This was not nearly as interesting to watch as the VT game. UM played pretty vanilla in terms of alignment and only really tried a couple of tactics to mix things up. I saw a couple different charges by LBs to take the dive and I saw a couple attempts to blitz the A gap. However, they pretty much decided to have the unblocked DE play neutral and have Perryman stone the dive. They stayed with 4 up front and an umbrella of 3 LBs with Perryman playing deeper than the others in the middle. Although that makes it harder to get a hat on him, he doesn't have the speed of his predecessor to make up the ground.
It seemed the vast majority of reads were gives as far as the dive - keep was concerned. If the ball was pulled out of the BBs belly, UM made sure to contain JT and ensure that the ball would get pitched. They were gonna make sure #5 didn't beat them. I think you have to give JT a lot of credit. He just went about his business and never showed a bit of body language that he was getting frustrated by that. I love the look in that kids eyes when he plays. He is right at home playing QB on the big stage and he is totally unselfish. I think he had a really good day in terms of option reads and we ran a lot of options. I think there may have been a total of 3 or 4 plays where I wish he would have pulled a give or made a pitch, but other than that he was spot on. In fact, he handled a couple A gap blitzes flawlessly with pull-pitches all in one motion, no hesitation at all. The kid is finding his groove as an option QB. Let's just enjoy it while it lasts.
Miami has athletes and they are hard to block in space. Obviously Golden felt they could play vanilla and use their team speed to chase plays well enough to stop us, and he was right for the most part. They gave up no huge plays. The only problem was, we didn't cooperate by giving them any unforced errors like TOs, or negative plays. This was a well managed game on both sides of the ball IMHO (Them on D and US on O). They paid for their scheme in the way of gobs and gobs of third down conversions. We just executed. Nothing fancy, just making reads and protecting the football.
We blocked OK on the interior. Mason is always good and he was again. I think Braun had a tough time with his guy. He just couldn't get much movement out of him head up and he had a hard time cutting him on the backside of plays. His guy was forever making tackles from the back side of the dive. They knew just where to line that guy up in what I think is called a 2 TECH, where it is difficult to get the right angle for the backside OG when Burden is heading to the second level. Devine got one series each half in place of Braun which doesn't sound like much, but it represented about 30% of the snaps. The same guy Braun couldn't budge, he would push out of plays. In fact, he manhandled him. As far as I am concerned, I think Shamire is showing he is ready to play more and take time away from Braun. Shamire failed to cut once or twice on the back side too (not quick enough or low enough) and he had trouble pulling into space, but he is a force when the play comes to his side and he really protects the passer well. He made some rather ferocious blocks at times. There was one memorable play where he slammed a guy down and I wasn't sure he would get up. He will be good. For those of you wondering if we swung and missed on Devine, forget about it. If I am not mistaken we went the distance both times Shamire was out there. Burden had some good moments and others where Perryman made him look silly. Griffin was pretty good at times. I have to give Chamberlain some props. He probably played his best game I have ever seen him play before he got his leg rolled. He made some really good blocks with some authority. Everybody did a pretty good job in pass pro for the most part.
Perkins played his best game at AB. He ran well with the ball, but he blocked extremely well too. Only one missed block that I saw and he had a lot of opportunities. The rest of the ABs were a mixed bag blocking, but those UM defenders were pretty darned nimble too. It wasn't an easy assignment. I was happy to see the entire crew getting into the action and making plays. Zenon with the TD run and 3rd and 15 conversion, Bostic with a long run and a TD, Hill with the TD, Andrews with a good run.
The WRs did a good job blocking on the edge for the most part. Waller played physical and got a lot of backwards movement out of his guy. I thought the holding call on him was pretty cheap. Smelter always blocks well. Summers made the only glaring blocking errors that I saw at that position.
Laskey ran hard and he made some tough extra yards even if he never broke out of there. He protected the football well, and believe me, there were many opportunities where he could have given it up on the strip. They were ripping at him all game. He got knocked around A LOT even without the ball. We are talking about Perryman here, not some chump. I hope ZL takes an ice bath today, he got pounded. I thought he took a couple plays off blocking, but that is my only complaint.
I think CPJ made the correct tactical decision in forgoing the forward pass, even though there were some plays to be hit off play action. They were flowing pretty hard towards motion with their safeties and could have been exposed. However, I am not sure what a couple of longish plays would have netted us besides putting the ball back in their hands 1 or 2 more times for the game. They had to wait excruciatingly long periods of time between possessions as it was and it crushed whatever MOJO they had on offense. As long as we were finishing the drives, what was the hurry? When you look at the scoreboard 17 points seems incredibly low considering how easily they moved the sticks. It looked like Canadian Football out there at times when they had the ball. Well, the defensive study is for another day.
