Louisville Post Game

[stech81]

From the postgame presser:

Louisville changed their defensive front at halftime.

so they made halftime adjustments and then we didn't adjust to it? Which coaches were upstairs in the booth?

 

[Southern psu fan]

imo the coaches had the team in position late in the game to get the win and we turn the ball over and our TE didn’t catch the ball on another series. IT’s football and these things happen but when a team like Louisville has a few more play makers you can’t make mistakes to get the win. The Louisville coach had Purdue in the big 10 championship game last year so trust me he’s a dang good football coach and he also beat Ohio St a couple of years ago. In college football goals change so take this loss out on SC State and get me 6 wins baby to go bowling and we’ll go from there. We didn’t play good the second half and we still had a chance for the win late in the game. We just gotta get better guys and I believe we will.

 

[iceeater1969]

so they made halftime adjustments and then we didn't adjust to it? Which coaches were upstairs in the booth?

Our head coach is paid X and their head coach is paid 2X
In 4 years we will have a coach that is paid .3X or 3X.

 

[CuseJacket]

so they made halftime adjustments and then we didn't adjust to it? Which coaches were upstairs in the booth?

Based on this coming up in the postgame presser, I take it to mean that the coaches recognized Louisville’s adjustment during the game.

With that info I doubt they sat on their hands. So the questions are what adjustments did we try to make? Were they bad adjustments? Were we unable to execute? Did injuries make us less flexible to adjust? Etc.

 

[stech81]

Our head coach is paid X and their head coach is paid 2X
In 4 years we will have a coach that is paid .3X or 3X.

I like Key I would have liked to win. But it was the first game and the first game with a new coaching staff. I believe in giving a coach time.

 

[Techfan02]

I heard that brent key was chewing thackers *** in the 3rd quarter can anyone confrim?

 

[orientalnc]

Based on this coming up in the postgame presser, I take it to mean that the coaches recognized Louisville’s adjustment during the game.

With that info I doubt they sat on their hands. So the questions are what adjustments did we try to make? Were they bad adjustments? Were we unable to execute? Did injuries make us less flexible to adjust? Etc.

We had some attrition that played a part in our degraded 2nd half performance. Still, we were in a position to win late. Give UL some credit. They made plays at critical moments.

 

[57jacket]

Here are a few more numbers on the game (again, from https://gameonpaper.com/cfb/game/401525462). These are defensive numbers. I’m not going to say whether Thacker can call a defense, etc.

First big number is “stop rate”—on what percentage of plays your defense is on the field did they get a punt, turnover, or turnover on downs (including 4th down conversions).

Louisville got us off the field—punting, etc—about half the time. Ours was only about 26%. To our credit, we held them to FGs a lot.


View attachment 14690

I’ve seen a few people write that we couldn’t get sacks, we couldn’t pressure the QB, we didn’t get any tackles for loss. They didn’t get many more tackles for loss than we did. They got one sack (and boy, that one counted).

We had more explosive plays than they did. We were about as effective as them in stuffing the ball.

Turnovers hurt us—and Louisville made more of their turnovers than we did (ours only had seconds left in the first half).

View attachment 14691

What these numbers don’t show is the difference between the second quarter vs the third and the beginning of the fourth. I don’t think it was just Louisville’s halftime adjustments—it was ours, too. Our line yards (the yards on a run from the OL compared to the yards on runs from the runner) were about the same as Louisville’s.

We don’t have a line that will push for 3 1/2 yards on a play. We’re better off spreading the defense out and getting rushing yards that way. Also, we were better off optioning, and that had been effective for us in the first half.

If you look at the special teams stats, they basically cost us a TD worth of points—at least six, and enough to lose the game. We finally figured out to fair catch the kickoffs after a while. Punts are still kind of an adventure.

I don’t have any stats for bad tackling, but that killed us in the second half. Bad tackling allowed Louisville to move the ball down the field on the first series after halftime.

There are a lot of things to improve on defense, and our guys were going for turnovers, but if they can focus on one thing, it’s making the tackle—wrap up and make good tackles. If you can’t do it solo, fight and hold on until you get help. Stay between your player and the goalline.

On offense—unless we end up with the mid-1980’s version of the Washington Redskins “Hogs” where they can just push you down the field—we’re going to spread and option. If we bring in extra TEs, we still have to spread.

Key seems to want the OL to take over the game. I understand that they won’t be able to do that unless he keeps pushing them, but they couldn’t do it last night. There’s no side of the line that you can follow for three yards. Key and Geep Wade need to be smart in picking their battles. They can’t give up, but that first offensive series in the third cost us dearly.

Special teams need work.

Outstanding post. Thanks Slugboy. On D Thacker has always played soft on the corners to avoid big pass plays. But in red zone the dbs are closer to LOS. Hence better D. Just a philosophy. However, the DB failure to tackle cost us the game. D coaching in the past emphasized TO by ripping ball away instead of bring runner to the ground. This will obviously change after listening to Key.

 

[57jacket]

Key post game
“We’ll learn from this,” Key said. “We had a lot of new guys out there. They played a lot of meaningful downs tonight, a lot of downs. A lot of them had some big plays made by some new guys out on the field. It’s encouraging when those guys can go out and do that. But at the same time, we’ve got to be able to do it for the entirety of the football game.”

 

[leatherneckjacket]

I watched the 3nd and 3rd quarter in slow motion. It was hard to see much difference in how Louisville lined up defensively but one would need the all 22 film and lots more football knowledge than I have to actually assess what they did differently. Coach said they did adjust on defense. It was not anything easy to see though.

This is where the play execution vs play call is a topic for debate. We clearly executed very well in the 2nd quarter but did not execute well in the 3rd quarter. We only ran 9 plays in the 3rd quarter, 6 runs (including 2 QB scrambles) and 3 passes.

The defense really struggled that quarter.

I am no expert but it looked like they were having their safeties crash the line to stop the run and short passing game on first down. The personnel on the 3rd quarter was the same for both teams. It just looked like they were trying to force us to go down field on 1st down and we did not in any of our three first down plays.

 

[tomknight]

From the postgame presser:

Louisville changed their defensive front at halftime.

as you would expect them to. sort of an indictment on our offensive staff that we were not able to counter that move.

 

[stech81]

Based on this coming up in the postgame presser, I take it to mean that the coaches recognized Louisville’s adjustment during the game.

With that info I doubt they sat on their hands. So the questions are what adjustments did we try to make? Were they bad adjustments? Were we unable to execute? Did injuries make us less flexible to adjust? Etc.

Good questions to bad you don’t work for the AJC

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Based on this coming up in the postgame presser, I take it to mean that the coaches recognized Louisville’s adjustment during the game.

With that info I doubt they sat on their hands. So the questions are what adjustments did we try to make? Were they bad adjustments? Were we unable to execute? Did injuries make us less flexible to adjust? Etc.

Watching CPJ over the years I realized that adjustments on the defensive line can be subtle but make a big difference. The offensive line adjustments in response can be equally subtle. But the offensive line has to have several blocking schemes in their bag of tricks to draw from. And lots of techniques in their quiver.

I think our OL, though greatly improved, still has some learning to do. This game will either help that learning process or expose a fatal flaw that can’t be fixed this year.

I’m hoping it’s the former and the line learns better how to adjust. Just my opinion.

 

[Oakland]

I heard that brent key was chewing thackers *** in the 3rd quarter can anyone confrim?

That is usually done in private. Thacker, Coleman, and Tillman may have received some counseling. I can't say anything about the linebackers because I just didn't notice them make a big play.

 

[Eli]

Watching CPJ over the years I realized that adjustments on the defensive line can be subtle but make a big difference. The offensive line adjustments in response can be equally subtle. But the offensive line has to have several blocking schemes in their bag of tricks to draw from. And lots of techniques in their quiver.

I think our OL, though greatly improved, still has some learning to do. This game will either help that learning process or expose a fatal flaw that can’t be fixed this year.

I’m hoping it’s the former and the line learns better how to adjust. Just my opinion.

Very true anyone who watched FSU and LSU can see that one move that the defense struggles to counter can result in a disastrous 2nd half. All FSU did was go to a two back look and used a lead blocker with the power run game and it opened up their entire offense.

 

[CuseJacket]

Some insight on the adjustments are covered in the first two min here.

 

[GetYourBuzzOn]

Another PFF snip for y'all, this one regarding Rushing by Direction. I wish I could break this out to view by Quarter, but I don't think that's possible. At any rate, I was surprised to see that we had our best success running up the middle- LG, Middle Left, Middle Right, and RG. All over 5 YPA. The runs off the tackles were not productive at all.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

Another PFF snip for y'all, this one regarding Rushing by Direction. I wish I could break this out to view by Quarter, but I don't think that's possible. At any rate, I was surprised to see that we had our best success running up the middle- LG, Middle Left, Middle Right, and RG. All over 5 YPA. The runs off the tackles were not productive at all.

Not surprised given how well we ran the ball in the second quarter.

 

[CuseJacket]

 

[leatherneckjacket]

We had several opportunities to make plays behind the line of scrimmage and failed to do so. Whether it was because we took a poor angles, closing of control on ball carrier, general indecisiveness, not wrapping up, or just getting juked out by the QB, we just could not make a TFL when we needed to.