What we learned over the weekend …

GlennW

GlennW

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,189
I'm not sure how many of you who have made "evaluations" of the Jackets actually made the trip to Dublin, versus those of you who based your prognosis on what you witnessed on TV and some replays from some websites or sports channels.

I was at the game (actually had some decent seats), and got there early so I could watch the guys warming up until they got the trophy at the end of the game after they won. I have a few observations I'll share, for those interested.

First, people need to remember that Boston College had the top-Ranked Defense in College Football last Season, and they returned a large majority of their Defensive Starters for the 2016 Season, so it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that they would have played us tough. Then we found out they spent most of the summer preparing just for OUR Offense, so, once again, having the top-Rated Defense having a month to prepare for us should have given us an inkling we would have had some issues moving the ball.

Then it turned out that on game day, it happened to start raining, which impacted our lighter Players from getting better leverage/traction against the bigger/stronger BC Defensive Linemen at the LoS early, so we were losing the battle up front before Justin could get started (again). Can you say a "perfect storm" for the Jackets to lose?

But as we all know, what happened is the Team scored 10 points late to pull out the victory, and it wasn't just any victory but an ACC Conference victory. The Defense bent, but when it mattered, they held BC to 14 points for the game. Paul Johnson proved, once again, he is the ultimate "gambler" when he went for it on 4th and 19, deep in our territory, and we were down 14-10, late in the game. Justin Thomas showed, once again, he has ice water in his veins and makes big plays at critical times, leading the Jackets on the winning TD drive, with 30 seconds remaining in the game.

Now I saw plenty of times where our RB's ran the wrong way on sets and left Justin on his own, and where our Offensive Line looked like they whiffed on blocking almost every Defender, standing around while they watched Justin running around for his life. I also saw our WR's stop running their routes on plays and Justin passing to where they WOULD have been if they would have just kept going.

In spite of all these mistakes, and the punting issues, the Team never quit fighting, and they won a game in a Foreign Country that they would have lost last Season. Now when you think about that, and then you look at Virginia losing to Richmond, and LSU losing to Wisconsin, and Notre Dame losing to Texas, and Tennessee having to go into overtime to beat Appalachian State (along with some of the other big surprises this past weekend), I think the bottom line is we should all be very happy we came home with a Conference win, and a lot great film that our Coaches can work on with the Team as we head into Clemson.
 
ibleedgoldnwhite

ibleedgoldnwhite

Georgia Tech Fan
Messages
18
dressedcheeseside said:
I guess it's just never as good or as bad as it may seem?
Click to expand...

That's my general belief, also tied into no matter how good or bad it was, it's time to get to work and improve. From a fan perspective though, I find week one is usually a poor indicator of how good or bad a team really is.

Think about how bad we looked against Wofford a couple of years ago and look how that season turned out. Conversely I remember winning some big ones like going out to Auburn and dominating week one, then finishing 7-5.
 

alagold

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,732
Location
Huntsville,Al
GlennW said:
I'm not sure how many of you who have made "evaluations" of the Jackets actually made the trip to Dublin, versus those of you who based your prognosis on what you witnessed on TV and some replays from some websites or sports channels.

I was at the game (actually had some decent seats), and got there early so I could watch the guys warming up until they got the trophy at the end of the game after they won. I have a few observations I'll share, for those interested.

First, people need to remember that Boston College had the top-Ranked Defense in College Football last Season, and they returned a large majority of their Defensive Starters for the 2016 Season, so it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that they would have played us tough. Then we found out they spent most of the summer preparing just for OUR Offense, so, once again, having the top-Rated Defense having a month to prepare for us should have given us an inkling we would have had some issues moving the ball.

Then it turned out that on game day, it happened to start raining, which impacted our lighter Players from getting better leverage/traction against the bigger/stronger BC Defensive Linemen at the LoS early, so we were losing the battle up front before Justin could get started (again). Can you say a "perfect storm" for the Jackets to lose?

But as we all know, what happened is the Team scored 10 points late to pull out the victory, and it wasn't just any victory but an ACC Conference victory. The Defense bent, but when it mattered, they held BC to 14 points for the game. Paul Johnson proved, once again, he is the ultimate "gambler" when he went for it on 4th and 19, deep in our territory, and we were down 14-10, late in the game. Justin Thomas showed, once again, he has ice water in his veins and makes big plays at critical times, leading the Jackets on the winning TD drive, with 30 seconds remaining in the game.

Now I saw plenty of times where our RB's ran the wrong way on sets and left Justin on his own, and where our Offensive Line looked like they whiffed on blocking almost every Defender, standing around while they watched Justin running around for his life. I also saw our WR's stop running their routes on plays and Justin passing to where they WOULD have been if they would have just kept going.

In spite of all these mistakes, and the punting issues, the Team never quit fighting, and they won a game in a Foreign Country that they would have lost last Season. Now when you think about that, and then you look at Virginia losing to Richmond, and LSU losing to Wisconsin, and Notre Dame losing to Texas, and Tennessee having to go into overtime to beat Appalachian State (along with some of the other big surprises this past weekend), I think the bottom line is we should all be very happy we came home with a Conference win, and a lot great film that our Coaches can work on with the Team as we head into Clemson.
Click to expand...

Glenn,
I agree with almost everything you said but their roster shows than no DL for them weighed over 292.We just got stoned by better players and poor execution.We knew the rain was coming for 4 days before. (shoe issue?)
 

TheSilasSonRising

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,729
takethepoints said:
Well, that most of the pre-season polls weren't worth a bucket of warm spit, but I'm guessing that most everybody knew that going in. But how about the ACC? Here's my take:

• "UNC will be just as good as last year! Trubitsky will show the way!"
Yeah. Right. If that outfit had had Williams out there they would have beat the Dwags by two TDs. I didn't understand why so many people thought the Tarholes would be good this year and I still don't. Oh, and by extension, I wasn't all that impressed by the Dwags either.

• "Clemson is a collection of football gods! They play for the MNC again!"
Uh, no. They're a good football team, but they can be had. And, unlike anyone last year, Awbun seemed to be dedicated to keeping Watson from running the ball effectively. Everyone else will too and their overall effectiveness will suffer.

• "FSU is terrific!"
No argument, but I will say that Ole Miss is so deficient in its run game that it is hard to tell how good the Criminoles are this year. Pretty good is obvious; championship contenders isn't.

• "Huh? Louisville!?!"
Lots of ACC teams played pushovers and it's hard to tell from that. The Cards, however, seem to be a lot better then most people thought. Well … me, at least.

• "Tech will return to form!"
Hard to tell again. We'll see over the next two - three weeks. The field over there reminded me of ND last year with longer grass. Not perfect conditions for our O. Still, we won anyway.
Click to expand...

Crap, why is the world, no the football Gods, always against us by only having the part of the field we run on so bad?

IT ISN'T FAIR, IT IS NOT FAIR!!! :( :( :(
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,096
I think one of the things folks are tending to forget here is that we have so many new starters. To go by what Coach said in his pressers this week, here's a short list. Some are experienced, but in new positions. So you get Will, now playing guard instead of tackle, forgetting to pull on three plays. Or MLD blocks someone who we weren't supposed to block at all and was actually getting help from one of the new ABs! Some are experienced but making their first start. So neither Fromayen or Marshall exactly tore up the pea patch. Some were literally brand new. Here the picture was better since Green, Searcy (I'm counting him new despite 1.25 games last year), and Mills all played well. Still, we had two instances where the ABs forgot/got confused about which direction the veer was going. This led to those weird plays where first Jordan (on his TD) and then JT were left out there with no one to pitch to. Then there's the inevitable: early on, the QBs, no matter how experienced, miss reads left and right.

This kind of thing is to be expected early on. As I keep saying, for the first 3 - 4 games, I'm always satisfied with a one (that's 1) point win. The Navy proverb on this was that the O started rolling when the leaves turned. That's about when we should expect better efficiency.
 
Chas_Jacket

Chas_Jacket

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
368
GlennW said:
I'm not sure how many of you who have made "evaluations" of the Jackets actually made the trip to Dublin, versus those of you who based your prognosis on what you witnessed on TV and some replays from some websites or sports channels.

I was at the game (actually had some decent seats), and got there early so I could watch the guys warming up until they got the trophy at the end of the game after they won. I have a few observations I'll share, for those interested.

First, people need to remember that Boston College had the top-Ranked Defense in College Football last Season, and they returned a large majority of their Defensive Starters for the 2016 Season, so it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that they would have played us tough. Then we found out they spent most of the summer preparing just for OUR Offense, so, once again, having the top-Rated Defense having a month to prepare for us should have given us an inkling we would have had some issues moving the ball.

Then it turned out that on game day, it happened to start raining, which impacted our lighter Players from getting better leverage/traction against the bigger/stronger BC Defensive Linemen at the LoS early, so we were losing the battle up front before Justin could get started (again). Can you say a "perfect storm" for the Jackets to lose?

But as we all know, what happened is the Team scored 10 points late to pull out the victory, and it wasn't just any victory but an ACC Conference victory. The Defense bent, but when it mattered, they held BC to 14 points for the game. Paul Johnson proved, once again, he is the ultimate "gambler" when he went for it on 4th and 19, deep in our territory, and we were down 14-10, late in the game. Justin Thomas showed, once again, he has ice water in his veins and makes big plays at critical times, leading the Jackets on the winning TD drive, with 30 seconds remaining in the game.

Now I saw plenty of times where our RB's ran the wrong way on sets and left Justin on his own, and where our Offensive Line looked like they whiffed on blocking almost every Defender, standing around while they watched Justin running around for his life. I also saw our WR's stop running their routes on plays and Justin passing to where they WOULD have been if they would have just kept going.

In spite of all these mistakes, and the punting issues, the Team never quit fighting, and they won a game in a Foreign Country that they would have lost last Season. Now when you think about that, and then you look at Virginia losing to Richmond, and LSU losing to Wisconsin, and Notre Dame losing to Texas, and Tennessee having to go into overtime to beat Appalachian State (along with some of the other big surprises this past weekend), I think the bottom line is we should all be very happy we came home with a Conference win, and a lot great film that our Coaches can work on with the Team as we head into Clemson.
Click to expand...
One thing to add to Glenn's comments - BC wanted this game very very badly. Their last ACC Win was November 2014. The were desperate not to start the season off with a Loss. From the preseason comments it was pretty obvious they were not preparing for the 2016 season as much as they were focusing in the first game.
 
Top