⚡ CFB Dashboard

For me, I need to see better execution from every offensive position. QB is taking the most heat, and he was bad, but really every position group was bad to some extent against UVA. Blame coaches, blame players, blame both, I don't care. Clean it up. There were plenty of plays left on the field because one guy was out of sync with the rest of the offense or made the wrong read. Examples are the Snow punt return where he ran against his blocked leverage, GH counter to the field with Duke when UVA was overloaded to the boundary but he tried to bounce it instead of banging into the B, abandoning free access RPO throws for no reason, etc. I don't think we can really draw any conclusions on defense from this game, need to see how they perform when paired with a competent offense. Hopefully we see that tonight. From a coaching standpoint, there have been a lot of comments in various threads about our lack of creativity or ability to scheme guys open. I think the lack of execution on 1st and 2nd downs played into that a lot. It's hard to explain just how difficult it is to be creative when your average distance to go on 3rd down is 7 yards like it was against UVA. For the game overall our success rate on 1st and 2nd downs was 40.5%. If you take away the lone TD drive, it drops to 38.7%. That is absolutely horrid early down execution. That number needs to be >50% at a minimum, and preferably pushing 60+%. I think there is a lot of blame to go around for that, but the plays that were called could have been successful with better execution. Not just from QB, but from everyone. Further, if your average fan can see how bad CJ was struggling to make throws, the UVA analysts were light years ahead of that with in-game analytics/evaluation. You can see it in how they responded early in the game. They consistently started to put an extra hat in the box and forced CJ to beat us with his arm. If the defense is +1 or +2 in the box, even the 1990s Dallas Cowboys OL would struggle to be successful. What I'd like to see from a coaching standpoint is use personnel/alignment/responsibility decisions that make sense. Everyone knows Dyson is just about our only proven pass rushing threat, and everyone knows our tendencies for the JACK position. So you're going to see teams put the RB on the boundary and put him into the flat on passing downs to force the JACK to peel into coverage. Come up with a counterplan for that. Offensively, I'm sorry, but there is no way in hell we should be calling switch verts to Ashton Locklear from the slot. And don't put your stiffest WR (Jackson) as the target man on the glance RPO. Use your individual skillsets appropriately. If you want to run RPO, make your twitchy guy be the target man on the read. Maybe let Snow run the glance. And be less predictable with personnel packages. If I see Provience come in the game, I know we are running the ball or going pure play action. And you can tell based on the down/distance which one of those it will be. If Douglas or Ploog are in there alone, we're passing. Maybe use some spread packages and try to run from them. Or go 12 personnel but try a boot action with an H slide. CJ's mechanics are awful anyway, so get him on the move out of the pocket and let him improvise.