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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Week 9 Picks


Last Week:


Free Money


Maryland is playing pretty well right now. I think they are too good for FSU to beat by more than 17.5 Maryland loses, but by less than 17.5. LOSS


LSU beats Auburn by more than 22.5. Betting this team until they don’t cover one. WIN


Solid Bets


Clemson beats UNC by more than 10.5. WIN


Virginia Tech beats Boston College by more than 20.5. LOSS


Miami beats GT by more than 2.5. Hated writing that. WIN


Wisconsin beats Michigan St. by more than 8.5. LOSS


Tossups


Wake Forest beats Duke by more than 2.5. LOSS


N.C. State loses by less than 5.5 to UVA. Sigh. ******* UVA. WIN


Stanford beats Washington by more than 20.5. WIN



On the season so far:





Overall

34 for 67

Free Money

9 for 13

Solid bets

13 for 29

Tossups

12 for 25







This Week:


Free Money


Clemson beats GT by more than 3.5.


Solid Bets


Miami beats UVA by more than 13.5. Yes I know this game already happened. That WAS my pick. And its a loser. Great.


Virginia Tech beats Duke by more than 15.5.


Maryland beats Boston College by more than 7.5.


Kansas St. loses to Oklahoma by less than 13.5.


Tossups


Michigan St. loses to Nebraska by less than 4.5.


NC State loses to FSU by less than 19.5.


UNC beats Wake by more than 7.5.

Week 9 - Clemson Preview

Here is a fun trivia fact for you (that you’ve probably heard already). The last time Clemson was 8-0, who did beat them? Thats right, Georgia Tech, in 2000. George Godsey led a 5-2 Georgia Tech team into Death Valley, and knocked off #4 Clemson on a last second pass to Kerry Watkins, who made a one handed catch.


In fact, that was October 28th, 2000, 11 years ago from tomorrow.


We also knocked off Clemson the last time they made it to at least 4-0. That was in 2007. 4-0 and 13th ranked (I think) Clemson came into Atlanta and left unbeaten no more.


So Georgia Tech gave Clemson its first loss in its two best starts to a season in the last couple of decades.


In addition, we have beaten Clemson since 2000 every single time they have entered the game undefeated. They are 0-4 against GT in that span when they have a zero in the loss column. In both 2004 and 2009, Clemson entered the game 1-0.


Wonder what the odds are of us knocking Clemson off this time?


Most would probably say not good. Many would say our chances are nearly zero. Some might actually say literally zero.


Well, stranger things have happened.


First, I feel obligated to point out that Vegas still has Clemson favored by a little more than a field goal. It opened at 4.5, and hovered around 4 most of the week (I am not sure what it is at the moment).


Vegas is not in the habit of giving away free money. They tend to know what they are doing.


So what does Vegas know that nobody else seems to know?


First of all, Vegas probably understands we have a pretty significant situational advantage. No matter how many times Clemson’s coaching staff has told them “GT is a good football team”, “GT always plays us tough”, and “this will be a very tough road test”, Clemson’s players are human. They know what we did the past two weeks. They have seen the film. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for them to come into this game thinking anything other than they should win fairly easily.


And its hard to play as intense as you otherwise might when you think you should win.


Conversely, we are at home again for the first time in 3 weeks. We are hosting a top 5 ranked team. Our season has been nearly ruined in the past 2 weeks, but this type of statement game could get us (almost) right back on track. Additionally, we (essentially) have to win this game to stay in the conference race. Stranger things have happened, especially in the ACC, but we would need a lot of luck to win the Coastal with 3 losses.


So our backs are against the wall. All the psychological factors favor us. I expect Clemson will get our best shot. I doubt they will be able to respond with their best shot.


So, point #1 in setting this spread (and thus predicting the game) is to consider that GT is likely to play one of its better games of the season, and Clemson probably will not.


After that, you move into the specific matchups.


Our defense has quietly been playing pretty well. Within the ACC, we are statistically one of the better defenses. We played a poor game against UVA, although only conceded 24 points which is not awful, but besides that game we have played pretty well for the most part.


Additionally, our strength on defense is Clemson’s strength on offense - passing. We are a pretty good pass defense. Within the conference, NC State, Maryland and Miami are the better passing teams we have played. We held them to 17 point (Miami’s offense, not counting special teams), 16 points (Maryland) and 14 points (NC State until garbage time).


The teams that have given us more trouble are UNC and UVA, the pro style outfits that have pretty good power running games - our weakness.


Clemson is not very good at power running. They are a pretty good running team, but they do a lot of misdirection, and a lot of attacking the edge, etc. Not so much just powering right at you.


As a defense, we are faster than we are strong. And Groh does a good job keeping us in position. So, misdirection plays and plays that run wide play to our strengths.


This is not to say that our defense is magically going to shut Clemson down. We are only a pretty good defense, while Clemson is a great offense. But, the fact that our defensive strengths match up well with what Clemson likes to do means that Clemson might not score as much as you would expect Clemson to score against a team with a defense ranked similarly to GT’s.


Another matchup factor is that Clemson is more of a second half team. They average 40.6 points per game, but only 17.75 in the first half. They score 22.85 in the second half. That is nearly a touchdown more in the second half. Why is that relevant? Well, Clemson plays a very up tempo style, with a lot of downfield passing. This means they do not run much clock. So their games last longer and they get more possessions. Scoring more in the second half is likely a result of wearing their opponents down, and finding weaknesses they can exploit.


Obviously, Georgia Tech runs a lot of clock. Especially lately, we have been going on 15 and 20 play drives for our touchdowns. In conference, our games typically average a little under 11 possessions per game, for each team. In the last two games, we have had 9 and 10 possessions. Those are very quick games.


Clemson averages 40 points per game, but only 27 points per game in its first 10 possessions. This game may only last 10 possessions...


It will be a battle of contrasting styles, but if GT can move the ball and eat some clock, Clemson could well find themselves not wearing us down as much as they are used to wearing down the opposing defense, and not finding the rhythm that Clemson is used to finding.



Additionally, our offense might matchup well with Clemson’s defense. Teams that use option running attacks, misdirection, and attack the edges have had success against Clemson.


FSU has almost no running game, and Virginia Tech, Boston College and UNC have fairly traditional run games. Those teams only rushed for 29, 102, 126 and 133 yards respectively against Clemson. None averaged more than 3.6 yards per carry.


However, Auburn, Maryland and Wofford have more option and misdirection type running attacks. Those three ran for 237, 272 and 291 yards. And none rushed for less than Wofford’s 4.77 yards per carry. Maryland and Auburn both ran for more than 6 yards per carry.


We (obviously) run an option based attack. Nothing like the traditional pro style run game that Clemson seems to excel defending.



So, we have a fairly good matchup defensively, a fairly good matchup offensively, we might frustrate Clemson with our time of possession, we are at home, and we will probably have a pretty significant psychological advantage.


All of that adds up to a pretty significant chance of an upset.


In fact, when you consider that, on paper, we are really only about 10 points worse than Clemson, all of the above factors might actually mean we should be favored.


Yes, that is correct, I just said we are only about 10 points worse than Clemson even without all of the factors above.


How is that possible? Well, remember that “on paper” means all games all season long. Obviously we are playing worse right now. Clemson has been fairly consistent since their slow opening two games. Our average performance through the first 6 games would probably be good enough to play Clemson to a near draw.


But how likely are we to produce such a performance right now? Probably not very.


As I have explained on here several times in the past few weeks, my opinion is that we are fatigued right now. We need a bye week badly. We are not deep at all, and that means that playing week in and week out takes more out of us than our opponents. We simply don’t have as many players to rotate into the game.


So, we are beat up and tired (probably more so that Clemson who I think is a little deeper). Meaning we are not likely to play like we did the first six weeks. We are more likely to play like the last two.


My guess is that the way we played (on average) the first six weeks is nearly even with Clemson, and the way we played the last 2 is probably about 30 points worse than Clemson.


So, how do I arrive at only 10 points worse? Well, I expect in a game this big, we will come out playing with a lot of adrenaline and emotion. That should allow us to play with more energy for at least a half or so. I don’t think we have enough in the tank to play a full game at a high level, but I do think we will play with more energy than we have the past two weeks.


Combine that with the fact that I think we simply played poorly the last few weeks. It was not all fatigue. We just made some dumb mistakes. Special teams errors. Missed blocking assignments. Missed reads.


If we do that stuff again, then forget everything I said above. It won’t be close.


But I think (hope) that in a big game at home, we will play more focused.



So, in summary, I think our tired team will play on an emotional high, with a renewed focus due to this being such a big game for us. Playing at that level, I think Clemson is about 10 or maybe 14 points better than we are. But that is before you consider the specific matchups and the situation. Pretty much every one of those factors at least slightly favors GT.



So, when you take everything into account, Clemson being favored by such a small number makes more sense.


I do actually think Clemson will cover that spread. I think the above factors are valid, but I think we are just too worn down. Emotion and Adrenaline only lasts so long. I think we give Clemson a scare, but in the end eventually Clemson gets the win.


I do think both Groh and Johnson will have good gameplans, and will call a good game (per usual). In particular, Groh will probably challenge Clemson’s offensive coordinator Chad Morris more than most defensive coordinators he faces this year.


Clemson has too many playmakers to slow down that much, but I bet you Groh limits some of what they do, and we generate a few stops.


I also do think the game plays a little faster than Clemson is used to, and thus we will hold them below their average simply because they won’t get the ball as many times as they are used to having it.



Overall, I will call it Clemson 31, GT 24.


But, of course, that is contingent on us executing a little better than we have the past couple of weeks. If we play like we did last week, it will be a lot worse than that.


If Clemson plays a bad game, or we play a good game, we could actually win. Based on our physical ability, that would not be as big of an upset as some think. We have not played up to our physical ability for a couple of weeks. But we are still capable of playing that way.


Unfortunately, I think we need the bye week before we get back near that level.


So, 7 point loss, but not a bad effort.


Hope I am wrong about the winner. We’ll see.


Go Jackets!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Week 8 - Miami Review

Here are some more disturbing numbers:



Opponent

Total Yards

Yards per Play

Offensive Points

Kansas

768

13.5

66

UNC

496

6.9

35

NC State

413

6.5

38

Maryland

386

4.8

21

UVA

296

4.9

14

Miami

211

3.4

7




And to those awful numbers, we added the worst of the season... Ouch.


According to these trends, my calculations predict approximately 140 total yards, 2.7 yards per play, and 0 points against Clemson (kidding... sort of).



Season Averages now:



Opponents

Average Yards

Average Yards per Play

Average Offensive Points

Non Conference

675.3

10.3

59.33

Conference

360.4

5.3

23





Well, this will be a short blog post. No need to dwell on it. I did re watch the tape. As painful as that was.


Not a whole lot of non-obvious stuff to post. Defense played great. Special teams and offense lost us the game.


We consistently put the defense into terrible situations and short fields, and they consistently got stops. Really a great day for the defense.


Special teams, among other problems, had two glaring issues. Laskey inexplicably fumbled the punt into the end zone (here Miami, how would you like 7 points?). And the kickoff team combined a poor kick with poor coverage to give Miami a short field to end the half, when they only had about 60 seconds to try to score. Field the punt normally, and kick the ball off normally, and its probably a 7-7 game at the half, with us getting the ball first in the second half. Sigh.


But, really, the real issues were with the offense. 211 total yards, less than 4 yard per play, and only 7 points pretty much speaks for itself.


So what happened?


Well, our blocking issues continued. Really a tough day to block. Not too surprising. That has been the story against Miami for the last 2 years also. Clearly they have a very athletic defense, and that makes them hard to block. They do not get blocked and stay blocked for very long, by anybody really.


Their defensive tackles largely took away the dive on their own, and gave us problems.


Everywhere else, they did not beat every block, but they beat a lot.


So, give a lot of credit to Miami for playing well.


However, we deserve some of the “Credit” too. We did a fair amount of going to the wrong place. Often we were slow to recognize who to block. An A-back realizes a half second late that the linebacker is his responsibility, not the safety, and by then the linebacker has a half step on him and he can’t get the angle back. Etc. That exact play happened several times, just change the positions of the offensive and defensive player around.


The most egregious example that I remember occurred on third down and 5, on the first drive of the second half. This was the play immediately before we went for it on 4th and 3 and failed to convert. Tevin made a good read on that play, a counter option, and cut upfield. He almost certainly gets the first down, but the A-Back on that side took a very strange arc to get to his block, going way too far wide. He could not get back in front of the linebacker he was supposed to block.


Outside of those blocking errors, we often used poor technique. We went “high” into a lot of block. We were standing up too straight. That causes several problems. Mainly, it allows the other guy to get underneath us and get leverage. “Low man wins” is a common phrase in football, for a good reason. But also, you need to have your knees bent and be low so that you can be ready to move horizontally. We were getting faked out too easily, and letting our assigned man get around us too easily. You have to be able to move horizontally to keep your body squarely in front of theirs.


Playing too high is often caused by fatigue, which I expect was the case for many of these issues. As I have said (probably far too many times), we look like a fatigued team. Especially on the O-Line. When you are beaten up and tired, its hard to get low and move laterally with good quickness. Its hard to fight to get underneath your man and get leverage. And, its easy to just go through the motions and be slow to recognize your blocking assignment.


In addition to those problems, the other main issue we had was getting the ball to the right place. This is Tevin’s job, but I don’t fully blame Tevin. I think he is forcing things. I think the struggles of the rest of the offense have created a situation where Tevin feels a need to be perfect. He is playing like he is afraid to make a mistake. He is playing too methodical, too careful. Perhaps somewhat predictably, that leads to him playing tentatively, and actually making more mistakes. He needs to loosen back up, play full speed, not be afraid to pitch the ball, and be aggressive.


Specifically, against Miami, we missed several pitches. We missed them for several reasons.


First, Tevin makes up his mind too early. On several plays, he failed to make the defense really commit. You could see that he tucks the ball away a step before the pitch comes open. He needs to sprint full speed, make the defense commit, and then take the read. We missed at least two pitches in the first half that were open for 10+ yards a piece.


We missed at least two other pitches because Tevin sees an “opening” and cuts up field. The more egregious of these plays was on third and 7 on our second drive (the play that set up the failed fake punt, on which I think we actually converted and got a poor spot, but I digress). On this play, we called a counter option to the short side, and there was only one defender over there to make a play. If Tevin takes it wide, he either has a pitch or a keep and gets the first down easily. But he saw that the line got a good push, and abandoned the play. There was some space, but there were also 4 or 5 defenders bunched up. They were all blocked, but Tevin could not find a hole big enough and got stopped for a 3 yard gain.


On another play, in the second quarter, we had a great looking option to the wide side of the field. This time we had Orwin as the pitch man, and once again only one defender. There was also a TON of space. This might have been a huge play. But suddenly, Tevin breaks off of his path and follows the dive up field. He moved with such a sense of urgency that I first thought there must be a big hole. But he ran into a bunch of traffic and gained about two yards. I have no idea what he saw there.


On other pitch plays, Miami blitzed a linebacker into the mesh point. This effectively makes Tevin make two reads at once. He has to see the defensive end, decide to keep, and then also see the linebacker and decide to pitch. Its not an easy play. But, this is not an easy game. A couple of times we had possible big gains on these pitches as well, but at this point, Tevin is playing too careful and tentative to make such a quick play. He defaulted to a keep and got a yard or two on all of those plays.


We also missed a couple of dive reads (the rare dive that was actually there) but these were much less of a problem.


To be fair, I do not expect Tevin to play perfectly. That is not possible. A very good QB in this offense will only make the reads maybe 80% of the time. But at this point, I’d be surprised if Tevin is getting the ball where it needs to be 50% of the time. And that is just not enough. The nature of our offense is to take what they are giving us. If we execute properly, only one option will be open. We have to get the ball to the right place, or else a good play will be a bad play.


Miami was giving us the pitch early. We failed to take advantage. If we hit even 2 or 3 of those pitches, each one probably goes for 10 or 15 yards (maybe one goes even further) and we get a drive going and maybe score. At the very least, Miami has to adjust a little bit on defense, and something else opens up.


If we hit a few of those, the flow of the game would have changed drastically.


The good news is that, even as poorly as we played, we still created 10 or so good chances to hit some big plays (in fact we did hit one, on a rocket toss. Very unlucky to have those offsetting penalties.) We just did not give the ball to the right guy.


More good news is that we were only 1 or 2 blocks away from some other plays being pretty successful.


The bad news is that we look tired and sloppy, and we hit hardly any of those plays that were there.


More bad news is I don’t see what is going to change for Clemson. Maybe the bye week will help us, but that is a week away.


I am hoping we can play on adrenaline this week, because its such a big game. But I don’t know if that will last for the entire game. Or if it will be there anyway.


Oh well. I’m ready to move on from that awful performance. I still have faith in these guys. We are a good football team. For a variety of reasons we have not played like it recently. But we have good players and good coaches. I hope we get it back sooner rather than later.


Let’s go Jackets!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Week 8 Picks


Last Week:


Free Money


FSU had a players only (ie “come to jesus”) meeting this week. I think they are tired of this losing. I think Duke is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Noles by more than 13.5. WIN


Clemson beats Maryland by more than 7.5 Clemson is going to be much tougher to deal with now that they have this offense. Completely different team. WIN


Solid Bets


Texas A&M finally plays a complete game, and beats Baylor by more than 9.5. WIN


UNC beats Miami by more than 3.5. I think they are good enough up front to slow down Lamar Miller, and they will then sit back and take advantage of INT 12 (aka Jacory Harris) per usual. LOSS


GT by more than 7.5 over UVA. I think we finally snap out of this funk, and get the job

done. LOSS


Arizona St. is good enough to keep it close with Oregon. They lose, but they lose by less than 16.5. WIN


Tossups


Michigan State ends Michigan’s unbeaten run, and wins by more than 2.5. WIN


In something of a shocker, Texas loses by less than 7.5 to Oklahoma St. (bounce back game for the horns, although I don’t think they pull out the win). LOSS


Wake Forest loses by less then 7.5 to Virginia Tech. LOSS



On the season so far:





Overall

29 for 58

Free Money

8 for 11

Solid bets

11 for 25

Tossups

10 for 22







This Week:


Free Money


Maryland is playing pretty well right now. I think they are too good for FSU to beat by more than 17.5 Maryland loses, but by less than 17.5.


LSU beats Auburn by more than 22.5. Betting this team until they don’t cover one.


Solid Bets


Clemson beats UNC by more than 10.5.


Virginia Tech beats Boston College by more than 20.5.


Miami beats GT by more than 2.5. Hated writing that.


Wisconsin beats Michigan St. by more than 8.5.


Tossups


Wake Forest beats Duke by more than 2.5.


N.C. State loses by less than 5.5 to UVA. Sigh. ******* UVA.


Stanford beats Washington by more than 20.5.

Week 8 - Miami Preview

I’ll start with the most important thing - unless you are Allen Iverson - practice.


If anybody reads the AJC, you already know that Coach Johnson thinks a team usually plays about the way it practices. If you are focused and have good energy in practice, usually that carries over to the game.


Ken Sugiura wrote a pretty good blog article comparing Coach’s mid week quotes about how we were practicing to the team’s performance in the game, and it is fairly accurate.


So, what did he say this week? Well, Paul thinks we practiced pretty well, and should be ready to go.


For the astute readers of both the AJC and this blog... you might have noticed this quote:


Coach Paul Johnson is easing up on players this week with concerns about tired legs after playing seven consecutive games on top of four weeks of preseason camp.

“I think that might explain a little bit where we’ve been the last couple weeks,” Johnson said, referring to the team’s lackluster play in a win over Maryland and a loss to Virginia.

Yes, that is pretty much what I said in the post game review. If you want to know what Coach is thinking 24 hours before it shows up the paper, just ask me...


Anyway, based upon what I have heard out of practice this week, I do expect a good effort. I don’t know how much more physically rested we will be, but motivation and attitude should be where they need to be.

I’m optimistic.

However, Miami is a pretty good football team. Do not be fooled by their 3-3 record. They have played (according to Sagarin) the 7th most difficult schedule in the country.

Here is a quick look at their schedule, and what GT would have done against it (again according to Sagarin)


Opponent

Miami’s Result

GT’s predicted result

at Maryland

Loss by 8

Win by 1

Ohio St.

Win by 18

Tie

Kansas St.

Loss by 4

Tie

Bethune-Cookman

Win by 31

Win by 39

at Virginia Tech

Loss by 3

Loss by 6

at UNC

Win by 6

Loss by 2



Now, of course, we could use our actual results against Maryland and UNC, but we did play them at home.

The point is, you can see that we are two pretty even teams. Even though we are 6-1, Miami would likely be something similar against our schedule, and we might not be much better than 3-3 against theirs.

Their losses are pretty good ones. Kansas St. and VT are top 20 teams. Ohio St. is a pretty good win (particularly how badly Miami beat them). Maryland is not a great loss, but don’t forget Miami was playing without 8 of their starters for that game. (also of note, that game counts as 1/6 of Miami’s computer ranking, which may be unfair).

So, Miami is a pretty good football team. I expect a very tough game down there, even if we play well.

Per usual, they have the athletes. We have really struggled to block them the past two years. I expect a big challenge again this year. Statistically, they have not been that good of a defense this year, but with us that never seems to matter too much. Maryland has not been a very good defense statistically this year, and yet they slowed us down. Wake Forest was not particularly good the last two years either, but they slowed us down. The issues are how athletic are your defenders, how well can they avoid our blocks, and how well do we execute. Miami has proven pretty well the past two years that their linebackers and secondary are difficult for us to block. We will need to execute very well. Would be a big help for our passing game to return as well.

On defense, we obviously need to play much better than last week. Our front 7 simply has to get off of blocks, and play harder. We cannot get pushed off the ball and miss so many tackles. Miami has a good O line (probably better than UVA) and Lamar Miller is an excellent running back. They had a fair amount of success running on Ohio St. Even in a down year for the buckeyes, that is still a difficult defense to run against.

The other problem is, if you focus on the run too much, they also pass the ball very effectively. Jacory Harris has always been capable of putting up big numbers passing, but this year he seems far less likely to mix in the big mistakes.


UNC did a great job against Miami’s running attack (44 yards on 27 carries) but Jacory threw for over 200 yards in the first half, and Miami built a big lead.

Jacory’s passer rating so far this year is 170. That is excellent. That includes a 215 and 174 in his last two games, against VT and UNC, two pretty good defenses.

(Yes Tevin still has the absurd passer rating of 190 on the season, but that is left over from the video game numbers we put up in the first 3 cupcake games. His last 2 games, for example, he had a 71, and a 0 - yes a 0 against UVA. 2 for 8 for 24 yards and 2 picks produces a very poor passer rating. Although much of that was not Tevin’s fault)

Anyway, point is Jacory is a good passer. Miami can hurt you in a variety of ways. When they put it all together, they are a very good football team.

A big concern in all 3 phases of this game for me is their speed. On offense, Lamar Miller (running back) as well as many of their WR’s have excellent speed. On defense, their entire team is very fast, and that could give us problems. On special teams, their return men, their blockers, their coverage guys... all of them have good speed. They can really hurt you both returning and covering kicks.

One thing that may help us is that this Miami team (regardless of who is coaching) seems to have a hard time stringing together good games. Threw away a good chance to beat Maryland in the opener. Then played a great game to badly beat Ohio St. Then lost a close one at home to Kansas St (although that was not really a bad game). Very sluggish against Bethune Cookman. Then a bad first half at VT, but a good second half, leading to a close loss. Then a great first half at UNC, and a bad second half.

In other words, they do not appear to be a team with a great attitude themselves.

After their big win last week against UNC, and our very bad looking loss to UVA, they may think this will be an easy win. They are favored by 3 points, despite being 3-3 and unranked while we are 6-1 and ranked. And many in the media are taking Miami to cover that spread.

Hopefully, they come out a little flat.


But I still think they are too good. Unfortunately, I predict a loss this week. I do think we will play better. We will play with a good attitude, and look like a different team than the last few weeks. But Miami is better than our last 3 opponents (yes even though Maryland beat them... full strength Miami I do think is better).

It will be a hard fought game, but I predict a close loss.

If the secondary continues its hot streak of big interceptions, and our D-Line remembers how it played for the first half against UNC, we certainly can win.

But I think its asking too much of what is still a pretty physically worn down team. We badly need a bye week, and unfortunately we have to play two pretty tough opponents before we get there.

I hope I am wrong.

Let’s go Jackets!