First Quarter. 3rd and 17. BC calls a draw that gets blown up.
This was the first real cowardly call of the game. But I can understand why we did it. The draw is low risk. It should be easy to execute and it plays to your strengths: the line and Harris. However, we failed to execute. Here are some issues:
-- Doesn't Harris seem awfully deep? This might make it seem like he is staying into block and sell the draw, but it also means he has to cover a lot of ground just to get to the line of scrimmage.
-- Anderson releases downfield and takes a defender with him. Now Clemson only has five guys in the box!! Although this doesn't guarantee a first down, it should at least mean a decent gain. But you can already see problems. Lapham (on the right side) is drawing his man downfield away from the play. That's good. However, the rest of the line is clustered at the line of scrimmage? This is a draw. These guys have runs thousands of draws. What are they doing? They should also being drawing/driving their men downfield too. There should be a big hole. Yet Clemson -- with only five in the box -- is ready to gobble up the runner.
-- Castonzo won his matchup. But the three interior guys (two of who were all ACC) shuffled around and left three defenders ready to crush Harris. Ugh.
1st and 10. Basic run play. Offensive line is asked to do something (pull I think? but it is so sloppy you can't be sure) and leave Haden out to dry.
Pulling and trapping is a staple of many offenses. Gary Tranquill might have multiple plays that call on it. One problem though...our guys have not been drilling in this for two years. Should we have these plays in our playbook? Can you do this and still mix in zone? Does anyone have clue what is going on? Take a look:
-- Clemson has five men on the line. That is problem No. 1. Do we audible? Have any counters? If so we didn't use them.
-- The play starts off ok. Richman, Claiborne and Pantale all block down and win their battles. Castonzo doubles the End with Anderson. I don't love the decision but you can live with it (I would prefer if one of them went to the second level). The real problem is that Lapham and Tennant are supposed to pull and clear the way. Yet Tennant doesn't disengage quickly enough and Lapham is a big dude who is probably never going to cover that much land quickly enough.
-- So now Haden is heading towards a hole with two Clemson guys waiting for him. Tennant and Lapham are never going to get there. Haden decided to kick it out and go around the end but was tackled for a loss.
1st and 10. Shinskie's first drive. 1st use of one of Logan's staples: the zone option read.
We are struggling. We haven't moved the ball. Someone (Tranq?) decides to go and use one of the plays that worked well for BC last year. Only we use it with the one guy who wasn't around in the Logan days in Shinskie!?!? But once again I think these guys have so much going on in their heads, they are screwing up basic things like spacing. Take a look:
-- Look how big the space is between Tennant and Claiborne! What's going on? Both are smart and experienced. Why is this happening? It screams lack of repetition or confusion. The Clemson DT picks up on it and gets right in the gap.
-- At the snap he is already by Claiborne. But the play is not totally lost. A good QB who knows this play might be able to make something out of nothing. But instead we have a relief pitcher who hasn't played football since 2002. Now if Tuggle had been in there, he might have done something...after all he saw film of Crane and Tuggle dealing with this same situation last year.
-- Claiborne is beat. Lapham is blocking air. Haden is about to be lunch. Since the end is starting to crash though a running QB who knew the offense might have kept it himself and tried to make positive yards.
-- Yet Shinskie gives it to Haden and we have another negative play.
I may have more of this, but you get the point. There is too much going on with the team and our experienced guys are lost. There is more talent than we saw today, but we need the staff to quickly put together a plan that plays to their strengths!
When the coaching staff has their come to Jesus meeting Sunday, it is on Spaz, Day and Sirmans to speak up and get us back on track. They know what can work with these guys. They know what drills will work. They are the carryovers. They have to help bridge the gap. If they don't we will have serious issues.
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15 comments:
Spot on analysis ATL.
With all the focus on who will be the QB, apparently the offensive line was completely neglected. When the 1-2 punch of Montel and Haden is stiffed, something is wrong --- no matter how good the defense is we are facing (and make no mistake that Clemson Defense is very very good).
The positive news is that our Eagle defense was straight up filthy. And all we would need is to get a very simple offensive scheme functioning, and we will find ourselves right back in the mix. Va Tech's recent success is proof that you don't need a high powered offense to be very successful in the ACC.
I am looking forward to reading the second part of your excellent analysis.
this is great analysis, ATL. other sites will lazily chalk the loss up to "lack of speed" or "inexperienced quarterbacks". the o-line play is where our games are won and lost. hopefully we get it together.
In real time, I noticed that we often were double teaming a DL and completely ignoring the defender next to him and allowing the man to rush in unblocked -- not even a missed block but no intention to block him).
There has to be confusion on assignments, there's no way some of these cases were designed to let a man go unblocked.
I don't remember any BC offense struggle and look lost like yesterday, in the past 20 years.
I think I'm ready to bury this, move forward, and use my energy thinking about Wake and forget Clemson ever happened. I'll vomit if I don't.
Good work here. I thought throughout the game yesterday that most of the OL problems were mental, not physcial. Missed assignments, bad technique, tepid play... I think those are things that can be fixed but they better fix it fast. Playing against patsies that you can physically overpower masks all those things but now playing the big boys exposes those weaknesses.
I think this line can re-group and play better. I also think the QB platoon is over, thank god because I feel it had a lot to do with the O's problems. One guy needs to get all the reps, not 4.
Now if we see more of the same next week I'll be worried...
Here's the thing that troubles me, the OLine has known that they were in trouble for two weeks. Think back to Tennant's comments after the NE game, commenting on the various issues he was seeing and how disappointed he was in the Olines play. My hope is that they've been working on the problems Tennant saw and have been trying to correct them, my concern is that it looked this bad after two weeks of working on these problems. Doesn't give me confidence that they'll turn it around by next week.
Thanks for the great analysis ATL. Looking forward to part 2, then put this behind us and onto Wake!!!
Phenonemal analysis ATL. YOU are the best in the business and we are just lucky you happen to be a BC Alum.
Don't you think a red-flag was Spaz hiring an O-line coach with zero O-line coaching experience? I may be wrong about this, but I seem to remember reading that this is the assistant coach's first time coaching O-line. If true, then Tranq needs to step in and get things fixed ASAP.
It really angers me that a team could be hindered by scheme and not ability, especially for the seniors and the defense.
Nice work ATL...I love the use of the screen shots along with the commentary. I wasn't sure how many people notice that we just got demolished in the trenches yesterday. The primary reason we lost that game was that the Clemson front seven spent just as much time in our backfield as our own skilled players. THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITH AN "EXPERIENCED" LINE. I think we have the talent and the size to play with the new scheme. I wouldn't suggest that we blow things up and move back to zone blocking as the problem is in timing and execution....and they better fix it - fast!
Agree with all the comments about the line. I also thought that Harris looked really slow hitting the hole. he normally gets uup in there really quickly but everything look a little hesitant yeaterday. Maybe its because he could see the blocking break down right from the snap.
I also thought you comment on the zone read were right on. tuggle had our first long play off of it. Their ends were crashing so hard, I thought we should have gone to it much sooner.
Hopefully, we can bury this one and move on with Wake.
just look at the 4th picture, Lapham is still in his stance as everyone else is already engaged in their blocks
To put it as simply as possible: if Clemson's D-Line started the game on the opposite side of the offensive line, very few plays would have had a materially worse result. BC did not come close to successfully executing a single play on offense.
In your second series of images, I'm pretty sure that is zone blocking and it was actually executed cleanly at first but Tennant and Castonzo need to release and get to the LBs before Haden does and it was a timing thing.
I have been watching BC football for 30 years. This was the worst performance by a BC offensive line that I have ever seen. Presumably they will cease with all the early season hubris about "the return of O line U" and the like. The BC teams I remember most fondly were those that let their play on the field do the talking. Offensive coordinator needs to wake up and simplify the offense. The offensive line owes the defense an apology.
Eddierock
Yesterday, I referred to the o-line as "inexperienced". You have illustrated perfectly what I attempted to say; i.e., "inexperienced with this system", whatever it is.
We know these players have the talent and desire to execute; but they looked lost out there.
Great analysis with "X's" and "O's", Bill.
If we don't correct this problem, we are looking at 1978 from here on.
Of all the plays in this game, watching the read option with the oversized gap disgusted me the most. How did they expect to block that DT with a massive whole in the line before the ball was even snapped? Should have been obvious.
We had other problems in that game, but if the o-line had played well we would have been right in the mix.
"In the game of football nothing is more crucial to any offense's success than its offensive line's ability to block effectively. And, between pass blocking and run blocking, run blocking is by far the more important skill. If a team can gain 5 yards per carry all game long, they've won the football game before it even starts."
How can you run block effectively?
You can start by not getting confused by your coache's new zone blocking scheme, which was different from the one used under Jags and Logan for the previous two years; and you can only hope that your new offensive coordinator isn't sending mixed signals to your new OL coach.
Let's go coaching staff - these guys are better than this!!!!!!!
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