Rewatched the 1st quarter of the NIU game last night and...

Bonaire41

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
238
I was actually encouraged. I know that's weird to say, but I feel a bit better about where we stand as a program after rewatching. We really lost this game in the 1st quarter, or at least it was the biggest factor in my opinion. More specifically (and I hate to call out one player) Sims's mistakes cost us biGTime. On offense, at least 2 plays on 2 different drives that were 100% touchdowns if even a decent pass was made, 1 to Jahmyr where he wasn't sure which shoulder to look over, and 1 to Nate McCullom that was 1 yard too long. If either one of these had been 10% better throws, we would have won the game.

The defense did have a part too, but with 2 back-to-back 3-and-outs to start the game, they did their part early. NIU's 3rd drive was where they changed to a heavy, high tempo that caught us off guard.

In short, we generally executed fine and looked like we were in year 3 minus 3-4 completely uncharacteristic throws by Sims.

There is something to be said about our 10% underperformance costing us the game against NIU, but I'm expecting that they will get those things corrected in practice.
Yes the kids just didn’t the make plays. They were a lot of them like you said. Yes they were coaching mistakes but the players have got to step up and make playes.That why I think the loss hurt so much because of mix opportunities. We win by 21 if they do. It was more of the players on this game than it was on the coaches
 

Tundeballer

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
227
ATL "above the line" needs to stop immediately. It is keeping the defense out of sorts. Put your best player on the field! If that man is tired, injured or needs a breather...put in your second best man.
If you look all across the country, most teams rotate regularly on the d-line, less with linebackers and not nearly as much in the secondary because cohesion matters for that group. We are doing more or less what other programs do. They just don't have a buzzy term for it.
 

RyanS12

Helluva Engineer
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Flint Michigan
Another thing that was crucial was the two long balls by Lambardi that the NIU receives caught that 9/10 times would’ve been a drop or incomplete. You could just feel early on, especially when Sims went down, that nothing was going to go our way. And it didn’t. The TD catch by Kyric that was inches from a great TD and the 2pt conversion that wasn’t a catch.
 

bke1984

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3,599
I agree we should have run a lot more, and should try to run early to score early, but the passing plays were there when they were called.
Yep, but we didn’t hit them. That’s the problem with passing unnecessarily…it’s much harder to get right - always has been. You need a good QB that will make a good throw. For whatever reading Saturday Jeff wasn’t a good QB. Not saying that he isn’t good in general, just wasn’t good Saturday. It’s the staff’s job to adjust when something like that happens. Perhaps they just didn’t get the opportunity to do so before he got hurt, but based on the blunders in the third and fourth quarter I’m not so sure they would have.
 

JacketEagle98

Georgia Tech Fan
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28
Biggest thing for me is not only does CGC have a reputation for defense, but he prides himself on coaching DBs. DB is arguably our most talented position in terms of recruiting rankings. It should be our strongest unit on either side of the ball given the coaching and talent there. That is just not the case...our defensive backfield looks like a mess too many times, and our DBs display poor fundamentals too often. It's perplexing given everything that group has going for it.
I agree that coaching is a big part of the secondary, but I am surprised that our safeties still takes poor angles. Athletes should know how to take a proper angle for a tackle. It’s not just coaching that we struggle with in the secondary. Time to play some of the younger players.
 

Techster

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I agree that coaching is a big part of the secondary, but I am surprised that our safeties still takes poor angles. Athletes should know how to take a proper angle for a tackle. It’s not just coaching that we struggle with in the secondary. Time to play some of the younger players.

In terms of our safeties, I've pointed this out several times, but they no longer have the speed to play there. Our starting safeties have grown into LBs but they're still playing safety. CGC even mentioned that he was worried one of them got too big and not having the speed and range to cover back there. If you look at them from their freshmen season to now, there's a noticeable difference in their range. Both graded out poorly last season...and they were the strength of our secondary a few years ago.

On NIU's first touchdown, the RB basically erased our safety's angle. Juanyeh actually had a good angle, the RB just blew by him and blew up the angle. Juanyeh would have gotten to him a few years ago.
 

FlatsLander

Ramblin' Wreck
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926
In terms of our safeties, I've pointed this out several times, but they no longer have the speed to play there. Our starting safeties have grown into LBs but they're still playing safety. CGC even mentioned that he was worried one of them got too big and not having the speed and range to cover back there. If you look at them from their freshmen season to now, there's a noticeable difference in their range. Both graded out poorly last season...and they were the strength of our secondary a few years ago.

On NIU's first touchdown, the RB basically erased our safety's angle. Juanyeh actually had a good angle, the RB just blew by him and blew up the angle. Juanyeh would have gotten to him a few years ago.
I don't know about Juanyeh's angle on that play (maybe I'm thinking of another one), but it looked like he attacked the inside shoulder of the RB which let the RB get to the sideline. I've definitely never coached FB, so my opinion is probably not worth much, but I would rather have our Safeties and wide DBs get on the outside of the RB and at least force them back off the sideline.
 

TromboneJacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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Another thing that was crucial was the two long balls by Lambardi that the NIU receives caught that 9/10 times would’ve been a drop or incomplete. You could just feel early on, especially when Sims went down, that nothing was going to go our way. And it didn’t. The TD catch by Kyric that was inches from a great TD and the 2pt conversion that wasn’t a catch.
Don’t get me wrong; this was a bad loss that should not have happened, but one thing that’s been grating on me is everyone describing that NIU team as a “winless MAC team”. And that was true last year, but this isn’t quite the same team, and the biggest difference is that they have Rocky Lombardi at QB. He’s no Heisman finalist by any means, but he’s a good QB with years of P5 experience and numerous starts, even being on a couple award watchlists. He made some damn good throws in the game, and even as badly as we played, I highly doubt NIU would have been able to move the ball remotely close to that level with the scrubs they normally would have had under center. Don’t get me wrong; we still should have been getting better pass rush and stuffing the run, and our offense should have bullied their defense, but let’s not exaggerate the loss and pretend we lost to a team that had absolutely nothing good about it.
 

Yaller Jacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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989
Three comments on the posts above. ) I suspect we'll be rotating defensive linemen more with a noon kick. 2) I'm not down on Pastanaude's play calling. He sees Sims hit those passes in practice. If we complete a few for big gains we're talking about how nicely Coach P mixes his plays. 3) NIU may stink this year, but we don't know that yet.
 

bobongo

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If you look all across the country, most teams rotate regularly on the d-line, less with linebackers and not nearly as much in the secondary because cohesion matters for that group. We are doing more or less what other programs do. They just don't have a buzzy term for it.
Rotation is a good thing, but if you rotate too often you defeat your own purpose by winding your players from running on and off the field so much. Especially if the other team is hurrying up.
 

alagold

Helluva Engineer
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Huntsville,Al
I was actually encouraged. I know that's weird to say, but I feel a bit better about where we stand as a program after rewatching. We really lost this game in the 1st quarter, or at least it was the biggest factor in my opinion. More specifically (and I hate to call out one player) Sims's mistakes cost us biGTime. On offense, at least 2 plays on 2 different drives that were 100% touchdowns if even a decent pass was made, 1 to Jahmyr where he wasn't sure which shoulder to look over, and 1 to Nate McCullom that was 1 yard too long. If either one of these had been 10% better throws, we would have won the game.

The defense did have a part too, but with 2 back-to-back 3-and-outs to start the game, they did their part early. NIU's 3rd drive was where they changed to a heavy, high tempo that caught us off guard.

In short, we generally executed fine and looked like we were in year 3 minus 3-4 completely uncharacteristic throws by Sims.

There is something to be said about our 10% underperformance costing us the game against NIU, but I'm expecting that they will get those things corrected in practice.
Great BUT-the only problem -it was NIU!!! not uva, Vt, or even doook
 

dressedcheeseside

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If you look all across the country, most teams rotate regularly on the d-line, less with linebackers and not nearly as much in the secondary because cohesion matters for that group. We are doing more or less what other programs do. They just don't have a buzzy term for it.
Then explain why we are terrible at getting lined up before the snap. Heck, several times were were staring at the sideline as the ball was snapped.
 

dressedcheeseside

Helluva Engineer
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14,239
Three comments on the posts above. ) I suspect we'll be rotating defensive linemen more with a noon kick. 2) I'm not down on Pastanaude's play calling. He sees Sims hit those passes in practice. If we complete a few for big gains we're talking about how nicely Coach P mixes his plays. 3) NIU may stink this year, but we don't know that yet.
He sure better see Sims hit those passes in practice, they were easy throws.
 
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