Thoughts on the ECU game
Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2023 12:07 amThat 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.
- 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.