That was decidedly not what I wanted to see. More accurately, that was not what I wanted to read about, since I don’t get ESPN3. Even worse, ESPN3 for some reason does not have the replay of the game up, so I can’t even go somewhere with a different internet service provider and watch the replay some other time. But I don’t think I want to anyway.
What I saw watching the gametracker was a team that moved the ball far too easily against us, and a GT offense that was far from overwhelming. We looked good against UVA last week, but then again we didn’t look as good against them as UNC did this week. Maybe that performance wasn’t as good as we thought. I had assumed that since we beat UVA roughly as badly as FSU did, and FSU trounced Miami last week, that we must have played better. And then FSU barely beat a bad Boston College team at home last week and UNC annihilates UVA at UVA.
Combine all that with another lackluster performance by us, and, well, that is not what I wanted to see going into the 3 game stretch that will define our season. I did not want to see a bunch of games that undermine our argument that we have improved. I suppose that such is life in the ACC, where no team plays at the same level two weeks in a row.
Wait a minute, you might be thinking, didn’t we win 42-14? Well, yeah, we did, but we only led 14-7 at halftime, and we actually would have been trailing if we didn’t get so many turnovers. I don’t know if we forced those turnovers, or if they gave them to us, but I don’t really care. I don’t want for GT to need turnovers in order to stop Middle Tennessee State. And we did NEED turnovers. There were times they were moving the ball up and down the field all over us.
Offensively, I want to control their defensive front with good blocking and slice and dice them for multiple 10-20 yard runs. Instead, we were getting far too many 1, 2 and 3 yard gains. We should be scoring TD’s fairly easily, and instead we only scored 2 in the first half, and that was with 3 (THREE!) turnovers in a half.
We did come out in the second half and put the game away by scoring TD’s on three of our first four drives. That was good, but why can’t we do that from the opening kickoff? Paul Johnson apparently told the team at halftime we needed to play with more urgency. If that was the problem, that means we were flat again? Seriously? I know its Middle Tennessee, but if that is true, that would mean there are 3 or 4 games this year where we appeared to be flat (Kansas, Wake, MTSU and arguably N.C. St.). We have only played 7 games. When you are flat as often or more often than not, that’s a pretty serious problem. I mean you only play 12 games a year. How can you not really care about four of them?!
There were some good signs. We won easily in the end, and defensively we forced 6 turnovers. Or at least they had 6 turnovers, which should indicate we forced at least a few, and were putting them under pressure. It is possible they just made silly mistakes and gave the turnovers to us, but, you know, I didn’t get to see the game.
Overall there were not nearly enough good signs in my opinion.
Here is a drive by drive breakdown:
GT First Half Drives
| Start | Plays | Yards | Yards/ Play | 3rd downs converted | 4th downs converted | End | Result |
| MT 34 | 3 | 34 | 11.33 | 1 (1 yd) | 0 | MT 0 | TD |
| GT 27 | 8 | 27 | 3.37 | 2 (9,1 yd) | 0 | MT 46 | Fumble |
| GT 14 | 6 | 49 | 8.16 | 0 | 0 | MT 37 | Downs |
| MT 27 | 3 | 3 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | MT 24 | FG Miss |
| GT 24 | 9 | 76 | 8.45 | 2 (5, 1 yd) | 0 | MT 0 | TD |
| GT 27 | 5 | 24 | 4.8 | 0 | 0 | MT 49 | Punt |
| GT 49 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GT 34 | Punt |
The last drive was three incomplete passes, with a 15 yard offensive pass interference penalty. I don’t mind that too much since we are not a great passing team, particularly when the other team knows we have to pass, as they did there with only 1 minute to go in the half. I do have problems with a lot of the other drives. We have to cut down on fumbles, we punted against MTSU which I was hoping to avoid, at least in the first half, and we took over at their 27 one time and gained three yards. Really? And of course to top that off Blair missed his first FG of the year. When we get a turnover at the other team’s 27, I want a TD even we are playing Alabama. Its pitiful to get the ball 27 yards from the end zone against Middle Tennessee State and not even threaten to score a TD.
A quick glance at the yards and yards/play columns tells you that we had tremendous success moving the ball on three drives (1st 3rd and 5th), but bogged down on one of those (3rd), and then never really got started moving on the other drives.
MTSU First Half Drives
| Start | Plays | Yards | Yards/ Play | 3rd downs converted | 4th downs converted | End | Result |
| MT 20 | 8 | 38 | 4.75 | 2 (8, 14 yd) | 0 | GT 42 | INT |
| MT 17 | 4 | 23 | 5.75 | 0 | 0 | MT 40 | Punt |
| MT 46 | 9 | 41 | 4.55 | 2 (2, 1 yd) | 0 | GT13 | INT |
| MT 37 | 6 | 11 | 1.84 | 1 (5 yd) | 0 | MT 48 | INT |
| MT 24 | 3 | -2 | -0.67 | 0 | 0 | MT 22 | Punt |
| MT 20 | 9 | 80 | 8.89 | 0 | 0 | GT 0 | TD |
| MT 8 | 3 | 8 | 2.67 | 0 | 0 | MT 16 | Punt |
So our yards per play by drive were 0, 1, 3, 4, 8, 8, 11. Their yards per play by drive were 0, 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 8. That is an edge for us, but not a huge one. Of particular concern to me is their TD drive. 80 yards, 9 plays? That is an average of over 8 yards per play for a sustained drive. And its not like they broke one 50 yard play to jack their average up. They moved the ball without facing a third down for NINE plays, and 80 yards. That is pitiful. We also didn’t start the game very well, allowing them to move 38 yards, and convert third downs of 8 and 14 yards, before Tarrant bailed us out with an interception. They also drove to our 13 one time before we were bailed out by another interception, this time by Burnett. We did play pretty good dense for three drives out of seven, and on those we forced punts.
GT Second Half Drives
| Start | Plays | Yards | Yards/ Play | 3rd downs converted | 4th downs converted | End | Result |
| GT 38 | 5 | 18 | 3.6 | 0 | 0 | MT 44 | Punt |
| MT 45 | 3 | 45 | 15 | 0 | 0 | MT 0 | TD |
| MT 38 | 5 | 38 | 7.6 | 0 | 1 (1 yd) | MT 0 | TD |
| MT 30 | 6 | 30 | 5 | 1 (5 yd) | 0 | MT 0 | TD |
| GT 47 | 3 | -1 | -0.33 | 0 | 0 | GT 46 | Punt |
| GT 30 | 3 | 2 | 0.67 | 0 | 0 | GT 32 | Punt |
| GT 33 | 7 | 51 | 7.28 | 0 | 0 | MT 39 | Fumble |
| MT 24 | 2 | 24 | 12 | 0 | 0 | MT 0 | TD |
Overall, that looks a lot better. On our 4 dives with Nesbitt, we scored 3 TD’s, averaging 15, 7 and 5 yards per play on those drives. The longest of the three was only 45 yards though, so with such great field position, I would expect to score TD’s. The last four drives were QB’d by Washington, Sims, Washington and Sims. Good to get them some reps. As you might expect, they both started slowly, going three and out. It was a good sign that both got the team moving on their second effort, and Sims scored a TD on a 2 play 24 yard drive. He did not however look as fast on that run as I was hoping, but he does look huge. No matter how big he is, I doubt he is appreciably better than Nesbitt at power running, but he may be about as good, which would mean he is really, really good.
MTSU Second Half Drives
| Start | Plays | Yards | Yards/ Play | 3rd downs converted | 4th downs converted | End | Result |
| MT 18 | 3 | -3 | -1.0 | 0 | 0 | MT 6 | Punt |
| MT 28 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 1 (7 yd) | 0 | Mt 40 | Fumble |
| MT 22 | 2 | 8 | 4.0 | 0 | 0 | MT 30 | Fumble |
| MT 20 | 5 | 14 | 2.8 | 1 (4 yd) | 0 | MT 34 | Punt |
| MT 14 | 5 | 17 | 3.4 | 0 | 0 | MT 31 | Punt |
| MT 18 | 7 | 82 | 11.72 | 0 | 0 | GT 0 | TD |
| MT 24 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | MT 24 | INT |
| MT 22 | 3 | 7 | 2.33 | 0 | 0 | MT 29 | Game |
This was also better, as we forced three punts and two fumbles while the game was still in doubt. Further, they only had one drive where they averaged more than 4 yards per play, and that was the only drive where they gained more than 17 yards. In fact, they did not even get across midfield except for that one drive.
However, that one drive was an inexplicable breakdown. They went 82 yards on 7 plays, averaging a whopping 11.72 yards per play, and again did not face a single third down. In fact, they only faced ONE second down. That was pitiful. They ran for 8 yards to set up one 2nd and 2, and converted that with a 3 yard run. Other than that, every single play on the drive went for at least 10 yards and a first down. That was beyond pitiful. A good high school defense seriously might be able to perform that well against MTSU.
On to a different analysis. I think a good way to tell how well two teams are playing, besides looking at the scoreboard of course, is to look at how well both teams are moving the ball. The above analysis does that pretty well, telling you how many third downs were converted, and how many yards per play each team was averaging. I think another useful perspective is to focus on how many third downs a defense was forcing, as compared to how many first downs they were allowing. So let’s take a look. Ideally, as a defense you would want to force more third downs that you allow first downs, and you would like to keep their conversion rate on those third downs below 50%.
First Half
| GT | | MTSU |
| 13 | First Downs Allowed | 9 |
| 9 | Third Downs Forced | 9 |
| 4 for 9 | Third Down Stopped | 4 for 9 |
You can see clearly that their defense played better than ours, at least in terms of first downs allowed and third downs forced/defended. It was close however. But against a team like Middle Tennessee State, I want to be winning this, not in a close battle, and certainly not LOSING a close battle.
I wouldn’t so much mind “losing” this battle if we lost it because, for example, we did not get many first downs because we kept breaking 30 and 40 yard runs. You can drive 80 yards and only get 1 first down if you break two 40 yard runs (a long run for a TD is not scored as a first down). And then you can hold them to only 35 yards and punt, but that could be 3 first downs. But if you are doing that, you should see that they are not forcing many third downs. Here, it is the combination of several factors that bothers me. We allowed more first downs than they did, yet they forced just as many third downs as we did, and they stopped just as many as well.
Second Half
| GT | | MTSU |
| 10 | First Downs Allowed | 6 |
| 7 | Third Downs Forced | 6 |
| 5 | Third Down Stopped | 5 |
You see they only allowed us 6 first downs here, but I am not too worried about that, because we were scoring so quickly. We scored on drives of 2, 3, 5 and 6 plays. That does not leave much time to pick up many first downs. Stopping them on 5 out of 7 was good, but allowing them to stop us on 5 out of 6… not so good.
The bottom line though is that these stats are probably much more even only because we blew the game open so fast in the second half, and spent the last 4 drives playing our backup QB’s and probably getting pretty deep down the depth chart at other positions as well. I think we played fine for most of the second half.
Here is a look at the game stats:
| | GT | MTSU |
| Rush Yards | 329 | 143 |
| Yards Per Carry | 5.8 | 3.7 |
| Pass Yards | 86 | 173 |
| Yards Per Attempt | 6.1 | 4.9 |
| Total Yards | 415 | 316 |
| Yards Per Play | 6.8 | 4.3 |
| Points | 42 | 14 |
| Turnovers | 2 | 6 |
The total yards were a little closer in part because we kept getting a short field after turnovers. That robbed of us some yards we probably otherwise would have gotten. But then again, we didn’t seem to score many touchdowns when we had to drive more than 45 yards. However we had a substantial lead in yards per rush and yards per pass, which indicates to me that we outplayed them by a good margin. I would have preferred to beat them a little worse given that they turned the ball over 6 times. Last year our offense was good enough to score 56 points (and gain 600 yards) on a Vandy defense that was probably better than this MTSU team. We also scored 49 points twice last year against Duke and FSU. And in those games, we forced a total of 6 turnovers in 3 games. This year our offense is apparently not playing well enough to hit 50 on a sun belt defense when we get a short field several times thanks to 6 turnovers. Not exactly the momentum I was looking for heading into our next three games.
Anyway, here are my goals for the game:
Offense:
Gain at least 500 yards, 400 rushing and 100 passing. Given that we just ran up 477 rushing alone on UVA, this is set pretty low.
Did not get there. 329 rushing and 86 passing. So we didn’t make either.
Score at least 50 points. We haven’t come near that mark since S.C. St., and I think it is time the offense gets rolling.
Another miss. 8 points away.
No more than two fumbles total, no more than 1 lost, and no more than 1 turnover.
I don’t know how many fumbles we had, but I know we lost 2, so this was another miss.
Get some reps for the backup QB’s. I want to see Tevin get at least two drives and Sims get one. Judging from very limited action, Sims may be as good of a runner as Nesbitt, only faster. Wouldn’t that be something?
Finally, we got one. Both QB’s got two drives, and both moved the ball pretty well on their second. Sims does look like a good runner, but I may have over estimated his speed. For a guy that most schools recruited as a defensive back, he did not look that fast to me.
Defense:
Force 3 turnovers.
Ha. Ha ha. We got this one by halftime. 6 total.
Get 3 sacks.
I confess I don’t know how many sacks we got. I do know we got at least one, which forced a fumble, and we had several tackles for loss. I’ll give it to us.
Hold them to less than 14 points, at least while the game is in doubt.
Got this one exactly. Well, technically 14 is not less than 14, but this is what I meant.
Hold them under 300 total yards.
Very close. 316.
The overall verdict for this game is that we put them away quickly in the second half, but there were long stretches of disappointing play. Hopefully that just means we thought it would be an easy game and didn’t show up real motivated. As I said, that would make 3 or 4 games out of 7 where we have showed up at least a little bit flat. It’s hard to be flat for every other game, but it is possible. Surely that won’t be a problem this week. Surely…
Assuming we show up ready to play, we will still need to play one of our better games in terms of execution if we are going to win. Clemson, even after firing Bowden, has proven they are still good at throwing winnable games away, but they are still probably the most talented team we have faced so far this season. We should at least have a chance to win if we play well, because I think our coaching staff is significantly better than theirs and we have some talented players as well. But in our 8th game of the season, its time to stop talking about how we can play better and start playing better. Put up or shut up time has officially arrived.
Go Jackets!
