I wanted to wait until I had watched the game to comment in this thread, so apologies if some/all of this has already been covered.
1st Quarter: Score ended even, but we looked like the slightly better team imo. Other than the boneheaded backwards pass that they scored on, King played great. OL looked slightly worse than against Cuse, but I didn't watch them specifically - left side of line definitely looks the weakest though. The ref confusion on the first penalties was absurd, how do they not have a better understanding of what they are calling than that? Run D looked ok, we got a little bit of pressure on Shough but the secondary mostly failed to cover again. I'm concerned about Birr, he is missing a lot of field goals this season. Shelley has also got to have better awareness on punt returns - he's fielded several punts this year he should have fair caught or let go.
2nd Q: There was a Louisville run at the 13min mark where we stopped the RB in the backfield but he was on top of a Tech player, and it looked to me like the Tech player had stripped the ball - by the time the ref blew the play dead, the Tech player had full control of the ball. There was no mention by the announcers or review, and maybe the Louisville RB's knee had touched but I watched it back several times and didn't see it. Efford got picked on in the passing game several times. DBs continue to dissapoint, absolutely terrible tackling and awareness. We got beat again on 4th and 1 on the same pass to the RB that Cuse ran, somebody should be covering the RB in those situations. Amazing catch by Singleton there at the end of the 1st half, Louisville should have been flagged too for pulling his helmet off. King throwing the ball away on 3rd was dumb imo, glad we were able to score on 4th.
3rd Q: Right off the bat, a DB blows past Shough chasing rb on what should have been a nice sack and Louisville picks up 3 or 4 yds instead. OPEN YOUR EYES! Looked like OPI at 13:27, but we got away with DPI the next play. Refs shorted us on spots multiple times. Taking the delay of game was dumb, needed more just to tie it up. The 1st DPI near end of the 3rd was kinda BS, don't think it was catchable and there was minimal contact imo. The next DPI was legit and shocker, the DB had no idea where the ball was and let him catch it anyway.
4Q: We had to score when we got inside the 5 - imo should have brought in Pyron and then thrown a quick swing pass to Jamal like they did to us on the 4th and 1. If it was 1 yard King could have gotten it, but he's definitely not a bruiser running the ball. The safety was nice, but obviously 7 points would have been better. The OL was getting their butts kicked on run plays - 71 appears the weakest of the group, on both run and pass plays. The blocked FG attempt was the final nail in the coffin, Birr had no chance to get that high enough. The final 4th down call was bad, we really need more creativity
Overall, I thought play calling was okay, but plenty of room to improve. King played pretty dang well minus the backwards pass and a few throws way out of bounds. WR groups played really well. OL group played about how they played against Cuse except a little worse on run plays. RBs were mediocre - I used to think we needed a big bruiser, then earlier this year I said with our OL that Jamal was plenty, well now I'm flipping back that we need a back who can get hit in the backfield and pickup positive yardage like Mason did for us. Haynes got stopped by just a handful of jersey atleast once or twice this game, can't have that. On defense, we have GOT to get better in the secondary. All 17 points Louisville scored on offense and damn near every 1st down was picked up against them. They tackle poorly, they don't seem to ever know where the ball is, they got penalized multiple times to extend Louisville's drives. Thoroughly unimpressed with Cory Peoples so far, I haven't seen anything that would make him worth retaining.
We have a lot to clean up, but we can still be a pretty good team and potentially upset ND, Miami, or ugag. Duke, UNC, VT, and NC State are all winnable if we just don't beat ourselves.
