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Sorry. I know this is way late. I have just been way too busy lately to watch replays enough to make a decent report. Even though it is being served up cold, I figure it is still worth doing.
The UGA game for me illustrated just how important establishing the dive is to this offense. They couldn't stop it consistently, so we stuck with it, but more importantly, it made every other play in our arsenal better, because they really had to commit to the middle to survive.
The Humpers basically picked their poison from the beginning with an illadvised strategy if you ask me. Obviously, they were VERY concerned about the cut blocks and how to handle them on the interior. Although their defensive alignments were remeniscient of VTs( and many others )with the deep MLB and the OLBs jumping the A gap once in a while, their defensive front lined up a full yard off the LOS for all plays not on their goal line. This essentially made it 1st and 7 at the beginning of every series of downs instead of first and 10. Not only were they a yard back, but they appeared to be taking a more "read and react" type of posture, rather than firing off aggressively. To me, this showed how important the mere threat of the cut block can be, whether they were actually used that much or not. The net result was essentially a gain of 2 or 3, even on the plays where their guy defeated a block rather handily, which happened fairly often. Obviously, they would only use this tactic if they considered themselves to be physically superior and able to win battles despite conceding a yard per play. Either that or the thought we would just self destruct with mistakes before driving the field. Whatever the case, they got more than they bargained for from our guys up front. I don't want to say we flat out dominated them, because their guys won some of the battles. They are generally hard to block. But we did frustrate and confuse the crap out of them and wore them down with an extended series of body shots. I thought our execution was brilliant. I thought we threw a really good mix of blocking variations at them and kept them guessing. The biggest thing in my mind was we NEVER LET UP, we just kept coming and we broke their will. It was as simple as that. When it was goal line, we got lower than they did. We were obviously more powerful up front than they expected. That was plain to see. Additionally, they never really adjusted to the speed with which we hit the dive. They were always a bit slow to react. We ran dives to every gap and we ran a plethora of blast plays, unbalanced line dives, and plain old TO give reads. When they stacked a single side because we had run behind Mason 6 plays in a row, JT just called an audible to the opposite gap and we gashed them. Then, when they were all playing keying on the BB we hit them with the AB dive to great effect.
In summary, I don't think I have ever seen us execute a plan that well between the tackles EVER. Kudos to the whole group. The only player that I thought missed some assignments was Griffin. He blocked air a few times on plays that went nowhere, earning a spot on the bench for his efforts.
We blocked the perimeter very well, too. We have to give it up for the ABs, as they played one of their best games ever. They were just the counter punches on this day, carrying the ball, but they were relentless blocking too.
Despite intending to watch only the offensive series, I just had to watch "the kick" again and our OT series on defense. PRICELESS!!
The UGA game for me illustrated just how important establishing the dive is to this offense. They couldn't stop it consistently, so we stuck with it, but more importantly, it made every other play in our arsenal better, because they really had to commit to the middle to survive.
The Humpers basically picked their poison from the beginning with an illadvised strategy if you ask me. Obviously, they were VERY concerned about the cut blocks and how to handle them on the interior. Although their defensive alignments were remeniscient of VTs( and many others )with the deep MLB and the OLBs jumping the A gap once in a while, their defensive front lined up a full yard off the LOS for all plays not on their goal line. This essentially made it 1st and 7 at the beginning of every series of downs instead of first and 10. Not only were they a yard back, but they appeared to be taking a more "read and react" type of posture, rather than firing off aggressively. To me, this showed how important the mere threat of the cut block can be, whether they were actually used that much or not. The net result was essentially a gain of 2 or 3, even on the plays where their guy defeated a block rather handily, which happened fairly often. Obviously, they would only use this tactic if they considered themselves to be physically superior and able to win battles despite conceding a yard per play. Either that or the thought we would just self destruct with mistakes before driving the field. Whatever the case, they got more than they bargained for from our guys up front. I don't want to say we flat out dominated them, because their guys won some of the battles. They are generally hard to block. But we did frustrate and confuse the crap out of them and wore them down with an extended series of body shots. I thought our execution was brilliant. I thought we threw a really good mix of blocking variations at them and kept them guessing. The biggest thing in my mind was we NEVER LET UP, we just kept coming and we broke their will. It was as simple as that. When it was goal line, we got lower than they did. We were obviously more powerful up front than they expected. That was plain to see. Additionally, they never really adjusted to the speed with which we hit the dive. They were always a bit slow to react. We ran dives to every gap and we ran a plethora of blast plays, unbalanced line dives, and plain old TO give reads. When they stacked a single side because we had run behind Mason 6 plays in a row, JT just called an audible to the opposite gap and we gashed them. Then, when they were all playing keying on the BB we hit them with the AB dive to great effect.
In summary, I don't think I have ever seen us execute a plan that well between the tackles EVER. Kudos to the whole group. The only player that I thought missed some assignments was Griffin. He blocked air a few times on plays that went nowhere, earning a spot on the bench for his efforts.
We blocked the perimeter very well, too. We have to give it up for the ABs, as they played one of their best games ever. They were just the counter punches on this day, carrying the ball, but they were relentless blocking too.
Despite intending to watch only the offensive series, I just had to watch "the kick" again and our OT series on defense. PRICELESS!!
