Vespidae
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No, not full time. Corporate execs in transition do it all the time. Nuf said.
Unique challenge coming up with Georgia Tech, but I love playing option football teams. It’s a great challenge. I like defending it and I like the all-inclusive nature of what your week looks like when you go into something like that. I look the opportunity for our team to continue to grow and ready for the next one.
Q. During the presser on Saturday, you talked about maybe the inconsistency from your team being total volume of plays more so than have to have. With a team like Georgia Tech, depending on the game script, the volume of plays could go either way. Does that lend itself to a different offensive game plan approach?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yes, it does. There is a delicate balance in there between trying to generate enough points and keep Georgia Tech from having the number of possessions, or if we’re able to play good enough defense and getting them off the field. And that script is you have an ideal going in, but that each time we’ve played Georgia Tech or Air Force or others, it kind of morphs as it goes. You are never quite sure until you get into the situation.
Preferably we would love to get ahead. This is versus any option team. We would love for them to have to play from behind and we would love for them to not have the ball very long. They would want just the opposite, to be ahead and have the ball as long as they can, which means converted third-and-shorts. And I think that’s pretty standard.
Q. Obviously you’ve had a lot of success against option teams. Is it your way of attacking, the old traditional way, where you shut down the dive and then force the pitch and get that guy or are there different ways of attacking it?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: There are different ways and rarely against a coach as good as Paul Johnson in schemes can you use the same plan every year because they adjust really well. There’s a lot of in-game adjustment that goes on with this system and the counting of numbers and formational adjustments and type of plays being run.
The worst mistake really, a less than effective approach is just to play it one way. But what you do have to be is assignment sound. And the fullback adds consistency. If you can’t take away the fullback, the time of possession just overwhelms you. You never get the ball.
But there’s a reason you put your best player at quarterback in the option. And he’s one that makes the entire thing go. If you are going to err anywhere, it would be erring on the side of making sure the quarterback is handled. You can’t put all your focus there; otherwise you never get the ball back because of the fullback.
Then if those two things happen to be handled well, the volatility and really where the big chunks come, which is the third phase, which is the pitch and play actions, rarely do you get to those unless you’ve gotten to the other ones. I think sequentially that would be the best way for me to explain my view of defending the option. And so we’ll do our best to, again, address all of those things.
Q. Does Georgia Tech present unique challenges because they played — everyone thinks Justin Thomas is their best player, and he didn’t play last week. I don’t know how similar the way the guy who played played to Justin Thomas, but what kind of challenge does that present in preparation?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Option is option and it’s very difficult. Most likely, if you have been at a place long enough, like Coach Johnson has been at Georgia Tech, they are not talking about the same issues we have. There’s a clear plan where it’s this quarterback. Then if he’s not in, it’s this quarterback. If this running back is not in, there’s another running back. And there’s a development plan that’s going on where it’s more seamless moving from one to another. Usually that means there’s been enough repetition to where there’s not the giant drop offs that a lot times happen in newer programs.
So I think that their program is mature enough to account for that.
Q. In a lot of Virginia’s games against Paul Johnson’s teams, Georgia Tech has come out and had a lot of success on the first couple of series and then it seems like the defense gets adjusted to the speed of the option and settles down a little bit. Was that your experience against Air Force and Georgia Tech? Is the defense particularly vulnerable right out of the gate?
BRONCO MENDENHALL: Yes is the easy and clearest answer. The more experienced your team, the less so. The less experienced team, the more so.
So yeah, we’re vulnerable to that. However, in the past three or four or five games, we’ve actually started pretty well defensively in terms of 3-and-outs. Y’all can do the research. So I think that our practice model is doing a pretty nice job to help us start pretty quickly early. Whether that will help enough versus this opponent, we’ll find out. But that’s pretty typical regardless of who any option team plays and trying to get a feel for that.
So we’re aware of that and recognize that challenge, but this is now, let’s see, five years at New Mexico plus then 13 total at BYU. Not every year was against Air Force, but that’s 15 years straight of defending all different kinds of option football. But there’s been a pretty good learning lab of what might work and what might not. All that does is give us a reference point to start from for this particular team and this particular situation. And that’s helpful but it doesn’t help our team in this particular situation. And that’s helpful, but it doesn’t guarantee success.
Does anyone have a summary of injuries for GT and UVa? Who will play tomorrow?
Georgia Tech offensive tackle Jahaziel Lee and safety Shaun Kagawa have both been ruled out for Saturday’s game against Virginia. Lee has an upper-body injury and Kagawa has a lower-body injury.
They are the only players on the Tech injury report.