Pics from Clemson

I should have erased these...but sometimes it is important to document the day regardless of the outcome.

Pics from the Bay Area

The San Francisco Club sent along these pics from the Game Watch. You have to appreciate the effort of BC's west coast fans.

Second viewing thougths and grade report: Clemson

This game was terrible to watch back. Terrible because of how poorly we played and also terrible because it could have been different. Clemson is not a great team and we have potential to be much better than we played. This was a disaster. Fortunately it is over. Let’s hope we learn and adjust quickly.

Offense: D-

I know many of you are down on our QBs, but I actually have some hope for Tuggle. Sure his stat line was terrible, but there were eight catchable balls that our WRs and TEs did not come up with. He held the ball a bit too long at times, but showed a decent understanding of the defense and looked great running the ball. The only times we showed life was in the second half when we used him in the shotgun with zone option plays or stretch runs for the RBs. Please build on that! Tuggle’s deep balls were not great. He hung them up too much and forced them into coverage. He also has to be more careful with batted balls. In total I marked seven bad decisions. The first INT wasn’t his fault. I don’t know if Tuggle will become a star. I don’t know if he can be better than Crane/Davis. But he is better than David Shinskie. Shinskie made some poor decisions on holding the ball too long and pulling out from under center too early. I didn’t see anything encouraging.

Although his stats don’t show it, I thought Harris played well. He made some great blocks and when given the opportunity turned in some positive runs. Haden didn’t play as well. He dropped a pass and really struggled finding holes. He was also impatient on some of his reads.

The WRs didn’t have a chance to show much but they weren’t particularly focused. Gunnell had one of his worst games with numerous drops. Larmond was a non-factor and worse, allowed himself to get pushed out of bounds a deep route.

The Tight Ends were the only group that played well throughout. They both blocked well, ran decent routes and made catches. We need to go two TE more and get them the ball on quick, short throws.

I’ve already spent too much time documenting the problems of the offensive line. Let me say this, there are plenty of teams that use traps and zone. Michigan with RichRod is one of them. I don’t believe you have to be exclusive to one in order to be successful. That said, our guys are confused. Their spacing and assignments are all over the place. That is on the coaches. I am not privy to the behind the scenes rumors, so I don’t know who is doing what. All we do know is that they need major adjustments. At UNH Sean Devine used a system like the one we used last year. I don’t think he’s somehow forgot how to teach and implement. I think somewhere along the lines things got complicated. Simplifying is the key. As for the individual performances, watching it back, Castonzo played decently. There were some curious decisions (which I don’t blame on him) but the majority of the time he won his battle. Tennant was also not as bad the second time around. Rarely were the breakdowns coming from him being beat. Claiborne had an uneven day. As I showed, he got beat a few times and was also out of position. Lapham, as usual, struggled with the speed guys on the edge. The new guys Cleary and Richman were lost but still did okay when engaged with a defender.

The offensive scheme was a grab bag mess. That mostly falls on the feet of Tranquill. We don’t seem to have a set of plays or formation that we can rely on. I’ve beaten to death the offensive line woes, but I am also troubled by the failure to adjust. Clemson kept eight guys in the box and we didn’t do anything to exploit it. Where was the play action? Why not go to an empty backfield on the 8 men fronts. Why not use more screens? There are a million counters. I don’t know why we didn’t use them. While we didn’t sustain anything, the offense looked best in the second half when we used more shotgun, stretches and asked Tuggle to run. There better be more of that. Tranq seems like the early fall guy but there is plenty of blame to go around. Devine and Brock have both been offensive coordinators before. They should be embarrassed by this performance too. Ryan Day is the alleged offensive coordinator in waiting. He should be embarrassed. This group of talent is not going to be the greatest offense of all time but it is much better than it showed. Tranq and his staff need to find things that worked and figure out how t get them to work better and in an actual game.

Defense: A-

The defensive line wasn’t dominant but very productive and active. Giles is adjusting well to the inside and looks good. Albright lost contain a few times but was very good. Newman also lost contain but had one of his best games in a long time. Ramella was okay and even dropped into coverage a few times. Hats off to Rossi for clogging up the middle and taking many of Scafe’s snaps. Ramsey earned his first sack of the season. Holloway, O’Neal and Deska all got snaps. As a whole the front four played well. It wasn’t until late in the game that they finally started allowing chunks of yards up the middle.

The linebackers were excellent again. Through three games I would say LeGrande is the best player on defense. He’s making plays and making tackles and is much better than Kuechly and DiSanzo in coverage now. Kuechly was active again and looked good. DiSanzo also did a good job and showed more speed than I expected. Bagan had another surprisingly productive day given his limited snaps. Morrissey was effective too. Clancy played but wasn’t near the ball as often.

Credit Rollins for being great in run support. He snuffed out numerous big plays. Fletcher also showed his great instincts. Gause played well and I was glad to see him force Spiller out of bounds in open space. Bowman was good. Davis made some good tackles and did a great job reading the QB on the INT. Johnson also played well.

That might be one of the best defensively called games I’ve seen at BC in a long, long time. McGovern had Clemson off balance all day. He would have three down lineman and blitz. He’d have three down lineman and drop eight. At one point we only had two down lineman. There was a fair amount of blitz and although we didn’t pile up sacks we forced bad throws. In the redzone things were sharp. The guys knew where they had to be. Our base defense was strong. We rotated multiple guys. It was a shame to see the effort wasted.

Special teams: C-

The Spiller return was terrible. Based on what Spaz said, we weren’t even supposed to kick it to him. The coverage was terrible and no one had any lanes. Fortunately we settled down and Quigley’s directional punting got better.

The kick returns were…meh. We know he has speed but Smith has no feel of the blocking nor where he should go. He ran hard at least and didn’t shy from contact. Fox actually seems to get it. The blocking wasn’t very impressive and didn’t give either of them much to work with.

Gunnell’s bad choices on fair catches were another factor in making this a day to forget for him. We also need to do a better job blocking the gunners.

Overall: D

My seats were right above the BC tunnel. That gave me a front row seat to each entrance and exit during each delay. This team was beaten well before the clock ran out. What’s amazing is that the defense played with as much heart as they did and that Tuggle kept playing hard even when things were down because the body language of most of the team was terrible. I know we have deficiencies on offense but that doesn’t explain the problems we had on offense. In case you didn’t read it already, that was the fewest yards Clemson has ever allowed in an ACC game. We didn’t seem prepared and didn’t make any effective adjustment until the 3rd quarter. But forget about the execution for a moment. Forget about the emotions of the game. The most damning play of the day was punting on 4th and 2 from midfield in the second half. That was a waive of the white flag. Your D is playing its guts out and you are punting again? Spaz is new and will adjust but his decision there was playing not to lose.

I am not writing anything off, but that was a cold shower. We better have marked improvement. Don’t buy any spin about talent or BC rebuilding. We had a historically bad day and wasted a great defense. Our head coach now has to fix this.

How to ruin the best OLine in the ACC part 2

As you will see the offensive line was not the only problem yesterday, but the breakdowns up front and the failure of our coordinator to react all come back to confusion and execution on the offensive line. These shots are all from Shinskie's second and thankfully final series.

1st and 10
-- At this point Clemson has no respect for our passing game and has put 8 in the box. We will see this all year until we prove we can exploit it.

-- We run a trap with the three interior guys moving. Ricky Sapp -- the guy Doc Walker circled is unaccounted for. In theory the play is going away from him. The hope is he will be too late or someone will rub him and keep him from the play. This is tougher to do when there are 8 in the box and the Tigers were smelling blood.

-- Here is where it starts to breakdown. Cleary (77) is ready to clear a hole. The right side is okay. Claiborne is a little behind but has a position on his man. Tennant and Castonzo are doubling the DE and letting Sapp run free. Is that the design? I don't know. I would hope Tennant would occupy his man and Castonzo would jump out on Sapp. Why aren't they reading and adjusting?

-- At this point Sapp is through. Claiborne has lost his man and the right side is losing.
-- Harris is toast.


2nd and 13
-- Clemson is loading the box again. We have two TEs which should offer extra protection if needed.

-- Clemson drops one of their 8 back. This takes away some of the big play.

-- Good straight forward pass blocking. It can be done! Now the problem is Shinskie. He never looks off Anderson.

-- This pass is completed. It is positive. Put enough of these together and you actually have an offense. But no, we used many more slow to develop plays.

3rd and 10
-- This is the final play of Shinskie's day. It had a breakdown in protection and in QB play. It is an obvious passing down and Clemson has 7 in the box.

-- The right side of the line is fine. The first mistake though is Cleary looks to his right and starts to get out of position to the uncoming defenders. To make it worse, Clemson is overloading and sending three guys at the gap between Cleary and Castonzo. Ugh.
-- Hope is not lost. Castonzo makes a strong move to fill the hole. Clearly recovers to get the trailing guy. Our receivers start to get open. The ball needs to start coming out.
-- Harris makes a huge block to give Shinskie that much more time. (BTW, our running backs have been great pass blockers under Sirmans.) Yet the ball is not out!!! Look, guys were open.
-- We had a breakdown. We had a two seperate saves from two of our best (Harris and Castonzo) yet Shinskie takes the sack. As I said, multiple problems but it started with protection.

How to ruin the best OLine in the ACC part 1

We have four returning offensive lineman. Three of those four earned all ACC honors last season. Coming into today's game they had a combined 63 starts. They looked lost today and I am afraid they don't know what to do. That's coaching. Now our coaches have plenty of experience and should be able to turn things around. My fear though is there is too much going on and we are doing nothing well. I am also a bit concerned about things like spacing and execution. This stuff should not be happening three games into the season with a mostly experienced group. The execution is probably due to too many varied schemes (part Tranq, part Logan) and four different QBs splitting time. Here are a few of the issues. (I may add more as I continue to go through the rewatch).

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.