I just watched the first half of the USF game against Elon. Offense is very similar to Clemson or UNC: quick hitch, quick hitch, deep down the sideline. They’ll keep you honest in the middle of the defense with RPOs and a quick pace. It will be a test for our young secondary. Elon was only able to blow-up one quick hitch that I saw in the first half and weren’t able to cover deep. The receivers look good and Barnett was able to throw accurately. But I’ll say this he did not throw one pass with a guy in his face and with the exception of a couple throws downfield, everyone was open. He threw one slant, no crossers, no skinny posts, no back shoulders. (I might have missed a throw or two because I was fast forwarding through most of their defensive possessions but I definitely saw most of his passes). It’s really hard to say if Barnett is a good quarterback after watching this game, you can rack up easy stats in an offense like this when you have perfect protection and your receivers are superior athletes.
I’m interested to see if our Dline can penetrate the pocket quickly and/or if Woody can dial up blitzes to get in the face of a QB who’s getting The ball out quick. It’s been a headache playing teams like this over the last decade. Not being able to generate quick pressure and then not being able to cover tightly enough to defend a variety of routes and make open field tackles. I liked the way our secondary came up and made tackles Saturday but these receivers are much more capable than Alcorn’s. This will be a great test for our defense and I’m excited to see how a Woody coached defense deals with an offense like this because we’ll see it again this year.
From an offensive perspective, I watched USF’s defense enough to know that they don’t have anybody like Kyle Van Noy, Jaylen Smith, Roquon Smith, or Jeremy Cash. I agree with an earlier poster, that those types of guys can Give us problems. They seemed pretty average across the board but of course if they have a clue we’ll have to at least ‘not beat ourselves’ which we’ve had a tendency to do at times.
