Week 4 - Miami Preview

Just like last week, I’ll begin by showing what we did wrong last year.  Once again, I am only showing what I consider to be egregious mistakes.  Things that could have been easily corrected, and had a significant impact on the game.  For most clips, I freeze frame the key portion, explain it, and then show the clip again with no interruption. 

This was probably our worst game of the season last year, in terms of execution.  Miami’s defense deserves some credit, but we did a lot of this to ourselves.  See below.

3 of these plays resulted in GT losing the ball.  Two were third downs, and both of these involved poor pitch reads.  On 3rd and 4, Tevin was under pressure immediately, but it appeared the pitch man might have had a chance to convert.  On a separate 3rd and 7 play, Tevin cut inside when we had only 1 defender on the outside, to defend Tevin plus Sims as the pitch man.  If Tevin cuts outside, we probably convert easily and it might have been much more.  Both of these plays occurred near midfield.  Finally, on 4th and 3 at Miami’s 30 yard line, we missed a pretty open 10 yard throw.  Should have been just pitch and catch, and our ball at Miami’s 20.  Instead, it was a turnover.  Think we could have used 3 extra possessions, 2 at midfield and 1 at Miami’s 20 yard line?  

Additionally, we got a bad break on Roddy’s long run.  Roddy stiff armed the defender’s facemask while the defender horse-collar tackled Roddy.  Both are 15 yard penalties.  Unfortunately, those offset, so the whole run was negated.  Had there been no penalties, we had a 40 yard gain to Miami’s 40 yard line.  If only Miami had committed the penalty, its our ball at their 25.  But the interesting part is, if only we had committed the facemask, its still our ball near midfield.  Instead, we end up with the ball at our own 20.  Basically, we were punished because Miami also committed a penalty.  I think they should change this rule, and give each team the option of declining the other team’s penalty.  If the result is better for us by declining their penalty and accepting our 15 yard penalty, I think we should be allowed to choose that option.  Miami should not benefit from committing a personal foul.  But effectively, that is what happened.  

So anyway, enough about last year.  If we execute that poorly again, we will probably lose.  But hopefully we execute well, or at least at a normal level.  

Miami at the moment does not look very good.  Especially on defense.  Boston College is not known as an offensive power, and yet Miami allowed them 537 total yards.  So far this season, Miami has been a very bad defense.  They’ve also been a bad rushing defense.  They gave up 233 yards to Bethune Cookman.  But, let me tell you why I don’t care about rushing defense stats.  Our offense is different from everyone else’s.  I mean, there is some variation between all offenses, but I think our rushing offense is different to a much larger degree.  And what that means is its hit or miss as to how we will perform against a “good” run defense or a “bad” run defense.  Because whether a run defense is good or bad is determined by the stats it compiles against everybody else, most of whom run the ball in a very different way from how we run it.  We sometimes have great days against good defenses, and bad days against bad ones.  And most every year, at least one pretty bad run defense shuts us down.  See below:

2008

Opponent	GT Rush Yards	Opponent Run Defense National Rank	Rank Among GT Opponents
Miami	472	72nd	8th
Miss St.	438	74th	10th
UGA	409	27th	4th
UNC	326	58th	7th
FSU	288	42nd	6th
VT	278	14th	2nd
Duke	224	75th	11th
Clemson	207	36th	5th
LSU	164	17th	3rd
BC	162	7th	1st
UVA	156	73rd	9th

So our best day was against the 8th toughest, and our worst was against the 9th toughest D we faced?  We lit up UGA (4th toughest) and struggled to run on Duke (11th toughest)??  

2009 

Opponent	GT Rush Yards	Opponent Run Defense National Rank	Rank Among GT Opponents
WF	412	82nd	10th
Vandy	404	105th	12th
FSU	401	108th	13th
UVA	362	95th	11th
Clem	333	67th	7th
UNC	317	10th	1st
VT	309	41st	5th
Duke	306	74th	9th
Clem	301	67th	7th
Miss St.	213	62nd	6th
UGA	205	36th	4th
Iowa	143	34th	2nd
Miami	95	31st	3rd

Aha!  Some order.  Well, sort of.  We had our four highest totals against the four worst defenses we face.  And our 3 worst were against the 2nd, 3rd and 4th toughest.  We did have the one game against UNC (the best run D we faced) where we put up one of highest totals all year.  But in 2009, we sort of made sense.  As you’ll see, this was the only year really.

Opponent	GT Rush Yards	Opponent Run Defense National Rank	Rank Among GT Opponents
UVA	477	105th	10th
UGA	411	56th	4th
UNC	372	22nd	2nd
VT	346	64th	5th
MTSU	329	94th	7th
Duke	320	113th	12th
Miami	308	83rd	6th
Kansas	291	107th	11th
Air Force	279	103rd	9th
NC State	247	14th	1st
Clem	242	28th	3rd
Wake	209	98th	8th

Ok see here we go again.  Our 2nd and 3rd highest totals all year against the 4th and 2nd BEST defenses we faced.  And our worst game was against the 8th.  We did worse against the 11th and 9th toughest defenses we faced than we did against the 5th, 6th and 7th toughest.  We don’t make any sense.

Opponent	GT Rush Yards	Opponent Run Defense National Rank	Rank Among GT Opponents
Kansas	604	117th	12th
Clemson	383	83rd	8th
MTSU	382	114th	11th
Duke	364	85th	9th
UNC	312	27th	4th
Utah	311	20th	3rd
NC State	296	37th	5th
Maryland	272	111th	10th
UVA	272	48th	6th
VT	243	14th	2nd
UGA	243	11th	1st
Miami	134	68th	7th

A little more order here.  We struggled against the 1st and 2nd toughest defenses, and our best day was against the worst.  But the Maryland game is confusing, and of course, there was another game where a not so good defense (Miami) shut us down.

In fact, in 3 of Coach Johnson’s 4 years, our worst performance of the season came against only the 7th, 8th and 9th toughest run defenses we faced.  (and this does not actually include the Gardner Web game.  I included only FBS teams so we could see a true national rank, but technically in 2008 our worst total of the season was Gardner Web, which is even more mystifying).  

Also of note, two times the defense that shut us down was Miami.  And last year, the Miami defense that shut us down was not very good.  So, I’m not ready to say we are going to run all over Miami just because they are a bad defense on paper.

Teams with great athletes and speed often give us problems.  And Miami still has that. They lack experience, and they are a little undersized, but that is not a huge problem with us.  We are not going to try to overpower you (at least not that much).  So, I expect us to struggle some on offense.  Yes I know I said this last week.  Whoops.  But I really mean it this time.  I am hopeful that we will execute very well, but even if we do I think we’ll only score maybe 35 or so.  Not the 56 nonsense we put up on UVA.  If we don’t execute so well, it will be more like 14 or 17.  Here is hoping we execute.  

Either way though, if our defense plays the way it has been playing, we’ll have a chance to win.  I think Miami’s offense has athleticism more like VT’s than UVA’s.  But nevertheless, we held VT to 7 points through 3 quarters.  I expect we can do the same thing to Miami.  Hopefully, if our offense is sputtering, the defense can close this game out.

The one thing that Miami has that we have not faced yet is a true playmaker at running back.  He is young, but Duke Johnson has really impressed me.  He has excellent speed, good power for his size, and he is shifty enough to make it hard to get a good hit on him.  Most defenders, in space, are forced to try to arm tackle him, and he is too strong for that.  And if you give him a crease, he will usually take it all the way.  Oh and he also returns kicks, so our special teams will need to be ready.

Our defensive front needs to play well.  I think they are better and they will.  We have a lot of speed, especially at linebacker, and we will need it against Duke Johnson.  I think they put more pressure on our defense than UVA did, but ultimately we will keep them from scoring too many points.

I think we win something like 35-17.  This game still terrifies me, for the reasons listed above.  Our offense has at least one mystifying game per year, and its usually to a team like Miami.  And their offense has the playmakers to hurt us if we don’t play sound with our assignments.  But I still think the smart pick is on GT to win comfortably.  We will need to play well.  Here is hoping we do.

Go Jackets!