Week 10 Review - Virginia Tech

would have put up a quick review of the game sooner than this, but, well, I didn’t really feel like it. To put it mildly, I took the loss… hard. Not only did I think we had a chance to win, I actually thought we might be the better team, at least if we played like I thought we could out of the bye week. Turns out, I think I was right. And we were on our way to the win. And Nesbitt got hurt. No problem, the defense really made some plays in the third quarter to keep us in it while the offense was sputtering. Eventually, VT pulled ahead, and surely now the pain could set in right? Well, no, our offense would fight back, even without Nesbitt. We tie it up with 2 minutes left. Relief, but cautious relief. But before I really even had time to panic, disaster. They bring the kick back to go back up by a TD. Surely now we are done. No, not yet. We still fight. We get all the way down to the VT 16, and finally die with an interception. But even that had to be close. If the ball floats another foot and a half, its probably a TD.

Trying to think of a more painful way to lose. Trying to think of a more crucial game to our season. Don’t think I’ll be able to do either one. Win that game and we are right back in the conference race. Lose it, and we have a better shot to get an invite to the Big Ten and win that in 2011 than we do to win the ACC this year. (I’m told its still mathematically possible…)

I think I would rather have lost 49-3 than lose like that. Tough to take…

The game itself was pretty simple. Our offensive line played well. That made us very hard to stop. VT’s skill players are very good, and played well. That made them difficult to stop. Somewhat surprisingly, we competed well in the trenches on both sides of the ball.

We controlled the first quarter with two relatively easy scores. VT had the ball only once, but drove nearly 60 yards before bogging down and punting.

In the second quarter, our defense bent again and this time broke, letting VT cut the lead in half. But they continued playing relatively good defense aside from that drive. On offense, I think CPJ outfoxed himself a little bit. Starting at our own 6 after a penalty, we try two passes on three plays. The lone running play gained around 10 yards, but the two passes cost us enough yards that we had to punt. I have no problem passing, but VT really hadn’t stopped the run yet. On another drive, we have 4^th and inches from our own 39 or so. Given our penchant for false starts, and the loud stadium, I would have preferred to simply line up and run the QB sneak right away. Nesbitt almost surely gets the first down. But instead we try to draw them off, then call time, then line up and wait to look for some audibles. Our O line, after sitting down in their stance for probably about 30-45 seconds combined before and after the time out, finally jumps and costs us 5 yards. Its tough to ask an O line to stay down that long and then all come off the ball at the same time when they are having trouble hearing the snap count over the crowd. Much easier to just line up and go.

Oh well, CPJ is a really good coach who called a really good game. Sometimes he changes pace and it works brilliantly, so maybe its not fair to second guess him when it doesn’t work. We did right the ship and march down to their 5 before the disastrous interception and ensuing Nesbitt injury.

So 2 TD’s and a drive to their 5 yard line is pretty good for only 5 possessions.

The third quarter marked a pretty clear change on offense. The offensive line was still blocking well, but the defense was now able to key much more on Allen. Tevin’s reads were a little shaky at first. He was clearly trying to find a rhythm for pretty much the whole quarter, and that cost us. He did make one really good throw to Hill that probably should have been caught for a 30-35 yard gain. Anyway, with Nesbitt in, almost certainly making quicker and better reads than Washington and giving the defense two strong runners* to worry about, I see no way that we don’t score some more points in the 3^rd quarter.

(side note* – I am cautiously excited to see how our offense goes with Tevin. I do think he is a good runner. But he is a different runner than Nesbitt, faster but not quite as strong. Point is, our offense was in a good rhythm with Nesbitt and Allen both able to attack the middle of the field. With Tevin in, we still had “two good runners”, but it took Tevin a quarter to start making his reads at full speed and running with confidence. “Hesitant Tevin”, the guy who played the third quarter, was someone the VT defense could largely ignore. They were able to wait and see if Allen got the ball before proceeding over to Washington, and since he was not playing full speed, this didn’t hurt them like it should have.)

Our defense played great in the third quarter, but appeared to get tired in the fourth. This makes sense because they spent more time than usual on the field, with our offense suddenly sputtering. With Nesbitt in, its my opinion that we probably give the defense more rest and also increase the lead during this quarter. So that hurt.

In the fourth, Tevin finally found himself, and we started moving the ball a little bit. He hit some very nice throws as well, although part of me wonders if those throws weren’t similar to some Nesbitt throws earlier in the year that were dropped. The catches were encouraging, at the very least. And Tevin may be a better passer than Nesbitt, but for now I would say let’s give it a few games before we proclaim him a great passer.

Normally, I don’t like to make excuses (like Nesbitt’s injury) but I definitely do not subscribe to the fairly common attitude among football fans that fans are not allowed to play “what if”. Most people seem to think you win or you lose, what happens happens, and they just won’t listen to “well things may have been different if this happened or didn’t happen”. I don’t get that logic. I play the what if game whether we win or we lose. I want to try to figure out what should have happened. I think its clear that there is an element of luck in the game, and sometimes the better team does not win, for whatever reason.

Even though I normally don’t love playing what if, I usually do it. But here, I have absolutely no problem doing so. I see no way that a rational person can argue that Nesbitt going down did not have a dramatic affect on the game. I see no way a rational person could argue that VT was likely to hold us to 0 points in the third quarter with him playing. (they possibly could have done so, but “likely”? Don’t think so.)

It certainly may be true that VT would have been forced to call a more aggressive game if we had Nesbitt and we were scoring points, and maybe that works better for them and they still win. So I will not go as far as to say if we don’t lose Nesbitt, we win the game for sure. But let’s just say I wouldn’t mind going back to halftime and playing it out with a healthy Nesbitt. And my money would be on us.

Further, I think it’s also pretty obvious that Nesbitt’s injury was something of a freak accident. He just got his arm kicked at a funny angle, and it broke a bone. It happens, even though its pretty unlikely, especially for a kid as tough as Nesbitt.

So I don’t feel bad at all about playing “what if” here. I think we lost the game primarily due to a freak injury to our most important player.

Even given that, I am somewhat excited to see Tevin run the offense. I think our offense is really better suited for a faster QB. Nesbitt ran it well, and is a warrior, but I am not convinced he was the best kind of runner for our system. I’ll reserve that discussion for later in the week, in the Miami preview, mostly because I want more time to look at the tape of Tevin’s running plays before I try to speculate as to what might happen.

Anyway, here is a look at the usual numbers.

GT First Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 42	9	58	6.45	1 (1yd)	0	VT 0	TD
GT20	3	80	26.66	1 (1yd)	0	VT 0	TD
GT 26	3	9	3	0	0	GT 35	Punt
GT 7	3	2	0.67	0	0	GT 9	Punt
VT 47	5	41	8.2	0	0	VT 6	INT

You can see we moved the ball pretty easily on our three good drives.

VT First Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
VT 6	9	56	4.22	1 (4 yd)	0	GT 38	Punt
VT 23	10	77	7.7	0	0	GT 0	TD
VT 34	10	58	5.8	1 (3 yd)	0	GT 8	INT
VT 29	6	17	2.84	1 (3 yd)	0	VT 46	Punt

VT also moved the ball pretty easily, although they did have to convert more, and longer, third downs.

GT Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 13	9	37	4.11	0	1 (2 yd)	50	Punt
GT 34	6	21	3.5	0	0	VT 45	Downs
GT 20	3	-3	-1	0	0	GT 17	Punt
GT 20	9	80	8.89	1 (5 yd)	1 (4 yd)	VT 0	TD
GT 20	10	64	6.4	2 (17, 2 yd)	0	VT 16	INT

Key here is our first three drives of the half, as Tevin was settling in, were noticeably worse than our average first half drive.

VT Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
VT 40	5	8	1.6	0	0	VT 48	Punt
VT 8	5	18	3.6	0	0	VT 26	Punt
VT 45	8	55	6.88	1 (1 yd)	1 (3 yd)	GT 0	TD
VT 38	11	62	5.64	2 (1, 2 yd)	0	GT 0	TD

Overall I would say the defense played pretty well.

Here are the third down stats:

First Half

GT		VT
14	First Downs Allowed	5
6	Third Downs Forced	5
3	Third Downs Stopped	3

Pretty even there except for the total first downs, but that’s probably more a function of us moving the ball so easily in the first half, when we did successfully move it.

Second Half

GT		VT
9	First Downs Allowed	9
6	Third Downs Forced	8
3	Third Downs Stopped	5

Pretty even there.

The overall game stats:

	GT	VT
Rush Yards	346	198
Yards Per Carry	6.8	5
Pass Yards	80	137
Yards Per Attempt	8	5.5
Total Yards	426	335
Yards Per Play	7	5.2
Points	21	28
Turnovers	2	2

You can see some pretty decent edges for us there. We lead in total yards, yards per pass, yards per rush, and yards per play, all by decent margins.

In the end, a somewhat typical VT game. They lost by most every measure except the final score. Seems they are pretty good at that. And yet this time it leaves a more bitter taste in my mouth than usual.

As for the rest of the year, I am curious to see if the defense continues to improve, and how the new look offense does. But I consider the next two games to be little more than practice for the UGA game. I am confident we will get at least one more win (most probably Duke but I think we have a reasonable shot to beat Miami or UGA) so we will keep the bowl streak alive. Besides that, the only thing we have left to play for in my opinion is beating UGA. So, let’s make sure to keep getting better…

Let’s Go Jackets!