How Do We Fix The O-Line?

[NorthEastCane]

Umm no Jarren caused at least half of the sacks.... Zion was holding his own a good bit although the moment was too big for him which where the mental mistakes came from. but Campbell was a lot worse.

Scaife - LT
Donaldson - LG
Gaynor - C
Somebody at RG maybe move Gaynor over and start Clark at C... who knows figure it out.
Zion - RT

Zion in the starting line up is the best option we have but RT is where he needs to be.

This is nonsense.

Carry on.

 

[M3N]

Scaife at T is an option to seriously consider during the bye week.

People don’t want to hear this, but a huge part of the problem is just youth. Out of the 10 OL in the the two-deep, there is only one junior and no seniors. That is an insanely young group.

Tired of hearing the youth ****. Out of all the OL we have Scaife is head and shoulders the best. We didn’t evaluate good enough while recruiting and it shows.

Donaldson might be worse then Trevor Darling and he’s been here 3 years!!!!

This current crop of OL signees aren’t going to cut it either.

 

[NorthEastCane]

Run. The. Spread. It's so simple yet I bet we don't make the change. There is literally no other way to scheme around an O-line as atrocious as this one.

If we keep running plays under center we might as well just punt the ball as soon as we get it and hope we score solely on defense.

If there is no way to scheme "around an O-line as atrocious as this one", how is spread going to help. Even when we went shotgun, pressure was getting to him before receivers could get into their routes.

 

[CaneMutiny06]

My solution to help fix the problem (our OL wont be great this year but it can be at least average):

- Move Scaife to LT
- Move Campbell to guard
- Move Nelson to RT

While Nelson gave up more sacks (I believe) than Campbell I though he was better than Campbell and looked far more athletic, his get off was just bad. I think with these changes and more shotgun we could salvage the OL

I agree with those saying musical chairs won’t “fix” the OL, but this may be the best short term solution in terms of preventing drive-killing negative plays.

 

[Patreek]

If there is no way to scheme "around an O-line as atrocious as this one", how is spread going to help. Even when we went shotgun, pressure was getting to him before receivers could get into their routes.

I don’t want to run the spread exclusively but the entire point of using it some would be that Williams would line up and know pre snap where the ball is going and rifle it out of their immediately. It would be a short passing game with the ball out almost immediately. It would get figured out by teams who can tackle in space and get pressure with 3-4 guys but it wouldn’t lead to 11 sacks.

 

[NorthEastCane]

We started a true freshman that gained 50 lbs since he last played live football. If Nelson was our best option than our OL is completely awful. We don't recruit from the NFL so the evaluation needs to factor that we need guys ready to play no more than two years out of high school. Alabama doesn't win because they develop guys into college talent in four or five years, they win because they recruit guys that are ready in one or two years.

It's not like we didn't try. Who were our main targets the last recruiting class? How many did we get?

 

[The U Code]

Tired of hearing the youth ****. Out of all the OL we have Scaife is head and shoulders the best. We didn’t evaluate good enough while recruiting and it shows.

Donaldson might be worse then Trevor Darling and he’s been here 3 years!!!!

This current crop of OL signees aren’t going to cut it either.

Donaldson played his a** off last night...

 

[Garnacho]

Zion will be fine when he figures out the snap count. He was slow every single play coming out of his stance after his false start

 

[We the Boss]

My solution is to emulate programs that actually put out good offensive lines. Develop players over YEARS not just a spring and summer. Even Florida was playing mostly guys who had years of practice and development. We threw a true freshman and a redshirt freshman into the fire and who knows what happens to their confidence and development now.

Everyone wants to believe Jalen Rivers and Issiah Walker would solve this over night - they won’t. Starting or relying on freshman to play offensive line must end and guys must be developed.

For this season? I’d chip constantly, eliminate the play action calls, and get Irving and Realus George on the field more. I’d play more wildcat and I’d hammer into Jarren that his internal clock needs sped up. Id call read options plays very often and run/pass options constantly. Id make the offense where Jarren is making one quick read and going or knows where the play is going before the snap. I’d call a conservative ugly offense most of this season and rely on the defense. I might also go back to having shifts and motion in the offense that inexplicably disappeared last night.

Florida started the runner up from the biggest loser in their OL and looked much better.

 

[Patreek]

Florida started the runner up from the biggest loser in their OL and looked much better.

Who?

I believe they started 1 redshirt freshman and the rest were redshirt juniors or redshirt seniors. The difference in time spent in a college weight room and being coached is substantial.

 

[NorthEastCane]

I don’t want to run the spread exclusively but the entire point of using it some would be that Williams would line up and know pre snap where the ball is going and rifle it out of their immediately. It would be a short passing game with the ball out almost immediately. It would get figured out by teams who can tackle in space and get pressure with 3-4 guys but it wouldn’t lead to 11 sacks.

We started out doing that last night. Check out the first drive. But when Grantham adjusted and brought up the CBs to take it away and then brought pressure with 3-4 guys (there was some blitzing but not a lot). We had no effective counter. We couldn't get it to guys in space

 

[jackbenimble71]

After jarren breaks down the tape with enos, jarren will make adjustments to get the ball out soon this negating these sacks or throw it away. Plus jarren seemed too timid to take off running. Several times he was flushed out of the pocket and had a good ten yards of open field to take off and didnt

 

[Patreek]

We started out doing that last night. Check out the first drive. But when Grantham adjusted and brought up the CBs to take it away and then brought pressure with 3-4 guys (there was some blitzing but not a lot). We had no effective counter. We couldn't get it to guys in space

I’m not disagreeing with you. But we didn’t run a lot of spread formations to my eyes. Because if we did either they would have to man up or there would be a dump off open every play

We started out doing that last night. Check out the first drive. But when Grantham adjusted and brought up the CBs to take it away and then brought pressure with 3-4 guys (there was some blitzing but not a lot). We had no effective counter. We couldn't get it to guys in space

Calling play action from under center is the anti christ of the spread. Enos on a lot of plays chose the worst possible formation and play call. I’m not arguing running more spread wins the game. I’m arguing Williams sees the field better and knows - throw to this receiver or throw it out of bounds. The reads are that much easier and quicker is my only argument.

Florida did adjust but if we believe we have the horses (Jordan, Osborn, Thomas, Pope, Harley, Hightower, etc...) in the spread there should be at least 1 favourable matchup or a way of lining up / motioning to get a weapon in space at the LOS open. It doesn’t mask horrible blocking at all, it makes the quarterback see the field presnap and make decisions earlier and quicker.

 

[NorthEastCane]

Less starting experience but way more years of practice and improvement. To me that’s the crux of the issue. If you sign guys with feet who can block and then spend 2-3 years developing them you have a program churning out offensive linemen who can play. If you start every freshman or sophomore that practices well and then destroy their development and then expect next year’s freshmen to plug the holes you are screwed.

I agree, there's only two ways to counter that:

• Overwhelm people with ready to play quality (which we clearly lack)
• Give them time to practice and improve (which I hope Barry's begun)

None of which helps us this year.

I remember a interview with a successful coach that has won national championships (who has since retired) that when asked about improvement he said, "While a team will improve during the course of a season, he's seen the biggest jump between the first game and the second game". I hope this is the case here.

 

[ThomasM]

#4 is what bothered me the most. The tackles needed help, and you have two TEs on the field. Why the **** didn't they help out? **** poor coaching, that's why.

 

[Patreek]

#4 is what bothered me the most. The tackles needed help, and you have two TEs on the field. Why the **** didn't they help out? **** poor coaching, that's why.

Yeah I genuinely thought Enos would be going from the spread one play or series to double tight ends and motioning one or both out wide.

With how the tackles played any 5 or 7 step drop from under center needed to be with double tight ends chipping and Dallas in the backfield. That severely limits the playbook but would have saved some sacks.

 

[scrantoncane]

I just checked. 8 sacks and 12 TFLs.

So we actually did noticeably worse than that last night. It was simply too much of a mismatch to think it will magically fix itself this year.

Per Athelon, UF has No 3 DL unit in SEC. obviously the SEC is a better conference than the ACC.

The ACC DL rankings we face are as follows:

UNC 8
VT 7
UVA 9
GT 14
Pitt 6
FSU 4
Lville 11
Duke 10

We simply aren’t gonna face that talent again. Taken in conjunction with a freshman seeing live bullets for first time and a new OC/system, and It was a recipe for disaster.

OL shouldn’t be as much of an issue moving forward, I hope.

 

[Big Lou]

Only one of our Top 10 OL is an upperclassman. No seniors. This line will basically be together for at three years.

Yes we are young but we should not be this bad. So Donaldson is upper class but Herbert Hillary gaynor dykstra are not ? All of them are on their third year .. we clearly have a massive talent issue on the Oline that will not be fixed any time soon .. maybe if we are extremely lucky, it will be in 3 years ..maybe.. the Kennedy Fail is huge..

 

[Big Lou]

But that begs the question. Have we recruited Ol weakly? Some here think we have recruited it well.

Clearly, very weakly.

 

[Hoyacane1620]

On Nelson, his biggest issue was just getting out of his stance quick enough. They need to change up the snap count to give these guys a chance. Greenard and them boy were almost around them before they came out of their stance. I would have liked to have seen a few more RPO's too. I remember one for sure to JT for 10 yards.

FWIW, as I watched it on tv, the observation about changing the snap count was made a few times in the 4th Q. It was pretty obvious Grennard anticipated it.