Looking Foward to UVA...

Sean311

Helluva Engineer
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2,019
Helluva game Saturday but a lot to still work on and get better. IMO the young guys need to start executing better. JT needs to limit mistakes. I think we are better than UVA on both sides of the ball. I expect a big win for GT Saturday!

Your thoughts?
 

gtg936g

Helluva Engineer
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2,142
I think it is going to be a close game. We usually do not play well up there. I like our chances though.
 

TheTaxJacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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726
The blocking was better against Pitt and it looks like we built into that against FSU. The OLine looked much better in run blocking. ABacks did an OK job blocking but they ran with greater effort and finish. Marcus Marshall looked real good. He was close to popping a few big runs only to be tripped up.

All that said, the offensive line pass blocking is still as bad as I have ever seen in college football. I mean they are turnstiles out there. The only difference is that they don't have built in number counters that track the number of attendees at the event that pass through them. There is no time for JT to throw the ball at all. The only pass that I saw where JT had even a chance to set his feet and make a throw was the wheel route to Stewart and thank god for that.

With that said, JT needs to make better decisions when being chased out of the pocket. The first INT was unacceptable in my mind. He broke every rule except throwing the ball across his body to a receiver over the middle. He threw under duress, off his back foot into double coverage. Ouch. That's totally and completely on him. Again he is pressing trying to make something happen but he needs to throw that ball away or commit to running it and getting what he can out of it.

We played OK but we aren't all of a sudden a juggernaut. We are more than capable of winning or losing the rest of the games on the schedule. The blocking just has got to improve.
 

Yaller Jacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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979
I think we are the better team, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried. Earlier in the year, in the middle of a longer answer about what was going wrong, PJ said something like "we seem to go berserk and forget how to play when we go on the road." I worry that the energy and focus we saw Saturday will not travel to Charlottesville. TaxJacket is right. We aren't good enough to get wins with our B game.

On the pass protection, I don't have a clue what's wrong, but I think we need so have Justin roll out every time. That seems to be the only way he buys time enough to throw the ball with the right timing.
 

YJAlleyCat

Jolly Good Fellow
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We haven't played well on the road yet, so I would like to see us play up to our abilities and not make the stupid mental errors that doomed the other road games. I know they can do it. Even in Charlottesville on Halloween!
 

MWBATL

Helluva Engineer
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6,533
Two biggest areas of improvement have been Special Teams (which cost us the Duke game) and Defense (which cost us the UNC and Pitt games). Even if our offense does what it did against FSU (possess the ball, give the D some rest and eke out FG's on some of their drives with an occasional TD) I think we'll win IF the other phases continue to play like they did against FSU.

That run defense, if true and not a mirage, will keep us in every game the rest of the year.
 

alagold

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Huntsville,Al
I think we are the better team, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried. Earlier in the year, in the middle of a longer answer about what was going wrong, PJ said something like "we seem to go berserk and forget how to play when we go on the road." I worry that the energy and focus we saw Saturday will not travel to Charlottesville. TaxJacket is right. We aren't good enough to get wins with our B game.

On the pass protection, I don't have a clue what's wrong, but I think we need so have Justin roll out every time. That seems to be the only way he buys time enough to throw the ball with the right timing.

I'll comment on pass blocking--(1) I really think that we spend SO MUCH time on running practice and it needs it, that passing gets short changed (2) our basic 5 man front OL (no TE) is not enough to deal with teams that have LBs close to LOS and come plus our basic 190 lb Aback doesn't do well vs 230 lb LBs
(3) for the backs blocking -see #1 (4) JT is short which limits his view over the middle so this limits the pass blocking options
 

takethepoints

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6,096
I'll comment on the pass blocking too.

I think it is a combination of two things. First, we don't have a BB who is a constant threat on the dive and inside veer. That means that nobody much pays attention to holding ground and stopping us up the middle first. If we had the combo we had last year nobody would be teeing off on a pass rush; they'd be worrying about what'll happen if they tried it. Second, the overall speed of the O is down as well. That means the LBs and DBs aren't holding ground to stop us reaching the edge. They are coming up fast. Result: on passing downs - and those are more identifiable now - they press and blitz.

In short, I don't think the OL has regressed; we didn't look all that hot at the first last year. Then we began to hit the dive and speed up our execution. All of a sudden, from UNC on, the 2014 OL was the greatest thing since sliced bread. If our execution continues to improve, I'm betting that the pass blocking will too. But that's a hypothesis and we'll have to see.
 

sidewalkGTfan

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If the defense plays closer to the way they did against FSU, we'll win by 10+ points. If the defense plays more like they did against UNC, Pitt and CU, it could go either way and I really wouldn't like our chances.
 

LongforDodd

LatinxBreakfastTacos
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3,194
I think our O runs up some yards. The UVa D could be the least talented we've seen since Tulane...plus I think we've grown up a bit.
 

GTNavyNuke

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Williamsburg Virginia
I'm looking forward to UVa since we are playing better and beat our first real team last week.

After the Pitt game, we held a wake for the season after our Game Watching. But the impossible happened in beating FSU after losing to so many lesser teams. So the bottle of FireFly was not consumed in vain.

I was going to say UVa is the easiest game on the schedule but Atomic has the next three all about the same. http://atomicfootball.com/archive/teams/tm_9.html

Don't forget that GT is regularly just good enough to break your heart. Last year was a notable exception. But that's why were fans, never know what we're going to get (tic).
 
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