2.3

[HKB60]

As a former player this is what I saw. The OL, I hate to say this because I was an OL, did not do a good job of picking up blitzes. Also, the coaches should have kept the RB or TE in protection more than they did. OL did not block as well on runs. Bootleg worked well and I am surprised they did not run more counters. Quick slants should have been used more. Sometimes good old power football works!! Get under center and have a FB & TB in the backfield!! Let’s go Paladins and we need to win the rest of our games!!

[gofurman]

Sisson made some great plays but hes got to learn how to get rid of the ball when he sees pressure coming. He acted like it was against the rules. Correct me if I’m wrong but he never threw it away to avoid a sack. Not sure but didnt every sack come from the ends and they came in untouched? That is a long way to run and no one lays a finger on you?

I looked at the individual stats and of the 9 sacks 1 was a DE and I think a DT got half of one. Most were were divided among 3 LB’s. Two came from corners. I think our RB’s just missed guys a couple of times, but other times they were picking up somebody coming up the middle and there was nobody to pick the guy up coming from the outside. Once or twice we rolled right at the blitzer and just had to freeze. But it is wasn’t so much our linemen getting beaten by their linemen.

It was kinda like we came up with this cool intricate offense with lots of bells and whistles for style points, and their dumb old coaches cheated by just playing sandlot kill the man with the ball defense and ignoring the rule that says you can’t just blitz every down because.

He threw one away and got called for grounding. He had about 4 seconds on that one but just couldn’t let it go.

I agree with Jackal about the slow developing plays. Most of the runs that got stuffed were of that nature. And lots of the pass plays have silly, half hearted run fakes that don’t fool anybody (sometimes faking to invisible backs) and just slow things down. I was surprised we had no plan B that would punish them for all that blitzing.

I wonder too if they were getting a jump on us which led to panic at the center position. Tweaking the count might fix that.

One real worrisome thing is that these blitzes were slow motion compared to what’s coming. This was VMI who essentially can’t sign anybody who has another offer. Prolly not covered up with speed.

My worthless opinion is that we just have to stay committed to running even if it’s only 3 or 4 yds. The average yesterday was skewed because of 70 yds in sacks.

It's not really about faking people, though, if the defense doesn't care about the fakes. VMI appeared to be crashing every snap and using their DEs to turn our OLs and let a free rusher through. They effectively didn't care that Furman was play faking.

I agree, though, that we should have kept the ball on the ground. If a defense can stand up to four quarters of our running game without letting us break one, then hat tip to them. If they want to blitz, they do so at the risk of letting Furman get to the second level (more defenders up front = fewer defenders at the second/third level).

I'm not saying they need to simplify the playbook, but I think some of the creativity is getting in the way here. Sometimes you just need to leave a running back in to block someone.

Jackal. 100% agree. I noticed we ran play action and the blitzer never hesitated to look to see if we actually handed the ball off. I think they were told ‘just keep hitting the QB regardless’. If he hands it off so be it. IE -Don't even consider the play action.

I was shocked that we ran the ball as much as we did and yet VMI just didn’t care about play action. As you said, it is as if we thought well, when we run “they have to respect play action” and they said “no we don’t”. It was like damn Remember the Titans “blitz every play”.

Granted the lack of effectiveness of our runs (that’s being kind) made it easier to just forget about all runs and run fakes. Kudos to VMI front seven and D coaches