Man it sure felt good to do to VT what they usually do to us, didn't it? Make plays down the stretch (really, in all phases) and pull out a close win that really could have gone either way. I think its clear that VT is at least a pretty good team, but I think its equally clear that both teams played poorly last Saturday. A lot of unforced errors. Some errors were forced to varying degrees but both teams have a lot to clean up.
Nevertheless, it was still a quality road win against one of our nemeses. Let's start with the positives. I really liked the way the defense battled. Gave up a lot of 3rd down conversions and a lot of good plays, but just sorta kept chopping and eventually got some results. The final interception that sealed the game was HUGE, and I thought a really good play by DJ White. (I think it was him). They had run the same route combination on us several times that game. The outside WR runs a short out, about 5 yards, and the slot WR runs a little deeper and cuts to the sideline. The QB reads the corner and throws where he isn't. Usually that had been the underneath route. Roof spent most of the day playing relatively soft zones. Well this time White faked like he was jumping the short route and baited the QB into throwing behind him, but then jumped back to the deeper route right before the throw. I'm sure the VT fans thought it was a stupid play by the QB, but in my opinion White made a great play and put a lot of pressure on the VT QB.
Obviously Justin Thomas was a huge positive, for the most part. Made some huge plays in the Fourth quarter. And I love watching him run. The 80 yard TD run was awesome, even though it was called back. I think we are going to see a few more of those this year.
I thought the offensive line looked pretty good, for the most part.
The linebackers looked good and the entire defense was fairly consistent against the run.
Now for the bad stuff. Our perimeter blocking on offense really wasn't very good. Watching it live I thought VT outschemed us and just played their assignments, but actually there were some option pitches that failed, but would have been good gains if the outside block wasn't putrid. We have got to get that cleaned up.
We left a lot of points on the field otherwise as well. The silly penalty to call back Thomas' long TD run, for example. I call it silly because there wasn't really a need to try to cut the guy (the penalty was an illegal block below the waist because it came from the side, sort of - it was debateable). He could have blocked him high pretty easily, as it wasn't that close to the play. Or really, he could have done nothing. The guy wasn't going to tackle Thomas, but maybe the blocker couldn't have known that.
There was the 4th and 2 should-have-been-an-easy-TD-
Not the biggest fan of the defense's third down conversion rate. For a while it seemed like we couldn't get them into third and long enough. They'd convert anything.
So there were plenty of good takeaways and plenty of bad takeaways from this game. I really like the fact that we played only mediocre but still found a way to win. Let's focus on that.
On to Miami. The most notable thing about Miami may be the lack of speed on defense. I mean for a Miami team. You expect tons of talent just flying all over the place. Even some of the more mediocre Miami teams of the last 6-7 years had that. This year's version is oddly mediocre in this regard. They do, however, have a phenomenal middle linebacker - Denzel Perryman. Reminds me a little of NC State's Nate Irving who gave us fits in 2010. We need to get him blocked, but if we do that consistently, and execute just OK everywhere else, there should be some running room. We will need the perimeter blocking to be much better than it was against VT.
Offensively, Miami is interesting. Lot of talent. Duke Johnson is excellent. Their WR Philip Dorsett is one of the fastest players in the country. I think the QB, Kaaya, while extremely inexperienced, is pretty talented too. Miami scares me a little bit because they have been an inconsistent, mistake prone (poorly coached?) team. But I think they have more talent than they've shown. Its a lot easier for a talented, inefficient team to "play smart" one game than for a smart, efficient team to "play athletic" one game.
Nevertheless, offensively this year they've mostly relied on big plays. They are in the top 30 nationally in plays of 10+, 20+ and 30+ yards. But they are 75th in total yards and 96th in first downs. So they don't sustain drives much. They hit big plays or else they make mistakes and punt.
Meanwhile, our defense hasn't been the greatest at getting people off the field. So can Miami sustain drives for a change, or do we get a lot of stops for a change? This will be like the resistible force against the movable object. Something has to give. What is a pretty safe bet is that Miami will hit some big plays. GT is in the 60's and the 80's respectively in plays allowed of 20+ or 30+ yards. And we haven't exactly played a bunch of teams known for their offensive prowess.
So you'd expect Miami to score. I'm hopeful that with the home night crowd, and the energy in the stadium, our defense can get some stops. Miami has been a little mistake prone. If we can also shorten the game with sustained successful drives on offense, then maybe we can hold them in the 24-30 range. I think they score at least that much. But we might well be able to beat that. I would think we should score in the 30's.
The game probably comes down to who makes the plays in the 4th quarter. Its supposed to be close. If either team wins the turnover battle by 2 or 3 or more, they could win comfortably, but barring something like that, I look for a very good game, and I hope the good guys can pull out another one by stepping up in crunch time.
As always, Go Jackets!!
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