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Offense:
D'Eriq King - 21/30 322yds 1TD 70%cmp & 14att 28yds
Mike Harley - 10rec 170yds 1TD
Will Mallory - 2rec 58yds
Mark Pope - 3rec 48yds
Dee Wiggins - 3rec 36yds
Don Chaney Jr - 10att 43yds 1TD
Jaylan Knighton - 12att 37yds
Gained 444yds (322yds passing & 122yds rushing) of total offense, 78 plays, 23 1st downs, 8/17 on 3rd down, 5.7 yards per play & 31:28 in time of possession.
Love the first drive play calling with the first two passes on Deep balls to Mallory & Harley, started out early to stretching the field vs UVA.
On the second drive King had a good run to move the ball backed up into our end zone & also delivered another throw to Mallory who made a good catch. Mallory has done a good job stepping as the primary TE since Brevin has been out, I'd like for him to get more targets, but he's been good for a few explosive plays in every game.
Mike Harley played his best game of his career today. He was catching everything thrown by him & got very good YAC yardage on the day, he really stepped up amongst the WR room as the go to WR for King out the Slot. Despite his struggles early in the year, he's just kept fighting & kept working & has emerged as the WR1 for this team.
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Two Great catches early on by Pope, but two bad focus drops.
Wiggins has been a huge disappointment this season, he has no physicality at the top of his routes, he cannot separate to save his life & goes down faster than a baby Deer. He gets no elevation or verticality in his routes at all, just folds like a lawn chair as soon as a CB touches him, he wouldn't start for me for the rest of the year, his size & speed is completely useless, smh.
No more Bubble screens to Marshall Few, ever.
All the TF WR's were out this game due to Covid protocol, looking forward to them getting back in 2 weeks for NC St.
The OL got completely blown up on the interior on 3rd down early in the game Scaife got abused. Interior OL played really bad, Scaife got beat like a rented mule, he was getting completely bull rushed all game. Snowden gave Zion fits. Clark & Jarrid Williams were solid, but the rest of line played like shìt.
King did a good job escaping the pass rush on the 2nd drive in the 3rd quarter, UVA got away with illegal contact to the head on that play, but King saved a potential sack & gained yards on the scramble. This was a good passing performance by King, he missed one to Harley that would've went for a TD on that last drive in the 4th quarter, but overall he was very good completing 70% of his passes & had no turnovers. I felt he made good decision to Mallory in the end zone, just think he needed to give him a jump ball & get the ball placement higher to the back shoulder so he could snatch it out of the air.
Terrible call to end a 15 play drive in the Red zone with just a FG, we totally let UVA off the hook. 3 straight runs to the same side was idiotic AF. There was so many plays that could've been run against a super tired UVA Defense in that spot & we just completely gave up. Haven't been too critical of Lashlee to this point, but that was an awful decision IMO.
Also disagreed big time with punting the ball back to UVA on that first drive of the 4th quarter, it was a 4th down & 1 at midfield, we could've easily converted that & kept the drive going.
They got away with a facemask on Knighton in the 4th quarter as well.
Our rushing offense since Louisville has been garbage, we did gain over 100 yards but we were only running at a horrendous 2.5 yards per carry, it was more so death by a thousand paper cuts, we cannot run on the inside to save our lives. Chaney had some nice runs, but we telegraph our run plays way too often, as soon as we gain anything more than a yard on a run we just hand it off right away again & just waste a down with too many short yard gains. The best runs we had is when we went with 4-wide splits & forced the Defense to pull defenders out of the box & Chaney/Knighton would bounce it outside.
Overall, the offense wasn't bad in terms of production through the air, just left too many points on the board, we should've scored 37 points.
Defense:
Jaelan Phillips - 7tcks
Gilbert Frierson - 6tcks & 1PBU
Bubba Bolden - 5tcks & 1PBU
Quincy Roche - 4tcks 1TFL
Waynmon Steed - 3tcks 1TFL
DJ Ivey - 3tcks 1PBU
Bradley Jennings Jr - 3tcks 1TFL 1 sack
Jahfari Harvey - 3tcks
Gurvan Hall - 2tcks & 2PBU's
Jon Ford - 2tcks
Nesta Silvera - 2tcks
Gave up 366yds (181yds passing & 185yds rushing)
Running QB's always gives this Defense trouble. Armstrong rushed for 91yds on us, but aside from the busted coverage late in the 4th we did a good job in pass Defense holding them to just 181yds passing. Defensive line barely got any pressure, we only had 2 TFL's & 1 sack the entire game.
Every tackle that Amari Carter makes will be called for targeting, it's clear the ACC refs have him tagged as a player they literally have a quota to throw out of every game he plays. At this point Diaz & Baker just need to start playing Jalen Harrell & Brian Balom (once he gets cleared from quarantine) as the 3rd Safety in rotation because AC5 will not be allowed to finish a game this season
Gurvan Hall had a textbook hit dislodging the ball on an early defensive drive.
Bolden didn't play his best, he had a few lapses in coverage but was solid overall.
Terrible terrible coverage by Al Jr on the Deep TD to Henry, completely fell asleep & busted coverage, that was just bad on his part. He played most of this game like he was just going through the motions, he's been very good on the season but tonight he seemed mentally out of it.
Great PBU by Ivey on 4th down, he had good leverage & came underneath the outside shoulder & got active with his hands, he also had a very good tackle on a QB run from Thompson. He's played better since earlier this season.
We play way too much soft Zone coverages, it bugs me lol.
Good job by Jennings blowing up the play in the red zone for a sack, that was good recognition by him.
That was a great TFL by Steed to get to Tavares Kelly in the backfield. He had a bad misread on that long run on 4th down by Armstrong, he hit down on the ball fake, but otherwise he played well with Flagg being out.
Our best LB's are Brooks, Flagg, Steed & Jennings, McCloud just can't turn a corner & has no lateral quickness at all.
The biggest issue with this year's Defense is we are not forcing enough Turnovers, we need to put an emphasis on getting to the ball Defensively, either through stripping it from ball carriers or having our DB's start jumping more routes, but we need more turnovers. We need desperately need a Ballhawk on the backend, hopefully Kamren Kinchens & James Williams will get their shot to play next year as TF's because after Bolden leaves we won't have an impactful Safety returning. Hopefully, we got something with one of the 4 TF S's from the 2020 class.
Rarely do I talk about refs, but this was a God awful officiating crew. It's almost like they were trying their hardest to slow down any good drive we got going on offense & made sure to be momentum killers at every turn. ACC refs are the fckin worst.
Overall, ugly team win, but a win is a win. We should've beat this team a lot more handily, we left points on the field. The Defense didn't play bad, but mental errors lead to preventable scores. Even with all that said, ****, we're still 5-1 lol hopefully the Bye week doesn't kick our asses like it has in recent memory. NC St is very beatable, maybe a good road trip can light a spark under this team.
Either way, just keep winning.
