This is a game, being against a *decent* opponent and flowing into the meat of your schedule.. teams use these games heavily when scouting and game planning tendencies. Games like this are used by teams to fine tune and craft a script and see how it goes. This is where you either show a bunch of nothing and be very vanilla if there are more formations/alignments in your bag. Or if you've shown all/most of your formations but still have play designs in your bag... you go against your grain and run reverse tendencies or tendency breakers and run plays and designs out of different sets than you plan or would like to do in those first few conference games before the bye week. Then the bye comes and you try to shake it up again if you have to or draw up new stuff.
Less technical and more just broad view
Would like to see us run the ball a little more effectively. Hoping to see about 40 carries with around 300 yards on the ground and only throw it about 25 times.
Seems like we run way too finesse for a team with 2 backs over 225 pounds. I want to see the big dudes eat on Saturday. OL and RBs. We haven't ran as effective as I expected *and* it's been against light boxes for the most part. Vanilla, yes, but more of the same gripes we had with Parrish. 5-6 yards every time... but never the big play.
Defensively, just look locked in and not whatever they were doing in the first half last week. Refocus like we did against UF and don't just turn it on in the red zone.
Then, I'd love to see a lot less 7 man protection in the passing game. Let it be 5v5, or 6v5, or 6v6. If they want to send 6-7 guys we should be abusing them in the passing game. Teams rarely/almost never send 7 guys against us but we dial up our protection for it every time and let them bait us into it.
Seeing this way too often and it's been that way under Mario since he got here - really seems they try to baby/protect the OL when they don't need to. Teams start mugging the LOS and we dial up a heavy protection and they bail into a 7-8 man zone coverage and you get Ward sitting back there and having too much time and no one open. TEs and RBs doing nothing or bailing to the flats too late. Send the RB/TE and get them out of pass pro and let Cam beat them to death in the quick game where they vacate so teams stop doing that so much - this is more of a put it on film for future opponents kind of thing.
Same exact thing happened to TVD starting against UNC and GT and he couldn't figure it out. Cam is figuring it out better and has mobility to make plays out of nothing but it limits the explosive plays the way you design them and limits what you can actually dial up and puts Cam in more error prone situations making something out of nothing. Basically where his fumbles/interceptions come from in the past.
Knit picking, I know.