I spent some time going over Saturday’s win this weekend and I’ve got to say, as usual, it looked better on tape than it did live. When I left the stadium on Saturday I felt like this was the same ol’ same ol’ for an OL that’s seemingly been stuck in neutral since 2011. We still have a ways to go obviously, but I do feel better about the performance of the OL and the offense in general. Below are some specific topics which address what we did well and not so well:
Ben Braden
It was nice to see #71 back in the starting 5. No one came further last season than Braden, who started the season as the weakest link on an underperforming OL but seemed to improve by the week. By the end of last season he’d turned himself into an average to slightly above average B10 guard. But if Braden wants to keep his job this season, he’s going to have to play better than he did Saturday, especially on a disastrous first sequence:
TE Blocking
I’ve seen Jake Butt called out a few times for his blocking on Saturday, and I’d agree that he needs to improve. But it sure as heck isn’t just him because it seemed like out entire collection of TE’s struggled:
We didn’t execute that well, especially early on. A bunch of little things added up to missed opportunities:
Ben Braden
It was nice to see #71 back in the starting 5. No one came further last season than Braden, who started the season as the weakest link on an underperforming OL but seemed to improve by the week. By the end of last season he’d turned himself into an average to slightly above average B10 guard. But if Braden wants to keep his job this season, he’s going to have to play better than he did Saturday, especially on a disastrous first sequence:
- Play #2: On a deep handoff to Evans, Braden allows the DT to cross his face and penetrate deep into the backfield. This forces Evans deep and widens his angle, allowing a safety to come up field and tackle him for a loss. This play probably wasn’t going anywhere anyway, but it was probably a three or four yard swing due to Braden getting beat inside.
- Play #3: This is the middle of a really poor sequence by Braden, as he stays on the slanting DT too long and can’t slide back in time to pick up the blitzing LB, who gets a free run at Speight. UM is forced to punt after an ugly 3 & out. This brought back memories of the Funk era.
- Play #4: After a playaction fake, a S blitzes into the box; Braden doesn’t keep his feet moving and instead lunges and tackles the S as he bears down on Speight, who throws deep and incomplete to Chesson in the right corner of the endzone.
- Play #5: On a handoff to Higden, Braden allows his DT to swim over the top of him and penetrate into the backfield. It didn’t help that Khalid Hill missed his lead block on the play too. Instead of Higdon going 1 on 1 with a S, he had to fend off a DT and a LB too, netting a two yard gain.
TE Blocking
I’ve seen Jake Butt called out a few times for his blocking on Saturday, and I’d agree that he needs to improve. But it sure as heck isn’t just him because it seemed like out entire collection of TE’s struggled:
- Play #1: Out of a double TE set, Ian Bunting gives up inside leverage and allows the DE to penetrate and work down the line and get into the play, dropping Smith after a 1 yard gain. This type of stuff is inexcusable; Bunting was on the backside of the play, meaning all he has to do is step and seal off his inside gap. He can even give ground if it comes to that, but just get in the way and keep him out of the play.
- Play #15: Hill scores his first TD from a yard out as Cole, Kalis, & Mags wedge open a huge hole. Unfortunately Bunting was beaten inside again and allowed a defender to pursue down the line.
- Play #18: On a counter play to Khalid Hill, this thing just looked weird. Wheatley absolutely whiffs on his block while Bredeson traps but turns up too early and misses the hole. Hill kind of panics and cuts it back and picks up two yards.
- Play #20: On a screen pass to Evans in the red zone, Kalis, Butt, & Mags all lead up the field. Kalis and Mags do a decent enough job but Butt gets lost in space a little bit and doesn’t block anyone. This pay was run to the short side of the field and Speight had to loft the ball over the outstretched hand of a defender, and the extra half second the ball was in the air kind of killed this play as it gave the defense a little extra time to pursue and blow it up.
- Play #38: On a direct handoff to Evans, Butt motions back across the formation and is supposed to lead up the hole, instead he misses the hold entirely and runs into nothing-ness. This play was well blocked (although Kalis was just a tad slow) and Evans was late to see it open up and couldn’t quite get there. He picked up 3, but quicker recognition and this thing could’ve popped.
We didn’t execute that well, especially early on. A bunch of little things added up to missed opportunities:
- Play #7: After a 35 yard gain on a post pattern to Chesson, Evans takes a handoff on 1st goal and runs into nothing. There was a hole to his right, but I think Evans saw the S safety filling so he cut it up and just kind of put his head down for a yard or two. He could’ve stuck to the script and taken on the S (as Smith and Isaac surely would have), or slowed up a bit to see what else develops. Had he been more patient he would’ve noticed a nice cut back lane up to his left. The OL did a better job on this play then results would indicate.
- Play #8: On a pitch sweep to Isaac, Chesson lets his man cross his face and dart into the backfield as Kalis pulls in front and Hill leads up. Hill runs into Chesson’s CB and Kalis sees a LB scraping in; here is my eternal problem with Kalis: the LB outran him to the spot and is now in the backfield…he’s gone Kyle…you have to move on and just let him go! Instead Kalis turns his back to the line of scrimmage and continues to chase. Well, guess what? Isaac cuts it back and easily evades the LB that Kalis is still chasing but once he cuts it up there are two things in between him and endzone, a S in a white jersey and #67 in a blue jersey. Isaac runs into Kalis and the S is able to bring him down after a complete loss of momentum. Once that LB beats him to the spot, Kalis has to cut his losses and move on. Had he done that he’d have picked up the S and Isaac would’ve scored easily.
- Play #12: On a sweep toward the UM sideline, Cole and Newsome pull around in front of Evans. Newsome gets waaaay to deep…like 4 ½ yards deep into the backfield and has no obvious angle to block anybody…and doesn’t. Cole leads up and at least gets in the way before Evans bumps into him and falls over after a 3 yard gain. Newsome’s about half as wide as a school bus, just get downfield and get in the way!
- Play #21: After UCF botches the kickoff we’re in position to hang another TD on the board. On the snap, the protection slides right and Cole doubles the DT with Kalis. A LB shoots the gap and Cole can’t slide back in time, leaving a clear path the QB. Evans is wide open on the play and would’ve scored easily, but he doesn’t pick up the ball in time to make the catch. Speight held it as long as possible; Evans needs to get his head around and Cole’s got to slide back.
- Play #29: Most of you will probably remember this play as a great individual effort by Smith on a gain of 14. What many of us probably missed (myself included) was that Kalis, Mags and Cole absolutely blew this thing wide open. Later in the first half and into the second UM made some adjustments in the run game which I’ll get to later, but Smith basically ran to the one place where there were defenders on this play. He could’ve run to either side and found easy yardage but instead he took the hard way, broke about 8 tackles and ended up in about the same place.
- Play #32: We’re starting to get some push now and Isaac takes a handoff to the right and just kind of rides the scrum for a 4 yard gain. What he missed was a huge cutback lane to his left and likely a gain of 10 of more.
- We actually picked up all kinds of stunts and slants; those type of calls have been kryptonite to our OL for years. We improved a ton last season in this area and we showed the same against UCF.
- UCF brought a S hard into the box repeatedly. Evan on plays that we were blocked well we were left at best with a 1 on 1 between the RB and S. That’s a good matchup for Smith & Isaac but Evans doesn’t have the body to deliver punishment in the hole yet. That was going to make it tough to run against.
- With one S attacking, UCF basically decided to use their other S to help their LB’s cover TE’s and RB’s. That left zero coverage on the outside and we all saw what Darboh and Chesson did to their CB’s. UCF picked their poison and instead of getting ground into the turf they got embarrassed through the air.
- Speight looks good. I’ve very happy with his play to this point. I don’t feel that our offense faces any limitations due to his play.
- UCF overloaded the power side of our OL. They basically played one DE in the weak A gap, their NT head up on the C, the other DE in the strong B gap, and an OLB in the strong C. ILB’s looked to be in the weak A and stacked in the strong B. Basically, there are 5 gaps starting from the weak A gap all the way across the line to the strong D gap and UCF had 3 DL and 3 LB’s to defend them. That left only 2 LB’s and a S to cover the weakside and eventually we started attacking that area. An easy way to do that is to run counters and cutbacks; unfortunately those are by far the two weakest components in Davion Smith’s game. He just doesn’t have the lateral quickness to hurt teams over there. Evans and Isaac on the other hand, do, but they were a hair slow to recognize where the running lanes were opening. You could see the holes open up as the game went on and our RB’s outside of Smith are going to need to recognize the weaknesses in the defense down the road. It’s hard to run with urgency and patience, but hopefully we learned something.
- Go back and watch Hill’s second TD and see where Kalis’s DT ends up. They should’ve charged him the price of admission because he just about ended up in the first row. I’ve been an outspoken critic of Kalis for 4 years now…it actually feels like longer than that to be honest. But I liked his game on Saturday. He wasn’t perfect, but I liked what I saw from him. Yes it was only UCF, but I thought this was one of his better games period.
- We can clean up a lot of this stuff; Newsome will get better and one way or another we’re going to find a G, be it by Braden getting back to where he was last year or Bredeson beating him out. Angles will get sharper and chemistry will improve. I am probably most concerned with our TE blocking actually. We improved last season as the year went along but damn it, a defender should NEVER shoot that inside gap on the weak side! Inexcusable, and it happened numerous times Saturday.
- Don’t let the 275 rushing yards fool you. 87 came on one long run and 98 came on 5 QB scrambles. Their other 41 rushing attempts netted 90 yards. Those plays still happened, but I hope Brown uses a little more caution when blitzing mobile QB’s in the future and I also hope that we get a hell of a lot more disciplined staying in our outside rush lanes to keep the QB in the pocket.
- At the game, I thought for sure that there were two holds on the outside on the 87 yard run. Rewatching it, I’m not so sure. They could’ve thrown the flag, but it was close IMO. I don’t think Dymonte took a bad angle to the ball necessarily, he just underestimated that kid’s speed a little it. I guess that’s kind of what creates a bad angle but as I watched it I thought he was fine, but all of a sudden that kid took off with a burst. The lesson to be learned there is to get to your spot with urgency and don’t assume you have time. That kid was FAST!
- On UCF’s other TD…I’m not sure what happened there but it looked like Gedeon just blew his gap. He flowed right past the hole on an inside zone play; I’d assume that hole was his responsibility.
