Thoughts on the Navy Game

[JasonB]

I came home from the game thinking that we aren't a bad team... but we also aren't a good team yet.

After watching the replay, I feel a little better, but still we make enough mistakes to keep the other team in the game. That said, this was the first game this year that we stopped the avalanche and turned the game back around the right way.

Offensively, 40 points in 46 plays is amazing. TM played a great game, and his stats would be even better without the 3 drops. Need to stop the drops. But with Rice having a relatively quiet game, the other receivers stepped up big, finally. Kerley, Dixon, Daniels, and Goffney all had big plays and major impacts. Navy has a great run defense, and kudos to the staff for not even trying to fight through it. The line did a great job in pass defense, even though we chose to send more players on pass routes and it let blitzers run free against TM. This was an area we missed Siggers, however, because TJ struggled to pick up the blitzers in the backfield. I gotta say, Hickman was called for holding and it kept our offense from scoring on one of the drives, and it was a horrible call. The defensive tackle was already going down to chop Hickman and Hickman just shoved him to the ground. I thought it was an awful call.

Speaking of awful calls, on that punt... the inadvertent whistle was after the ball was rolling on the ground. Just a terrible, terrible call from the officials.

Defensively, I think the DC did a great job, bouncing back and forth between a 3-4 that basically played like a 5 man front, and the base 4-2-5, where two safeties came up and turned it into more of a 4-4 look. Switching back and forth really confused Navy. At the end of the game, with the big lead, we basically went to a soft 4-2-5 to encourage the dive run to foce Navy to eat time, and so our yardage given up looks terrible. But the looks were great. The 3-4 (5 man front with Wiley often playing one OLB on the line and 15 playing the other OLB on the line, and then 91/98/96/40/92 rotating into the middle three spots) was fantastic at stopping the dive. Fofana had 21 for 61 against us on the FB Dive. He was 21 for 156 against Tulsa and that is a big reason they whipped Tulsa. That is job number 1 for stopping the option, and we did a great job. We were more inconsistent stopping the QB, the pitch, and the misdirection.

Sure, we had some things that happened that drive me nuts. On the second TD pass, 22 literally pointed at the WR and told 26 to take him. And we still let him go and run free, and 41 noticed it and tried to catch up. 41 looked bad, but that was all on 26 I am pretty sure. 13 struggled at times both in coverage and missing tackles or not taking the right angles, but we know the limitations, he shouldn't be starting on a good team. He gives great effort, and he had 9 tackles which is great, but overall it was a struggle. There were a couple of kids who had opportunities to step up, but didn't make it happen yet. I really, really wanted this to be a game where Adimora stepped up, but he only was on the field 15 times. Keke Burns had a lot of opportunities on the edge, but really got blocked out of the play a lot of times and only ended up with 1 tackle.

However, there were some players who we were waiting to show up, and finally did. Farrar, the OK State transfer, got the most playing time he has had this season and really played well. He has good size and moves well, and I thought did a great job. Reid is a player who has flashed, but I thought he handled the physicality of this game extremely well, and he showed up big. Not sure where the low PFF rating comes from, I guess because they credited him with 4 missed tackles. But I think those mostly came at the end when he was tired. I thought he did a great job for the most part. Massey played an incredible 99 plays, and yes, he missed some tackles, but he played very physically for the most part and made some great plays on the edge against the pitch to keep things from breaking long. Really important to get our best defender on the field the rest of the season. Crossley had a couple of iffy plays early - he basically tried to intercept the pitch on an early drive and gave up a long run. But he was all over the place and physical. We could have used him against UCF with that speed across the field. Slade played 95 tackles after again, not playing against UCF, and this was the most physical he has played. Not a great rating from PFF, but I thought he did his job well and Slade and Reid were both helping us to stop the dive all game long.

The most exciting part, was this was the best our DTs have played all season. I suspect that the 3-4 did a lot to get them going. Levelston and Chatman were good (I have no idea where the low rating on PFF for Chatman comes from). But the biggest things were that 98, 92, and 91 all showed up and played well. 92 made significant plays early, but was consistently plugging things up all night. 91 has been disappointing this year, but played a ton last night and did really well. PFF gave him a 30 rating, unbelievably, but it was easily his best game of the season. And 98, who I thought was going to play second string behind 40 after watching him in camp, finally got good run and played really well (again, a mysteriously low PFF rating). Last year, the Navy game really boosted the play of Chatman, Levelston, and Williams for a few games afterwards. It is going to be interesting to see if it has the same impact on 91, 92, and 98 this season.

Moving forward, I'm curious to see if we see more multiple formations and come out of the 4-2-5 and mix the 3-4 in a little more. It is becoming pretty clear that Aho and Levelston and maybe even Wright are probably better as 3-4 DE than a DT or DE in a 4 man front. Our LBs aren't quite athletic enough to pay in a 2 man alignment. And, we haven't really established depth for the 3 safety look because none of the players behind Massey, Roberts, and Crossley give you a ton of confidence yet.

Overall, this game certainly wasn't perfect. I think we haven't been good enough to beat 3 really, really good teams. And we have been good enough to beat 1 bad team and two meh teams. I don't think anyone is going to pick us to come out and beat Cincy when they are coming off a bye until we can prove that we can win against a good team. But I was excited to see the team compete for a full game and with the physical nature of the game, which was missing against Maryland and TCU, and will be critical to stay in the game against Cincy.

[JasonB]

One more note - great adjustment early by the offensive coaches. Early in the game, we were trying to run the jet sweep to get the ball outside. They quickly switched to the WR screen and that call was effective the majority of the night. It got the ball to the edge quicker, which is necessary against a swarming defense.

[crazy horse]

You mentioned the one blown coverage. But it seems every game we are getting beat on these long throws and 1 or 2 WRs are getting behind our DBs. Maybe there is a reason for this, but it drives me nuts seeing opposing receivers running free and no SMU DB within 10 yards of them. How do we continually get that situation?

And the first Navy TD might have been a surprise. But at the end, there was no doubt that pass plays were the order of the day. And yet they were still getting behind our DBs.

[JasonB]

You mentioned the one blown coverage. But it seems every game we are getting beat on these long throws and 1 or 2 WRs are getting behind our DBs. Maybe there is a reason for this, but it drives me nuts seeing opposing receivers running free and no SMU DB within 10 yards of them. How do we continually get that situation?

And the first Navy TD might have been a surprise. But at the end, there was no doubt that pass plays were the order of the day. And yet they were still getting behind our DBs.

For the most part this season, our WRs have done pretty well in coverage, preventing players from getting behind them. We have a lot better protection from our safeties this year, and that helps - they aren't on an island.

However, I agree with you in the Navy game. 5 was beat long and the WR dropped the ball. Part of it is because we don't have great speed at corner. Armani, Westfall, Hall... these are all guys who don't have great top end speed. When we play our normal 4-2-5, they have protection over the top and they are much more effective. When Navy comes in and you can't afford to play with two deep safeties, they are on an island and it looks more like last season's defense.

The other problem we have is with the hips. Hall for example has nice size to him, but they had a deep slant and just left him in the dust... corners need good hips to flip on a cut and transition to covering an inside route. Rogers is getting better with his technique and his hips are much better as well as his top speed, so I think he will develop and be a good corner. McMorris also has better hips than any of our current starters. Finally, 14 is a guy to watch, I think he is going to be an excellent corner.

Our most experienced corners have some limitations... the challenge is do you try and cover for limitations, or do you just accept that you are going to have some blown coverages? The Navy offense puts corners on an island, which we are not ready to handle at this stage of the program. Those guys do much better in our base 4-2-5 look.

[Terry Webster]

That first touchdown pass to Gaffney had some of the best wide receiver blocking I have ever seen. The block by Rice was brutal.

[JasonB]

That first touchdown pass to Gaffney had some of the best wide receiver blocking I have ever seen. The block by Rice was brutal.

Yeah, that area of the team is improving significantly. It wasn't good at all early on. We need better blocking from our TE in the running game right now.

[ponyswim]

I wonder is they might get a little creative at some point and play another offensive lineman.
Play with 6 at least for some plays here and there. I think we would still have enough threats in WR part that playing with 6 OL and no TE might have some value, especially as a "surprise" element.