Week 11 Review - Miami

Well, sorry guys. I came out flat this week. Didn’t think the Duke blogger could possibly beat me, so I didn’t really show up ready to write. That’s why it took me so long to put this out, and also why the effort is sub par. I just didn’t feel any intensity, and sense of urgency. I didn’t really wake up until the third quarter, and even then it wasn’t my best effort.

I can only hope the team will learn from my mistakes. Because Duke can beat us, unfortunately probably rather easily, if we show up flat for the game. Normally, I would not be worried about a team on a three game losing streak showing up flat. That doesn’t normally happen. But with this team we have this year, you never know.

To be fair, I don’t think we are 5-5 because we are flat all the time. We are a young team and we are not particularly good on either line. We have made plenty of young mistakes this season, and just generally are not executing consistently. So there are plenty of problems besides motivation. But I do think motivation, or lack of, has been a factor. This team strikes me as a young team that is used to winning. They won 11 games last year, won the conference, and started this year ranked #15. I think they felt entitled, and didn’t have enough upperclassmen leaders to show them what it takes to earn all those wins.

Jefferson, Nesbitt, Allen and Bedford are the only upperclassmen that jump out to me as having the potential to be leaders, based on their performance and abilities. And Nesbitt is a quiet leader. I don’t know if those four have not done a good enough job getting the younger players to focus, or if the younger players just don’t listen. But I can tell you I have only thought that we came out with intensity, a sense of urgency, and appeared focused in two games this year. At UNC, and at VT. And that makes sense. UNC was right after Kansas, so our players I guess had a wake up call. And VT was with our backs against the wall, had to have a win to stay in the conference race.

Not too surprisingly, those were our best games of the season. We beat a pretty good UNC team on the road, and we probably would have beaten a pretty good VT team on the road if Nesbitt doesn’t get hurt.

I don’t mean to suggest that we would be unbeaten if we had just played hard and been mentally in every game. We have other problems. But we would have beaten Kansas, and we would have competed better in the rest of our losses. And maybe won some of them.

Anyway, on to the Miami review. It will be quick, because I did come out flat this week (read: I’ve got a busy week. And I don’t have any more experienced bloggers to show me how hard you have to work if you want to be successful)

Miami was more talented, which I knew going into the game. When you are playing a more talented team, you have to execute well, and make fewer mistakes. At home, and off a good game at VT, I thought we would keep that momentum going and we would execute better than Miami. I was wrong. We were the ones making silly mistakes and not executing, and when you do that and you don’t have a talent edge to make up for it, you lose 35-10.

It should be noted that even given that, we would have been in the game, and maybe even leading in the 3^rd quarter, if we hadn’t made two particularly horrendous mistakes. The two in question were Butler’s pass interference and Orwin’s fumble.

Butler’s pass interference was so bad because it was third down and long deep in Miami’s own territory. If we get a stop there, we get the ball around midfield. Additionally, it was a bad pass, and even if caught, would have been short. Finally, Butler RAN INTO HIS BACK for no apparent reason. It looked like he simply didn’t know where the receiver was. He was in great position to defend the pass. He just ran into him. WTF? That play is the level of stupid that only happens to most players 2 or 3 times in a career.

Orwin’s fumble was simply a fluke. It was a good pitch, and he was under no pressure. He catches that pitch 99 times out of 100. Just so happens that the one time was on first and goal at the 6 when we had the rocket toss blocked very well. I think he walks in there, but even if he doesn’t score on that play, we probably score later since he certainly gains yards and we were already on the 6.

Both teams made plenty of mistakes in the game. I know you can always go through and say “well if we hadn’t made this mistake or that mistake, we would have won…”. I don’t think those two mistakes fall into that “regular mistake” category. I think you can expect in an average game to not make any mistakes at all like those two.

If we don’t make those two extremely rare screw ups, consider how the game goes. Miami does not score their second TD of the first half. So they finish the half at 7 (assuming all else was the same of course). We probably get a FG on that drive since we would have had the ball at midfield, but maybe not. Could have been a TD but they were doing a great job of red zone defense (another key in the game. I think they scored TD’s on 4 of 4 trips to the red zone, and we scored a TD on 1 of 4 maybe?) so I’ll say no TD. So its either 7-3 or 7-6 at halftime. Then Orwin’s TD is putting us ahead either 17-14 or 20-14. Instead we fumble to remain down 21-10. That momentum killer pretty much ended the game. Our defense had three chances to get them off the field the following drive, and failed all three. That to me shows a lack of intensity, which would be consistent with a big letdown on the fumble.

But the main point is if we are ahead by 3 or 6 at that point instead of down 11, I bet we keep fighting and the game comes down to the wire. I think its unusual to have a 25 point loss where you can easily identify 2 crucial plays that are also very, very unlikely plays, that really turned the game.

Oh well. Miami is a very talented team. I don’t think they are real well coached, but I don’t think there is too much shame in losing to them. Wish it hadn’t been at home and by 25 points, but you can’t afford to play such a poor game in terms of execution.

Here is a look drive by drive.

GT First Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 21	8	37	4.6	1 (11 yd)	0	UM 42	Punt
GT 23	13	56	4.3	1 (9 yd)	1 (1 yd)	UM 21	FG
GT 20	9	42	4.7	1 (5 yd)	0	UM 38	Downs
GT 17	7	31	4.4	0	0	GT 48	Punt

You can see we moved the ball pretty consistently, but we did not average more than 5 yards per play on any drive. We also had to convert a third down on 3 of 4 drives just to move the ball some, and we scored no TD’s. In short, Miami was making it difficult on us.

Miami First Half Drive

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
UM 12	10	88	8.8	0	0	GT 0	TD
UM 12	9	88	9.8	1, penalty	1, penalty	GT 0	TD
UM 24	7	32	4.6	0	0	GT 44	Punt
UM 38	3	2	0.7	0	0	UM 40	Punt
UM 20	4	22	5.5	0	0	UM 42	Punt

The first two drives stand out. The first is not a typo, they went 88 yards on 10 plays without ever facing a third down. Wow. The second drive, yeah, we stopped them twice, except for those pesky penalties. Sigh. The rest of the half was actually pretty good deense, which I did not see coming while watching the game. I thought they’d have 28 easy by halftime after watching the first two drives.

GT Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
GT 24	6	76	12.7	1 (6 yd)	0	UM 0	TD
GT 23	10	71	7.1	1 (4 yd)	0	UM 6	Fumble
GT 19	5	15	3	0	0	GT 34	Punt
GT 1	3	4	1.3	0	0	GT 5	Punt
GT 45	4	4	1	0	0	GT 49	Downs
GT 14	11	81	7.4	3 (5, 6, penalty)	0	UM 4	Fumble

You can see we moved the ball very well the first two drives (appears consistent with CPJ’s reputation for good halftime adjustments) but the fumble was pretty much the killer. The next three drives were noticeably worse, especially in terms of yards per play.

Miami Second Half Drives

Start	Plays	Yards	Yards/ Play	3rd downs converted	4th downs converted	End	Result
UM 21	1	79	79	0	0	GT 0	TD
UM 14	11	86	7.8	3 (5, 7, 7 yd)	0	GT 0	TD
UM 46	6	53	8.8	0	0	GT 1	Fumble
GT 42	1	2	2	0	0	GT 40	Fumble
GT 49	10	49	4.9	0	2 (penalty, 3 yd)	GT 0	TD

Not much to look at there. Just bad defense. Hard to tell really how much of that was motivation. The first drive we should have been pumped up and ready since our offense had just cut the lead to 4. But Hankerson made a play. You can’t tell much from a 1 play, 79 yard TD “drive”, other than that somebody on the defense screwed up real bad. By the time we came back out on defense, it was 21-10 and we had just fumbled right at their goalline, and I expect our defense was very disheartened. It would be nice if we were mentally tougher than that, but I don’t think this team is, so that was almost certainly a factor.

Overall a very disappointing effort, but pretty consistent with our play all season. A lot of frustrating mistakes, but I think there are explanations for what is going on, and none of them point to any major problems in the program in my opinion.

I am still hoping to play well in our last two games, make it to a bowl and win. That will give us a good foundation to build on for 2011, particularly if we can beat UGA. Which I think we can, but we will have to play much smarter, with more intensity, and more efficiently that we have most of the season.

Let’s Go Jackets!