Fresh off of a rigorous film session consisting of a couple of NCST condensed games, my novice to intermediate football mind would submit their Wake game as exhibit A. Wake runs a lot of similar concepts to us offensively and Claiborne is a J Haynes doppelgänger. Lots of East / West and outside zone and Claiborne had several one on one opportunities with nothing but green grass after making one guy miss. Pack front over pursued and got washed out several times giving huge cutback lanes and wake sprinkled in a lot of short passing. H King should be a bigger threat to run than Wake had too. Heck, even their unis that day helped visualize how our offense can go against the pack.
The Duke game is a better indicator of pack offense. Wake game is where they lost McCall, so I didn’t worry much about O (although they blocked well and didn’t look bad). Oddly, in the Duke game I didn’t think either O line blocked well. Pack and Duke defenses were in backfields all day. Big difference is that Duke QB made a couple of downfield throws catching state in blitz and one on one cover. Offensively, Pack QB is quick and elusive. Unlike Ward, when pocket breaks, he is getting upfield, not buying time to throw. We need to keep him in pocket. Their WR are slippery outside. We have to tackle in space, which we have done poorly at times this season (ND comes to mind)
