expect the reason people are so much more up in arms now is a combination of things. First of all, we have raised expectations since then. Second of all, the 2008 defense did not look so weak. The offense looked very weak at times, but people tend to get more upset by bad defense. Third, Clemson and VT are better names than Kansas and N.C. State. But if you think about it, we are in position to get 3 wins and be 5-2. In 2008 we were 6-1. That team finished ranked in the top 15 and won in Athens, against a better UGA team than the one we will play this year. So its not like we can’t still have a good year.

There are more similarities between the two teams. Both teams had young players in key positions. The 2008 team at least had a very experienced, and good, defensive line. But it had a very young QB. This team has a very experienced, and good, QB, but a young and bad defensive line. The skill position players on both teams were pretty young. The 2008 team did have the advantage of having Dwyer and Thomas. But Thomas wasn’t nearly the player in 08 that he would be in 09, and this 2010 team has better runners at A-back in my opinion, like Smith and Bostic.

The point of all this talk is not to defend the 2010 team’s performance so far. It has been real bad. I am only making the point that we have a history under Johnson of playing better at the end of the year than at the beginning, and this team has plenty of room to grow. I will confess that I thought we would start the year being pretty good. You can go read that in my season preview. Looking back on it, I probably made the mistake of assuming that “experience” in spring games and practices was almost as good as experience on the field. Turns out it isn’t.

Let’s look at each position group.

The O line. I thought they would be the best we have had under Johnson. On paper they are the most talented. But I probably underrated the importance of having experience playing together in real games. They are better than our 2008 O line was, but are probably not quite as good as the 09 version.. yet. They may still end up being better, but for now, they are young, and they look like it.

We pretty much know about the QB’s. As for the running backs, we don’t have anyone as talented as Dwyer. Then again, Dwyer is probably the most talented runner Tech has had in 10-20 years. We do have some pretty good young recruits, and we probably have the best A backs we have had.

The receivers really need to start making plays. We need to find that guy who can consistently get open and make catches. It should be Hill, but until he starts to figure things out, someone else may have to step up.

The real problem on offense though, I think, is our blocking up front. At times it has been good, but it is very inconsistent. This has made our offense resemble the 2008 group more than the 2009 group. We hit some very big plays, but we also have too many bad plays that kill drives. We can’t rely on being able to get 3 yards on third and 3. The 2009 group seemed to always get at least 3 or 4 yards when they wanted. Hopefully, as the season goes on, we will make fewer mistakes and missed assignments up front, and we can see what this offense looks like playing behind a consistent, and pretty big and talented, O line, because I still think this O line is pretty talented. But we will see.

Defensively, it’s pretty much the same thing. We have a significant amount of freshman and sophomores getting serious playing time at all three position groups. That is promising for the future, but for now it means a lot of youthful mistakes. Of course, our veterans have been making some dumb mistakes as well, but hopefully they will shake that off and play with more focus.

Another ironic thing about all of this in my opinion is that many pessimistic GT fans, and plenty of UGA fans, are jumping on the “Paul Johnson was only winning because he had Gailey’s talent” bandwagon. Well, sure, Dwyer and Thomas and Morgan and Burnett were Gailey’s guys, and losing them hurt. But what does it tell you that so many of Johnson’s freshman and sophomore recruits are beating out Gailey’s seniors and redshirt juniors for playing time? (That Paul recruits better than Gailey did…) The simple fact is that young players are rarely good enough to be consistently good players right away.

In the offseason, when I heard Coach Johnson say things like “we have so much depth that it is creating lots of position battles” I was thinking “oh good, our young players are talented like we had hoped”. I was happy they were competing. I didn’t really want them to win the battles though. I didn’t want to hear a true freshman was going to win a starting spot at safety when we have 4 upperclassmen available at safety. That means our experienced guys just aren’t real good. If they were, their experience would make them better, even if they were not quite as talented as the young guys. The fact that the experience does not more than make up for the talent gap indicates that the talent gap is pretty significant.

I also made the mistake in the preseason of assuming Groh could do more than he really could. I do think he has done some good things, and I see promise from this defense. If our offense had been as good this year as it was last year, I am confident our defense would be statistically improved. It is improved in some areas. We are giving up fewer yards per play, and remember this is pretty much the same terrible D we had last year except minus our two NFL caliber players. I believe we have given up more total yards and points simply because we are on the field much more than last year’s defense was. That is a function of the offense not playing as well. So I am not sure I am ready to fire Groh just yet, as many other GT fans seems to be.

Anyway, all of that is just to say there is no reason to panic. I still expect us to have a good year, and to at least be a factor in the coastal race. But we will see.

I want to begin the preview of the Wake Forest game with a quick discussion about how the season has gone so far, according to the Sagarin Ratings, which I find to be pretty useful. A quick word about computer ratings – many people dismiss them. They say things like computers don’t understand football. And they don’t take into account games that are flukes, when teams show up flat etc. Furthermore, you cant base rankings on just comparing scores of so few games, etc. What I think these people overlook is that human rankings are plagued by most of these same problems. And the “problems” human polls are free from often just cause more problems. For example, humans are capable of taking into account that a team like VT may show up “flat” for JMU 5 days after the big loss to Boise. So they are better right? Well what happens with a game like GT Kansas? Were we flat, or are we just bad? This is where human bias comes into play, which is a huge problem that does not affect computer polls.

And that explains why I like computer polls. They don’t care if its Michigan Notre Dame or Eastern Michigan Army. When 2009 FSU and Miami, both coming off mediocre years, played a close game early, the computer does not assume both are “back”. They simply compare the scores of every game played by everyone, which is what people are really trying to do anyway, computers just do it better.

Sagarin’s polls are very simple. There are two, and he averages them equally for his overall ratings. One looks at who beat who, that’s it (no bonus points for how much you win by), and the other looks at scores, that’s it, (no bonus points for winning or losing the game). Sagarin calls this second poll, the points poll, his “predictor” because, not surpringly it is the best predictor of future games. That poll is the one I use most often. Is it perfect? Of course not. Its computed on a very small sample size (indeed the whole season in football is a small sample size) and obviously teams can skew their ratings by playing a really good or really bad game. But it is something, and it’s better than most other opinions, in my opinion.

So what does it tell us about GT? Well, at this point in the season, comparing every team based on a network of results, Sagarin says that on a neutral field, GT would perform as follows:

We would beat Kansas by 8.

We would lose to UNC by 1.

We would lose to NC St. by 3.

So, not terribly surprisingly, we played poorly against NC State and Kansas, and well against UNC. That’s not exactly breaking news, but it is good to some objective evidence that we are playing up and down. Others have contended that UNC is simple terrible and Kansas and State are in fact better than we are. Sagarin agrees that State is better than us, but only slightly, and at GT we should actually play to a tie. Hopefully that means we played badly, not that we just are bad.

The good news is that we don’t often (or really ever under Johnson) play two bad games in a row. So I expect us to come out and play well. For the record Sagarin has us winning by 8 (11 on a neutral field) so I would expect a win by more than that if we do play well.

We are 9 point favorites even coming off the big loss to State. That is probably because Wake has looked terrible the last two weeks. I think Wake is better than they look. Stanford is a very good team, but they embarrassed Wake so badly in part because they played the game at 11:15 pm Eastern time, which really isn’t fair. I imagine its hard to play D1 football at a high level when your body is telling you to go to bed. And then Wake lost 31-0 to FSU, but that game was only 10-0 deep into the third quarter. However, even though Wake may not be as bad as they have looked, they are still pretty bad.

They gave us a very tough game last year, but that was with their QB Skinner who is now gone, and we gave them a lot of help in that game with poor execution. This year’s Wake team is more of a running team than a passing team. And they run even though their offensive line isn’t that good. Which means they aren’t a very good offense. If Groh and the D can’t get back on track a little bit this week, we may be in real trouble. Defensively, Grobe’s team will be well coached, but I don’t think they have the athletes to really bother us. They will be small up front, and I think that will make it very hard on them. (sound familiar? Well hopefully I am right this week…)

As usual, let’s take a look at recruiting to try to see some objective analysis of the talent differential. (of course, we had a big talent edge on Kansas, UNC had a big one on us, and State and GT were about even talent wise, so take this with a grain of salt…)

	2007			2008			2009			2010
	GT	Wake		GT	Wake		GT	Wake		GT	Wake
Best	81	79		80	78		80	79		80	79
Top 5	79.4	75.6		78	77.4		79.4	77.6		79	78.2
Top 10	78.5	72.5		77.3	76.2		78.8	77		78.2	77.5
Avg.	75.65	71.27		76.53	75.66		76.85	74.55		77.06	74.6
Total Players	20	11		15	12		21	18		16	20

You can see we have clear edges most everywhere. They are pretty close to us in the “Best” category, but we still have a slight edge. The edge either stays roughly the same or increases as you move down the chart, depending on the year.

So we are more talented, at least on paper. As the past three weeks have shown, that guarantees absolutely nothing.

Lets take a look at the stats so far this season:

	GT	Wake
Rush Yards Per Game	320.5	238.5
Rush Yards Per Carry	5.85	4.82
Rush Yards Allowed	155.25	175.75
Rush Yards Allowed/Carry	4.09	5.02
Pass Yards Per Game	80	130.75
Pass Yards Per Att.	7.1	6.2
Pass Yards Allowed	212.5	291.5
Pass Yards Allowed/Att.	7.0	7.6
Yards Per Play	6.1	5.2
Yards Per Play Allowed	5.4	6.4
Points Per Game	31	32.8
Points Allowed Per Game	26.8	40

The biggest thing I am seeing here is that they allow 5 yards per running play to everyone they have played. And “everyone” includes Presbyterian and Duke. Stanford and FSU may be good, but my feeling is that if they allow 5 yards per run against those 4 combined, then we should be able to hit a lot of big runs. Next most important is that they run for 100 yards more than they pass for on average. That would scare me if I thought they were good up front. But I don’t think they are. The way they play, they need to be faster than us on both sides of the ball, and they are not faster than us on either.

Based purely on the fact that I think we will come out motivated, play hard and play at least OK in terms of execution, I expect a comfortable win. Grobe is a good coach and he has really upgraded Wake’s program, but they still don’t have the talent that they really need to be seriously competitive year in year out. On top of that, they have a new QB playing this year. Actually, they have several QB’s playing, but the point is that they do not have an experienced and talented QB like Skinner, who really made their offense work.

Of course, we could play poorly again and lose. We could definitely play poorly and barely win. But for now, I am pretty confident.

Here are my goals:

Offense

Gain at least 500 yards – 400 rushing 100 passing

No more than 1 turnover

At least 42 points

Defense

No more than 21 points (this is a little high, but I think our D needs a cushion)

No more than 300 yards

Force at least 2 turnovers.

I haven’t set those goals as high as I normally do, because I will be happy with less than perfect given how we have played so far. Offensively, we should have success because I don’t think Wake’s defense is very good, so I have set those goals much higher than those for the defense. FSU shut out Wake and Stanford only allowed Wake to score some points after they had piled up over 50 themselves. Maybe the goal should really be that we don’t allow more than 14 or so until the fourth quarter when and if we have scored in the 40’s or 50’s. I don’t really care about giving up garbage TD’s when the game is already decided.

Anyway, time to get back on track with a good performance. We need it.

Go Jackets!

Week 4 Analysis - North Carolina State

Well, there were a few things to like about the game, but overall a very disappointing effort. Coach Johnson said afterwards that we had 42 and 43 missed assignments on offense and defense respectively. He doesn’t remember which unit had 43 or 42, but who really cares. That is a lot of busted assignments. Part of that is N.C. State being fast and good, because when the opposing team puts pressure on you, you tend to make more mental mistakes. But even so, this is poor execution. And much of it was by guys who are veteran players and really have to do better. N.C. State may turn out to be really good, but from watching the tape, it is clear to me that this game at the very least should have been closer.

Offensively, we mixed in several mistakes. Our O line missed a lot of blocks. Again part of that is a credit to State, but there were several plays where we just blocked the wrong guy. And there were other plays when I think the only fair way to describe the missed block is that our guy screwed up. No division one athlete should completely whiff a block when they are 2 feet away from the guy and well balanced. I don’t care if they are trying to block Ray Lewis. Other plays Nesbitt made a poor read, or Allen dropped a pitched, or an A back, receiver or Allen whiffed a block. Or Stephen Hill made any one of a several mistakes, which are described in further detail below. It was a team effort with timely poor execution.

Defensively, it was the usual culprits. Poor tackling and busted coverages. We mixed in a few other mistakes as well, but it was mostly those two. And at times we appeared to be sleepwalking, including somewhat inexplicably the first two drives of the second half when we had a chance to get back in the game.

Here are my grades.

Nesbitt – 6 of 10. He did not have his best game running, throwing or making reads, but he still made enough plays that I can’t put him any lower. Plus a few of the reads that I thought he missed from watching the game live he actually read correctly. Either we messed up elsewhere, or State just made a good play in those cases.

Running backs – 7 out of 10. They did miss some blocks and drop a few fumbles (Allen) but they also had some really tough runs and they made some plays for us. Overall not a bad game for this group.

Receivers – Give them a 6 out of 10 by default, because they didn’t have a lot to do. Good TD catch by someone (maybe Cone but I don’t know and don’t really care) and a good move on a receiver screen (same). Hill made several mistakes, but the group’s main job is to block and I didn’t have a huge problem with the blocking.

O line – 3 out of 10. On far too many plays we either didn’t get off the ball well or we missed blocks when we did get off quickly. I saw more bad plays than good ones.

D line – 4 out of 10. They made enough plays to get a 4. Some pressures, at least one sack, and a ball batted down at the line. Plus they made several good plays in the running game. Problem was they had plenty of plays where they got no pressure, or left open a running lane for Wilson, or just blown off the ball on a running play.

LB’s – 3 out of 10. They had some plays as well, but they busted a lot of coverages on short passes over the middle, and also did a poor job filling running lanes for too much of the game. Plus they, along with every unit on the defense, noticeably lacked urgency for much of the game when they really needed to show it.

DB’s – 3 out of 10. Not a real good day. Tarrant’s pick 6 was the highlight, and we had several other good plays, but way too many blown coverages and just plain dumb mistakes.

Here are the depressing stats for the game:

	Georgia Tech	NC St.
Rush Yards	247	159
Yards Per Carry	5.1	4.0
Pass Yards	116	368
Yards Per Attempt	6.4	9.0
Yards Per Play	5.5	6.5
Points	28 (21 offensive)	45 (38 offensive)

First thing that jumps out is the 9.0 yards per pass, with 41 passing attempts. That is terrible. And the fact that we gave up 527 total yards and only gained 363. We also got beat in yards per play. Pretty much lost every category. Except rushing yards and yards per carry.

Here is the depressing summary drive by dive analysis.

Good kick coverage on the opening kickoff, really good open field tackle at the 16.

N.C. State first drive.

Got some pressure without blitzing very many players. Got a little lucky on second down that they dropped a pass, but coverage was OK. We also did a good job containing Wilson because for a second it appeared he wanted to scramble but had nowhere to go. Really poor coverage breakdown made it very easy to convert third and 7. That would have been a big three and out with the crowd very into the game.

A few plays later we got a great blitz, overloading Wilson’s blind side and getting Jefferson in clean. He delivered a really good hit and forced a fumble. Big play, giving our offense the ball around our 40 yard line.

State gained about 45 yards on 5 plays, then sacked and fumbled.

GT first drive.

Poor cut by Roddy outside when he should have gone inside turned 5 yards into no gain. Not a very good job by the two interior linemen getting downfield cost us a possible big gain on the dive on second down. On third and seven we try to pass and their linebacker Cole (who is a really great athlete) jumped and tipped the pass over Hill’s head.

OK punt down to around their twenty.

We gained three yards, three and out. Poor execution on two running plays cost us a probable first down in my opinion.

N.C. St. second drive.

Great sack by Izaan Cross on first down. Got a good push, created space and sacked him. Sadly we let them run right through us for about 13 yards on second and long, setting up third and 1. Great defense though. Good penetration, as we appeared to be expecting a run. Wilson ran right, and got nothing.

Three and out, 9 yards gained.

GT second drive.

From our 29, much better job getting downfield this time from the O line. As a result, we hit Irving (state’s very good middle linebacker) and we get 9 yards on the dive. Nesbitt picks up the first down with a pretty easy 5 yards on the counter option. On first down we fumble the snap and fall on it. Silly. On second and 11 though the counter option really got them moving the wrong way, and Nesbitt kept for about 25 yards. On first down, Allen goes nowhere. Their D line did a good job pushing us. On second a toss to Peeples looked promising, but he sorta tiptoed for about 4 yards. Then we fumbled on third down on a counter option, but the play was going nowhere anyway. Their players appeared to know exactly where the play was going, and they jumped it immediately.

33 yards, fumbled on third down.

N.C. St. third drive.

Take over at their own 38. Running play goes nowhere. Sylvester ran him down from behind. Good aggressive play. On second and long we blitz and get good pressure, but Wilson escapes the pocket and hits a short pass right for a 7 yards gain. Then on third down, VERY easy short pass right, as we gave the guy about a 10 yard cushion. Pretty good run defense on first as we hold them to three yards, but then a great pass from Wilson nets them about 20 yards to our 20. Pretty good coverage. Followed by a quick screen left that we appear not ready for, and thus it gets about 6 yards pretty easily. They try to run wide right on second and 3 but we stuff them again. Third and four they go with a quick lob to the end zone. It hit him in the hands but he was well covered and couldn’t catch it. But it was the tight end against our safety Johnson. He had about 4 inches on him and probably should have caught it. Good pass by Wilson. A similar play would score on us in the second half when it was caught.

They missed about a 30 yard field goal somehow.

They gained about 48 yards here, and missed a FG.

GT third drive.

We had very little success blocking on first or second down. First down Nesbitt kept on a counter and probably should have pitched, but it wasn’t going very far. On second down, a dive to Allen got about a yard. We then try to pass, and Nesbitt rolls and should have hit Smith for a first down. He was open down the sideline but Nesbitt lead him a little too far. I would have liked to see us pass on first or second because it appeared their front 7 or 8 were jumping running plays. Anyway, it was there on third. Poor execution. This could have been a 20+ yard gain if we threw a good pass and caught it.

No gain on this drive. Then we get the punt blocked. Poor job by the punter and the wall. The snap pulled the punter right and the wall drifted left, so we had three guys blocking for basically nobody. Looked pretty ridiculous. Let’s send the varsity out there to punt next time coach. The JV obviously cant get it done.

GT fourth drive.

First down counter option looked promising, but Nate Irving did a great job pursuing and hit Nesbitt for a loss of one. Although he was aided by our lineman trying to block the wrong guy at first, then realizing his mistake and trying to adjust too late. On second Allen picks up 4. Nesbitt tries to pass on third with a 20 yard fader and we have our first Stephen Hill sighting. He appeared to be able to get to the ball, but also appeared not to know the ball was in the air. He didn’t really run after it until the last couple steps, even though he appeared to have the defender shielded with his body. Thomas would have caught that easily for about 30 yards. Sigh.

Gain of four yards and a punt.

N.C. St. fourth drive.

From their own forty, they run for a couple yards then throw right to a WIDE open guy for about 25. WTF. No idea what we were doing in coverage there. And again throw right for 13 this time. Also wide open. We blitzed exactly one LB on both of the last two plays. Poor coverage. Then we finally play good defense for 3 plays. Short throw right for 3, run right for 3, then we blitz from the left and have a guy watching for a scramble right, so Wilson has to throw it away. Looked like the whole defense was on the same page there. Good work.

Gained 45 yards on that drive, ended with a FG from our 15 or so.

GT fifth drive.

Fifth drive and still NO points?? Commentator just pointed out that we only have 4o rushing yards. To this point I would say the problem is a combination of poor execution, poor blocking, and N.C. St. being fast and reading our plays well.

First down Allen gets 4. Allen gets a first down straight ahead on second. This is more like what I expected to see, us able to establish the dive against their front 7. With the exception of one 9 yard run, we really haven’t until these two runs. But we give it to Allen a third time in a row for 4 more. We try it again and they stuff it. Good read by Nesbitt though, the dive was the right play, we just didn’t block anyone downfield. Maybe they all were expecting the dive and surprised us by closing in quicker. Anyway, on third and 4 more stupid execution cost us. Nesbitt and Allen fumbled the exchange. My guess is Nesbitt was a split second late deciding to keep it, then tried to keep it and Allen knocked it loose trying to grab it. Nesbitt should have kept, we appeared to have a big play working on the edge here. They only had one defender and we had Nesbitt and the pitch man. At the least, I think we had the first down for sure. Sigh.

Gained about 20 yards here, but fumbled on third down. Again.

N.C. St. fifth drive.

First down from their 46, Wilson bootlegs right and dumps to his fullback for 8. Fooled us with a fake handoff for a pretty easy gain. Second down and two they caught us blitzing Wilson with a draw straight ahead for a big gain. Then they run straight ahead again for 9 yards to our 20. They convert second and 1 barely, then Wilson scrambles around forever to gain about 5 yards. We only rushed 3, and I think we had him spied, but he scrambled right first then left. Same defense next time but this time we force him right and keep him there, he can’t scramble and has to just throw it away. Then we got good pressure on third down and force another rollout throw away. They were called for holding on top of that, but we declined, forcing fourth down. Once again, good defense eventually. They missed another short field goal.

Gained bout 40 yards here and missed FG. So far, in five drives, they have moved the ball well on 4 of them, but only have 3 FG attempts and one make to show for it. They fumbled the other drive and went three and out on the other. Not great defense, but not bad defense to this point, against a pretty good offense.

GT sixth drive.

Sixth drive and still no points? Unusual day for our offense.

Pretty easy dive to Lyons for about 7, from our 20 yard line to start. Same play and this time Lyons goes nowhere. Didn’t really block anybody. On third down we run the play where Nesbitt follows Allen straight up the middle, and pretty easily get 7 yards. On first down we mix it up with a deep pass. Hill was about 3 steps behind the guy but Nesbitt underthrew it. Hill still had a chance but he doesn’t know how to make a play on the ball in the air yet. Thomas also probably catches this one easily. (Granted Thomas was a first round draft pick, but I think Hill is physically similar and needs to learn how good he can be). On second down we finally run the triple option AND get to a pitch. Jones throws a great block and Bostic gets a big 40 yard run. He really has some speed in the open field. A Nesbitt keeper on first down goes nowhere, so second and 10. Toss right to Peeples read well by them, only two yards. I swear he is not running very hard though. Surprisingly we run the dive on 3^rd and 7 and almost get the first down. On fourth and short Nesbitt sneaks for it pretty easily. Nesbitt follows Allen again for 3 yards. We then try to counter option and they get a great push from their interior D line, which screws up our timing. I mean our O line got driven back about 3 yards. Awful. Nesbitt fights back to the line of scrimmage.

On third down Nesbitt made a key play. Even though Nesbitt’s read, the end, is taking Nesbitt, he also sees the dive is going nowhere, and so he pulls it away from Allen and pitches immediately to Smith for a TD. My suspicion is this play was there a few other times, but it’s a hard play to pull off. State did a good job being proactive and mixing us up by really jumping the dive man, while having their end (the guy Nesbitt usually is reading) take Nesbitt. That fools Nesbitt into giving to Allen, because the end is clearly leaving Allen alone, even though the dive is not there because the LB’s are all blitzing desperately to stop it. Here Nesbitt made a great play getting us out of that trap. I will have to confess I am not sure what the long term solution is to that problem, since I think it would be real hard to ask Nesbitt, on a regular basis, to read the end and the linebackers down the middle before Allen is past him. Anyway, good play there.

80 yard drive for a TD finally.

N.C. St. sixth drive.

Starts from our 30 or so. This was a key drive, as they had about 2 minutes and if we could have gotten into halftime down only 10-7, and getting the ball first, we would have been in ok shape. They gained 7 yards on first down, but then we forced a bad pass from Wilson on second down. We blitzed on third and short, got to him, BUT didn’t wrap up. Key play there, as he escaped and threw a short pass for a first down. Could have ended the drive right there with a good tackle. But no. Sigh. Next play Wilson then throws a nice 12 yard out route for a first down. On the ensuing first down we send 5 and Jefferson blitzes inside cleanly, and makes a very good tackle since Wilson saw him coming early and tried to get away. This forces second and very long, which they of course will convert in two plays. Second down and 21, and they actually convert it in one play. We got good pressure, but there is a guy pretty open down the right sideline. Soft zone coverage. Wilson is too good for that trash. Sigh. Good coverage next play forces incomplete pass. Second and ten. But then another soft zone play allows them to get a pretty easy ten yard stop route for a first down. They are running low on time though, down to our 21 but with only 30 seconds left. But they throw to the end zone and have a guy wide open. I read where Paul Johnson said on that play we are in cover four, meaning we have four guys playing safety across the back who are supposed to not let anyone behind them. Somehow, they get a guy pretty wide open under the goal posts. Somewhat unbelievable. They called this incomplete at first, but I think his right foot was actually down and then he dragged the left foot. I am not sure which one they called, but it was a good catch.

70 yard drive and a TD, in about one minute. Really have to cover better. Coach Johnson said that we had 42 missed assignments on defense, and I have to believe several of them occurred on this drive. We just have to be more focused. This was a TD that we didn’t have to give up. Wilson is a very good QB, but we helped him out on this drive.

GT

We run the clock out essentially.

Halftime.

GT seventh drive.

Good kick return out to our 35.

First play we triple option right. Our O line did a good job getting downfield, and even though we didn’t really get a good block on Irving, we were in his way enough so he couldn’t get there. Nesbitt takes off in a hurry and keeps for 62 yards down to N.C. St.’s 3. Interestingly, we did not block their interior D lineman at all, so they had him free to take Allen. Fortunately for us, their end did not notice this, and he took Allen too. Of course, one thing about our offense that makes it difficult to defend is that the defender’s all have their assignments. They do not know before the play which ones are going to get off blocks, so sometimes if they do not react quickly enough, they have two guys taking one guy, and they leave one guy free. Then we have a busted play where Nesbitt goes left and everyone else goes right. But then Roddy punches it in on the counter handoff on second and goal.

65 yards and a TD.

N.C. St. seventh drive.

The defense came out of the half and absolutely laid an egg. They moved from their 20 to our 15 in four very easy plays. A quick toss to a receiver in the flat for 20, a short toss right for about 8, a run for 10, and a bootleg pass to the tight end for about 25. We then played ok defense for two plays, albeit aided by what appeared to be a busted blocking assignment on second down on their part, to bring up third and 6. Then they threw a short out to the right and we reeeaally should have made the tackle to bring up 4^th and 2. Even on a drive where we played so badly, we had a real chance to force a field goal. We had a corner there and a LB coming, but we failed to wrap him up and we let him wriggle for 3 yards to get the first by 1. Two pretty easy plays later they dumped the ball over the middle for 5 yards and a TD. Didn’t see much good from us on this drive. There did appear to be a busted assignment or two, such as no one seeing the tight end peel off on the bootleg that got 25 yards, but the biggest problem here I think was that we just didn’t come with any fight. We similarly invited UNC into the end zone last week on the first drive out of the half. In theory we should be well rested and motivated. Apparently halftime calms us down.

80 yard drive and a pretty easy TD.

GT eighth drive.

Wow. Unbelievably bad execution here. To be fair, on first down State’s end made a great play. He waited in front of Allen until Nesbitt had already kept the ball, then at the last second jumped around Allen and was able to tackle Nesbitt. I am not sure what the answer is there. I guess Nesbitt needs to give to Allen, or Allen needs to do a better job hitting him once he realizes he does not have the ball. But really just a great play by them. Second down was a big problem though. We run the reverse and in the stadium I could see how well it was set up. Hill might have run 70 yards to the house, but he easily had about 30 yards down the sideline. Problem was Cole was on the backside. Well, problem number one was an awful block. The linemen released out and got set up with great position, and Cole wasn’t even moving. I mean our guy was about 3 feet away from him, Cole didn’t see him, and he was just waiting for Cole to turn towards him to block him. And he missed. Cole is a very good LB, but on this play that was just a terrible, terrible block. If he gets the block there, Hill has a long way to go.

Problem number two was that Hill does not know how to be a good football player. As fast as Cole is, Hill is a very athletic receiver and also a track guy, who runs a sub 4.4 forty. He has to realize that even though Cole has decent position on him, he probably can beat him to the corner, and even if he can’t he has to try. Hill probably gains about 10 yards even if he cant beat him there, but he cant, absolutely cant, afford to let Cole turn him back into the middle, where the rest of the defense is pursuing back across. But what does Hill do? He doesn’t think about what the play is at all, and where the other defenders are likely to be, and instead he just reads Cole, and goes inside. And gets tackled by the rest of the defense. Turned a possible big play into a 2 yard gain. This was really only Hill’s third chance of the game (two first half passes) to make a play, and so far he is 0 for 3. And he had a good set up to make all three. Sigh.

Then on third down we get the first with a good pass play but its called back for illegal procedure. And on the next try, we don’t block anybody. Nesbitt almost made a great play escaping the pressure and throwing on the way down to Roddy, but they made a great play to break it up at the last second.

Zero yards, three and out. They played good D, but we gave them a lot of help. Again.

N.C. St. eighth drive.

Starts off with a dumb pass interference penalty. It wasn’t much, but he put a hand on him on a 40 yard pass that we had covered reasonably well. He was open by a little but Wilson underthrew him. Should have been able to defend the pass without interfering. So they move from their 40 to our 45 on the penalty.

Now Wilson is getting hot. He hits a pretty open guy down the seam for about 20 more yards. They love those routes and we sure didn’t cover it very well. Finally we get an ok play as they throw short over the middle and our D linemen peeled back and tackled him for only 2 yards. On Second and 8 from our 20 they throw a flanker screen and he drops it. We had a guy there, but they probably get a good gain here bc our guy had a poor angle.

So they help us out and give us another big third down where we could force a field goal with good defense. And… we let them convert with a run up the middle. We don’t recognize it very fast, so they get 6 yards before contact, but then we hit him with 2 guys, and a pile ensues, and they drive the pile about 5 yards inside our ten. Pitiful stuff really. Either we have lost our fight, or we are tired.

Then they give us a break with a hold, so now its first and goal from our 17. You would think a good chance for us to force a field goal. But no. We let them run up the middle for 10 yards. Next play we hold them to only 2 yards. Then on third and goal from the five, we finally lose contain on Wilson and let him get into the end zone on a scramble. Not terrible I guess, at least on that play. We lost the battle on this drive much earlier. But it still appears we just have no fight.

GT ninth drive.

Starts off with a decent counter option and a pitch for an easy 4 yards. I thought we didn’t pitch enough this game, but watching the tape I can’t really put my finger on why. Maybe they were taking the pitch man and other things weren’t open because they were beating our blocks in the middle. Anyway, we option left this time and pitch for another pretty easy 6 yards and a first down. We try to go for a deep pass play and don’t fool the corner at all. Still, Nesbitt floats it toward Hill who has chance number 4 to make a play. This time he actually did a good job going to get the ball, but then after getting himself into position over the corner to take it away, he takes it away and drops it. I mean, the guy clearly has the tools. He is 6’4, fast and coordinated. He just has to learn to do it. Sigh, again. On second down we threw a short screen pass to Cone (I think) and he made a good move to get 8 yards. But on third and short Nesbitt missed Allen on the dive for a probable first down. And I am not sure what he was reading. Allen had space, and Nesbitt got hit by a blitzing Irving right after not giving to Allen. We go for it on fourth and three and this time Allen is not there, but he throws a pitiful block after not getting the ball, and the same guy (I think Irving again, that guy is really good, to be fair) that was going to take Allen tackles Nesbitt. I mean Allen, if you aren’t going to block well, you at least have to block him poorly. Allen tried to cut him and basically whiffed the LB and hit the ground. Has to be better than that. Get a little contact.

We gained about 18 yards, and lost it on downs.

N.C. St. ninth drive.

Decent defense on a run outside left. We stop for 5 yards but at least the first guy there makes the tackle. We hit him after 3 yards, but he fell forward. And then they run an out rout right and pick up the first down easily because we are playing such a deep cushion again. If we aren’t covering short, you would think we could at least cover deep…

We let them run for 5 yards up the middle, but they helped us out with a hold that backs them up. Finally, we play three good plays in a row, breaking up a pass at the line, stuffing a run, then pressuring Wilson and containing his scramble, forcing a throw out of bounds.

Gained about 20 yards, but then driven back 10 by a hold and stopped on 3 plays for only 2 more yards, forcing a punt.

GT tenth drive.

Of course we start the drive at our own 10 yard line thanks to a stupid penalty on the punt. We need a lot of help.

But we fool them on a pass play to Allen out of the backfield which would have gotten ten yards easy, but then Allen breaks like 5 tackles on a really nice 50 yard catch and run.

On the next play they blow up a toss right, and Bostic probably should have lost 4 yards, but he used his speed and showed a lot of toughness breaking two tackles and picking up about 8 yards. Really good run there.

Then we fool them with a deep pass down the middle for a pretty easy touchdown.

90 yards, three plays, TD. Had to have that drive.

As a quick aside, I am real tired of hearing commentators, when we get down by more than one score, say the obligatory “uh oh they run the option they aren’t really geared to come from behind”. Well why not? I mean sure, we aren’t a passing offense, so we are not very good at running a two minute drill, because then we have to pass when they know we have to pass. That is really the only problem. But why does that apply in the second or third quarter? Here in this game, we went on a 70 yard 3 play drive with all runs, and a 90 yard 3 play drive with two passes. So clearly we can score in a hurry pretty well, and I would argue as well as any offense. We scored on an 80 yard 3 play drive and a 70 yard 5 play drive against UNC last week, with only one pass total on the two. Why exactly is it that we can’t come from behind? At least moreso than other teams. I mean lets face it, when you are down by more than one score, that usually means the other team is better than you, so most teams I would bet don’t have much success in that situation. But I would tend to think that so long as we are not trying to score with only a minute or two left in the game, we are just as well if not better suited to come from behind as anyone else.

N.C. St. tenth drive.

We keep the momentum going, as they start from out 20 and we pressure Wilson out of the pocket then force him out bounds for no gain. On second down they drop an 11 yard pass. We covered him ok I guess, but we didn’t really force the drop. On third down, we blitz from the left and get great pressure, forcing Wilson to throw it away, which he does poorly and Tarrant gets the HUGE pick 6.

They gain no yards and get picked off for a 30 yard TD return. At this point I thought we were going to win the game. We just needed to keep the momentum going with a key stop on defense, and we just might have pulled it out. But…

N.C. St. eleventh drive.

But we come out and let them control the line of scrimmage for two easy runs, netting about 12 yards. Then a short receiver screen sets up second and short, where Wilson fakes a hand off and keeps, and Egbuniwe made a very bad read on the play and it took him a good second to recognize Wilson had the ball, or else maybe he can make a play on him. Then we follow a good first down run defense with an easy 20 yard dump off catch and run over the middle. We have been fighting a little harder this drive though, noticeably. I guess we are just tired up front. We keep fighting on the next play, holding a promising looking run to only three yards. Then we get pressure and cover well, forcing a throw away. This brings up a HUGE third down. If we can hold them to a field goal, we can keep it to a one score game. They make matters easier with a false start to make it third and eleven. Then Wilson lobs the ball up right away on basically a timing route to the end zone down the seam. We have it covered well, but the guy is in man coverage and doesn’t expect the ball that fast, so he doesn’t turn around. But most disturbing is that once he realizes the ball is coming down and being caught, he really didn’t seem to fight that hard. Oh well. Its just a TD. It only basically seals the win. No big deal.

We tried to fight, but couldn’t really do it. 75 yards, TD. On the biggest series of the game, N.C. St. had what it took and we didn’t.

GT eleventh drive.

So with 8 minutes left and down by 10 points, I am not convinced that we had to go exclusively to the pass, but I guess it wasn’t a bad idea. We did so to save time, and they were getting plenty of pressure. First down they sacked us, and Hill dropped the ball on second. I don’t blame him for that though because he got hammered. On third down Nesbitt just made a great play scrambling for the first. Then we have what should be a 15 yard pass play but it appeared Nesbitt expected Roddy to keep running and Roddy was stopping his route, so what resulted was an awkard looking drop off his fingertips. At this point, the team quit, so I am going to quit my review as well.

Ok, not really. My DVR for some reason stopped recording, so I cant review the rest of the game. But I think everyone knows what happened next. We ran a bunch of pass plays where guys appeared to be running routes that Nesbitt didn’t expect, so someone screwed up and the ball fell incomplete a bunch. Then our D put up another “inspired” performance and we lost 45-28. Giving up 4 TD’s on their first 6 second half possessions.

Let’s take a look at my goals for the game:

Offense:

400 yards rushing

Not Close

100 yards passing

Got this, Ok game passing

At least 42 points.

Not Close.

No more than one turnover.

I think we lost two fumbles and were stopped on downs once. So not close.

Defense:

No more than 350 total yards.

Not Close at all.

No more than 21 points.

Yeah… about that… not close.

Force at least 2 turnovers.

Hey we got one!

Final Verdict: N.C. St is a good team, but we made them better by making so many mistakes. We were the home team, and the simple fact, I believe, is that we are capable of playing much better than this. Maybe we still lose, maybe we win, who knows, but this should have been better. And has to get better.

But as I said in the quick review, I do still believe in these players and these coaches. If we play just mediocre the next three weeks we should have a chance to win all three games. Wake is not as bad as they have looked in recent weeks, and UVA may be much improved this year, but I still think we should win those two games, even as bad as we looked Saturday. If we can go on a three game win streak, that will give us some much needed practice, experience and confidence heading into the brutal stretch at Clemson, at VT and then Miami at home. There is still plenty to fight for, but our players need to be fighting as hard they can. There isn’t much margin for error anymore.

For now I am not too worried, mostly because I don’t think our coaches will allow us to continue making so many mistakes. I know that most people are down on Groh, but I still think he is a good coach. People are overlooking the impact of the offense playing so much worse than last year, and the effect that has on the defense. Groh’s defense is averaging 5.5 allowed per play, versus 6.1 last year, and remember that we lost the two players who were by far our best playmakers from last year’s unit, Morgan and Burnett. So the defense is playing better statistically without the only two players from last year who you could really call “good”. And don’t quote me points allowed, that is the stat that is most affected by the offense. I don’t care if the defense did better last year when the offense held the ball forever and rarely set up the defense in bad field position.

I think that each unit will improve as the season progresses, and the improvement of each will help the other one.

Then again, I was surprised by how little fight and focus we appeared to have last week. I hope they don’t surprise me again anytime real soon.

As always, Go Jackets!