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Offensive Play


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Thought this might be too long to put in the what we learned thread, but thought it was an interesting look at yesterday. The offense played poorly, there is no way around that. However, if you break it down by drive it's actually pretty interesting and along with poor snaps and interesting play calling the flow of the game really disrupted the offense. They only had 17 snaps in the second half which is partly their fault, but it is also hard to establish a rhythm with that small number of opportunities. Sorry for the long post. 

1st half: 

9 plays, 81 yards, TD

3 plays, -2 yards, punt

5 plays, 24 yards, punt

4 plays, 5 yards, punt (bad snap led to 20 yard loss)

12 plays, 42 yards, TD

6 plays, 5 yards, punt (illegal motion wipes out big gain)

11 plays, 51 yards, missed FG 

We had a good first drive, likely scripted, and followed that up with two really poor drives. On the 4th drive of the game we picked up 10 yards and 2 yards before a bad snap set us back 20 yards and effectively ended the drive even after a 13 yard pick up. We followed that with a good TD drive and another good drive that ended in a missed FG. While even the good drives were messy we really only had 4 bad drives and 2 of them were penalty/mistake caused. We also looked to be cleaning it up heading into half time. 

2nd half: 

The offense doesn't get the ball until 6:47 remaining in the 3rd Q after two non offensive TDs. That's A LONG time to go without playing football and may have contributed to the issues. 

5 plays, 34 yards, INT

3 plays, 2 yards, punt (9 yard sack)

2 plays, 19 yards, fumble

3 plays, 5 yards,  punt (7:27 left in the 4th, no reason to take a risk)

3 plays, -6 yards, punt (holding penalty, still no reason to take a risk) 

1 play, - 4 yards, EOG

We started the second half with a good drive before a bad decision by Adrian on the pick, but he hadn't played in nearly a quarter of football. The next two drives were killed by a sack and a fumble by Mills. After those, the last three drives the game was winding down and there was no reason to risk another turnover so we just ran it very conservatively. What I'm getting at is there was good within the bad and the offense is very fixable. 

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I agree with your fixable assessment, but my biggest concern was the inability to establish a consistent run game.  Establish the run game and it opens up a lot of other options for Adrian.  The run game starts up front.  So the question becomes, "Is our O-Line fixable?".  Perhaps, but I had hoped for more progress up front and fear we may suffer another year of getting man handled by the Wisconsin's and Iowa's of the world (at least on the offense side of the ball).

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36 minutes ago, Skeeball said:

I agree with your fixable assessment, but my biggest concern was the inability to establish a consistent run game.  Establish the run game and it opens up a lot of other options for Adrian.  The run game starts up front.  So the question becomes, "Is our O-Line fixable?".  Perhaps, but I had hoped for more progress up front and fear we may suffer another year of getting man handled by the Wisconsin's and Iowa's of the world (at least on the offense side of the ball).

With the youth we have, absolutely.  This season?  Who knows.  Two centers who have never played in a game (one a former TE), a walk on who beat out schollie guys and a few new faces will take time.  And effort.  Some one had mentioned in the game thread when was the last true guard we recruited?  I am unsure as I don't follow recruiting that much, but it makes sense when they talked about moving guys to get better guard play.

 

If Frosts scheme is predicated by OL pulling, it's hard when the interior is getting blown up.  It was concerning we had no run game and no answer to fix it.....At least none we showed yesterday.

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6 minutes ago, lo country said:

With the youth we have, absolutely.  This season?  Who knows.  Two centers who have never played in a game (one a former TE), a walk on who beat out schollie guys and a few new faces will take time.  And effort.  Some one had mentioned in the game thread when was the last true guard we recruited?  I am unsure as I don't follow recruiting that much, but it makes sense when they talked about moving guys to get better guard play.

 

If Frosts scheme is predicated by OL pulling, it's hard when the interior is getting blown up.  It was concerning we had no run game and no answer to fix it.....At least none we showed yesterday.

 

I think we will be better off with W. Farniok and a full game of Washington. I was hoping that Raridon and even Sichterman would get a chance to see if they could help or not. 

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25 minutes ago, lo country said:

If Frosts scheme is predicated by OL pulling, it's hard when the interior is getting blown up.  It was concerning we had no run game and no answer to fix it.....At least none we showed yesterday.

 

If I had to fill in the blank in this sentence:

 

"Frost's scheme is predicated by ________."

then I probably wouldn't choose "offensive line pulling." I'd go with "the quarterback making the right reads." Really hard to focus in on the reads when your eyes have to go up into the air and your feet have to leave the field to catch a high snap. It's hard to convey just how big of a deal that was yesterday. We might have actually scored an extra 7 points if every snap had hit him in the numbers.

 

I thought the spread of 36 was way too high and didn't think we'd cover that. We also missed a field goal that we should have made. 

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10 minutes ago, Undone said:

I thought the spread of 36 was way too high and didn't think we'd cover that. We also missed a field goal that we should have made. 

 

I thought we’d cover it during the game. We were up 28-7 about to receive the ball and two turnovers later it’s a ball game.

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3 minutes ago, Nebfanatic said:

I think part of our issue in the run game was scheme related. Frost was pulling defenders into the box with formations. He can create mismatches in the run game with formations as well, something we didn't see alot Saturday. Frost will do more of that against Colorado.

 

Absolutely. The concern is at center, though. S. Alabama started to back off their safeties late in the game, and we still couldn’t run inside because they were just ragdolling our center.

 

To your point, though, in those same plays their “conflict LB”, that player that sits between the box and the slot, he didn’t care about defending the slot, it was run all the way. There is opportunity in those situations we didn’t take advantage of, to be sure. Just a very strangely called game. 

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6 minutes ago, brophog said:

 

Absolutely. The concern is at center, though. S. Alabama started to back off their safeties late in the game, and we still couldn’t run inside because they were just ragdolling our center.

 

To your point, though, in those same plays their “conflict LB”, that player that sits between the box and the slot, he didn’t care about defending the slot, it was run all the way. There is opportunity in those situations we didn’t take advantage of, to be sure. Just a very strangely called game. 

Totally agree center play is concerning. Don't think we have one ready. I almost wonder if Hixon would be the best option there. 

 

And it was a strangely called game. I think a bubble off the RPO action would have been very effective. I'm positive we will see more bubble screens next week.

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1 hour ago, lo country said:

If Frosts scheme is predicated by OL pulling, it's hard when the interior is getting blown up.  It was concerning we had no run game and no answer to fix it.....At least none we showed yesterday.

I rewatched part of the gamed last night.  Jaimes pulled on one play and was blown up by a linebacker.  I was thinking how can that possibly not result in the LB getting planted on his a$$.  It was Jaimes that almost got planted.  I can see why Jurgens is considered a good blocker because he can position his body between the defender and presumably where the running back should go and he's good at keeping the defender from getting around him.  Like the rest of the OL, he gets no push which appears to be related to how they are taught to block.  They squat with a wide stance and not much forward lean allowing them to move laterally but doesn't allow them to get a push and sometimes they have difficulty not getting pushed back.  It's almost looks like they are blocking for pass protection.  The announcer said we weren't getting a push but it seemed like our guys weren't trying to move the LOS as much as finessing defenders out of the way.  At the goal line after 1 or more failed running attempts they fired off and moved people back and Mills was able to score.

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