Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Official Game Breakdown

It's our first official installment ever of our game breakdown. Believe it or not we have last year's, although it's not on the net, and we can always post it so you can compare and contrast the gameplan, growth, and play of both team's players. Today, although lengthy, will be our breakdown of Monday night's game and we'll have one every Monday/Tuesday after the game, and Saturday/Sunday after the Thursday night game. It's broken down into three fields: Offense, Defense, and Special Teams. Instead of giving out grades, we'll scale it on 1-10. Enjoy:

Offense:

1) O line - Great job blocking. On that first driave that we scored deep to Benjamin Jacory had all day to throw. Beautiful work all the way around. Pipho did have that one blunder, but as a whole the unit was great.

Score:8

2) Receivers - Leonard Hankers, welcome to the U. What a great game by Hankerson. I almost want to pass the credit to Randy here. People ripped him for recruiting so many receivers, but with 2 starting receivers injured and nursing injuries (AJ has a groin pull), we didn't miss a beat. Hankerson stepped up. Benjamin stepped up. Collier stepped up. Who didn't step up is a better question.

Score: 9

3) Qb - Excellent. Aside from one bad throw, the INT to Greg Reid, Jacory was as fluid as any QB UM has had. He took the hits. He felt the pressure. He saw all types of coverages. He didn't care. Ice..... that's what runs in his veins. He broke tackles and eluded the rusher. I could go on and on about him, but I'm sure this blog has a bandwidth limit.

Score: 9

4) RB - That's the Baby J we expected huh? Baby J and Cooper did what they were brought here to do. Chambers provided some quality minutes and carries, as did Mike James with going out for some passes (a big 3rd down conversion in the wst half).

Score: 7 and 1/2

5) TE - Good. Epps had some big catches and RAC. Gordon and Graham also allowed him a chance to come off the field and rest up and not be overworked.

Score: 7

6) Coaching - Average. It seemed obvious that missing our 2 starting DEs, DVD being out (concussion), and our starting safety in Vaughn being out, we chose to rush four and make sure our Dline contained FSU's QB. We need to see a lot more penetration next week though.

Score: 9 and 1/2

Defense:

1) DT - Very Good. Stopped the run, put some pressure, gave up very litle yardage on the ground.

Score: 8

2) LB - This defense is light years better without Cook and Davis and with the addition of Colin, who was back from an injury. Spence had a bad game, and that's okay, but he has to get it together for next week. The is the unit that HAS TO dominate next week.

Score: 7 and 1/2

3) DB - Brandon Harris, 1st day draft pick. Anyone notice how FSU couldn't pass when DVD was in there? Sam Shields was taken advantage of, but assuming it was his first day at CB in actual game time, and Ryan Hill was injured, he played just well enough and he was a good tackler. Our safeties played well, and aside from Jo-Jo Nicholas'd dumb PI in the endzone, they were almost error free.

Score: 7 and 1/2.

4) DE - Good penetration and containment on the run. Andrew Smith deserves a lot of praise and played very, very well.

Score: 7.

5) Coaching - Adequate. We knew we couldn't let Ponder beat us with his feet, but couldn't generate too much of a pass rush all the while we suffered some injuries to a starting, 3 year CB.

Score: 7 and 1/2.


Special Teams:

- Returns - Graig Cooper was a monster. Such a big impact in the game and setting us up with great field position.


Score: 9 and 1/2.


- Coverage - Bosher needs to do a better job of putting more hangtime on it if he's going to kick it short. All reports are that he just had a bad day, so we'll hope he corrects it and improves.

Score: 5 and 1/2.

As always thanks for reading and Go Canes.

4 comments:

  1. You overrate 3 areas.

    1) Coaching. Whipple was great. But defense needs to be better prepared. Wasted too many defensive timeouts because they were in wrong set.

    2) D-Line. GREAT against the run. But you said they provided some pressure. They pressured Ponder maybe 3-4 time entire game. Given all the throwing that is just too little. Too often it seemed he had all day to throw the ball.

    3) Secondary. Maybe they played better with DVD at CB and Shields got picked on after he came in. But safeties as well were frequently out of position. FSU WR's were just Wide open all day.

    All the above are fixable. And poor healthy didn't help. Missing 2 starters each from DL (Ojomo, Moncur) and DB (Telemaque, DVD). But you need to grade on what ACTUALLY happened; NOT what SHOULD happen if healthy.

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  2. Good post Raul. Thanks for your contribution. The reason I give pressure the benefit of the doubt is because our gameplan concentrated on our Dlinemen staying in their lanes and not collapsing the pocket too much. Last year Ponder broke containment and ran hog wild on us. I much more prefere keeping him back there as he is prone to making errors, poor throws, and we have such a young line (especially with Vernon seeing his first ever action and seeing something like 30snaps).

    Also have to keep in mind that JoJo Nicholas is our second string Safety with VT out (who should be back this week). But I can see your opinions and accept that. Great post, thanks for contributing.

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  3. ...and what the hell was up with the pooch kicks??? Pretty much the only thing I didn't like about the game.

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  4. You know what I noticed about the pooch kicks? They worked a bit, then they moved Reid and their return man up to the "upman" position. Prior to that they had people faircatching and fumbling the kicks.

    What we need is for Bosher to get more hangtime and kick it to the 20so they can't return it. Hopefully this is what Randy said it was and is just a bad game for Bosher.

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