The Blog Resumes

So I've taken about a year off and missed the last 9 games of last year and the first 4 of this year.  I know.  I know.  Worst.  Blog.  Ever.  I just could not stomach doing it last year after the MTSU game, and then I remembered how much I enjoyed just watching football without worrying about writing this stuff.  I was too systematic about it.  Felt like homework.  I had too much structured segments that I felt obligated to fill, even if I didn't have the time or material.  It ended up making me enjoy football season less, which was exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

I'm back now, by popular demand.  Seriously I have had requests.  Well, ok, a request.  One.  Singular.  Thanks Jarrett!  (name changed to protect privacy [just kidding, nobody cares, and thats his real name]).  But its going to be a lot more informal.  Which, actually, people will probably prefer.  I'm sure I'll still throw some ridiculous statistical research at you from time to time, but there won't necessarily be a "preview" and a "review" every week.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's get to the very informal and disorganized wreckless ramblins.

First of all, I hate Virginia Tech with the fire of a thousand suns.  They are approaching UGA status at this point.  For a lot of reasons but mostly because they have apparently decided we are their biggest threat in the Coastal.  Which I guess is correct.  But they spend extra time on us every year.  Bud Foster (Virginia Tech's defensive coordinator for those who don't know) basically admitted to using Sunday the past 2 weeks to work on us.  Which probably explains, at least in part, the lackluster effort against East Carolina and Marshall.  Last year, I can't prove it, but I'm confident they spent a bunch of their August practices preparing for our offense.  This strategy apparently backfired as they were not nearly as good as normal running their base stuff, early in the year.  Their defensive numbers the first half of the season were terrible, by their standards, until they finally regrouped for the final 5 games or so of the season.  Typically, you use August to get everybody back in sync running your NORMAL BASE DEFENSE FOSTER I HATE YOU.  UNC scoring 48 points on them warmed my heart a little bit.  But not really.  And I'm sure Pitt scoring 35 points had nothing to do with the 3 weeks those clowns probably wasted putting in "The Georgia Tech" defense.

Any team can do this (and I believe many do to some extent).  Single out one or a handful of teams to spend extra time on, and then sacrifice some time against some of the easier teams on your schedule.  Usually you might do this on your bye week or maybe against an FCS team.  In any event, I don't fault VT for doing this (thats a lie) but I am irritated they have chosen us to do it against.  I wonder if and to what extent we do the same, to VT or others.

Anyway, Bud Foster and VT by this point appear to have their "Georgia Tech" defense down pat.  They move players around so they are smaller and faster and then do a bunch of weird stuff you never see them do any other time - like that linebacker jumping the snap and shooting the B gap about half of our plays.  And by the way, that strategy could be used against any offense to good effect.  Troy Polomalu does it in the NFL from time to time.  Its not something that works only against our offense, but it works a lot better when they surprise us with it (by, ahem, ONLY using it against us).  I kept hoping we would change up the snap count and get them offsides several times and they would stop.  Actually, we did that - but then we started false starting more than they jumped offsides so they had no real motivation to quit.  And obviously, they had us expending a lot of mental energy on stuff we don't normally have to think about, which could not have helped our execution.  Way to turn the game into a pre snap procedural chess match Foster.  I see what you are doing there.  I hope UNC scores 86 points on you this Saturday you (expletive tirade deleted).

I don't normally criticize Paul Johnson's play calling much, but I was a little confused as to why, since we have put in this entirely new formation, AND Virginia Tech has gotten so good at stopping our normal offense, that we didn't at least try the new one.  Vad in the pistol running the diamond is more of a power blocking scheme.  They were beating the tar out of our quick, finesse, angled blocked scheme.  Why not see if we can slow it down and push them around with more traditional blocking?  Really, it did not seem to me that we had much to lose.

Oh well.  That game is over with and I don't really want to think about it too much anymore.  As I said, I can't stand that team.  But the good news is that I'm pretty sure they will lose, several times, in conference.  Strangely enough, last week, BEFORE the game, I had the thought that the game we really need to win is Miami.  Even had we beaten VT, if we lose to Miami, and presumably lose at Clemson, we'd be 6-2 and I don't think Miami loses 3 times.  So if we wanted to win the Coastal, we always had to beat Miami.  After I worked that through, I actually realized that the VT game might not matter.  And if we were going to go 1-1 in these 2 games, it would be better to lose to VT and beat Miami than vice versa.  That, of course, is silly.  You don't get to trade games.  The two games are independent and the fact that we lost to VT won't help us beat Miami.  But it did occur to me about an hour after the loss that we have not really lost anything.  VT is a great defense but their offense can not be trusted to score more than 10 points on nearly anybody.  And when that is the case, you are going to be in a bunch of close games.  Miami will beat VT in my opinion, and then I think VT could lose literally very other ACC game, including Duke (maybe).  They won't lose them all, of course.  They are well coached and win a lot of close games, but 5-3 or at most 6-2 is the best they can do, I think.  If we beat Miami and finish 6-2, I think at worst we are in a 3 way tie, and likely just a tie with Miami, which we would win.

So, can we beat Miami?  About 4 days ago I would have said no.  We have not played well against Miami since 2008.  We have been especially bad at Miami.  They appear to be very good in all phases of the game. Improved on defense, very talented on offense, and solid on special teams.  They have tremendous speed at WR, a good QB and a great RB.  Their front 7 on defense is much improved, both because they are a year older (returning nearly everybody), and they have some injured players back and a couple new transfers.  So we lose, right?  Its a road game.  We have not looked great on offense yet.  Our defense, while improved, gave up over 600 yards to this unit last year.  Miami beat Florida.  We struggled with UNC (a bad UNC team?) and lost to VT, who, while good, is not as good as Florida.

But I did say I "would have" said no.  What changed?  Easy.  The spread came out.  Miami opened as about a 4 point favorite and now I believe its at 6.  I expected something like 14.  The last time that happened was in 2011 with Clemson.  Granted, we were at home, but I expected to be 14 point underdogs, and we opened as 3 point underdogs.  I was shocked.  I thought it was the most obvious bet ever.  Clemson would cover easily.  Of course we won by 14 in a game that wasn't that close.

That is just one example, but in my experience, when you see Vegas offer an "obvious" bet like that, something is up.  I got to thinking about it and here is what I've come up with...  First, Florida and Virginia Tech are actually probably about even.  Both are bad offenses and great defenses.  I could see giving Florida the edge because their offense probably is better (not saying much) but its close.  Miami won thanks to a lot of help (5 turnovers...) and we lost the turnover battle to VT.  I think Miami deserves credit for forcing some of those turnovers but still, turnover margin usually has a luck component and a big effect on the outcome.

Second, how much do we really know about Miami?  Their offense is great on paper but outside of one drive and one big play, they did not do much against Florida (less total yards for the game than we had against VT).  And the other teams they have played are garbage.  Literally, they are all worse than Duke.  I don't know what that tells us.  I was not terribly impressed by their offensive line against South Florida.  And South Florida has fallen off a cliff.  They lost to McNeese St by 30 points.  Seriously.  So maybe we can limit their rushing attack and pressure Miami's QB.  Defensively we know even less about Miami.  They kept Florida out of the end zone for the most part, but did allow over 400 yards to a mediocre offense (at best).  And shutting down those other offenses tells us about as much as GT shutting down Elon.

I don't know.  I am still thinking Miami wins.  But I'm a lot more optimistic now that I know what the experts think.  And, actually, a lot more confused.  Curious.  I guess I will say Miami wins something like 35-28, which just barely covers the spread.  But I like our chances a lot better than I did before.

Let's see what we can do.  Go Jackets.