Plays that excited me, Plays that scared me

LuCane

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Just 4 plays and what they mean for later.

Since it's only game 1, let's start with the "bad." For context, most know I'm not on either extreme of the Blake Baker debate. I don't think he sucks. I don't think he's the head coach candidate some claim him to be. So far, I think he's a dude whose evidence is closer to what Manny Diaz showed us in 2016.

Play that scared me: In the second half, on a critical play, our defense ended up in a 3rd and 12. UAB was toward the top end of the TV screen and on a hash with the short side of the field being their sideline. I immediately looked over to my friends and fam watching with me and said "****, last year Baker unnecessarily sent DB blitzes from the short side of the field in this scenario. Hope that tendency is gone." Play begins and slot WR on the short side motions to the bottom of the screen. Frierson stays frozen in the slot, giving a strong tell he's blitzing. Ball is snapped and he blitzes.

Unless this is some chess game trick by the defensive coaching staff to show an old tendency during the first game against a "lesser" opponent, this should be a cause for concern. Why? Because we have to stop this **** immediately. I'm a dopey message board poster who charts plays. Any legitimate team we will face has a non-dopey QA guy charting plays getting analyzed by a near million dollar OC.

This is ONE tendency that popped up multiple times last season. There are other examples of gratuitous blitzing. Sometimes a blitz is needed. Often times, it's not! Against Louisville and beyond, our 3rd down conversion stop % (which was 20% last night) will not be aided by QBs missing open WRs or lesser talent. It could track up (hopefully not) closer to last year's numbers if we continue to play with Miami talent the way Conference USA D-Coordinators have to use their lesser talent.

Play that excited me: The results, especially in these games, are always less important to me than how they translate for future games. King scores a TD on 1st and 10 from the 12 yard line. "Hey, that's what he's supposed to do!" Well, we struggled like **** in these scenarios last year. Our RZ offense was trash because we were so rigid in our playcalling and didn't have a dynamic player.

If I remember correctly, we were in a 2X2 set with 2 WRs on each side of the formation. UAB blitzed (again, IIRC, i haven't re-watched the game and taken notes yet). Our OL/RB combined to be 6 players vs 5 UAB defenders. The route combinations were fairly vanilla and UAB had 3 defenders on 2 receivers (one being Jordan) on both sides. John Campbell had a defender slip inside and disrupt King's pocket. Last year, this is a sack, a forced ball to Jordan, or at best an incomplete pass.

This year, as you can guess, our dynamic QB tucked the ball and easily picked up a chunk (which resulted in a TD). We saw another glimpse of that on another 3rd down conversion as well. This is a big f'in deal, even if we do somehow suck this year. We have been so awful at 3rd down conversion % because we continuously get ourselves into 3rd and unmanageable. We all expected this, but it was good to see against a disciplined, well-coached defense.

Play that scared me: On a 20+ yard run by UAB, we got gashed up front for poor gap control. We know this happens with Diaz/Baker front 7 schemes. We rely on Safeties to clean up. Perhaps this play goes unnoticed because there was a bigger pass play on the drive and we also somehow allowed an 11 yard run on 3rd and 15, but it's important for our season. Amari Carter whiffed in the open field on that 20+ yard chunk play.

I'm not anti-Amari, I promise. I've had some long debates with some of the more respected posters on this board over his abilities. He has some great attributes that can help us. However, this was another example of his issues in the open field. He also got blown by on a pass play, though thankfully the QB had a junior high throw that fell short. If you're not concerned about one of our key Safeties (who will play a lot) missing tackles in the open field, then I guess expect a lot chunk plays. We can't afford them. We're not good enough at LB yet.

Play(s) that excited me: I'm lumping two plays together. YO! You see Knighton's 18 yard run from midfield? Oh, man. Everything I hoped for from him in one play. The balance, the cutbacks, the pop. YO! You see Chaney's 33 yard run to get us in scoring position in the 2nd half? That's not a garbage time run. That's a run made in a 17-14 game against, again, a well-coached defense. Later in the season, I'm sure there'll be an instance where Chaney bounces outside too quickly, but this was very nicely done and the subsequent cutback inside showed me exactly what I hoped for: this is a kid who's not close to his ceiling yet. Great balance and ran with a forward lean yesterday.
 
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Can't disagree with any of that. I will add that I am kinda spooked by what I saw out of King in terms of throwing the ball. We're banking on this guy for an offensive resurgence this year - he's going to have to do better than that. Even with a vanilla scheme from Lashlee, there were yards and points left on the table due to QB misfiring. There was a ball on a 3rd down Brevin Jordan probably should have caught if he is an all world TE, but other than that the misses were on King, IMO.
 
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Can't disagree with any of that. I will add that I am kinda spooked by what I saw out of King in terms of throwing the ball. We're banking on this guy for an offensive resurgence this year - he's going to have to do better than that. Even with a vanilla scheme from Lashlee, there were yards and points left on the table due to QB misfiring. There was a ball on a 3rd down Brevin Jordan probably should have caught if he is an all world TE, but other than that the misses were on King, IMO.
He had a few misses but he was pinpoint with his accuracy on majority of his throws. Had a few throw aways too and still ended up 65%.
 
He had a few misses but he was pinpoint with his accuracy on majority of his throws. Had a few throw aways too and still ended up 65%.

Oh I love the throwaways. That part of his game was impressive. We haven't seen that consistently in forever. Instead of tossing the ball to the defense, suck it up, throw it away and live to see another down.
 
Just 4 plays and what they mean for later.

Since it's only game 1, let's start with the "bad." For context, most know I'm not on either extreme of the Blake Baker debate. I don't think he sucks. I don't think he's the head coach candidate some claim him to be. So far, I think he's a dude whose evidence is closer to what Manny Diaz showed us in 2016.

Play that scared me: In the second half, on a critical play, our defense ended up in a 3rd and 12. UAB was toward the top end of the TV screen and on a hash with the short side of the field being their sideline. I immediately looked over to my friends and fam watching with me and said "****, last year Baker unnecessarily sent DB blitzes from the short side of the field in this scenario. Hope that tendency is gone." Play begins and slot WR on the short side motions to the bottom of the screen. Frierson stays frozen in the slot, giving a strong tell he's blitzing. Ball is snapped and he blitzes.

Unless this is some chess game trick by the defensive coaching staff to show an old tendency during the first game against a "lesser" opponent, this should be a cause for concern. Why? Because we have to stop this **** immediately. I'm a dopey message board poster who charts plays. Any legitimate team we will face has a non-dopey QA guy charting plays getting analyzed by a near million dollar OC.

This is ONE tendency that popped up multiple times last season. There are other examples of gratuitous blitzing. Sometimes a blitz is needed. Often times, it's not! Against Louisville and beyond, our 3rd down conversion stop % (which was 20% last night) will not be aided by QBs missing open WRs or lesser talent. It could track up (hopefully not) closer to last year's numbers if we continue to play with Miami talent the way Conference USA D-Coordinators have to use their lesser talent.

Play that excited me: The results, especially in these games, are always less important to me than how they translate for future games. King scores a TD on 1st and 10 from the 12 yard line. "Hey, that's what he's supposed to do!" Well, we struggled like **** in these scenarios last year. Our RZ offense was trash because we were so rigid in our playcalling and didn't have a dynamic player.

If I remember correctly, we were in a 2X2 set with 2 WRs on each side of the formation. UAB blitzed (again, IIRC, i haven't re-watched the game and taken notes yet). Our OL/RB combined to be 6 players vs 5 UAB defenders. The route combinations were fairly vanilla and UAB had 3 defenders on 2 receivers (one being Jordan) on both sides. John Campbell had a defender slip inside and disrupt King's pocket. Last year, this is a sack, a forced ball to Jordan, or at best an incomplete pass.

This year, as you can guess, our dynamic QB tucked the ball and easily picked up a chunk (which resulted in a TD). We saw another glimpse of that on another 3rd down conversion as well. This is a big f'in deal, even if we do somehow suck this year. We have been so awful at 3rd down conversion % because we continuously get ourselves into 3rd and unmanageable. We all expected this, but it was good to see against a disciplined, well-coached defense.

Play that scared me: On a 20+ yard run by UAB, we got gashed up front for poor gap control. We know this happens with Diaz/Baker front 7 schemes. We rely on Safeties to clean up. Perhaps this play goes unnoticed because there was a bigger pass play on the drive and we also somehow allowed an 11 yard run on 3rd and 15, but it's important for our season. Amari Carter whiffed in the open field on that 20+ yard chunk play.

I'm not anti-Amari, I promise. I've had some long debates with some of the more respected posters on this board over his abilities. He has some great attributes that can help us. However, this was another example of his issues in the open field. He also got blown by on a pass play, though thankfully the QB had a junior high throw that fell short. If you're not concerned about one of our key Safeties (who will play a lot) missing tackles in the open field, then I guess expect a lot chunk plays. We can't afford them. We're not good enough at LB yet.

Play(s) that excited me: I'm lumping two plays together. YO! You see Knighton's 18 yard run from midfield? Oh, man. Everything I hoped for from him in one play. The balance, the cutbacks, the pop. YO! You see Chaney's 33 yard run to get us in scoring position in the 2nd half? That's not a garbage time run. That's a run made in a 17-14 game against, again, a well-coached defense. Later in the season, I'm sure there'll be an instance where Chaney bounces outside too quickly, but this was very nicely done and the subsequent cutback inside showed me exactly what I hoped for: this is a kid who's not close to his ceiling yet. Great balance and ran with a forward lean yesterday.

schematically on defense this tends to jump off the screen a lot. Something is broken there. Miami does enough with its aggression to win.....but some of these things are easily defensed.

We have great players on the DL. I wonder what it would look like to just let them eat 1 on 1 and play man coverage.

**** yeah. Knighton and Chaney both getting busy. I can live with that.
 
Can't disagree with any of that. I will add that I am kinda spooked by what I saw out of King in terms of throwing the ball. We're banking on this guy for an offensive resurgence this year - he's going to have to do better than that. Even with a vanilla scheme from Lashlee, there were yards and points left on the table due to QB misfiring. There was a ball on a 3rd down Brevin Jordan probably should have caught if he is an all world TE, but other than that the misses were on King, IMO.
Agree we need way more than what we saw. The overthrow miss on the deep pass to Harley is probably a timing issue. The wide miss (to Payton, IIRC) on the triple option type RPO at the goal line was just a wild throw.

I'd stress some patience. This is a really weird year (obviously), but especially in the sense of no extended Spring and game scenarios. Put it this way, we looked better against UAB in Game 1 of 2020 than we did against Central Michigan in Game 3 last season. Not saying we'll go on to have offensive explosion games like we did against Louisville in '19, but it's just way too early to judge the passing game. My biggest concern would be the combination of our route combinations (vertical) with OL who still get beat.
 
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Can't disagree with any of that. I will add that I am kinda spooked by what I saw out of King in terms of throwing the ball. We're banking on this guy for an offensive resurgence this year - he's going to have to do better than that. Even with a vanilla scheme from Lashlee, there were yards and points left on the table due to QB misfiring. There was a ball on a 3rd down Brevin Jordan probably should have caught if he is an all world TE, but other than that the misses were on King, IMO.
Think lamar jackson. Not always gonna be on target but will bail you out more times than not with his legs. That is what we have.
 
Chaney Sr.'s genes are kicking in. The kid looked like Gurley physically. He's running tougher than he did in high school and has been all camp.

I'm so **** excited about those two freshman backs that I can't keep myself calm. First game. True freshmen. Flashed pretty **** quickly. That's a good thing. We're going to need them to be who we expect them to be because although it's only one game, I see glimpses offensively of what made me pause when it was mentioned that Lashlee was our new OC.
 
He had a few misses but he was pinpoint with his accuracy on majority of his throws. Had a few throw aways too and still ended up 65%.
He hits Harley on that one bomb where he beat man coverage and connects with payton in the endzone, King easily has over 300 yards of offense by himself and his stat line looks ridiculous.

Saying that, I feel the offense will gel. Just needs time.
 
Can't disagree with any of that. I will add that I am kinda spooked by what I saw out of King in terms of throwing the ball. We're banking on this guy for an offensive resurgence this year - he's going to have to do better than that. Even with a vanilla scheme from Lashlee, there were yards and points left on the table due to QB misfiring. There was a ball on a 3rd down Brevin Jordan probably should have caught if he is an all world TE, but other than that the misses were on King, IMO.
King looked like himself. Not every game did he out 300 in the air and a hundred on the ground.

He probably will have similar passing numbers this year. 3-4 games under 200 yard. 3-4 games over 300-400 yard. And a couple inbetween.

He looked like.....himself.

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UL outside zone is not gonna be nice, if the Dline doesnt make the play in backfield, it feels like the LB never get there in time. Zach seems like he is still thinking and a step too slow.. We have like how many LB corches?

And I know we are striker based D, but if an offense is in run heavy double tightend its ok to go based 4-3 or do we not even have that ability anymore
 
To me, this teams best safety duo is Hall and Bolden. I saw more from Bolden in his limited snaps last year than I've seen in Carter in ALL his time here.

If I'm speaking honestly, I've always though Carter's skill set belonged closer to the line of scrimmage. To me, he should have been tried out as a striker.
 
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I'm so **** excited about those two freshman backs that I can't keep myself calm. First game. True freshmen. Flashed pretty **** quickly. That's a good thing. We're going to need them to be who we expect them to be because although it's only one game, I see glimpses offensively of what made me pause when it was mentioned that Lashlee was our new OC.
What's your biggest concern? Although imperfect and certainly will lean toward simplistic, I think it's a good fit for our program.
 
UL outside zone is not gonna be nice, if the Dline doesnt make the play in backfield, it feels like the LB never get there in time. Zach seems like he is still thinking and a step too slow.. We have like how many LB corches?

And I know we are striker based D, but if an offense is in run heavy double tightend its ok to go based 4-3 or do we not even have that ability anymore
I don't care who starts, but Sam Brooks has to play more snaps than Mccloud against UL or we're going to see some cringeworthy chunk plays. Look, Zach has attributes I've been a huge fan of since he got here. But, I'm on the edge of my seat watching him choose gaps and close. If we mess around with it against UL, we're toast.
 
Cam is gonna get passed on the depth chart. And I say that with all due respect to Cam. Good comparison, though.

I would be a little surprised but would feel that the youngins have earned it if that happened.

Pre-season I thought Cam was going for 1500+ Yards this season but being that we have King and the freshman. I’ll just trim that down to 1200 yards and 10TDS

Cam probably transfers if he gets passed up. So I’m rooting for him to ball out this year and hit the league. Then 2021 we let Rooster, the Don, And Franklin ball out.
 
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