So I finally watched a good bit of the UL vs Jax st game since I hadn’t seen any of their games so far.
Some thoughts on their offense:
Positives:
-They have 3 RBs who are quick and run hard. They are a downhill running team. Didn’t see a lot of counter or zone runs, just pretty much straight forward.
-the QB is decent, he doesn’t do anything spectacular, but he made good throws here and there. Didn’t see him run pretty much at all, but managed the game well. He did have 2 throws that were lobbed up for grabs that should have been intercepted, one was, but the DB stepped on the sideline coming down.
Negatives:
-Jax state was able to get pressure quite a bit with blitzing off the edge/delayed blitz/bringing an extra guy
-Jax st is not great defensively, their DL was small and had a hard time stopping the run. A few times their DBs just fell down in coverage and gave Louisville an easy big play or TD. Hard to tell how good they are on offense yet.
-UL does have pretty good skill position guys at RB and the WR transfer from Bama is pretty good.
Thoughts on their Defense:
-they tackle pretty well in space, didn’t see a ton of missed tackles
-with that said, they really struggled with QB draws, designed QB runs, and rush lanes, Jax st QB ate their lunch on the ground a lot of the game and ran over a few of their LBs and DBs. That dude runs hard.
-Jax st also had success on some quick slants for pretty big plays.
-for those who didn’t know (like me) rich rod is now coaching Jax st and they run super up tempo offense and were quickest per play team in the country last year. I don’t know if we plan to run up tempo in this game but they had some success with it.
-overall I think UL has some decent speed on defense, they tackle pretty well, but unless drastically improved this week, HK might have a lot of success on the ground with QB draws and zone read pulls.
They seem like a solid team with good skill position guys, I think we will put up points though. Definitely a winnable game, but we need the defense to tackle well and scheme our blitzing well and we’ll have a good shot.