Week 6 - Maryland Review

Once again, by far the best thing I have to say about that game is we had more points than they did.

And, as always, that is the most important thing.

But, for the second straight week, we looked sloppy. And did not play like we had any particular reason to be motivated.

Maryland deserves credit. They have some talented players. For the most part, they have not played very well as a team this year, but they do have some talent.

Fortunately for us, they continued some of their poor play Saturday. Offensively, they were far from sharp. On special teams they made some mistakes. And those things helped us pick up the win.

Let’s look at the game, one matchup at a time, starting with our offense against their defense.

They held us to 391 yards, at 5.01 yards per play, and only 21 points. In terms of yards and points, that is a very good performance by their defense. I hope those will end up being our lowest totals of the season.

So how did they do it?

Their scheme on defense was not especially complicated. With that said, I liked it. It is one of the schemes I would consider if I were trying to defend us. Essentially, they stayed at home and attempted to make us execute our way down the field without hitting many big plays.

Against our base formation (which we ran the majority of the game) they pushed their outside linebackers up nearly all the way to the line of scrimmage, almost playing a 6 man front. The middle linebacker lined up normally, the corners lined up in man to man with the WR’s, often giving a substantial cushion, and the safeties lined up normally.

They relied upon their front four of the D line, and the middle linebacker, to take the dive and any inside runs by Tevin. Once these players determined the B-Back did not get the dive handoff, they flowed with the play.

Playing this style makes the middle linebacker relatively easy to block, because he usually pretty much stays where he is for a second or two, reading the mesh.

From there, the outside linebacker (lined up basically as another defensive end) would float out to take the pitch man. It looked like Maryland coached these guys to “feather” a little bit, basically hesitating for a second before floating outside. The purpose of this is to make Tevin’s read tougher, and make him hesitate. The slower we move, the easier it is for the rest of the defense to catch up with the play. This strategy worked very well for much of the game, as it took advantage of Tevin’s inexperience and made him very hesitant on several plays. Additionally, it appeared to me that in most cases, once Tevin had to hesitate for a second, he pretty much just tucked the ball away and decided he was going to run. On several plays, the pitch developed late, and could have been hit for a big gain, but the play developed too slowly and Tevin had already just called his own number.

So, on their base defense, the middle linebacker took the pitch man, the safety came up and took the QB (somewhat late), and the corner was charged with getting off the WR block and supporting whoever needed it.

However, some times they would mix things up, and let the outside linebacker take the QB. I believe it was the safety’s job to read the outside linebacker, and simply take whoever he did not take. But most often, the outside linebacker took the pitch.

For much of the game, Tevin (and many others) looked to be playing a little too careful. As if trying not to make a mistake, and overthinking things. Just sort of tip-toeing and playing tentatively. This was especially frustrating when the blockers did this. I can understand why Tevin might, because I am not sure if he has seen this particular defensive look before. But the blockers, based upon their body language, did not seem to have much trouble identifying who they were supposed to block. Yet, on many plays, they would take a bad angle, or just sort of jog when they needed to sprint, and thus let a guy get past them and make a tackle.

Based upon my review of the game, here are the reasons our drives stalled, listed with most common first

• Missed blocks. I would say it was approximately 50/50 as far as what caused the missed blocks. Half the time, we just made a very poor effort. Half the time they just made a play. Many of their players consistently did a good job beating blocks.

• MIssed read from Tevin. Almost every time, this was a missed pitch. They did a very good job confusing Tevin, by hesitating, jab stepping, and faking as though to take one man, and then taking someone else. Still, Tevin needs to make those reads. We left several 10+ and 20+ yard plays on the field. Several times we had a play blocked very well, and the pitch man could have gone a long way, but Tevin did not see it. In addition to the reads Tevin missed, I believe we could have hit a few pitches if Tevin had been moving a little quicker. As I said above, some plays he looked confused and sort of tip-toed. Had he sprinted to the corner, on some plays I think he could have beaten the defender who was trying to float between the QB and the pitch before taking the pitch. The slower Tevin goes, the more that “Feathering” technique works.

• Penalties. We had a bunch.

• Poor Catch. There were only a handful of these drops, but they were costly. Many were long throws. One was a short pass to Orwin, but it would have converted a third down in the 4th quarter when we were up only 21-16. Fortunately, the defense stepped up.

• Poor Throw. Only a couple of these, but they really hurt. In particular, Roddy was open on a wheel route up the sideline, and Tevin overshot him by a couple yards. The throw itself was only about 20 yards, and honestly could have been underthrown, because the defenders that Roddy beat were flat-footed and unlikely to make up much ground. Additionally, the safety had followed Hill to the middle of the field, and thus Roddy might have scored. We did not score on that drive. It was in the first half, and I believe was the same drive where Hill later dropped a long TD bomb (although I think that ball was very slightly deflected by the DB right before getting to Hill, so maybe not exactly a drop).

So, Maryland got several stops. 8 to be exact. We scored 21 points on 11 possessions. 3 TD’s, 5 punts, a FG miss, an interception, and stopped on downs once.

Slightly under 2 points per possession is not very good.

As I said, Maryland deserves some credit. Their players made plays, and were generally difficult to block. Their coaches devised a good strategy. They chose to do a fair amount of attacking. “Feathering” is a form of attacking. Rather than passively taking their assignments, they attempt to confuse us as to who is taking who, in an attempt to make Tevin miss reads. That was a good gameplan.

But, overall, I still think we deserved more blame for our own poor execution than Maryland deserves for stopping us.

Here is a sad thought. After our first TD drive, we only scored after being set up by special teams. We scored a TD on a 33 yard drive, after Laskey’s punt return to Maryland’s 33. And we scored on a 17 yard drive after Zenon’s kick off return. Not real impressive there.

By the way, not a whole lot changed after that first drive. On that drive, we hit a big run by Tevin, simply because the A-back made a good block, and Tevin made a good read. Maryland did not adjust much. They played us the same as they did on that play for much of the game.

We just did not hit the blocks or make the reads.

Hard for me to say for sure if we were flat, but we did not look like we played with great energy.

As far as their offense against our defense, overall I was pleased. I thought our defense did a good job.

However, it was not as good as it looked in the end. Once again, we benefitted greatly from some dropped passes. A good amount of those we forced with pressure, but some not so much.

We also let them run on us more than I would like. As I have said before, our 3-4 scheme is prone to being a little soft against the run, but not as soft as it was for much of the game.

The 77 yard TD run was a significant error. The entire left side of our defense was late recognizing that the QB had the ball.

We did do some good things. For much of the game, we got stops. We forced 4 punts, 3 of which were 3 and outs, and we got two interceptions. I thought both interceptions were forced by us. One by good coverage, and the other by good pressure. We hit the QB as he released the ball, causing it to be short and letting Sweeting pick it off.

One thing I have been concerned about all year is our struggles to stop teams in the red zone.

For the year, we have allowed a TD 75% of the time teams enter our red zone. That is 107th in the country, out of 120 teams. We did allow Maryland a TD on only 1 of 3 drives, but they are 104th in the country in converting red zone trips into TD’s. So I don’t know if that makes me feel much better.

(Ironically, we also convert 75% of our red zone trips into TD’s, which is good for 13th in the country).

So, defensively, we did a lot of good things, and a few bad things.

Overall, it was a good game.

We held Maryland to 16 points, 335 yards and 5.23 yards per play, all below their season averages. And we made the crucial stop on the final drive to win the game.

I was very happy to see that our defense was able to pick up the offense on a day we struggled. Although, I was disappointed to see the offensive performance.

I was also disappointed to see us, once again, let a team back in the game. We lead NC State 21-0 and let them come back to 21-14 before putting them away. Then we lead Maryland 21-3 (with 12 minutes left in the game) and let them come back to 21-16 and even get the ball back. We had numerous chances to put the game away.

I really hope that we learn from these games, and that part of our struggles here are related to us being a little flat. Because Miami, Clemson, VT and UGA will take advantage of these issues, and very likely beat us. (Frankly, UVA and Duke are good enough to sneak out a win if we let them hang around as well).

I’m still trying to figure this team out. We have looked great, and we have looked sluggish. We have played a bunch of teams that probably arent very good, but some of those bad teams have some good players. We beat UNC, who I think is pretty good, but they are somewhat unproven at this point.

What if we have actually been playing very consistently, and our results have fluctuated only because we are misjudging our opponents?

Hard to say. But my best guess right now is that we have been a little sluggish because we are young, we are in a part of the schedule with a bunch of games we expect to win, and we are getting a lot of respect in the rankings and the media. Our players know they are supposed to win, and they are not mature enough yet to handle it.

I worry that all of these issues will still exist for the game this weekend. We expect to beat UVA, and will probably show up with something less than our best effort. I hope we can pull out a win anyway, and I sure hope our guys understand how dangerous of a team Miami is. They may not be a very good team, but they have a lot of talent and are capable of playing very good football if they ever get it together. If we go down there expecting to win, I predict another embarrassment courtesy of the Canes.

Anyway, for now, its good to get another win. I think this team is capable of playing better, and we will need to do so very soon. Fortunately, I really like our players, and their attitude, and I think CPJ will get us playing well when we need to play well.

Let’s Go Jackets!