Week 4 - UNC Review

As Paul Johnson said in his press conference, easily the best part of this game was that 35 is greater than 28. It may not have been the smoothest or most relaxing game, but it was at least a win.

I was very pleased to see the team win. I was even more pleased to see how the team responded (twice) when things did not go well. This was the first time all season we had a few problems. A little adversity. And, both times, we responded well.

First, early in the game things did not go as planned. They put together a good drive right away to go up by 7, and we did not score on the first play. Or, you know, the first drive either. But after the first play, I was upset. 18 yards? Thats it? Come on guys. We didn’t even come close to a touchdown there...

After 3 possessions, we were still trailing 7-3. And this, despite the fact that we had not punted yet, and we had forced two UNC punts. We had outgained them 144 to 74, and we had entered their red zone on all three of our drives. They had only been in our red zone once.

So, despite having largely outplayed UNC early, we trailed 7-3. And we had just fumbled at their 10 yard line.

If UNC puts together a drive there, and goes ahead 14-3, we might have been in trouble. But we didn’t panic. Instead, we forced another 3 and out, and then scored on the first play of the ensuing drive. And closed out the half leading 17-7, set to get the ball first in the second half.

Excellent response to adversity and frustration.

But then, a poor response to leading at halftime. I don’t know for sure if we lost our edge and let up, but it looked like it.

After allowing only 93 yards (3.72 average) for the first half (63 and 7.85 of that on the first drive), we let UNC come out and drive down our throats, quickly and easily, twice in a row. On those two drives, they gained 130 yards, averaging 13 yards a play. Clearly, a significant change occurred, either in our defense, their offense, or both. (At least one factor was a dropoff in intensity. For example, on one UNC 41 yard catch and run, early in the half, Attaochu practically jogged as UNC wide receiver caught the ball in the middle, and then sprinted around him and down the sideline. I am sure Attaochu will hear about that in the film room. He spent most of the game showing he has all the talent you want. Effort was lacking on that play. And it was the first play of the half, so I am not buying that he was tired.)

The offense was up to the task however, scoring a FG and then a TD (plus 2 point conversion) before each of those easy UNC TD drives, so we were still ahead 28-21 after UNC scored their second.

Shortly after that, more adversity. Hill drops a gimme touchdown, missing a chance to go ahead 35-21. Soon after, we allow UNC to convert a 3rd and 15, largely due to 3 or 4 missed tackles by us. And then a 55 yard TD run 3 plays later.

So now, after playing miserable defense for more than a quarter, and dropping a sure TD pass, we are in a tie game with about 7 minutes left.

Do we panic? No. The second great response to adversity. A 4-play, 61 yard drive to go right back up by 7. And then two very good defensive possessions to close out the game.

I was shocked to see a young team respond so well. UNC is a good, tough team.

So, that was the good news.

The bad news was that we played a very inefficient football game. We outgained them 500 to 330. We did not punt until the 4th quarter. We forced them into 4 punts before our first punt of the game. We outgained them 282 to 93 for the first half. In other words, we easily could have put the game away, or close to it, by halftime.

But, on three of our trips to the red zone, we scored 3 points (FG, FG miss, and fumble). The fumble occurred at their 10 yard line, on a first down play, and if Tevin and Peeples had been on the same page, he might have scored on the play. I am not sure who was at fault, maybe both of them, but UNC did not force that error. Just a bad pitch. You have to execute.

Conversely, UNC scored a TD on their only trip to the red zone of the first half.

In short, we outplayed UNC in the middle of the field, but let them get the best of us near the goalline.

That is a great formula for losing. We need to do better than that.

If the two teams had been approximately equal in red zone efficiency, we would probably have been ahead something like 28-7 or maybe 24-3. We had 4 trips (plus one long TD) to UNC’s one trip.

Offensively, as expected, we had some difficulty blocking UNC. I guess I am ok with that. Ideally, I would like us to be good enough on the O-Line, and athletic enough at the A-Backs and WR’s, to block even a defense as talented as UNC. But, rationally, I understand that few (if any) college teams can consistently block UNC very well. We did gain 500 yards and score 35 points. It is hard to argue with that. But, they generated some negative plays and prevented us from cashing in several promising drives.

I believe our ability to eventually generate 500 yards and 35 points, despite UNC doing a pretty good job beating some blocks, is indicative that we, as a team, do have a better understanding of what CPJ is trying to do. In year 4, I think everybody understands the play calls, various blocking assignments, and just “Gets it” well enough that Coach is not limited in his adjustments.

In 2009 against a similar UNC defense (yes, not exactly the same, but they were very talented both years), an exceptionally good GT offense did not fair as well. The 2009 version of the jackets was one of the top offenses in the country, averaging 33 points per game. They were 14th nationally in scoring offense and 26th nationally in yards per game. And that team, yes the team with Dwyer, Thomas and all that talent, managed only 406 yards (5.1 per play) and 24 points. This version of GT scored 35, gained 500 yards, and averaged 7 per play. And, we left some points on the field.

Interestingly, on my review of the tape, it appeared to me that UNC played us pretty much the same way the whole game. Their attitude seemed to be that they would line up, keep it simple, and just try to execute. Against our base formation, they simply played a 4-3, with two corners and two safeties. About as standard of a formation as it gets. When we moved an A-back up on the line of scrimmage, they moved a safety forward with the linebackers, essentially moving to a 4-4, with two corners and only one safety. I assume Paul Johnson liked something about that defensive set, because we ran most of our plays from an unbalanced set, with only one A-back, and the other A-back even with the offensive line. We also put both wide receivers on the same side for many plays. In his interview immediately following the game, Coach Johnson apparently stated (I did not hear this directly) that we had a hard time running on them except for our “Gadget” plays. I take that to mean our counter plays, like the counter option which we ran several times, and all the plays from our unbalanced formations. I don’t know exactly what it was about the formation that Johnson liked, but must have been something. (There is some analysis you can’t get just anywhere...).

We did appear to have to use a little more misdirection than usual. Basically, if you cant block them (or if you can’t consistently block them), then you try to get them to move to the wrong place. We ran a lot of counter option, which slowed down the linebackers pursuit on our regular option plays, and also worked like a charm to set up play action twice (although Hill dropped one). We ran a lot of the rocket toss, and its “counter” play, the inside trap handoff to the B-Back (where the QB’s hand off motion is essentially a fake toss - so you punish the defense for pursuing the toss too quickly). All of that was designed either to get UNC players moving in to the wrong place, or get them to hesitate for long enough to beat them to the corner.

Basically, North Carolina made it difficult for us. They forced us into mistakes, and as such we did not block as well or execute as well as we would like. But even so, we were able to use the full playbook, and our numbers ended up very good, we won, and we really could have scored even more.

And, as a relatively young offense, with a relatively young QB and O-Line, we should get better.

This offense might end up being very, very good.

Defensively, we played absolutely great for about two thirds of the game. That should count for something right? I guess.

We did not play well on the first drive. We played absolutely awful for the first two drives of the second half. But, for much of the game, we generated a lot of pressure. I was very pleased with the D-Line. UNC’s O line is supposed to be good, and it looked big. And frankly, we did a pretty good job of getting a push, and occupying and defeating blockers. At times, our LB’s and secondary took poor angles and did not fill their gaps, but the D-Line I thought was pretty consistent.

The good news is, the linebackers and secondary should be learning, and should improve all year (and into next year).

Some of the young guys (most notably Attaochu, but also Thomas, Young, Johnson, etc...) look like very good players.

We need to tackle more consistently. And our recognition could stand to improve. And we must, absolutely must, learn how to be stingy in the red zone. For some reason, we can shut people down when they are at their own 30 or 40, but once they get near our end zone, we just invite them right in for 7 points.

Nevertheless, 7 sacks is 7 sacks. We forced 5 punts and 2 interceptions. With this offense, 7 stops should win us most every game we play. We only allowed 330 yards. There is a lot to build on, but there is definitely building to be done.

Special teams, per usual, was an adventure. A missed FG, poor kickoff coverage, terrible kickoffs, for some reason Laskey kept fair catching very returnable punts, we only punted 3 times but one of them was terrible... etc. We cannot keep doing this or it will cost us a game at some point. Coach Johnson’s frustration is easy to see in his press conference quotes. Apparently, this is an area of emphasis, we work on it every practice, and it looks good in practice. Here is to hoping we get it figured out. At least we did block a punt.

Here is a look at the numbers, comparing the numbers for all plays in the game:

All Plays	GT	UNC
Max Yardage	59	55
Upper Quartile Yardage	8	9.5
Median	4	3
Lower Quartile	1	0
Min Yardage	-6	-11
% of plays 20+ yards	9.72% (7 of 72 plays)	9.62% (5 of 52 plays)
% of plays 10+ yards	19.44% (14 of 72 plays)	25% (13 of 52 plays)
% of play 5-10 yards	33% (24 of 72)	17.3% (9 of 52)
% of plays 0 or less yards	16.67% (12 plays of 72)	32.69% (17 of 52 plays)
Average of top 25%	19.88	21.62
Average of Middle 50%	4.44	3.78
Average of bottom 25%	-0.67	-3.62
Average per play	7.02	6.38

You can see that UNC’s offense was a little more feast or famine than ours was. They were either getting a great play, or a bad play. More than 55% of their plays were either for 20 or more yards, or 0 or less. Only about 26% of our plays were 20 or more, or 0 or less.

We also generated many more plays in the 5-10 yard range (24 to 9). That is apparent because our overall average, average of middle 50%, and median are all higher, and yet UNC’s upper quartile numbers are higher. Essentially, their upper quartile numbers were dragged up by a few big plays, but their typical play was more likely to be less than 5 yards. And that dragged the overall average back down.

Additionally, when they lost yards, they tended to lose more than we did. This is normal, considering they pass frequently and we generated a good number of sacks. We run more often. Negative running plays tend to be short losses. Sacks tend to be bigger losses.

Not exactly ground breaking stuff, but you can see why we outgained them by a ratio of 3 to 2. They had a higher percentage of big plays, but not by much. We had a higher percentage of medium plays, by a lot. Their “ok” plays gained 2 or 3 yards. Ours gained 5 or 6.

Overall, I would say a good game. Very encouraging. Particularly that we gained some valuable experience in how to win, even when everything does not go right. (I would say even when “We don’t play our best”, but that is not fair to UNC. They forced us into a lot of our mistakes.)

It remains to be seen exactly how good UNC is, but there is a reasonable chance they are one of the best teams we will play.

I expect us to improve as the season progresses, but for now we are right where we need to be.