Thoughts on the ECU game

[JasonB]

That was... the must frustrating watch for a 21 point road victory in a long time?

- As predicted, our defense really dominated the game, and the DL had a field day against their offensive line.
- Abiara? There are always some players that step up after a bye week, but that came out of nowhere. What a great first half.
- Just a great performance by the defense, and nice to see them come up with two turnovers at the end after dropping some interceptions earlier in the game.
- SMU has held three teams to less than 300 yards of offense this season. Last year, including the bowl game (BYU), we held two. In 2021, we did it once.
- SMU has held teams under 20 points four times so far. The last two seasons combined we did it 5 times.
- Also, as predicted, EXU did a great job stopping the running game. We knew going in that would be a problem, and their run defense continues to improve with a very athletic front 7. The varying fronts make it very difficult to identify who to block, and they crash the box with their safeties very aggressively.
- They manned us up across the field, and challenged our receivers to beat them. Early on Smith and Kerley made plays. But after that... as much as Preston struggled on the night, players have got to make plays. There were several catchable balls that were dropped or the WR just didn't make a play. Our primary AND secondary receivers make those plays the past few years. The WR corps is underperforming.
- I know there is a lot of flack going the way of RL for the playcalling in this game, but you can't run the ball into that front and waste downs, and they are taking away the intermediate game and Stone scrambling by having LBs spy. So, you have to take shots and hit plays down the field. WRs have to help you out from time to time.
- We are clearly giving something away schematically, because when we ran the ball, ECU knew what was coming and everyone attacked the box. On passing plays, they dropped back. We never caught them rushing in on a pass, even on the flea flicker, until the last TD of the game to RJ.
- Speaking of the RJ TD, he is the only receiver on the field who has shown that he will go up, be physical, and attack the ball with his hands. It might be time to send him deep more frequently and have our other recievers run crossing routes and out routes underneath.
- I saw three missed PI calls against ECU. I know that Rhett is trying to keep the team from complaining too much, but he needs to [deleted] a little more. Sonny did it too much, but you have to work the officials at some point to force them to make a call.
- All of that said, if the receivers engage more physically, they will get the calls. For example, the deep ball to 12, he had one arm taken away by the corner. If you come towards the ball more aggressively and force the corner to engage the rest of your body and take you down, the ref has to make the call. It's going to hurt the next day, but by not making more out of the contact you give the ref an excuse to not blow the whistle. The contrast on the next ECU possession was the PI call against Rogers. He didn't really do anything differently, but the ECU WR made sure he engaged the rest of his body and so it looked worse and drew the foul. Kind of like in soccer, there is a difference between a "flop" or a dive and drawing a penalty. Sometimes you have to make it obvious for the ref.
- Stone had a rough game. Yes, his receivers should have made some plays for him on some catchable balls, and there should have been some PIs called. Right now, however, he is not anticipating his receivers breaking free nor is he throwing anyone open. He is waiting for them to look wide open before he makes a throw. He is also holding the ball waiting for his first and maybe second option to break free before going through the route tree. That is why you don't see many intermediate throws - by the time he works to those options, those routes have already completed and the timing is off. It isn't that intermediate routes are not being run. You look at the primary/secondary and you have two seconds to anticipate if they are breaking open before you move to your third receiver on the intermediate route. Then you need to decide if you are going back to the primary/secondary or if you dump the ball to the flat or run. He is holding the ball way, way too long. Once you hold the ball for 3 seconds, it becomes playground ball, which works out sometimes (first TD pass), but isn't predictable or repeatable unless you are Jonny football with insane athleticism. The third down curl to Kerley was one of the only times all night he checked quickly to the intermediate route before it was done and thrown on time. The flat was also there all night and he finally took it at the end with the pass to LJ, who showed what a physical RB can do when matched up 1v1 and got the first down. If he starts to make a quicker decision on the first option, the passing game will work a lot more smoothly. And the 3 to 5 yard gain to the flat isn't the worst thing in the world either.

To sum up, great performance by the defense, but we didn't get the performance out of Stone and the WRs that we wanted. I certainly was hoping that the latter would be cleaned up after the bye week. I'm don't think that we play a run defense as good as this until the conference championship game, but we need our passing game to be cleaned up before we get to that point if we want to take home our first conference championship since the death penalty.

[HubbaHubba]

Great observations. It absolutely did look like they knew what play we were going to run. Either we are predictable, have tell tales or our side line signals are easy to read. I've thought this all season. I only noticed in the 4th that PS was going to the sidelines to get the plays and we started to move the ball better. Don't know if he was doing that all game and I didn't see it or something changed.

[Charleston Pony]

We abandoned the run game early and averaged only 2.5 yards per carry, aided by just two runs of more than 10 yards that I can recall. I couldn't agree more about all the deep ball one on ones that were thrown as our completion percentage was very low on those. Give ECU credit for blanketing our WRs but there were some underthrown balls and some our guys could/should have pulled down. We just don't have "that guy" this year but the flip side is that Stone continues to spread the ball around with 9 different guys targeted and 8 making catches last night.

[1983 Cotton Bowl]

Moochie Dixon going up to get that ball in the endzone and then somehow not coming down with it immediately jumps to mind as a "the WRs have to help you out from time to time" moment.

[JasonB]

Great observations. It absolutely did look like they knew what play we were going to run. Either we are predictable, have tell tales or our side line signals are easy to read. I've thought this all season. I only noticed in the 4th that PS was going to the sidelines to get the plays and we started to move the ball better. Don't know if he was doing that all game and I didn't see it or something changed.

I rewatched the tape. The only true tell I can see is when we have an H-Back in the game like Eby, he can become a read because it is really easy to tell when he is staying in to pass block versus driving in the running game, because he never goes out on a passing route.

Outside of that, they just run blitzed a ton. Launching a ton of LBs and safeties straight up the middle. On the passing plays, typically you would want a slot WR or TE just run a quick slant into the middle into the hole that is vacated by the blitz on a hot read, but either we aren't doing that or Preston isn't seeing it.

The most effective way to stop blitzing is to throw right behind it and tear it up in the passing game.

[JasonB]

Great observations. It absolutely did look like they knew what play we were going to run. Either we are predictable, have tell tales or our side line signals are easy to read. I've thought this all season. I only noticed in the 4th that PS was going to the sidelines to get the plays and we started to move the ball better. Don't know if he was doing that all game and I didn't see it or something changed.

And yes, the "walk of shame" we used to call it under June only happened at the end of the game. It would be interesting to hear if they thought their signals were getting picked up or if they were just doing it to slow the game down. But the offense had much better rhythm once they did it.

[mrydel]

It may have been said earlier in the thread but there was a time there were hand signals from our sideline and immediately the ECU defense started imitating the same signals as if they were relaying our play call to the defense

[JasonB]

Moochie Dixon going up to get that ball in the endzone and then somehow not coming down with it immediately jumps to mind as a "the WRs have to help you out from time to time" moment.

Even on the first drive of the game, there is a deep ball to Kerley over his shoulder that he needs to come down with. PFF only credited us with 2 drops (Moochie and RJ) but there were way more catchable balls than that.

When you look at the deep balls, Preston was 3/7 to the left, 3/6 over the middle, and 0/4 to the right, where I think on the right Moochie, Hudson, and Brinson were all guilty of not making plays on the ball.

It just seems like we have a lot of skinny WR. We don't have that physical muscled up guy who is going to go win a ball.

Bailey and Daniels should be killing players early manned up in the slot on the run blitz. If we aren't going to run hot routes from there, or Preston isn't going to pick it up, it would almost be better to run 12 personnel with two true TE instead of an H-Back and start getting the frosh TE more playing time so that they can provide a bigger target that leaks into the gap created by the blitz. That would allow Preston to look long and then dump it off to those guys across the middle instead of switching his primary read to the slot.

[JasonB]

It may have been said earlier in the thread but there was a time there were hand signals from our sideline and immediately the ECU defense started imitating the same signals as if they were relaying our play call to the defense

June used to have three players delivering signals, and only our team knew the active player in order to prevent this from happening. It might be time to change how signals are delivered from the sidelines.

[redpony]

Jason- great analysis as usual. IMO PS had a bad night throwing- lots of over-throws and under-throws. Not sure he is the qb for us in the ACC. we need to get a top qb from the portal since we have no idea about jennings and he will likely enter the portal at the end of the season.
We really need to start preparing for our first season in the ACC so we will not be a bottom feeder.

[GHammond]

Curious….can we name any TAPPS QB’s who have had measurable D-1 success?

[JasonB]

It is certainly a significant bump from TAPPS to top tier college football. It takes time for a QB to adjust to the different levels.

That said, I have seen Preston make enough elite throws this season to know the talent is there. And I've seen him in practice enough to know that he has both the ability and the quick brain to make good decisions.

This isn't a Pick Six Hicks situation where bad decisions are being made and he is turning the ball over left and right. In his first year starting, he has 12 TDs and 5 picks. His QBR is 5th in conference right now, ahead of Harris at UTSA and Henigan at Memphis. He is the 39th rated QB in the country on PFF, a little better than middle of the pack for those that qualify with enough plays.

It isn't where we want to be, but it also isn't horrible. And we would all acknowledge that he is doing it without a standout cast of receivers.

And yes, the eye test says that he sailed several balls last night and puts too much air under his deep ball to the sidelines. But you also have to acknowledge those elite throws. PFF has him at 15 Big Time Throws, 6 more than anyone else in conference. His Big Time Throw percentage is significantly ahead of everyone else in conference. His Adjusted Depth of Target is above everyone else in conference, and that is something we were very critical of TM about.

I wanted to see a big jump forward last night, and I am disappointed that we didn't see it. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to throw in the towel on him. He has "it", you see it in practice all the time. Let's not be like UT and throw the towel in on Gilbert and Buechele too early, because I think Stone ends up better than both of them.

[Charleston Pony]

We have to remember that Preston is still a FR in terms of actual D-I game experience

[GHammond]

Thanks, JasonB…last night was frustrating. I appreciate the perspective. #BeatTemple

[birddogger]

Coach was getting on PS a few times that I saw, but If it is true that ECU was deciphering our play calls, then PS did remarkably well. I hope our staff takes seriously the possibility that we were tipping our offensive plays and adjusts.

Agree wholeheartedly with others who were critical of the WRs. They need to muscle up and take the ball. PS would have had better paper stats had they come down with a couple of those balls.

All in all, it's really nice to be bemoaning a 21-pt road against an opponent who has had our number recently.

It's a good time to be a Mustang!