Duke postgame

[stinger78]

Watching the replay, the first PI on Dook’s first possession was BS. They both had a good grip on each other. The ball was under thrown and Shelley was trying to turn, but the WR was holding him. It well may have been the first INT, but he was held and Shelley got the PI. No way.

 

[chewybaka]

All of our roads have been and will be rocky. That is just who we are this year. We should be better but we just can’t get our s*it together.

Go Jackets!

Delay of game on the defense when it was 4th 8...got 5 yard penalty giving them a reasonable chance ...then they score....really. To Techs credit they fought thru it, but I threw popcorn at the TV on that crossing route for dukes score

 

[RonJohn]

Oh. I replied to the wrong one.

Can the DL shift over like they used to against us and CPJ?

Can still shift. Watch that play just after the 2 minute timeout in the first half. One of the GT players on the line makes a jerking motion, and the OL player responds to it. If he were moving smoothly to the side, it wouldn't be a penalty. Similar to the offense. The entire offense can stand up, and then reset. Players can go into motion. However, offensive players can't make sudden moves that look like the play is starting before the snap. The DL could do the same thing.

 

[jeffgt14]

Catching at the 10 is a risk of muffing the punt and having it recovered by the other team for an easy TD. Get away from the ball when it's that close to your own endzone and hope it takes a favorable bounce.

Watch other games. It's pretty much the standard to catch everything outside the 8 now. Nobody wants to risk getting stuck inside the 2. Anything further than the 5, you can still run your whole playbook.

 

[Jacket05]

I am surprised Rutherford's play has not been mentioned much. He played well when he got the ball putting up 76 yards on 8 receptions. However, he was responsible for so many more yards than that cause he killed it blocking down field on so many of the perimeter plays!!!

 

[Bogey]

In my recollections, of most of the punts we fair-caught, there were a number of defenders present ready to down the ball deep in territory. I thought they were mostly the right decisions.

Exactly. There is nothing sacred about the 10 if defenders are in position. From what I can tell, we are catching any ball from the 8 yd line or more if defenders are in place. We can still operate our O from the 8.

 

[stinger78]

I think I just saw where King got hurt. It was on the 4th and 1 with the big push. King got up w/o using his right arm. Might have hyper-extended his elbow or maybe got a hat on his hand, etc. That was just before he airmailed the throw to Lane in the EZ.

 

[jojatk]

Speaking of King.. He may be the most erudite QB in the ACC.

Now wait a second there’s no reason to insult… hold on (looks up “erudite”)… never mind

PS I agree with you 100%

 

[jojatk]

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the screens, and while I’d like to see some winkles off them or even some more rocket toss style plays, I’m just glad we got the ball moving wide of the tackle box. It opens everything up.

My understanding of our use of the screen so much is that it is both exactly what you said plus it forces aggressive defenses to cover the entire field, side to side, on nearly every play. If your defense isn’t really deep then that will eventually begin to take its toll. And that showed up big time in the 4th quarter as we were able to run on them more as they defense clearly began getting gassed. They were also on the field for nearly 40 game minutes.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I won’t gloat, because I will be the first to admit that we have plenty to work on. However, to those of those that are negative Nancie’s and wanted to crown dook the dynasty of the ACC for beating absolutely nobody, I will take your apology graciously.

I don't remember anyone saying that Duke was an up and coming dynasty. That will never happen but they did beat UNC. We should beat UNC handily as their season begins to fall apart but we will see.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I don't understand. The wide receiver screen is one of our most consistent and successful plays and you want us to stop calling that play so much? Would you also prefer that we stop scoring touchdowns?

Well, it works against bad teams but any defense with alert corners and safeties will shut it down. Our receivers are small and fast but not particularly good blockers.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

Their PI call was a make up call, IMO. The PI on us that set up their first TD was garbage and they knew it. However, our most egregious PI wasn’t called. That said, our DBs have got to be taught to turn on the ball or we’ll see more of that. D played bend don’t break and did it well. Part of it was Murphy missing throws. Still, DL made a lot of tackles tonight. That’s a good thing.

Murphy is kind of up and down. He played really well against UNC but not so much against Northwestern. I think he is a good player but has to have a lot of protection from the line because he goes down easy.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

The Good:

• We moved the ball well against a good defense ranked 28th in DFEI coming into the game.
• Our run game was “back”. Amazing what a difference a healthy Jamal Haynes makes.
• Good to see Chad Alexander back. He spelled Jamal a bit and had some decent runs (10/59).
• Jordan van den Burg was a beast on defense. 2 TFLs and a sack.
• Our defense shut down Duke’s run game, limiting them to only 74 yards.
• Haynes King had a good game – 77.2 QBR and 74% completion rate.
• Zack Pyron was money all three times he came in for our short-yardage “must-have” plays.
• On our last non-garbage-time drive, we succeeded in getting first downs and chewing up clock, despite Duke knowing we would run the ball.
• We won by two scores and beat the spread.

The Not-So-Good:

• Untimely penalties extended Duke’s drives and hampered ours.
• We allowed a 67-yard kickoff return. Fortunately, a PI penalty on Duke stalled what was looking like a touchdown drive.
• A failed blitz allowed a 65-yard touchdown.
• Despite his contributions in our run game, Alexander had a false start and another incident when it appeared that King was trying to pull the handoff but Chad wouldn’t let him. This play resulted in no gain.
• We were not efficient on 3rd down.

The Not-So-Good with mitigating circumstances:

• We had a couple of 3-and-outs during our mid-game “sluggish” period. However, these started with us pinned deep near our goal line, which limits play-calling.
• We let Duke come back and take the lead late in the 3rd, but then imposed our will and scored two unanswered touchdowns.

Overall, the Good outweighed the Not-So-Good, which is what you need to win games.

Did you think the offensive pass interference called against Duke was legit? It looked to be so to me but it gets called so seldom, that I actually thought the officials were going to call it on us.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

It felt like Duke did a good job giving us bad field position, affecting our play calling and keeping us in a hole. But we pushed through with the iirc 85 yard drive that was huge.
I assume the PI call was nonsense, correct? I was at the game but will watch replay, would like to see that and a couple others more closely. That PI call basically handed Duke a TD and kept the game close.
Duke looked to me like a pretty well coached and credible team that just didn’t quite have our speed and talent.
The home/west side of stadium, where we were, was packed, north end pretty full, east not so much, but good energy.
I like our little rivalry with Duke, nice to have one where we can enjoy some success but not a cakewalk.

Back in the day, Dodd hated going to Durham. It was usually a small crowd and even his good teams seemed to struggle at times there. And Duke always got up for us. They have been usually, though not always, a difficult team for Tech especially in Durham.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I’m delighted to be wrong about the outcome. It wasn’t pretty but a win is a win.

We won’t have another home game at BDS for another five weeks. Time to buckle down in these next three games. I’m looking forward to homecoming off a bye against Miami. But three critical games first.

We’re favored by 3.5 against the holes. I’m guessing we’ll be around +8 against ND and a pickem against VPI.

Only 3.5 as favorites? I would have thought it would be more but it is in Chapel Hill. After watching them against Duke, I don't know, I just don't think they are that good. Defense does not make open field tackles and the quarterback is nothing special. Their running back impressed me a lot. Offensive tackles are slow as Christmas. Big but seemed slow. Duke consistently got pressure in the second half and took over the game just running the ball despite being down 20 points.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

The son and I went to the game. Where he informed me that we would need 5 tickets next year because the daughter-in-law and the two sisters all wanted to geo to the games and felt left out. Well, it's only money. My impressions:

• Tech got its mojo back. I don't think there was any doubt who had the most talent on the field, but talent isn't much use if you can't use it. The key here was to have both Jamal and Alexander returned to health. Turns out from post-game interviews that fonts here who thought Haynes was hurt appear to have been right; he was himself late night and it made all the difference. And when he needed a breather Alexander came is and, as usual, moved the pile. (How he does that at 185 is a mystery, but some backs just have the knack.) That's what won the game; we Ran The Ball and had more plays and almost twice their TOP. Against a team with limited offensive power that did it.

• Well, that and a good D performance against the run; we had 5 TFLs and held them to 3.7 YPC. That'll do against a team with an inexperienced QB. And, yes, the second PI call was a complete travesty; there was no way either player could get to the ball. But I digress; the D performance was about as good as you could hope for. I was particular pleased by Lockett's performance. That young man gets push.

• I thought King looked like he might be hurt as well. His runs were more tentative then usual. Still, it's hard to complain about 197 yards of total offense and a 74% completion rate on his throws. The usual competent game, though I thought a couple of his throws were e bit risky.

• Why, merciful God, are we still running WR screens when every DC in the country knows they are coming and coaches for it? Ok, sometimes they work for big plays and we can get at least some yards from them. Maybe that's all Buster/Weike are expecting. But I'd like the O more if we were ruining some double options to the edge to get Jamal or King into the open. Maybe we can't make that work and there was nothing to complain about in the run game last night. But then I watch an Army game and get unsatisfied. Maybe it's just mw.

• Last word = our next opponent is a dangerous one. The Holes have the best RB in the conference and know how to use him. They are scoring almost at will and then can't stop anybody. (Why am I not surprised?) A performance like we had last night will do the job, but we'll have to get more out of the O to win. We'll see. If we can get to 5 -2 the ND game will be big.

Your observations are spot on about UNC...they are dangerous, with a fine running back but they are at the point of just packing it in for basketball. One more push from us and you can put a fork in them. In the second half of their game with Duke I thought I had never seen such poor tackling but then I remembered who is coaching that defense now. I am surprised at Mack, I would have thought he would have known better.

 

[57jacket]

Someone mentioned King being hurt? I wondered why he airmailed that throw in the endzone. Report?

 

[MidtownJacket]

Do you think getting things opened up “wide of the tackle box” eventually opens up the middle ?

I’d like to hope so. For my money JH11 is one of the few RBs I don’t love regularly sending between the tackles given his size/speed I think he is better bouncing to the outside.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Well, it works against bad teams but any defense with alert corners and safeties will shut it down. Our receivers are small and fast but not particularly good blockers.

Go back and watch the game. This is an ill-informed statement.

 

[jgtengineer]

Go back and watch the game. This is an ill-informed statement.

In recalling Rutherford flat pancaking that DB and laughing