CD: You made the comment that I was going to make — the pick 6 was a zone blitz. That was something that I was asking for a few weeks back, along with just overall more aggressive LB play.
I’m not saying the coaches read my posts or anything dumb like that. What I’m saying is that the defense is evolving right before our eyes, at least as it appears to me.
I thought yesterday’s DEFENSIVE game plan was great. Syracuse had piled up some yards on the ground, and flat out ran over us last year. Sure they had some injuries on the line and that probably hurt them, but we also made them that way and made a freshman QB beat us. We were also much more aggressive.
Did the defense play perfectly? No. But their points differential on the day (what they gave up versus what they scored) was 10. We will win an awful lot of games when that happens.
I don’t know what changed starting with about the second half of BC forward, but I like what I’ve seen out of the defense. This is more of what I expected when we hired a defensive coach and paired him with a DC that had put together good defenses elsewhere.
As for the O, well, after that first possession, there really wasn’t much. We need to get 7 as opposed to 3. We couldn’t convert on third down. We couldn’t run. Our trick plays didn’t work. I guess it was improvement that we didn’t try any wildcat, and weren’t telegraphing the snap timing with the jet sweep, but it was still interesting. I will admit that I’m not sold on Canada, and maybe my view of the offense is through that lens.
Oh, and we should give a major thumb’s up to the kickers yesterday. Baumann’s punting has really been our MVP this year, and Sade made some clutch kicks and had some nice kick offs. Nice job guys!
It’s a win, and we’re 1 behind where I thought we’d be right now. The good news is that all three of the last games are winnable. We need to come out of GT injury free, and get that win against WF. UNC looks like it could go either way. I’m not counting us out of GT. I feel like our strength (especially with this more aggressive scheme) plays into their weakness (they really struggle when they can’t control the middle up front on offense). We could win all three, but I’m kind of leaning towards 2-1 at this point.
