The Portal. Injuries. 3-3-5 Defense. Kicking.

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midatlantech

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I am rethinking the whole Portal thing. We have missed out on quite a few four star players that not only didn't stand out but flatly rarely played. I definitely see a place for OL coming in this offseason and helping us out and clearly we had two very big successes there. But generally I think we are better off recruiting our own (any position) instead of counting on the portal. If you have seen limited college tape on a player I'd question taking them.

We have plenty of Defensive Ends, NT/DT. And generally we have stopped the running games of many teams. But are we struggling with injuries up front? Meanwhile, is Trey Swilling hurt? Is Tariq Carpenter hurt?

How often are we playing zone defense on passing plays? Clearly a three man rush is not going to work. You have to blitz. See the Ravens. They blitz all the time, it's just a matter of which player(s) is coming. Teams are not throwing screen passes against us, they are not doing the traditional things to counter a strong rush. Their quarterbacks are sitting back and having all day to pick us apart. I know this is repeating others but blitz and play man. Trey Swilling is better than this! Is our problem the fact that we only have four serviceable linebackers and can't get them hurt???

Our special teams is much improved but our XP/FG kicks are way too low and easily blockable. We have been lucky and it was obvious that one or two are going to be blocked (one just was) and it will affect a game outcome if not corrected.
 
The defense is all kind of screwed up so it is impossible to say what the issue is.

Bottomline is the coach is responsible. He knew the roster going into fall practice. We haven’t had a bunch of injuries like we did in 2020.

They don’t play to minimize what the other team does. Seems like the only way they hope to succeed is with sacks and TOs but those aren’t consistent and you have to figure out how to keep games close.
 
I believe the way to portal is not getting second hand players from P5 schools it’s getting the guys everyone missed that are balling out at G5/FCS. There’s like 300 guys in the NFL from G5/FCS. We should be able to find 2-3 of those guys that can help our team a year.
 
knoxjacket said:
I believe the way to portal is not getting second hand players from P5 schools it’s getting the guys everyone missed that are balling out at G5/FCS. There’s like 300 guys in the NFL from G5/FCS. We should be able to find 2-3 of those guys that can help our team a year.
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The paradigm of having to get all highly rated HS players to be successful has changed. I look at it like this. NFL teams draft and want to draft as good of a player as possible. NFL teams also need to comb through free agency
 
knoxjacket said:
I believe the way to portal is not getting second hand players from P5 schools it’s getting the guys everyone missed that are balling out at G5/FCS. There’s like 300 guys in the NFL from G5/FCS. We should be able to find 2-3 of those guys that can help our team a year.
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Yeah, it seems like getting guys that are looking to move up (from G5/FCS to a wider-exposure team) might work out better than guys looking to move down (from riding the bench at a higher profile school). Not sure about the “want to come home” angle. But I guess Tashard Choice is a noteworthy exception to everything I just said. :-)

Regarding punting, I had high hopes for this kid given his backstory, but he kicks a lot of ugly balls (even though his average is usually decent). Hopefully he’ll improve, because punting is a push to a borderline liability right now.

JRjr
 
It was kind of necessary to rely on the portal as a bridge between players who left and players from Collins' first couple of classes who aren't quite ready. We can see the misses but where would our offense be without McGowan? And whatever PFF says, Eley is eating up tackles. Brent Cimaglia is 9 of 13 on FG's which we will gladly take compared to the last couple of years. Those are 3 off the top of my head that have panned out besides Hoss and Cochran. Others are going to provide depth and that's not zero-value either.
 
I'm not sure our portal usage has been too bad, though we may have expected too much of it as a new concept. It seems more like something we used to fill in roster holes where we needed or wanted a body that wasn't a raw recruit (though a few of those transferred in too). The secondary ones seem to be the most disappointing, but so is the whole group so who knows. McGowen and Cimaglia have been good help, Eley has been ok and I think Scott on the DL hasn't been any worse than what we had (could be wrong, just an impression).
The OL I feel like was us grabbing what bodies we could that could pass block. I remember reading somewhere that the transfers seem to do ok on pass blocking but suck at run blocking, so I would guess we were looking to balance that against the OL we had from before the could run block ok but not pass block.
 
GTLiebs said:
I'm not sure our portal usage has been too bad, though we may have expected too much of it as a new concept. It seems more like something we used to fill in roster holes where we needed or wanted a body that wasn't a raw recruit (though a few of those transferred in too). The secondary ones seem to be the most disappointing, but so is the whole group so who knows. McGowen and Cimaglia have been good help, Eley has been ok and I think Scott on the DL hasn't been any worse than what we had (could be wrong, just an impression).
The OL I feel like was us grabbing what bodies we could that could pass block. I remember reading somewhere that the transfers seem to do ok on pass blocking but suck at run blocking, so I would guess we were looking to balance that against the OL we had from before the could run block ok but not pass block.
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Not sure how much Scott has played, but he should essentially count as a HS recruit for our purposes. Recruited him the previous year and he opted out at SC, so a first year player, really.
 
I'm sure the coaches are smarter than me when it comes to football, but, for the life of me, I can't figure out why we'd ever only rush 3. It seems like one of the big advantages of a 3 man front is that the offense doesn't know where the 4th or 5th person is coming from.

Has anybody seen any statistics regarding how many we brought in pressure in the UNC game vs other games? Was UNCs o-line just that bad on that particular night? Did we bring more pressure than we have in other games?
 
LaFlavor said:
I'm sure the coaches are smarter than me when it comes to football, but, for the life of me, I can't figure out why we'd ever only rush 3. It seems like one of the big advantages of a 3 man front is that the offense doesn't know where the 4th or 5th person is coming from.

Has anybody seen any statistics regarding how many we brought in pressure in the UNC game vs other games? Was UNCs o-line just that bad on that particular night? Did we bring more pressure than we have in other games?
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YES UNC OL was that bad so we exposed it. Regarding the Portal and defense, why do we take Harris when he doesn't fit the 3-3-5 defense. He's a small rush end, not contributing much. He would fit better as a rush linebacker which is what Bama wanted to do with him, I don't get it.
 
midatlantech said:
YES UNC OL was that bad so we exposed it. Regarding the Portal and defense, why do we take Harris when he doesn't fit the 3-3-5 defense. He's a small rush end, not contributing much. He would fit better as a rush linebacker which is what Bama wanted to do with him, I don't get it.
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It is almost as if Thacker had different plans. Had a bit of success with the 3-3-5, and jettisoned whatever he had in store for Harris.

Does Stone have to sit out the first half this week?
 
midatlantech said:
YES UNC OL was that bad so we exposed it. Regarding the Portal and defense, why do we take Harris when he doesn't fit the 3-3-5 defense. He's a small rush end, not contributing much. He would fit better as a rush linebacker which is what Bama wanted to do with him, I don't get it.
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I'm not sure 3-3-5 is what we want our long term defense to be. I think part of it is building more defensive line depth to do a 4 man front and when we had early success with it, it kind of feels like what JJacket said for this season at least.
 
GTLiebs said:
I'm not sure 3-3-5 is what we want our long term defense to be. I think part of it is building more defensive line depth to do a 4 man front and when we had early success with it, it kind of feels like what JJacket said for this season at least.
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I truly think Thacker wants to run a 4 man front, but sees we have fewer of those and more DB's. Clayton has disappeared. White is a question. Two guys we thought would contribute have fallen flat
 
JJacket said:
I truly think Thacker wants to run a 4 man front, but sees we have fewer of those and more DB's. Clayton has disappeared. White is a question. Two guys we thought would contribute have fallen flat
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Even then, White is a DE and I think Clayton was too (correct me if I'm wrong). When we go with a 3 man front, are we doing 2 DEs and a DT consistently? Or is it basically a mix and match?

What we may really need is DT depth, I know we have 3 DL in this years class but don't know how many would be DT's. From the size maybe 2 of them?
 
GTLiebs said:
Even then, White is a DE and I think Clayton was too (correct me if I'm wrong). When we go with a 3 man front, are we doing 2 DEs and a DT consistently? Or is it basically a mix and match?

What we may really need is DT depth, I know we have 3 DL in this years class but don't know how many would be DT's. From the size maybe 2 of them?
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It is why I worry Stone may have to sit out the first half of our game Saturday. We really, really need him in the game.
 
midatlantech said:
I am rethinking the whole Portal thing. We have missed out on quite a few four star players that not only didn't stand out but flatly rarely played. I definitely see a place for OL coming in this offseason and helping us out and clearly we had two very big successes there. But generally I think we are better off recruiting our own (any position) instead of counting on the portal. If you have seen limited college tape on a player I'd question taking them.

We have plenty of Defensive Ends, NT/DT. And generally we have stopped the running games of many teams. But are we struggling with injuries up front? Meanwhile, is Trey Swilling hurt? Is Tariq Carpenter hurt?

How often are we playing zone defense on passing plays? Clearly a three man rush is not going to work. You have to blitz. See the Ravens. They blitz all the time, it's just a matter of which player(s) is coming. Teams are not throwing screen passes against us, they are not doing the traditional things to counter a strong rush. Their quarterbacks are sitting back and having all day to pick us apart. I know this is repeating others but blitz and play man. Trey Swilling is better than this! Is our problem the fact that we only have four serviceable linebackers and can't get them hurt???

Our special teams is much improved but our XP/FG kicks are way too low and easily blockable. We have been lucky and it was obvious that one or two are going to be blocked (one just was) and it will affect a game outcome if not corrected.
Click to expand...

We’re almost always in Zone. We’ve stayed in this Cover 3 double-Cloud almost exclusively since the Clemson game.
 
midatlantech said:
Yes, he has an odd step on his punts that I think throws him off. He's a freshman so he will get better but consistency would be helpful. Field position did not matter for Pitt or UVA however.
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Since punters rarely get scholarships, I am surprised we were not able to land a better punter.
 
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