VTTW Board Index

1st O series: );(&(;)@;)& in a repeat of several plays last year our rt guard pulls and turns up field TOO EARLY, only a nice bounce outside a speed by Neal turned the play into a nice gain; nice protection for a first down pass to CP; sloe developing play but Thomas pulls and Neal hits the hole; Bray throws the ball away, only looks left (usually looks right) and a motion penalty; Tiny and Thomas both block a guy, both release him to go to the second level and the first guy makes the tackle for a loss, very poor play by both; nice route, nice throw for a first down to the TE; Bray throws it into the stands after looking away from an open CP; bad pass by Bray, just a bad pass when CP was open; nice route and pass to Riverra down the middle; on the motion penalty Easly should have been called for unsportsmanship penalty as his jawing was far, far worse than Tiny's; Thomas nice block on the screen pass, our first successful screen pass of the year; ANOTHER false start; nice play by Neal negated  by a formation penalty by Tiny; dRaw play might have been better if Neal we t left; Bray target fixation, incomplete; nice route, pass and catch led to a first down on 4th and 10; Bray throws the ball away, only looking right, not down the middle where receiver(s) were open; nice fake fly and run by Neal, just a half step from a TD; Hunter for a first down on a stop route; nice TD pass to Riverra off of play action that froze the entire gator defense
1st D series: nice WR blocking on the fly; pressure on the QB led to a should have been pick by Randolf; we really never stopped the short pass; nice play by J Smith;
2 nd O  series: nice run by Neal; another nice run by Neal; another bad pass by Bray and yet more target fixation; tough catch to make but Hunter should have caught it
2nd D series: not good coverage by Wagner led to a first down; no fraking contain led to a long gain by the QB along with a nice block by the WR; j Smith AGAIN doesn't maintain his backside edge containment leads to another long gain on the fly; qB should have gotten a penalty for spiking the ball on a penalty; AJ doesn't maintain contain allows a first down pass; next play AJ saves a TD with a tackle; aJ another tackle; Lathers and Bohannon NAILED HIM!

2nd quarter summary: the offense was still uneven, good running but Bray was still not passing well. The defense was starting to show the issues that manifested themselves as big plays in the second half.

I've got an issue I haven't seen addressed.

I tried to keep track of WR, DL and RB substitutions. When the wheels fell off around the 40 minute mark in the game Poole had been out only a handful of plays, with the exception of a couple of plays (and splitting out Rivera) Rodgers, Hunter and Patterson were the rotation and Hood was used extremely sparingly. Anyone who recorded the game should check this before taking my word, but my theory is we simply gassed our own players.

A guy who has run 35 wind sprints will lose to a guy who has only run 15 every time. I think we've got serious substitution problems.

Other than two plays after CP ran a return out of the end one where Dallas played I did not see a another receiver other than the first three play.  Hunter was visibly winded several times last night.

I think Pig got three snaps (ballpark) when Hunter tapped his helmet to come out. Rodgers moved to his spot and Pig was in the slot if memory serves. Your point about winded receivers in the 4th quarter is dead on. You can't expect guys with no legs to make plays. The last couple of years I wrote off lack of subs to depth, but this year it seems curious. I think it's the reason we've consistently played 40 good minutes and 20 awful ones.

I think you are on to something here- this also seemed to happen in a few big games last year.  We've had many total collapses in the 3 rd quarter over the Dooley years. I'm not sure if lack of depth explains it all away.  It seems like ther is a mental aspect to it as well.

I think there's absolutely a mental aspect, but I also am reminded of one of Nolan Richardson's quotes. He loved to use a 9 or 10 man rotation because he used to say, "fatigue makes cowards of us all". An opponent with no legs was dead. At that point Xs and Os did not matter.

Poole?  Hasn't he been out for like, 9 months?  Do you mean Neal?

Yeah, Poole didn't get any snaps.  :doh: Neal is who I meant. Thanks for catching a rather large mistake.

I think physical fatigue does explain a good deal of it.  The announcers made a point of contrasting the rotation in the Florida DL with that of ours.  What makes the most sense is that last year, we tended to collapse at the start of the second half, while in this game we made it to the end of the third quarter.  That is consistent with fatigue taking a toll on a team with greater depth, which is still not quite there.

I am certainly not laying all our problems off on that.  There was a mental aspect to it, but I think we definitely had some tired legs at the end of that game.  A friend of mine who is very knowledgable on football because he bets on it pointed that out to me Saturday night.  This is a person who called the Giants winning the SB the first time they did it, and I respect his opinion.  In spite of how they looked last year and against ATM, Florida is still deeper and more talented than us, period dot.

We were rotating our DL just as much as they were.  The main issue was the back end of the defense, the LBs and safeties had to be gassed.  On offense the WRs and Neal played their most snaps of the year, by far.  Lane had one series in the first half an 1. or so in the 2nd half if memory serves.  Young was in for one (1) snap.  For the receivers, Dallas was in for CP for 2 plays and I think someone said Pig was in for 2-3 snaps.  As a result their routes were less crsip. 

Also, I saw a lot more confusion on offense Saturday night.  At least twice Hunter seemed confused at the snap.  There was one play, incomplete pass to CP who was on an in route and the ball seemed to almost split the (small) distance between he and Neal, who had released through the line.

I'll buy that...most of the "tired leg" plays did come from the back 8 (LBs and DBs).  There is the famous brush-off that Burton gave Teague, but AJ had a shot on that same play but no way was he running Burton down.  I saw a couple other gassed LBs and DBs as well.

If memory serves (it may not) Couch and Sentimore subbed a lot for McCullers, but still played some end (think Folkes was in a decent bit). It seemed like no one stayed in long, but the same 5 or 6 guys were rolling in and out. Regardless, I completely agree the back end was completely gassed and that what really killed us on the big plays.

Couch is the primary sub for McCullers but Sentimore is usually the NT in dime and some nickle situations.  In those situations we use 3 DEs, more or less like the Chief used to do.  In the 2nd half I believe that we used Hood some at NT. I frankly was spending more time watching the back end of the defense and the alignment issues we were having presnap.  One thing we tried to do, since the Jack was settting the edge correctly, was to cheat a safety over the top when they motioned the receiver to the other side.

It would appear that Dooley agrees with us
http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2012/sep/17/derek-dooley-says-he-needs-to-ease-burden-on/ (http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2012/sep/17/derek-dooley-says-he-needs-to-ease-burden-on/)

He should. We give fantastic free advice on here.  :smile: