CPJ still not happy with OL play

77GTFan said:
I do think Notre Dame shifted the philosophies of defenses against us. Up until then, most defenses emphasized staying home, carrying out your assignment. That strategy was always easy for CPJ to exploit. Notre Dame took the route of being aggressive, penetrating the line, and getting into our backfield. It worked for them and it worked for others who faced us later in the year. CPJ and the staff has had a year to expect we will only see more of this kind of defense. They should be ready. If not, they will have to initiate major changes to our offensive scheme, or lose a lot of games.
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I agree that ND exploited an aggressive strategy with their DL. They also shifted their alignments a lot to confuse our offense before the snap. It worked against us in 2015 and was picked up by other teams, but I don't think it was the first time CPJ has ever encountered it. In 2013, Vad struggled against the same kind of defensive strategy. There is always an adjustment which counters what the defense is doing, either by play selection or blocking schemes. But if your athletes don't have the experience or ability to make those changes during the game, the defense takes charge. Tech's OL was worse last year and lacked leadership, but we also had too much inexperience in the skill positions last year to exploit what the defenses did. We didn't have Byerly to pick up the 1-2 yard gain we needed sometimes, and JT played hurt all season. Our offense is good, but it's very dependent on experience and execution, so it can look really bad when the various pieces of the machine are not working together.
 
cincyjacket said:
They need to block the guy in front of them. They need to stop this crap with letting guys go unblocked to get to a guy in the second level. What ends of happening is the guy that is cut loose blows up the play in the backfield.
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The option inherently involves leaving people unblocked in order to read them. There's nothing wrong with the concept of leaving people unblocked as long as they are the right people....and of course the play actually calls for people to be left unblocked. If they are leaving pass rushers unblocked on standard pass plays, or on rocket toss, or on zone dive, then yeah....heads need to roll.
 
I want to contribute to the football stupidity in this thread:

We should not be blocking anyone ever, we should be throwing quick screens on every play. Since our opponents took 7 years to figure out how to beat the TO, they'll take at least a whole year to adjust to this, and since they are sending 7-8 guys every play, we will dominate. Why can't CPJ see this?
 
floridajacket said:
The explanation isn't really that difficult: the OL in 2014 wasn't as good as people remember. AB and BB were two-deep with senior. There's the joke about Shaq Mason being the equivalent of five men, but Shaq Mason plus AB/BB seniors made the other four linemen look better than they really were.

After the 2014 Orange Bowl, CPJ said STTE of "Justin Thomas was really good and made many other people look better than they really were." Careful analysis of the OB tape shows some missed assignments and blown-up plays. Big passes and runs overcame that.

Then AB/BB became even worse than expected last year because of injuries. It was not like the three seniors on OL were always healthy either.

People also underestimate the effect of all of the pre-season hype and then easily going through the first two opponents. Then the team had the effect of "too much" effort, as CPJ called it. Many of players tried to do too much instead of what the play wanted them to do.
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Yep. I'm guilty of thinking A-back was a simple "plug and play" position prior to the start of last season. It most certainly is not. AB's are just as important to our scheme as OL.
 
jacket67 said:
I agree that ND exploited an aggressive strategy with their DL. They also shifted their alignments a lot to confuse our offense before the snap. It worked against us in 2015 and was picked up by other teams, but I don't think it was the first time CPJ has ever encountered it. In 2013, Vad struggled against the same kind of defensive strategy. There is always an adjustment which counters what the defense is doing, either by play selection or blocking schemes. But if your athletes don't have the experience or ability to make those changes during the game, the defense takes charge. Tech's OL was worse last year and lacked leadership, but we also had too much inexperience in the skill positions last year to exploit what the defenses did. We didn't have Byerly to pick up the 1-2 yard gain we needed sometimes, and JT played hurt all season. Our offense is good, but it's very dependent on experience and execution, so it can look really bad when the various pieces of the machine are not working together.
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Yeah, one or two deep daggers to wide-open WRs would have probably put an end to that strategy. Unfortunately JT just didn't have the time to let WRs get downfield, and even if they did...it wasn't always a catch.
 
First and foremost, the line absolutely can't have defenders crash through on either side of the center. Defenders were making tackles in the backfield before the play could even develop. I think we are all in agreement here.
 
IIRC, didn't we start 6 freshmen (4 true freshmen) on offense in week six at Clemson? And it was primarily because of multiple injuries at many positions. That plus the complexity of the offense is really all you need to know to predict the outcome.
 
Killick said:
IIRC, didn't we start 6 freshmen (4 true freshmen) on offense in week six at Clemson? And it was primarily because of multiple injuries at many positions. That plus the complexity of the offense is really all you need to know to predict the outcome.
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This. Only smart high schools are able to run our offense.
 
Just occurred to me as some perspective: The OL has only had one week of practice since the UGA game last year. I wouldn't expect them to all of a sudden be leaps and bounds better this early (especially with some of them graduating). When we hear the same in August, it will be a bit more concerning.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I want to contribute to the football stupidity in this thread:

We should not be blocking anyone ever, we should be throwing quick screens on every play. Since our opponents took 7 years to figure out how to beat the TO, they'll take at least a whole year to adjust to this, and since they are sending 7-8 guys every play, we will dominate. Why can't CPJ see this?
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On top of that, can anyone recall a CPJ screen pass that didn't work? They always work. The defense gets so torqued up on run gaps and option that they just forget to look for the screens.
 
beej67 said:
On top of that, can anyone recall a CPJ screen pass that didn't work? They always work. The defense gets so torqued up on run gaps and option that they just forget to look for the screens.
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I remember a few where the QB missed the receiver.

More common was CPJ called some different mid-line options. Even if the defense brings 7, they may hit the wrong gaps and then all of those 7 defenders are in no position to make the tackle. I think one of the last plays of the VT game was a mid-line option. JT was going to have a HUGE play if one of the DL didn't make a great shoe-string tackle.

Another play was a B-back run on 3rd and 10, which brought a bunch of grief about playcalling. But apparently if an OL blocked the right guy on that play, it would have also been a big play.
 
Look on the bright side, whatever opposing defenses were doing to defeat our OL, our defense has been able to replicate in practice this spring.
 
aeromech said:
Look on the bright side, whatever opposing defenses were doing to defeat our OL, our defense has been able to replicate in practice this spring.
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That was part of my point. Hopefully Roof is working with CPJ to help our offense perform better against the defenses that we are playing against. Even our own!!
 
Deke said:
Just occurred to me as some perspective: The OL has only had one week of practice since the UGA game last year. I wouldn't expect them to all of a sudden be leaps and bounds better this early (especially with some of them graduating). When we hear the same in August, it will be a bit more concerning.
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How many of them are true freshmen with zero experience? This doesn't make sense. Even according to CPJ, we've had poor offensive lines most of his time here. There is a common denominator for more than the five years of a college career.
 
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