These last two weeks have reminded me of spring practice a lot. Everyone starts off by saying that it (these two games) don't mean a lot. Then everyone proceeds to analyze every little thing. I certainly know I do. It's really hard not to be excited about what we've seen, But as Cris has pointed out, it's Wofford and App State. So what can we learn and really take away from these last two weeks.
I try and go by the rule that it's harder to take positives out of these games than negatives. In other words, just because a player has great games vs. inferior opposition doesn't mean they are going to be great against good teams (it doesn't mean they are not either, we just can't know that yet). On the other hand, if a team performs poorly against a bad team then you can bet they aren't going to perform well against good teams either. So what can we take away from the last two weeks.
The good:
Obviously this is a young team and while I'm not generally a fan of cupcake games, this year really worked out for us. I think the biggest takeaway from these games is: right now we have players with very few game snaps coming into the year, that now have upwards of 50/60 snaps. That's huge.
This team has a businesslike attitude and that translated to the field and games. Looking around at the NCAA, you don't have to go far to see some "good" teams struggling vs. poor ones. Clemson didn't do that. Both games were well in hand (blowouts) by halftime.
On OC side of things, Clemson barely opened the playbook and that's great going forward. Louisville has no idea what we are going to be running against them, while one would think that we have a much better idea of what UL does offensively and defensively. It will be interesting how much we show vs. Louisville given their struggles. While I'm definitely not chalking this game up as a blowout or anything close to it... what would it mean for the ND/GT games to not show anything at UL?
The mediocre:
Again, it's tough to take positive things away from these games, but Clemson's defense (the 1st team) looked really good. DS loves to play backups whenever he can and the result of that was points and yardage for our opponents. If he'd kept in the 1st team and subbed like most teams do, there's every chance that we'd be looking at shutouts for both these games. I think we can at least say that our defense is going to more than hold its own this year after many people thought it was going to be mediocre AT BEST.
The offense did what it had to do and for the most part, looked good doing it (especially given the limited playcalling). I frankly expected the OL to be a step above the dumpster fire level this year. They are obviously better than that. How good? No way to tell, but I suspect they are going to be mediocre going forward and will improve a bit as the year goes on. Frankly, I'm a little bit worried about our skill player production this year. While Scott looks like a beast and Watson looks fine as well, no one else has really wowed me. Serviceable is all you can really say at this point. Still, if the 1st team had stayed in for most of the game, you are looking at scores in the 70s for sure... you can't complain about that.
The bad:
Kickoff return. REALLY BAD. Teams are going to start running it out of the endzone from 5 yards deep if we don't fix this pronto.
Offensive snaps. This is just plain perplexing. It cost us a conference championship last year. One would think we'd work on fixing this. Not so much...
Backup LB play. REALLY BAD, not ready for prime time. I don't see a solution here... Smith (hopefully) and Lamar can't get here fast enough. Here's hoping our 1st team guys don't go down.
I try and go by the rule that it's harder to take positives out of these games than negatives. In other words, just because a player has great games vs. inferior opposition doesn't mean they are going to be great against good teams (it doesn't mean they are not either, we just can't know that yet). On the other hand, if a team performs poorly against a bad team then you can bet they aren't going to perform well against good teams either. So what can we take away from the last two weeks.
The good:
Obviously this is a young team and while I'm not generally a fan of cupcake games, this year really worked out for us. I think the biggest takeaway from these games is: right now we have players with very few game snaps coming into the year, that now have upwards of 50/60 snaps. That's huge.
This team has a businesslike attitude and that translated to the field and games. Looking around at the NCAA, you don't have to go far to see some "good" teams struggling vs. poor ones. Clemson didn't do that. Both games were well in hand (blowouts) by halftime.
On OC side of things, Clemson barely opened the playbook and that's great going forward. Louisville has no idea what we are going to be running against them, while one would think that we have a much better idea of what UL does offensively and defensively. It will be interesting how much we show vs. Louisville given their struggles. While I'm definitely not chalking this game up as a blowout or anything close to it... what would it mean for the ND/GT games to not show anything at UL?
The mediocre:
Again, it's tough to take positive things away from these games, but Clemson's defense (the 1st team) looked really good. DS loves to play backups whenever he can and the result of that was points and yardage for our opponents. If he'd kept in the 1st team and subbed like most teams do, there's every chance that we'd be looking at shutouts for both these games. I think we can at least say that our defense is going to more than hold its own this year after many people thought it was going to be mediocre AT BEST.
The offense did what it had to do and for the most part, looked good doing it (especially given the limited playcalling). I frankly expected the OL to be a step above the dumpster fire level this year. They are obviously better than that. How good? No way to tell, but I suspect they are going to be mediocre going forward and will improve a bit as the year goes on. Frankly, I'm a little bit worried about our skill player production this year. While Scott looks like a beast and Watson looks fine as well, no one else has really wowed me. Serviceable is all you can really say at this point. Still, if the 1st team had stayed in for most of the game, you are looking at scores in the 70s for sure... you can't complain about that.
The bad:
Kickoff return. REALLY BAD. Teams are going to start running it out of the endzone from 5 yards deep if we don't fix this pronto.
Offensive snaps. This is just plain perplexing. It cost us a conference championship last year. One would think we'd work on fixing this. Not so much...
Backup LB play. REALLY BAD, not ready for prime time. I don't see a solution here... Smith (hopefully) and Lamar can't get here fast enough. Here's hoping our 1st team guys don't go down.
