Virginia

Well.  Not much to say about Syracuse.  That was about as close to perfect as a game can get.  I'll just say that I think we played great, they played poorly, we got some breaks and I don't think they had a very good defensive game plan.  Don't think we are really 56 points better than Syracuse but I'll take it.  Obviously we run a fairly unique offense.  As I've shown in some other posts, the performance of a particular defense against the rest of the country is often not a very good barometer for how they do against us.  We sometimes have a lot of success against pretty good defenses (UNC most every year, for example) and mysteriously struggle against not terribly good defenses - for example, Kansas 2010, Wake Forest both times, and, the most relevant for this week, UVA in 2011.  We have established something of a pattern of picking one random team, who really is not that much worse than we are, to murdillate (that's murder + annihilate, because either one by itself just did not seem quite strong enough).    Syracuse this year, UVA last year... NC State in 2011 somewhat fits this pattern, although it was a little closer than the other two.  Still, that NC State team actually finished ahead of us in the computers, and yet we led 42-14 and 45-21 before they made it look better in garbage time.  And it was on the road.

Anyway, all of that is just to say that I don't think Syracuse is that bad.  To be honest, I'd probably prefer to trade this outstanding game every year for 3 or 4 merely good ones, and perhaps use one of those against Virginia Tech, but whatever.  It was still a fun game to watch.

On to UVA.  Interestingly, the all time series is 17-17-1.  Would be nice to go ahead and take a lead in the series.  Being tied all time with this program is not exactly a ringing endorsement for GT football (although, there is no real good reason that UVA has not been better than they have been).

We are 9 point favorites, and most seem to think that is low because UVA really is not very good.  We don't have many common opponents.  Just BYU and Duke.  We did much better against Duke (won by 24 instead of losing by 13), they did much better against BYU (won by 3 instead of losing by 18).  UVA has not played very well at all recently, and on paper this should be a comfortable win and GT favored by 9 is probably even a good bet.

I'm terrified.  This game has EXACTLY the wrong feel to it.  First of all its Charlottesville.  I have grown to hate that place (and I've never even been there).  We have sent a lot of teams who were supposed to win up there, and only 1 of them has actually won the game in the last 10 tries (In related news, Paul Johnson is apparently the first GT coach with a winning record, currently, over UVA since Bill Curry.  I guess its hard to have a winning record over a team when you lose every game at their place.  That kind of maxes you out at .500 huh?).  Granted, this UVA team might just be worse than any of those other 10 teams we faced on our last 10 road trips to C-ville, but I still just don't like the place.  I don't like being favored but not by double digits.  I really don't like that every GT fan I know thinks we'll win easily.  And I am not the biggest fan of the matchup here.  UVA is a weird team (like most everyone in the ACC).  Hard to predict.  They somehow are one of the nation's best 3rd down defenses, despite not being a very good defense.  You might think that is simply because they don't force many third downs, but you'd be wrong.  They are well above average in that category.  How can a defense that forces a lot of 3rd downs and is excellent at stopping them be bad, you might ask?  Well.. I have no idea.  Other than to shrug and say "its the ACC"?

Another mystery - for a mediocre to bad defense, they have a pretty big and strong front seven.  Usually not the greatest matchup for our offense.

The good news:  offensively they don't do much of anything well, and we have what appears to be a pretty good defense.  They should not score much.  But, didn't we think the same thing in 2011?  I distinctly remember 14 quick points and a 7 minute painstaking, ground and pound drive to end the game 2 years ago.  That offense was decidedly below average statistically but we could not get them off the field.  Yes, I know, our current defense is much better.  We think.  For now.

I've seen this movie before.  The good guy dies in the end.  I hope I'm wrong.  But looking at the major factors - its a road game, the fans (and probably players) are overconfident after last week, we are supposed to win, which gives them the psychological edge, but not by a lot, meaning we don't have a dominant talent or athleticism advantage...  Oh, and this happens to be the place where we ALWAYS seem to play poorly.

I don't like it.  Intellectual analysis tells me that we should win by 2 TD's or perhaps more.  But I'll take any win.  Any win at all.  1 point.  Triple overtime.  Whatever.  Let's just get out of there at 5-3 and I'll be happy.

Go Jackets!

Syracuse

Well, so much for that good feeling.

Really that game was probably my fault.  Put the classic jinx on us with that stupid comment at the end.  Re-reading my blog post though, I feel like a lot of that was pretty spot on.  We did do a lot better offensively than last year (400 yards compared to 150, several more drives into scoring territory than last year).  And that "much better" performance was nevertheless only about 14-20 points.  We needed the defense to play well and it didn't.  BYU's offense may have improved to the point that its "pretty good", or our defense may have just played poorly.  We'll have to wait a couple weeks to see how both our defense and their offense play going forward.

The main reason we lost in my opinion was our play in the red zone.  Specifically, the defense.  This has been an issue for us for several years now.  We are not very good at forcing field goals.  If we stop the other team, it usually is before they get into our territory.  Once they get near our red zone, we usually usher them right into the end zone.  This season, we have allowed 16 offensive TD's and forced only 6 FG's (and one against Elon which hardly counts).  I don't have the time to compare this number to a bunch of other teams for context, but courtesy of cfbstats.com, I can tell you that we are 86th nationally in opponent red zone TD percentage.  Meaning, when an opponent gets inside our 20 yard line, we give up a TD at a far higher rate than most teams.  (65% if you are curious).

BYU is a good defense.  Ironically, they are only slightly ahead of us on the state I just quoted (76th at 62.5%) but they performed well in this game.  Some of these were not technically red zone trips, but when we drove into BYU territory, we often bogged down in FG range.  When the game was 24-13, both teams had created four promising drives that created scoring opportunities.  BYU converted 3 into TD's and made 1 FG.  We converted only 1 into a TD and went 2 for 3 on FG's.  And this is why we trailed 24-13.  We needed to hold BYU to around 20 points and the easiest way to do that would have been to tighten up when they got into our territory.  Turn one or two of those TD's into FG's, and its 20-13 or 16-13 coming down the stretch.  Playing poorly in this area is how you lose despite being roughly even in total yards.

The Pick 6 was the kind of play that will always kill you against a team like BYU.  We had a semi promising drive at midfield, with a chance for 3 or maybe 7 points, and instead they get a quick 7.  That kind of swing, against a BYU caliber defense, is usually going to end the game.  That type of play tends to be more about luck than anything else, so it does not concern me too much going forward.  It was a frustrating game, and another game that might have been winnable had we played well (probably would have needed near perfect execution in this case).  I was at least pleased to see us compete on both lines a lot better than last year.  I thought BYU still outplayed us in the trenches, but the margin was much closer this time around.

Anyway, on to Syracuse.  Along with Pitt, Cuse for a few years now has been a mediocre to bad team that is wildly inconsistent, capable of losing any game but also usually good for a big upset.  In other words, they fit perfectly into this conference.  That also makes them extremely difficult to predict.  On paper nothing here scares me too much.  They are good running the ball but don't throw it well.  Their defense is not terribly noteworthy.  We are at home and 9 point favorites.  Most of the computers seem to think we win by 1 or 2 TD's.

The most important thing in my opinion is to get the offense back on track.  When your execution is struggling, the last thing you want to see is a front 7 that beats a lot of blocks.  Which is exactly what we've seen three weeks in a row now.  Hopefully, tomorrow, this won't be as much of an issue.  Syracuse should be somewhere between Duke and UNC.  Our blocking was not stellar against either of those two, but it was good enough to get the job done.  That is what I expect tomorrow as well.  Something in the range of 31 or 35 points, probably.

The defense will need to avoid the collapse it endured last year.  As I've been saying for several posts, I have been pleased and excited by the defense.  Miami did not bother me too much because they are a really good offense (just ignore the UNC game last night - despite their play so far, UNC is actually pretty talented and Miami had several reasons to be flat.  That game was probably not an accurate depiction of Miami's true talent).  BYU has me a little more worried, because I don't think they are on the same level but still scored 31 offensive points on us.  Our defense looked great last year for a couple games and then came the epic collapse that started with Miami and continued through Middle Tenn., Clemson and BYU.  If that happens again, Syracuse is certainly good enough to score 40.  We should win but this team is no joke.  They have legitimate athletes.  Especially running the ball, where they recently changed from a senior pocket passer QB to a sophomore dual threat.  And they have two talented running backs (Jerome Smith and Prince Tyson-Gulley - who both have a good combination of size and speed).

Hopefully, the defense that played against Duke, VT and the 2nd half against UNC will show up and we can limit what they do.  Cuse only mustered 14, 17, 24 and 27 on Clemson, Penn St., NC State and Northwestern (in that order).  Clemson looks like a pretty good defense but the rest of those are probably not in the top 30 nationally, and are roughly comparable to GT or worse.  Unless we morph back into our midseason form from 2012, in which case we would be the worst of that group by far...

Here is to hoping we don't do that.  With moderate to pretty good execution on both sides, this is a game we should win.  And we need to do so, and probably win the next two as well, if we are going to keep the bowl streak alive.  I'd rather not need to upset Clemson or UGA in order to go bowling.  We have 2 FCS teams this year and can only count one for bowl eligibility, so we need 3 more wins against FBS teams - meaning we need to beat 3 of Cuse, UVA, Pitt, Clemson and UGA.  The most likely path there is simply to win the first three.

Let's go Jackets!

BYU

So, as curious as I was for the Miami game, it did not end up telling me much.  I already knew that, with the benefit of several turnovers, we could jump out to a lead.  And I already knew that, if we did not execute very well for 2 quarters, we could give up that lead.  I was pleased that we fought back to tie the game (except for the extra point - is it my imagination or does this happen to us a lot more than anybody else?).  And, if you had told me before the game that we would be driving at Miami's 30 or so, within 1 score, with 6-7 minutes left, I'd have probably taken that and said let's roll the dice.

Given how the game played out (7 turnovers and a lot of sloppiness both ways) its hard to say if the Vegas spread was the indicator I thought it might be.  The only thing that game really proved was that Miami has better talent than we do - but everybody knew that already too.  We just did not know how much more talented.  In  my opinion, the game did not do a very good job of showing us just how big the gap was.  At times we looked like we could not force 2nd down.  I am not sure if I've ever seen GT give up more plays of 20+ yards.  But at other times, we actually got stops.  Make one more play on 3rd and 15, with the game tied 17-17, or 3rd and 2 with Miami driving to seal the game, or our own 4th and 7, and the ending might have been more interesting.

In the end I was pleased with the way we fought, but not pleased at all with our efficiency.  We continue to make unforced errors and play inefficiently.  Some of that should have been expected from Vad this season, as he matures.  But most of the other players are experienced and, especially the offensive line, should be executing smoothly and making Vad's job easier.  Instead, it usually has been the opposite.  This is not to take anything away from Miami and Virginia Tech.  Both forced many errors on our part as well, and Miami committed many unforced errors of their own.

Despite the at times pitiful looking effort from the defense, I'm still generally happy with the play from that unit this season.  We will face exactly 2 more offenses that have Miami caliber talent - Clemson and UGA.  And UGA seems to lose 1 playmaker per week, so who knows what they'll be trotting out by the time that game gets here.  I'd rather not give up 500 yards and 45 points when we play those two, but there is hope.  Obviously, 7 of Miami's points came on a garbage time pick 6, which should not be counted against the defense.  Furthermore, if we clean up a few fundamental issues, we might have only conceded 28-31 points to Miami.  Holding either of Clemson or UGA to that kind of number would be considered a success.  And I do believe its possible.  At this point of the season, the defense appears to be our strongest unit.  Which is the first time that has been the case since 2008.  The optimist in me can't ignore the coincidence that 2008 was the last time we beat UGA, and that season had a very similar feel to this one.  That team was led by a good defense for 2/3 of the year, until the offense got in sync, and then a good defense slowed down a loaded UGA offense just barely enough.  Another loaded UGA offense awaits us at Thanksgiving, but once again, the UGA defense is vulnerable if our offensive execution improves.  As it appears we are now out of the ACC race, the most important goal in my mind should be improving every week, with an eye toward that UGA game.  I'd of course also like to win as many games as we can and keep the bowl streak alive.  But beating UGA would put a much more positive spin on what has to date been a disappointing season.  I don't think that result is nearly as far fetched as most fans of both teams probably do, at this point.

Anyway, on to BYU.  After dominating us last year in Atlanta, one would think they might be overconfident for this game.  They did lose 7 starters on defense, including their entire defensive line, but nevertheless, return a good unit.  I believe we will have considerably more success offensively than last season, but that still may be only about 14-20 points.  Despite what I would still call poor execution against Miami, overall, I saw improvement from the Virginia Tech game in this area.  With a similar degree of improvement this week, we might be able to score 28 or 31 on this defense, but we won't approach that number unless we play markedly better than we have.

Most likely, our defense will have to win this game for us.  The good news is that BYU is not a very good offense, and is mostly one dimensional.  We are probably the best defense they have faced, which is strange considering they played Texas.  But the Longhorns are a very talented team on paper that so far has put an oddly bad product on the field.  BYU torched Texas, but was pretty well shut down by a solid if unspectacular Utah defense, and just a plain unspectacular UVA team.  They have looked better in the past two weeks, but one of those games was Middle Tennessee State, which is not impressive.  The other was Utah St., but its not clear yet just how good they might be.

While BYU's passing attack has looked better of late, I still don't think its very good.  They are probably the best running attack we have faced so far (the only candidate to beat them would be Miami - but they are much more difficult to defend with an excellent passing attack).  Ted Roof's profile at his previous schools has generally been a very good run defense but a porous pass defense.  However, with this unit, we have mostly been defending teams that pass better than they run (certainly Duke and UNC are in this category, and VT because their rushing offense is atrocious, and probably Miami although they are good at both).  Roof's defenses have been built on two  principles - 1) stop the run, and 2) affect the QB.  Those two goals are one and the same tomorrow, as BYU's QB, Taysom Hill, is both their leading rusher and leading passer.

We will see if Roof and the defense are up to the task.  BYU remains much better defensively than offensively.  They are a team that, if you beat them, you generally beat them 19-16 or 20-13, as Utah and UVA showed earlier this year.  I expect both teams score somewhere around 20 points.  Whether we lose 24-20 or win 21-17 will likely be determined by who takes care of the ball, and who makes the plays in the 4th quarter.

Hopefully, this team, and its quarterback, starts to grow up and learns to win.

I have an oddly good feeling despite being 6.5 point underdogs on the road.  I was terrified by VT (correctly) and curious but pessimistic (correctly) for Miami.  Let's hope my feeling is correct again.

Go Jackets!

The Blog Resumes

So I've taken about a year off and missed the last 9 games of last year and the first 4 of this year.  I know.  I know.  Worst.  Blog.  Ever.  I just could not stomach doing it last year after the MTSU game, and then I remembered how much I enjoyed just watching football without worrying about writing this stuff.  I was too systematic about it.  Felt like homework.  I had too much structured segments that I felt obligated to fill, even if I didn't have the time or material.  It ended up making me enjoy football season less, which was exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

I'm back now, by popular demand.  Seriously I have had requests.  Well, ok, a request.  One.  Singular.  Thanks Jarrett!  (name changed to protect privacy [just kidding, nobody cares, and thats his real name]).  But its going to be a lot more informal.  Which, actually, people will probably prefer.  I'm sure I'll still throw some ridiculous statistical research at you from time to time, but there won't necessarily be a "preview" and a "review" every week.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's get to the very informal and disorganized wreckless ramblins.

First of all, I hate Virginia Tech with the fire of a thousand suns.  They are approaching UGA status at this point.  For a lot of reasons but mostly because they have apparently decided we are their biggest threat in the Coastal.  Which I guess is correct.  But they spend extra time on us every year.  Bud Foster (Virginia Tech's defensive coordinator for those who don't know) basically admitted to using Sunday the past 2 weeks to work on us.  Which probably explains, at least in part, the lackluster effort against East Carolina and Marshall.  Last year, I can't prove it, but I'm confident they spent a bunch of their August practices preparing for our offense.  This strategy apparently backfired as they were not nearly as good as normal running their base stuff, early in the year.  Their defensive numbers the first half of the season were terrible, by their standards, until they finally regrouped for the final 5 games or so of the season.  Typically, you use August to get everybody back in sync running your NORMAL BASE DEFENSE FOSTER I HATE YOU.  UNC scoring 48 points on them warmed my heart a little bit.  But not really.  And I'm sure Pitt scoring 35 points had nothing to do with the 3 weeks those clowns probably wasted putting in "The Georgia Tech" defense.

Any team can do this (and I believe many do to some extent).  Single out one or a handful of teams to spend extra time on, and then sacrifice some time against some of the easier teams on your schedule.  Usually you might do this on your bye week or maybe against an FCS team.  In any event, I don't fault VT for doing this (thats a lie) but I am irritated they have chosen us to do it against.  I wonder if and to what extent we do the same, to VT or others.

Anyway, Bud Foster and VT by this point appear to have their "Georgia Tech" defense down pat.  They move players around so they are smaller and faster and then do a bunch of weird stuff you never see them do any other time - like that linebacker jumping the snap and shooting the B gap about half of our plays.  And by the way, that strategy could be used against any offense to good effect.  Troy Polomalu does it in the NFL from time to time.  Its not something that works only against our offense, but it works a lot better when they surprise us with it (by, ahem, ONLY using it against us).  I kept hoping we would change up the snap count and get them offsides several times and they would stop.  Actually, we did that - but then we started false starting more than they jumped offsides so they had no real motivation to quit.  And obviously, they had us expending a lot of mental energy on stuff we don't normally have to think about, which could not have helped our execution.  Way to turn the game into a pre snap procedural chess match Foster.  I see what you are doing there.  I hope UNC scores 86 points on you this Saturday you (expletive tirade deleted).

I don't normally criticize Paul Johnson's play calling much, but I was a little confused as to why, since we have put in this entirely new formation, AND Virginia Tech has gotten so good at stopping our normal offense, that we didn't at least try the new one.  Vad in the pistol running the diamond is more of a power blocking scheme.  They were beating the tar out of our quick, finesse, angled blocked scheme.  Why not see if we can slow it down and push them around with more traditional blocking?  Really, it did not seem to me that we had much to lose.

Oh well.  That game is over with and I don't really want to think about it too much anymore.  As I said, I can't stand that team.  But the good news is that I'm pretty sure they will lose, several times, in conference.  Strangely enough, last week, BEFORE the game, I had the thought that the game we really need to win is Miami.  Even had we beaten VT, if we lose to Miami, and presumably lose at Clemson, we'd be 6-2 and I don't think Miami loses 3 times.  So if we wanted to win the Coastal, we always had to beat Miami.  After I worked that through, I actually realized that the VT game might not matter.  And if we were going to go 1-1 in these 2 games, it would be better to lose to VT and beat Miami than vice versa.  That, of course, is silly.  You don't get to trade games.  The two games are independent and the fact that we lost to VT won't help us beat Miami.  But it did occur to me about an hour after the loss that we have not really lost anything.  VT is a great defense but their offense can not be trusted to score more than 10 points on nearly anybody.  And when that is the case, you are going to be in a bunch of close games.  Miami will beat VT in my opinion, and then I think VT could lose literally very other ACC game, including Duke (maybe).  They won't lose them all, of course.  They are well coached and win a lot of close games, but 5-3 or at most 6-2 is the best they can do, I think.  If we beat Miami and finish 6-2, I think at worst we are in a 3 way tie, and likely just a tie with Miami, which we would win.

So, can we beat Miami?  About 4 days ago I would have said no.  We have not played well against Miami since 2008.  We have been especially bad at Miami.  They appear to be very good in all phases of the game. Improved on defense, very talented on offense, and solid on special teams.  They have tremendous speed at WR, a good QB and a great RB.  Their front 7 on defense is much improved, both because they are a year older (returning nearly everybody), and they have some injured players back and a couple new transfers.  So we lose, right?  Its a road game.  We have not looked great on offense yet.  Our defense, while improved, gave up over 600 yards to this unit last year.  Miami beat Florida.  We struggled with UNC (a bad UNC team?) and lost to VT, who, while good, is not as good as Florida.

But I did say I "would have" said no.  What changed?  Easy.  The spread came out.  Miami opened as about a 4 point favorite and now I believe its at 6.  I expected something like 14.  The last time that happened was in 2011 with Clemson.  Granted, we were at home, but I expected to be 14 point underdogs, and we opened as 3 point underdogs.  I was shocked.  I thought it was the most obvious bet ever.  Clemson would cover easily.  Of course we won by 14 in a game that wasn't that close.

That is just one example, but in my experience, when you see Vegas offer an "obvious" bet like that, something is up.  I got to thinking about it and here is what I've come up with...  First, Florida and Virginia Tech are actually probably about even.  Both are bad offenses and great defenses.  I could see giving Florida the edge because their offense probably is better (not saying much) but its close.  Miami won thanks to a lot of help (5 turnovers...) and we lost the turnover battle to VT.  I think Miami deserves credit for forcing some of those turnovers but still, turnover margin usually has a luck component and a big effect on the outcome.

Second, how much do we really know about Miami?  Their offense is great on paper but outside of one drive and one big play, they did not do much against Florida (less total yards for the game than we had against VT).  And the other teams they have played are garbage.  Literally, they are all worse than Duke.  I don't know what that tells us.  I was not terribly impressed by their offensive line against South Florida.  And South Florida has fallen off a cliff.  They lost to McNeese St by 30 points.  Seriously.  So maybe we can limit their rushing attack and pressure Miami's QB.  Defensively we know even less about Miami.  They kept Florida out of the end zone for the most part, but did allow over 400 yards to a mediocre offense (at best).  And shutting down those other offenses tells us about as much as GT shutting down Elon.

I don't know.  I am still thinking Miami wins.  But I'm a lot more optimistic now that I know what the experts think.  And, actually, a lot more confused.  Curious.  I guess I will say Miami wins something like 35-28, which just barely covers the spread.  But I like our chances a lot better than I did before.

Let's see what we can do.  Go Jackets.