Howdy everyone, hope y'all are doing well this week. Heard a crazy rumor that the weather is going to be nice Saturday. Working to confirm...
OK, enough of the small talk. Plenty to get to from the Georgia Tech drubbing so let's get rolling...
-- The statistics say this play, the first from scrimmage, gained 8 yards. Meh. Not much noteworthy there, right?
Sometimes the most revealing stuff is happening away from that ball. This would represent one of those cases. A team that comes out flat does not block like this. Notice Deshaun Watson delivering one. Notice Charone Peake chasing his guy off the screen at the top. Notice left tackle Mitch Hyatt blocking, well, anyone around him. Notice Eric Mac Lain coming over to take out a guy. And, finally, notice Artavis Scott laying the wood. You often hear the coaches talk about the skill guys needing to play well without the ball, and this was a great tone-setter for that:
-- You could tell they were really trying to get it to Peake as much as possible early to get him some confidence and rhythm. Watson stared him down this whole play, and had Hunter Renfrow open on the left side earlier:
-- When you're playing the triple-option, it tends to help when you have a freak athlete who can play both the pitch man and the quarterback. It also helps when you have a guy who can set the edge as well as Travis Blanks does here:
-- For a while now a bunch of you have been asking when they're going to motion Ray-Ray McCloud into the backfield and give him the rock. Well, they did it here and you can probably see why they don't do it more often. McCloud needs to do a better job of holding onto the football, and holding it well above his hips. It certainly does not help that the lead blocker, Stanton Seckinger, gets blown back into McCloud's path. But you have to secure the ball.
-- This is what defensive players dream about: You're sent on a blitz, right into a toss.
Kearse: "When I saw him pitch the ball, I knew it was a kill shot."
-- A lot of stuff seems to go wrong on this play, a QB counter with Kelly Bryant. The right guard, Tyrone Crowder, appears to go the wrong way and runs right into pulling left guard Justin Falcinelli. Seckinger gets caught up in the wash and misses his guy. Zac Brooks misses his guy. Guessing this would be considered one of those "teachable moments" you get in a convincing victory.
-- The first deep ball for a touchdown looked like it could have been on Kearse. In fact, Ed Cunningham diagnosed it that way. In reality, T.J. Green had responsibility for it. You can see Green turn his hips here on the action to the left side. At that point it's over. Kearse was responsible for the sweep action to the right side. Kearse did, however jump an underneath route in the second half that allowed for that second deep touchdown. Here's the first:
My take on both of these plays is something less than alarm. When you have a defense that flows so hard and limits a triple-option offense to 71 yards, you're going to give something up on occasion. And there was no way Tech was going to beat Clemson by throwing the ball.
-- How many times did we see Georgia Tech's offense behind the chains? So many first downs for negative or zero yardage. That's so huge when you're playing that type of offense, because for them third-and-10 is pretty much death.
Here was a great tone-setter on the first play of the second half. Dorian O'Daniel with a monster game.
-- One of the things we got used to with Nuk Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant and Mike Williams was their ability to make the difficult catches look routine.
If you threw Hopkins or Williams 100 of these balls, how many would they bring down? Ninety-five?
Nothing against Peake, but the offense has to find someone who can make these catches with regularity.
And Deon Cain shows he just might end up being that guy when he does stuff like this:
OK, enough of the small talk. Plenty to get to from the Georgia Tech drubbing so let's get rolling...
-- The statistics say this play, the first from scrimmage, gained 8 yards. Meh. Not much noteworthy there, right?
Sometimes the most revealing stuff is happening away from that ball. This would represent one of those cases. A team that comes out flat does not block like this. Notice Deshaun Watson delivering one. Notice Charone Peake chasing his guy off the screen at the top. Notice left tackle Mitch Hyatt blocking, well, anyone around him. Notice Eric Mac Lain coming over to take out a guy. And, finally, notice Artavis Scott laying the wood. You often hear the coaches talk about the skill guys needing to play well without the ball, and this was a great tone-setter for that:
-- You could tell they were really trying to get it to Peake as much as possible early to get him some confidence and rhythm. Watson stared him down this whole play, and had Hunter Renfrow open on the left side earlier:
-- When you're playing the triple-option, it tends to help when you have a freak athlete who can play both the pitch man and the quarterback. It also helps when you have a guy who can set the edge as well as Travis Blanks does here:
-- For a while now a bunch of you have been asking when they're going to motion Ray-Ray McCloud into the backfield and give him the rock. Well, they did it here and you can probably see why they don't do it more often. McCloud needs to do a better job of holding onto the football, and holding it well above his hips. It certainly does not help that the lead blocker, Stanton Seckinger, gets blown back into McCloud's path. But you have to secure the ball.
-- This is what defensive players dream about: You're sent on a blitz, right into a toss.
Kearse: "When I saw him pitch the ball, I knew it was a kill shot."
-- A lot of stuff seems to go wrong on this play, a QB counter with Kelly Bryant. The right guard, Tyrone Crowder, appears to go the wrong way and runs right into pulling left guard Justin Falcinelli. Seckinger gets caught up in the wash and misses his guy. Zac Brooks misses his guy. Guessing this would be considered one of those "teachable moments" you get in a convincing victory.
-- The first deep ball for a touchdown looked like it could have been on Kearse. In fact, Ed Cunningham diagnosed it that way. In reality, T.J. Green had responsibility for it. You can see Green turn his hips here on the action to the left side. At that point it's over. Kearse was responsible for the sweep action to the right side. Kearse did, however jump an underneath route in the second half that allowed for that second deep touchdown. Here's the first:
My take on both of these plays is something less than alarm. When you have a defense that flows so hard and limits a triple-option offense to 71 yards, you're going to give something up on occasion. And there was no way Tech was going to beat Clemson by throwing the ball.
-- How many times did we see Georgia Tech's offense behind the chains? So many first downs for negative or zero yardage. That's so huge when you're playing that type of offense, because for them third-and-10 is pretty much death.
Here was a great tone-setter on the first play of the second half. Dorian O'Daniel with a monster game.
-- One of the things we got used to with Nuk Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant and Mike Williams was their ability to make the difficult catches look routine.
If you threw Hopkins or Williams 100 of these balls, how many would they bring down? Ninety-five?
Nothing against Peake, but the offense has to find someone who can make these catches with regularity.
And Deon Cain shows he just might end up being that guy when he does stuff like this:
