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It is really hard for me to decide where to begin this week. On one hand, I want to be careful not to exaggerate the level of our domination against this opponent in fear of fomenting false hope and unrealistic expectations. But on the other hand, I want to give credit where credit is due. In the five or so years that I have been doing these type of reports, I have never seen us dominate an FBS opponent this way on the offensive side of the ball. In watching this game unfold, I honestly feel like I could have been calling plays on the sideline and everything would have worked out fine. It is just hard for things not to work when your OL is driving people off the ball the way we did. There really wasn't but a single BIG PLAY (Synjin's run out) that I can think of. It was just that every tackle seemed to be made 3 yards further down the field than it looked like. The amount of backwards movement we were getting out of their guys up front made the line to gain on first down look like 5 yards instead of 10. That is really the story. To be truthful, I don't think a game like this could have come at a worse time for us. We are about to face a top notch D line with strength, quickness and agility next week. While we are a good unit up front, producing at unprecedented levels in the CPJ era, we are not THAT GOOD. If we start believing we are, THAT GOOD, then it might be a rude awakening at noon next Saturday. We gotta keep the edge that is created by a healthy level of fear.
The Pack came out lined up with 5 up front like UVA did some of the time. 2 LBs in the middle and a couple of safeties that obviously felt they could just run to the play side boundary with reckless abandon whenever they felt like it. At the first sign of AB motion, they were gone. They just kept doing it, even after getting repeatedly burned by the designed counter QB solo runs with the pulling backside G and T. I mean, they were leaving half the field open. How they thought CPJ wouldn't see that beats me.
There was some stuff we can clean up. JT made a couple bad give reads. SD ran to the wrong gap a couple times and we whiffed a few blocks. However, make no mistake we were in complete control and it never should be that easy.
Shaq is always good, but the amount of backwards movement he was getting out of DLs and LBs will certainly be embarrassing to them at weekly film study. Everybody was good up front. Griffin still looks hampered by something. I don't know what. Pass protection overall was solid, the few times we needed it.
Dennis Andrews caught my eye blocking the edge this week. He looks to be earning some extra time with solid effort.
I need to give Byerly some props. Many have mentioned on this board how good a back up he is, maybe the best we have had in a while. I want to say he is a good player, period. He is a starter quality QB in our system and we will be just fine if he needs to play extended time in crucial games. I really believe that. I have been so impressed with his play.
I could go on and on, but the truth of what happened is very simple. We killed them up front. End of story. The rest is just details. We got to play a lot of kids. That is great. We got some guys a little rest. That too is great. I just hope our heads didn't swell after this one.
The Pack came out lined up with 5 up front like UVA did some of the time. 2 LBs in the middle and a couple of safeties that obviously felt they could just run to the play side boundary with reckless abandon whenever they felt like it. At the first sign of AB motion, they were gone. They just kept doing it, even after getting repeatedly burned by the designed counter QB solo runs with the pulling backside G and T. I mean, they were leaving half the field open. How they thought CPJ wouldn't see that beats me.
There was some stuff we can clean up. JT made a couple bad give reads. SD ran to the wrong gap a couple times and we whiffed a few blocks. However, make no mistake we were in complete control and it never should be that easy.
Shaq is always good, but the amount of backwards movement he was getting out of DLs and LBs will certainly be embarrassing to them at weekly film study. Everybody was good up front. Griffin still looks hampered by something. I don't know what. Pass protection overall was solid, the few times we needed it.
Dennis Andrews caught my eye blocking the edge this week. He looks to be earning some extra time with solid effort.
I need to give Byerly some props. Many have mentioned on this board how good a back up he is, maybe the best we have had in a while. I want to say he is a good player, period. He is a starter quality QB in our system and we will be just fine if he needs to play extended time in crucial games. I really believe that. I have been so impressed with his play.
I could go on and on, but the truth of what happened is very simple. We killed them up front. End of story. The rest is just details. We got to play a lot of kids. That is great. We got some guys a little rest. That too is great. I just hope our heads didn't swell after this one.
