I decided to sit on this one a bit before posting. The State boards were in meltdown mode, and I decided to let it simmer a bit.
I was frustrated watching it in front of the TV, and I wasn’t sitting out in the rain doing it. I can see how those sitting in the rain would have been highly frustrated. Maybe those were some posting, but I suspect that it was at most 50/50.
Before adding anything further, I figured I would mention that my preseason prediction was 8-4 (4-4) with a loss to Louisville. I figured these teams would be fairly even talent wise but Louisville had Petrino and would come in battle tested. I had hoped we’d win this, but wasn’t surprised that we didn’t.
I don’t want to rehash a bunch of stuff, other than some quick points:
– QB play: JB to me is more of a game manager and leader than a great throwing QB. He works best in a running offense throwing out of play action. He’s not good at routes of 10+ yards or checking down from his primary read.
– Louisville at 1-3: Their QB play has really improved. I think many of our fans (and maybe our players) looked at that record and thought it’d be an easy game. No moral victories, but that’s a better team than their record.
– Playcalling: Not a referendum on Canada, but not a defense either. It’s hard to call plays when the QB has a game that bad and the OL doesn’t open any holes for the running game. I did see open receivers. I didn’t see a lot of completed passes.
– Samuels: Absolutely needs the ball more. With Shad out, he’s the biggest weapon we have.
– Shad out: Was a distraction for the team.
– Weather: No excuses there. Both teams played in it.
– Early fumble: Really changed the tone of the game. Have a team that is 1-3 and if they give up an early score they start thinking “here we go again.” Instead they get that and then break the long run and it was huge for them. Bad break.
– Defense struggled with the QB read option. That’s a problem because most teams have that look now. Otherwise, they were pretty good.
– Schedule: Dead horse beaten, but we weren’t prepared by our schedule to play a good team. You could see it on the first long run when the guys were shocked we couldn’t just run the QB down.
Here are some things that I’ve not really seen mentioned as much that concerned me:
– Sense of urgency: Once we scored early in the 3rd quarter, we basically shut it down for the rest of the game. I understand a defensive struggle, but it was like we kept hoping that Louisville would make a mistake and give us the ball in scoring position. Effectively we played right into Louisville’s hands by helping them burn the clock, shortening the game and limiting possessions. It’s fine to play that way, but you need to do it when you’re up 7, not down 7.
– Louisville defensive player saying in a post game interview that they knew what was coming based on how we were lined up. I’ve argued this many times over the past year. We’re multiple in looks, but very limited in options out of those looks. That might be great for a bowl game if you’ve not done it all year (think Rivers and NC State vs Kansas in that bowl), but if it’s the same 2-3 plays out of certain looks time and again (particularly in certain situations), it’s eventually easy to scheme around.
– BJD mentioned it, but the actual play call on 4th and 1 at the end was baffling. It was the best shot at play action to slip a guy like Samuels out with a chance to break one. Even if we’d have gotten that first down, we had no time outs and would have been deep inside our own territory. Clock management and situational awareness are things that this staff seems consistently weak on. The sense of urgency was bigger than this one play, but this play shows what I thought I was seeing time and again in the second half.
