- Messages
- 3,281
I appreciate your point about running mid-line. I haven't finished the film, but I did see it run, although not much. Personally, I feel our failure to run mid-line well (and QB follow for that matter) this year has been a major reason for our struggles. The mid-line could quiet down a lot of the blindly crashing the A Gap by the DTs from a wider position ( I don't have the TECHNIQUE chart in front of me). Basically, they were daring us to dive and taking it away with early movement by the DT and we couldn't cut them off with the OG, who has to wait for the snap. Another advantage is that we have had a devil of a time getting to the deep MLB flying to the outside and getting him blocked. Well, if you run mid-line, probably one of two things will happen: the MLB will fly to the outside on early AB motion only to find that he ran himself out of the play when the AB turns up into the hole as a lead blocker, or the MLB is lead straight into the AB trying to make a tackle, resulting in us at least getting a hat on him. The mid-line, I believe, would be a great counter, and a perfect tool to slow down the MLB from getting to the outside with reckless abandon. The problem is that mid-line isn't really JT's thing. He doesn't have a feel for it and physical running on the inside is not his forte'.JT did look more explosive to me as well. The extra rest definitely helped him. I was also hoping to see more midline bc their DT was killing us. I thought that might have given him some more opportunities for big plays.
Now that we don't have a shot at a bowl game, I would consider giving Justin this week off to let Jordan get some reps and let Justin get as healthy as possible for the dwag game. That's the only one that matters at this point.
I think it has been a positive getting the dump offs out wide when the pass pro breaks down. It should help a lot in the long run. They have to go wide, as most teams are spying JT and that spy could blow up the short dump over the middle.
We grew some in this game, even if in small ways. However, running mid-line really well would be a huge help and we just haven't done it.