Disgusting. This game was basically a mirror image of last week, even though the Hokies went about achieving the result in a different way. UNC decided to stack the box and make Tyrod beat them with the throw. Bryan Stinespring, for the most part, did a good job of recognizing this. The difference this week is that Tyrod was just off. He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the first half, and his efforts seemed to be tentative. He would buy some time, scramble free, then have time to unleash a pass, only that the pass wouldn't come. On third down and long, I have no problem with taking a shot downfield and hoping a receiver can make a play. At worst it's like a long punt. But instead Tyrod would take the sack. That makes no sense to me, and I won't stand by that logic. So there were three things that I learned from this game:
1) Our offense only works if Tyrod can make the opposing defense pay. Look, you can't call the play-calls stellar, but you can't call them bad either. They were safe, but they would have worked if TT could have hit his men in stride. Sure, I would have loved to see a Wild Turkey (what ever happened to that??), or maybe another type of gimmick play thrown in, but you can't blame BS for that loss. And trust me, I would really like to do that. Also the offensive line was not what you would call "great", but I felt like they did enough. I am putting this loss on Tyrod's shoulders, and let's not overreact to this statement... I still think he's had a fantastic season and will continue to improve. He just blew this one game.
2) Our defense isn't nearly as good this year as it's been the past 3 or 4 seasons. It's just not. You can slather make-up all over a pig, but it's still a pig. Foster, with the exception of the second half last week, is scheming really well. His players just aren't using their heads. For whatever reason, there's been a lot of mental errors on the defense this year that allowed some long plays. The best example in this game against UNC was when they would motion their RB down to WR and then motion a WR over to RB. For whatever reason, this caused our defense to mess their pants the first couple of times they saw it. They eventually got their stuff together, but it took a while. It took too long.
3) We apparently are no longer to be feared on Thursday night in Blacksburg. This used to be a game that would cause opposing players to start shaking in their pads and urinating in their cups. We had the 12th man effect for just about the entire game. Our fans were loud, and probably a little obnoxious. But, this never amounted to having a 12th man on the field. We got maybe 1 or 2 false start penalties, but that was it. UNC was not scared of us, and that fact might be the most depressing of everything that happened last night. Losing to an unranked team in Blacksburg on a Thursday night... just saying it out loud sends shivers down my spine.
The short and simple is that you can't expect to win a game where you don't score at all in the first half, regardless of how the defense plays. Ryan Williams did a great job and the fact that his fumble came at the end of the game was a huge let-down, but he showed in the rest of the game that he was working hard and getting the extra yardage and you can't fault the guy's effort. This loss hurt, but not nearly as bad as the GT game. We were already looking at a long shot to make the ACC title game. Now it's completely gone. It's time to back the Hokies for the sake of rivalry and for the sake of football. And whatever crap team we play in our bowl game better watch out.
1 comment:
I would agree that Taylor made some bad plays, but it still starts with play calling. RW was not used enough in teh first half. And when you have 4 drives in your opps side of the field. you should come up with some points. I fault this on BS again. Though the D is not as good as it was in the past, they played well until they got tired.
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