Observation and Overreaction

YJMD

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,620
We have pieces that aren't put together yet. The pieces themselves are being developed well. Many are nowhere near as good as we think we will be able to get in the future, but the bigger gain is going to be putting the pieces together well. Against an opponent like Clemson, we probably have too many pieces that are just not good enough to be competitive if they are determined to stomp on the gas like they were Saturday no matter how we put them together. Most of our opponents are not like that. Personally, I think from what I watched that we actually did better on the eye test than prior games.

I know it's an odd statement, but Clemson attacks offensively by pushing your players to the maximum of what they have to do on their assignment. It's not so much that they try to overmatch you one on one. They try to create spots where someone is stuck with an assignment they just can't perform, and if their gameplan is good, they've gotten their coaching up to the point where they usually recognize and execute it to exploit the weak spot. I think we were more disciplined and cohesive in our assignments, but without blitzing the line had no chance of winning their matchup, and we were stuck creating a weak spot for them to find. We had some intermittent success on individual plays, but the talent chasm was just too wide to deny the opportunity for them, and their execution is just too advanced to not get there at least once every set of downs.

Offensively, we are headed there. We were just overmatched talent-wise on the front where we couldn't consistently create the opportunity to advance the ball in the first place. Execution wasn't really worse than we've seen it, but we are far behind Clemson in that regard, and really far being almost everyone in relying on a true freshman. That said, this is the only game where we've faced such a consistent disadvantage. Clearly versus everyone else we've played we matched to athletically well enough to create the opportunity.

I think we'll be better than the first 4 games moving forward. I think the execution is improving. The remaining teams have better matchups, so we'll need better execution to have better results, but we shouldn't expect to be unable to compete at all as consistently as we were vs. the tiggers.

Overall, I think the closer aims are where Dabo started, getting to a consistent winner behind some star players but not consistently overwhelming all but a few teams in the nation athletically.

But I think Clemson under Dabo's start had a much easier group of teams to gain an advantage on.
 

PBR549

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
837
Please stop trying to coach y'all. We changed coaches last year. Let them coach! Like I've said many times the best things we have going for us at Tech is continuity of staff especially if they understand the challenges in our academic situation. We'll never be a factory like Clemson but we will be able to compete if we give them time to get established.
 

danny daniel

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,612
So we scored 7 points in 17 possessions but if we had kept it to under 10 we would have won?

lol.
No we would not win but we might have looked like a competitive football team with a much more positive outlook from everybody going forward. It is never good for the team's morale to endure the outcome from such a game. Being the joke of the week is not good.
 

stech81

Helluva Engineer
Messages
8,885
Location
Woodstock Georgia
it's year 2 and this year has been messed up cause of the virus , sounds like they have had to change the way the practice and no one knows for a fact who we be able to play till game time cause of this virus,

CGC was given 7 years ( not that I agree with giving a coach a 7 year contract but the AD didn't ask mw what I thought)

Any new coach should be given time , in my opinion I should be see improvement by year 3 and year 4 . I guess the question is ( and I know this my sound dumb ) does this year count .

As long as the players don't quit I'm fine ( the question is did some of them quit last game, I hope not )

As far as the Coordinators and assistant coaches I really don't have a problem with them cause I have no idea what CGC wants them to do or how much power he gives them. The funny thing the one coach I was unsure about would have been CTC but now I like him the best.

I do hope that if one of them isn't doing his job CGC will not let friendship get in the way.
 

presjacket

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
678

I agree. I decided to consolidate the top and bottom 10 offense ppd and defense ppd since 2005 for comparison sake. Clemson might have been a bad defensive performance, but it was barely the 5th worst defensive performance we've had in 15 years. People really don't seem to grasp how bad our defense was at in the CPJ years. I would say the 2017 Duke game was way worse than this year's Clemson game for example.

I want to shout out that Louisville game though. If you remove the qb kneels at the end...6.56 ppd, scoring a td on all drives but one we kicked a fg. I doubt we ever see anything like that again.

Disclaimers:I choose 2005 because espn does not have prior seasons reliably. This data does not include bowls, and I made assumption that all td are 7 points. It would be incredibly more time consuming computationally to scrape the play data to figure out if we missed an extra point or not, and the end result will not affect the data much. I also had to remove a few old games like Troy in 2006 (only had one drive) or some game against UNC because it only had the first half. It also turns out that ESPN data kinda sucks for drive information and my time would have been better spent scraping the individual plays, live and learn.

Best Off
View attachment 9303


Worst Off
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Best Def
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Worst Def
View attachment 9305

Edit to include net ppd data
Best
View attachment 9307
Worst
View attachment 9308
Please explain the negative numbers for offense and defense. For offense, does that mean the other team's defense scored?
 

lv20gt

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,580
No we would not win but we might have looked like a competitive football team with a much more positive outlook from everybody going forward. It is never good for the team's morale to endure the outcome from such a game. Being the joke of the week is not good.

Does 51-7 really look more competitive to you?

As far as the positive outlook from everybody going forward, few if anyone outside the program thinks twice about this game. At most it is a "wonder why Dabo ran up the score". They expected Clemson to name the score on us, and they did. People seem to greatly overestimate how much most of the country pays attention to a team that is expected to be bad playing bad. Within the fanbase we have a bunch of people who are just waiting for the next loss to come out of the woodwork and complain, and there is no chance in hell that they would have looked at 51-7 any better.
 

alagold

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3,721
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Huntsville,Al
Does 51-7 really look more competitive to you?

As far as the positive outlook from everybody going forward, few if anyone outside the program thinks twice about this game. At most it is a "wonder why Dabo ran up the score". They expected Clemson to name the score on us, and they did. People seem to greatly overestimate how much most of the country pays attention to a team that is expected to be bad playing bad. Within the fanbase we have a bunch of people who are just waiting for the next loss to come out of the woodwork and complain, and there is no chance in hell that they would have looked at 51-7 any better.
Iv,
To answer your question--yes,it does look better.51-7 is a run of mill beating these days. 73-7 looks like we QUIT. ,which is the last thing you want to show the world.,It also it RECORD breaking.Terrible on any level.
 

SOWEGA Jacket

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,074
Our current offensive philosophy of "Lets go fast and try and catch the D off guard no matter what the state of the game is at that moment" is getting incresingly worrisome. We are better than we were last year, but not better enough to impose our will on most other teams. It it not working. And when we keep going fast as possible to a 3 and out so we can give the ball back to a team who we have not seen their punter...I just don't get it.
Collins is not playing for this year. This is a total rebuild. GT has never seen this before because we usually went from one old guy coach to another and we just floated along for years. Ross and O’Leary being the peak and a steady decline since. Collins is doing (like he did last year) exactly what needs to be done to attract talent. He’s ripping the band aid off and showing teenage boys the system we are going to run.

I was talking to a coach from a school in Dalton yesterday (not Gibbs school). After we laughed about the Clemson game he said the kids are loving what they are seeing from GT’s offense. He mentioned in their area when Collins landed a helicopter at Gibbs school and the entire community was part of that day. Bottom line is Collins message is getting out and teenagers are paying attention. Growing pains like Saturday are going to occur in every program. Bama and Clemson have suffered from embarrassing losses in Savannah and Dabo’s early years. But, like Collins, they put the blinders in and kept moving forward. Collins has had 1 and a quarter recruiting classes so far that he has controlled.
 

TromboneJacket

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
860
Location
Seattle, WA
Iv,
To answer your question--yes,it does look better.51-7 is a run of mill beating these days. 73-7 looks like we QUIT. ,which is the last thing you want to show the world.,It also it RECORD breaking.Terrible on any level.
Out of curiosity, what would be your cutoff for an “acceptable” beating? It seems 66 points is too much of a differential for you, but 44 is not. Where do you draw the line, and why?
 

forensicbuzz

21st Century Throwback Dad
Messages
8,814
Location
North Shore, Chicago
Well, they scored 21 points in the last 3 minutes of the first half. If we don't give up those quick-strike 21 points, then the 21 points in the 2nd half would have made the game 56-7. There you go. We only really sucked for 3 minutes!!!!!
 

WreckinGT

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,153
Does 51-7 really look more competitive to you?

As far as the positive outlook from everybody going forward, few if anyone outside the program thinks twice about this game. At most it is a "wonder why Dabo ran up the score". They expected Clemson to name the score on us, and they did. People seem to greatly overestimate how much most of the country pays attention to a team that is expected to be bad playing bad. Within the fanbase we have a bunch of people who are just waiting for the next loss to come out of the woodwork and complain, and there is no chance in hell that they would have looked at 51-7 any better.
Hey guys, nobody even knows who we are so don't worry about it has to be the weirdest fan reaction to a bad loss that I have seen.
 

Treb1982

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
471
Location
Augusta, GA
So what? Is a 50 point blowout in any way meaningfully better? Two years ago they scored 49 on 11 drives did we get a partial win for holding them under 50 simply because we just held onto the ball and didn't snap it for thirty seconds? We had no chance in either game and our defense wasn't any better then than it was now just because the total number of possessions was lower.
only positive that game had over last Saturday's was they didn't play the punter as a quarterback and complete a pass
 

lv20gt

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,580
Hey guys, nobody even knows who we are so don't worry about it has to be the weirdest fan reaction to a bad loss that I have seen.

It's the truth. Better than the make believing that anyone outside our fanbase cares that our blowout was an extra TD or two more than standard.
 

alagold

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,721
Location
Huntsville,Al
Out of curiosity, what would be your cutoff for an “acceptable” beating? It seems 66 points is too much of a differential for you, but 44 is not. Where do you draw the line, and why?

I'm glad you have no pain level.I think when you have the WORST loss in the WHOLE COUNTRY for the season,it is too much for me.What about you?
 
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