"The offense seemed completely befuddled and directionless."

[BainbridgeJacket]

Sorry. I shouldn't have gotten personal. I get tired of certain people criticizing without offering possible ideas for solutions on how to fix said problem, or without understanding what the problem is..

Let's be realistic. This is a message board, not a coaches meeting. No real solutions will be discovered here.

 

[ramblinvak]

Here is my theory:

CPJ has stated a few times that you cant solely play off of diamond and pistol and he wanted the sloppiness from the bread and butter stuff cleaned up. So, I feel he made it a mission to show the team the importance of the bread and butter even if that meant a loss at the VT game. I feel that his stubborness of not changing play calling during the game is due to wanting to see the offense start clicking with their base stuff against a great defense, and in a way, invest in the future. If you can move with the base stuff against a top D like VT, you should be able to move it with any opponent. I feel once the offense gets back to a proficient level with the base sets we will see the implementation of more diamond, pistol, and any other wrinkle again. It appears the team took notice of that this week and had the best practice of the year yesterday. I may be one of the few around here who believes in CPJ through thick and thin and want to see him succeed!

 

[Dustman]

Or maybe he just thought plays out of the diamond against that defense would lead to 3 and out.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I am with Dustman. I prefer the simplest explanations given lack of detailed info or expertise. By that I mean if someone can break down film and demonstrate he was "stubborn" in his play calling or "did not try to change blocking" or "did not take advantage of short passes" which were supposedly there then I will gladly listen. Calling all option experts! (as DCS would say).

I remember he said post-Duke that they were "doing something" so that he thought the diamond formation may help the offense and work and so he used it. That suggests that UNC and VT were "not doing" what Duke had been doing and so he did not see an advantage in switching to those formations. Different formations are not some sort of universal panacea. Only duct tape is that good.

I would love to read specific breakdowns kind of what Longestdays has partially done that could educate me into being able to critique the minute details of CPJ's decisions. That would be very interesting indeed. Until then I find the simplest explanations the most convincing.

 

[SoCal_GT_Fan]

Again, the offense played against a pretty good defensive team. Ya know how Alabama's 4-5 star laden offense did against this defense?
10-24 passing completion for 110 yds 1 td and 1 int and 38 carries for 96 yards for a paltry 2.5 yds/carry. Bama only score 2 TDs against VaTechs' defense. The defense scored 1 td on an interception and special teams got 2 tds as well (one on a kick-off return and the other on a punt return).

So....... How did we compare with Bama?
GT passing: 7-24 for 144 yds 2 int Bama passing: 10-24 110 yds 1 td 1 int
GT rushing: 42 carries 129 yds 1 td Bama rushing: 38 carries 96 yds 1 td.

So our offensive performance was on par with what Bama did against VaTech. Perhaps Bama's offense isn't that good. Let's see how they've done against Texas A&M, Ol' Miss and Colorado State:
Passing Rushing
Texas A&M: 20-29 334 4 tds 37 carries 234 yds 2 td
Colorado st: 21-27 272 2 td 21 carries 66 yds 1 td
Ol' Miss: 25-32 180 40 carries 254 yds 2 tds

I would say Bama's offense isn't that bad. So in conclusion Armageddon isn't upon us. Its just that we played against a really good defensive team.

Now, I wonder how well we would have done if we had TJ Yeldon, Derrick Henry, Kenyan Drake, Dee Hart, and Altee Tenpenny in our backfield with the cogs that bama has to block for them???

 

[Longestday]

We played against a good defense and made too many mistakes. Without the mistakes I could see us scoring 21 points and a win. That is without better OL play and QB play.

I am also not a fan of too many deep passes given our record. Our team has too few receptions over the shoulder.

We did make the cheating up CB pay with some short passes to the WRs.

We have not completed a screen pass this year.

Our team will get better as the year progresses.

 

[Longestday]

I also think too many OL starters missed fall camp

 

[awbuzz]

Dustman is dead on. Does anyone really think CPJ would not use a formation if it gave us a better chance to win?