Best Special Teams Game in Years

vapspwi

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I was hoping, with all our running backs, that we had some kind of backyard football hook and ladder play we could run on the return or on the last play of the game. It’s not much of a lower percentage play than just trying to throw a 50+ yard TD.

JRjr
 
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GoGATech

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I missed the 1Q and thought I heard that Clemson's TD came off a muffed punt by us. Did that not happen then?
No we were backed up in our own endzone and it wasnt a great punt. Not terrible but not great and that was compounded by where we were on the field. Gave them the ball at the 39. So one of their 2 TD drives was only 39 yards.
 

BrentwoodJacket

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People keep complaining about the fair catch at the end. Did you guys see what happened the first time Gibbs tried to return a kick? In case you didn't notice their kicker can get it up there with a lot of hangtime and land it at the 1. Gibbs should've fair caught that one also. He could've kicked it deeper after the safety but chose to kick it high and give his coverage time to get downfield. Fair catch is the correct call there. If he had tried to return it and got tackled you'd have the same folks hollering, "why didnt we fair catch it, we couldve run 2 plays!?"

The only thing I might have done different, and it's surely going to be an un-popular opinion, is I might have sent Sims out for those last two plays. I'm all for "dance with the one who brought you" and in no way would I be implying that Jordan lost his job or the chance, but right there in that situation, Jeff is taller, can see the field better, has a bigger arm, and is a faster runner. Jordan was great at managing the game, made some good reads and throws, I just would like a bigger arm in there in that scenario with a chance to make something happen downfield. I can also 100% still get behind letting Jordan have the chance to finish it out there too.
That makes sense. At that point, the propensity for Sims to turn the ball over would have been meaningless.
 

GoGATech

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Oh. Got it. Needed to air it out.
Also the more I think about it, even it if made sense from a strength/athletic ability standpoint, you can't send Sims out there at the goal line. For one, it shows a lack of confidence in your current QB, and for 2, it's really a no win situation from a coaching decision standpoint. If we score, all you hear is, "thank God Sims didnt F that up." And if we still dont score, its "Why the F did we change qbs? Yates wouldve scored."
 

BrentwoodJacket

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Although a heave and a prayer likely gets picked off, then you have morons on here going, "See he turned it over again, he sucks!"
I agree. Really at that point accuracy is meaningless. You want to hang it in the air as close to the goal line as possible and pray for a weird bounce.
 

05GTCorndog

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I know the punts weren't all that pretty, but he did get us a 39 yd net which is pretty decent for college football.
 

JJacket

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Also the more I think about it, even it if made sense from a strength/athletic ability standpoint, you can't send Sims out there at the goal line. For one, it shows a lack of confidence in your current QB, and for 2, it's really a no win situation from a coaching decision standpoint. If we score, all you hear is, "thank God Sims didnt F that up." And if we still dont score, its "Why the F did we change qbs? Yates wouldve scored."
If our current QB doesn't understand the need for a more powerful QB on the goal line, then he has a poor understanding of what it takes to win.

FWIW, if Nesbitt were in there, the TD would have been an afterthought. "A few yards? That's it?"
 

05GTCorndog

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I know the punts weren't all that pretty, but he did get us a 39 yd net which is pretty decent for college football.
Actually, that net was wrong. The net was closer to 35. Didn't he put one in the end zone for a TB? The box score is showing he didn't. Hmmm...

35.7 yd net on the year is actually pretty bad. Still a small sample size.
 

JJacket

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The safety was a hell of a good play, BTW. If we had only recovered the ball, instead of Clemson, and converted the 2PT conversion and pulled the game out in OT we would have talked about this game for the rest of our lives.
 

vapspwi

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I know the punts weren't all that pretty, but he did get us a 39 yd net which is pretty decent for college football.
One of his punts that went into the end zone only netted like 20 yards. Dunno how that factors into the calculations. In person, the punts seemed pretty mediocre but they were almost the same average as the Clemson guy.

JRjr
 

JJacket

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One of his punts that went into the end zone only netted like 20 yards. Dunno how that factors into the calculations. In person, the punts seemed pretty mediocre but they were almost the same average as the Clemson guy.

JRjr
Yea, of all the times for him to kick it well was the one to the endzone. Do we just not try to aim for the corner pylon with punts? If we can get it to hit and not hit the pylon and go out of bounds that would be awesome. I always wondered why we punt to the middle of the field.
 

ramblinwise1

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Yea, of all the times for him to kick it well was the one to the endzone. Do we just not try to aim for the corner pylon with punts? If we can get it to hit and not hit the pylon and go out of bounds that would be awesome. I always wondered why we punt to the middle of the field.
The coffin corner punt is a lost art.
 

GoGATech

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Yea, of all the times for him to kick it well was the one to the endzone. Do we just not try to aim for the corner pylon with punts? If we can get it to hit and not hit the pylon and go out of bounds that would be awesome. I always wondered why we punt to the middle of the field.
I'm assuming that unless you're one of the most incredibly accurate punters, punting to the middle of the field gives you the most margin for error to either side. If you aim for the right corner and it comes off bad, you could end up with a 20 yard punt or so going out of bounds up high whereas aiming down the middle couldve got you another 15-20 yards out of it before it makes it OOB.
 

BigDanT

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Also the more I think about it, even it if made sense from a strength/athletic ability standpoint, you can't send Sims out there at the goal line. For one, it shows a lack of confidence in your current QB, and for 2, it's really a no win situation from a coaching decision standpoint. If we score, all you hear is, "thank God Sims didnt F that up." And if we still dont score, its "Why the F did we change qbs? Yates wouldve scored."
Remember Tim Byerly in 2014?
 

BigDanT

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We could have a Wildcat package with Tobias Oliver at QB.
Come into the Virginia tech game and straight when keepers for the win?

All I know is we should probably play our back up QB for that game.
 
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