I haven‘t posted one of these in ages so I figured I’d give my two cents on Saturday.
1. Offensively and defensively Miami must be prepared for an early onslaught. This is a very talented team that’s been told for a week “ they suck , they’re soft and were overrated“. It should’ve been a very easy week for the coaches to get their attention. I expect early chunk play attempts to get the early KO.
2. Discipline. Games like this the small things matter, it can go from a leak to a full on tsunami and fast. Tackling in space is a must. Take away all cut back lanes and for god sakes keep contain. A&M has speed to turn a five yard hitch into a 80 yard TD. A missed tackle or blown assignment is how that happens. It’s cliche and not very **** but discipline is a must.
3.Make the qb a pocket passer. Regardless if it’s King or Weigman my goal would be to keep them in the pocket. Take notes from Mr Stoops last week. I’d mix things up from shell coverages to have eyes on the qb , not exposing the Mike in coverage and keeping things in front of the defense. If the DL is what we think it is give them a chance to get home. Maybe throw in some Cb / cat blitzes forcing the cb to the short side of the field. Lastly I’d drop a spy occasionally with one of our better athletes. If we blitz it’s a must they get home. Pick your moments.
4. Wr’s / te’s must make big plays. If we win this game it will be because the wr’s and te’s won some 1 v 1’s. We know AM will load the box and dare them to make plays. Playing in a phone booth against that front with a numbers advantage is a bad recipe. What we’ve seen the last couple weeks will not cut it schematically. That said I expect to see plenty of different looks with formations.
5. No layups. We can’t allow easy scores , regardless if it’s busted assignments , missed tackles and most importantly the return game. Ball security by the punt returners, TS , George or whoever is back there is a must. Catch the ball first!!!! This is an underrated area where losing X hurts.
6. RPO. Use more formations outside the hashes and heavy Rpo’s. It was obvious last year the biggest difference with the offense was the Rpo with Tvd versus King. He thrived in that area because of his quick decision making. We’ve also set the run up early in the season and haven’t used the te’s as well as the Rpo. This could be the perfect time to unleash both.
The biggest key is not having a catastrophe happen early , that could start the “ here we go again“ doubts to creep in. Drag the game out and put the pressure on them. Imo we need to play a good game and get a break or two to win this one. Hopefully we can end the streak of turds being laid in these big road games.
