FSU/Louisville similarities

I’m certainly not suggesting Shannon Dawson become Kyle Shanahan but SF runs their offense almost exclusively between the tackles as well. You can be super creative. Harbaugh likes to do this as well.

But one thing SF does for example is use the pitch play to keep defenses honest. Even if it doesn’t work it’s like throwing a bomb to keep the secondary honest. It might not work but it still has a purpose

I have a hard time grappling with the same OC calling a flea flicker to snatch momentum from FSU being the same one pounding the ball up the middle against Louisville (lot of pause in there)
100% completely agree.
It's super important to at least show it so the other guys have to at least respect it.

Pauses
 
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This isn’t rocket science or anything new just an observation and maybe me trying to talk myself back off the ledge a bit (I’m not on the ledge but you get me)

Forced myself to rewatch the Louisville abomination but it stood out to me how razor thin the difference was with these two games at the beginning

FSU empties the clip on their opening drive. Norvell (Gus) isn’t Brohm but he’s a solid play caller that does well on scripted drives

They march on us but the defense holds and forces 3. A huge win honestly.

We turn around and do nothing on offense but get a decent punt to put FSU at their own 20. We know the rest


Louisville empties the clip on their first drive. Again Miami bends but doesn’t break and forces 3.

I think we were ready for the fake it just looked like we played it poorly. **** if we attack the holder who knows what happens when a holder tries to pitch it to a kicker with pressure on him? Scoop and score is on the table even

Ultimately we give up the TD

Offense does worse than nothing as CiCi makes a very uncharacteristic penalty and almost feels like .5 turnover

We punt and Louisville starts with the ball in our territory

It’s 14-0 instead of 3-0 and 14-7 instead of 7-3 us when we make our first clean drive

From there the defense absolutely shuts the door in both games for an extended period of time while the offense flips the script on FSU but can’t do the same to Louisville

Moral of the story?

I dunno. I know people were ****ed at the defense. It was rusty and you could say flat, but also Brohm threw the house

We were pretty close to weathering that storm as well but 4.5 turnovers is tough to overcome

Unlike last season I expect the defense to keep us in it while the offense figures it out
People that think the defense was the problem aside from literally just bad tackling is dumb imo
 
I think Dawson really believes that the WR screen game counts as outside runs. He's mentioned it many times in the pressers. We have been really good in the WR screen game this year. Even if you think this is fair, I don't think it's unreasonable to pitch the ball to a RB a few times each year. The world will continue to spin

Yeah, we went to the well a bit too much against UL like @DMoney mentioned - English 100% baited Dawson & Beck into that 3rd down screen to in the 3rd that failed showing max pressure and dropping two guys to the side the screen went to.
Yes, but you wouldn’t run a halfback toss on 3rd and long, but a screen is ok somehow in Dawson’s mind. They were 7/7 at 3.4 yards per screen outside the 61 yarder by Toney. Louisville basically played zone the whole time and ate these plays up. I’d think there’d by a slightly different outcome if you have Fletcher out there on a toss, there’s almost 40 lbs of mass difference between him and the WRs.
 
Yes, but you wouldn’t run a halfback toss on 3rd and long, but a screen is ok somehow in Dawson’s mind. They were 7/7 at 3.4 yards per screen outside the 61 yarder by Toney. Louisville basically played zone the whole time and ate these plays up. I’d think there’d by a slightly different outcome if you have Fletcher out there on a toss, there’s almost 40 lbs of mass difference between him and the WRs.

That’s not his game though. I like Fletcher, I think he’s a good complementary back on a solid team and have said so for years, but the first time we ran a toss sweep to him and he lumbered out there and got chopped down for a 2 yard loss, yall around here would lose your ******* minds.

Run that to Lyle. Maybe Brown. Or just throw those guys a swing pass once in a while. Something on the edges besides a tunnel would be nice.
 
Yes, but you wouldn’t run a halfback toss on 3rd and long, but a screen is ok somehow in Dawson’s mind. They were 7/7 at 3.4 yards per screen outside the 61 yarder by Toney. Louisville basically played zone the whole time and ate these plays up. I’d think there’d by a slightly different outcome if you have Fletcher out there on a toss, there’s almost 40 lbs of mass difference between him and the WRs.
Agree. Great points!
 
This isn’t rocket science or anything new just an observation and maybe me trying to talk myself back off the ledge a bit (I’m not on the ledge but you get me)

Forced myself to rewatch the Louisville abomination but it stood out to me how razor thin the difference was with these two games at the beginning

FSU empties the clip on their opening drive. Norvell (Gus) isn’t Brohm but he’s a solid play caller that does well on scripted drives

They march on us but the defense holds and forces 3. A huge win honestly.

We turn around and do nothing on offense but get a decent punt to put FSU at their own 20. We know the rest


Louisville empties the clip on their first drive. Again Miami bends but doesn’t break and forces 3.

I think we were ready for the fake it just looked like we played it poorly. **** if we attack the holder who knows what happens when a holder tries to pitch it to a kicker with pressure on him? Scoop and score is on the table even

Ultimately we give up the TD

Offense does worse than nothing as CiCi makes a very uncharacteristic penalty and almost feels like .5 turnover

We punt and Louisville starts with the ball in our territory

It’s 14-0 instead of 3-0 and 14-7 instead of 7-3 us when we make our first clean drive

From there the defense absolutely shuts the door in both games for an extended period of time while the offense flips the script on FSU but can’t do the same to Louisville

Moral of the story?

I dunno. I know people were ****ed at the defense. It was rusty and you could say flat, but also Brohm threw the house

We were pretty close to weathering that storm as well but 4.5 turnovers is tough to overcome

Unlike last season I expect the defense to keep us in it while the offense figures it out
Should’ve left the starting defense in to defend the fake FG.
 
This isn’t rocket science or anything new just an observation and maybe me trying to talk myself back off the ledge a bit (I’m not on the ledge but you get me)

Forced myself to rewatch the Louisville abomination but it stood out to me how razor thin the difference was with these two games at the beginning

FSU empties the clip on their opening drive. Norvell (Gus) isn’t Brohm but he’s a solid play caller that does well on scripted drives

They march on us but the defense holds and forces 3. A huge win honestly.

We turn around and do nothing on offense but get a decent punt to put FSU at their own 20. We know the rest


Louisville empties the clip on their first drive. Again Miami bends but doesn’t break and forces 3.

I think we were ready for the fake it just looked like we played it poorly. **** if we attack the holder who knows what happens when a holder tries to pitch it to a kicker with pressure on him? Scoop and score is on the table even

Ultimately we give up the TD

Offense does worse than nothing as CiCi makes a very uncharacteristic penalty and almost feels like .5 turnover

We punt and Louisville starts with the ball in our territory

It’s 14-0 instead of 3-0 and 14-7 instead of 7-3 us when we make our first clean drive

From there the defense absolutely shuts the door in both games for an extended period of time while the offense flips the script on FSU but can’t do the same to Louisville

Moral of the story?

I dunno. I know people were ****ed at the defense. It was rusty and you could say flat, but also Brohm threw the house

We were pretty close to weathering that storm as well but 4.5 turnovers is tough to overcome

Unlike last season I expect the defense to keep us in it while the offense figures it out
I thought the exact same. Soon as we held them to a field goal in the first drive, it felt like FSU all over again. I thought we were headed that way for sure.

Everyone knew the fake field goal was coming. I’m one of probably about 50,000 people who called it out before it happened. And when JaKobe started celebrating, he convinced me for a second that I was confused and I thought we had done something huge. That was weird.

The margins are thin. And I think, or at least I hope, a huge factor here is that Louisville might be a really good team. They sure have a **** good coach. We’ll see how things play out, but maybe that’s a top 15 or 20 team at the end of the season that we gave the ball to four times and almost got the W anyway.

In that case, it’s not a bad loss, optics wise, and we’re probably a pretty **** good team.

It’s easy to say we’re gonna do the same old Miami thing again, and maybe we will. But I’m not ready to concede that. I’ve seen plenty of evidence that we’re better overall football team than we’ve been in a long time.

So sue me if I still think have a shot. But we do.
 
The rewatch is staggering how many plays were there in the passing game that we just flopped

I’m annoyed now even more because we should have been leading at the half and ultimately had likely a 7-10 point victory
You should not have watched it again. Gotta move on.
 
Were the Louisville coaches on the road recruiting the last 2 weeks too, or were they in the lab game planning?
 
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That’s not his game though. I like Fletcher, I think he’s a good complementary back on a solid team and have said so for years, but the first time we ran a toss sweep to him and he lumbered out there and got chopped down for a 2 yard loss, yall around here would lose your ******* minds.

Run that to Lyle. Maybe Brown. Or just throw those guys a swing pass once in a while. Something on the edges besides a tunnel would be nice.
Fletcher is a Short yardage+Goalline back. I said it all this year. He's been our best RB on those inside runs, but that's cause our entire running game is essentially pretending 1st down is actually a 3rd and 3....

All last year and this year I've said he straight looks bad with any open field... We REALLY NEED lyle to step the **** up and start making **** happen - including on the inside runs. The reality is you can't JUST use Lyle outside and Fletcher inside. Then we're just as predictable as before.
 
That block was awesome.

I think Mario/Mirabel/Dawson were well aware that we can't run the ball the way we ran it last year before the UL game. I didnt appreciate it watching the game live, but we pulled OL a lot and didn't rely on IZ/duo near as much as, say last year. They're trying different stuff, different formations, moving OL around, etc. It just hasn't worked that well, yet.

We don't really run to Bell's (whom I love as a pass blocker) outside shoulder, unless we pull Anez and/or bring a TE to that side. That's a big downgrade in the run game relative to when Rivers came back last year and was at LT. We could run left side B/C when Bell was at LT and Rivers was at LG too. McCoy has not made a leap this year (probably performing worse than he did last year tbh), and Samson hasn't played well since the USF game. Brockermeyer is a massive downgrade relative to Carpenter in the run game. Coop & CiCi have been fine but I don't think they've been exceptional. One think I don't get is why we don't try pulling CiCi to the left more. Seems like we mostly pull Cooper from the left to right side.

And the TEs. Cannot. Run. Block. At. All. I don't know if you caught it on the replay, but on the second and goal on our first TD drive we were in 12 and had Bauman and Lofton on the left side, ran to that side, and Lofton again tried to block the same guy Bauman was blocking and not one of the 3 unblocked UL guys who were in front of him (why Beck didnt audible out of this play when he saw how UL had overloaded that side I dunno).

Long way of saying there are personnel issues with regards to run blocking on this year's team. I guess where I differ from many here is that I give Mario/Mirabel/Dawson some grace and am optimistic they can figure something out. Mario & Mirabel have produced two top flight rushing attacks ('21 & '24) and their best RBs were CJ Verdell/Travis Dye/Damien Martinez. Nice backs but not Saquon or Bijan. They've generally produced good+ rushing attacks except for their first year or Oregon and at Miami (the COVID year wasnt great at Oregon but they also replaced their entire OL, IIRC). I get the aesthetic complaints about the run game - it looks ridiculous, ugly, and like it was designed by Bam-Bam, but I it's proven to be effective. It hasn't been effective this year, except for parts of the ND game and the USF game.
I knew from the few practice clips that none of them can really block. Not even the ones you think like the tall one from Ohio thats a freshman.(He is gonna be more of a receiving threat)

Our undersized young dl and walk ons were standing them up or beating them in the run blocking clips from practice.
 
I knew from the few practice clips that none of them can really block. Not even the ones you think like the tall one from Ohio thats a freshman.(He is gonna be more of a receiving threat)

Our undersized young dl and walk ons were standing them up or beating them in the run blocking clips from practice.

Maybe we miss Old Man McCormick then?
 
Another major difference was Louisville defense made a couple of incredible interceptions... they make catches like that and you know they came ready to play.... while our players looked like they were out clubbing the night before.
 
It was the perfect storm
Turnovers
No run game
Interceptions
Bad tackling
Great opposing offense with a first round receiver
 
I knew from the few practice clips that none of them can really block. Not even the ones you think like the tall one from Ohio thats a freshman.(He is gonna be more of a receiving threat)

Our undersized young dl and walk ons were standing them up or beating them in the run blocking clips from practice.
Carver is the one who can block right, and he's out for the year?
 
We should emphasize the quick and short passing game. We have tthe requisite personnel.

There's so much ink being spilled over the running game when we don't need to force it.
 
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