Postmortem Offense

[32counter]

Had ball for 7 minutes in 2nd half.

Had 2 first downs in 2nd half.

Had 6 rushing yards in 2nd half.

Had 42 passing yards in 2nd half.

Had 14 offensive plays in 2nd half v their 46 offensive plays.

When you run #16 to the A gap repeatedly,it’s easy to shut down.

When you pass to the RB in the flat repeatedly their corners play up.

Passing pocket collapsed in a hurry on most pass attempts.

Vanilla schemes are easy to breakdown in the halftime locker room.

 

[Gallipoli]

Wow, very good. From a technical standpoint, how can this be corrected?

 

[whampas]

Play better defense. 46 defensive plays doesn't give your offense any time on the field and yeah I know the defense needs to rest. It's a team game. We got beat on both sides of the ball. Not fair to lay it at the feet of the QB. You can't throw it down the field with no time. The one time he had some time he completed a 40 yd pass and a guy was in his face then. The key to our season is the offensive line. They don't get enough credit when we're good and not enough blame when we're bad. Takes a special kid to go there. They need to grow up in a hurry. If we get a good snap at the 3 and go up 14, it's a different game. That's not on the QB.

 

[Gallipoli]

Losses like these- two games in a row- are the head coach's fault, not the QB's.
Quoting the Spider Football Sage:

When you run #16 to the A gap repeatedly,it’s easy to shut down.
When you pass to the RB in the flat repeatedly their corners play up.
Vanilla schemes are easy to breakdown in the halftime locker room

 

[SpiderFanatic]

Play better defense. 46 defensive plays doesn't give your offense any time on the field and yeah I know the defense needs to rest. It's a team game. We got beat on both sides of the ball. Not fair to lay it at the feet of the QB. You can't throw it down the field with no time. The one time he had some time he completed a 40 yd pass and a guy was in his face then. The key to our season is the offensive line. They don't get enough credit when we're good and not enough blame when we're bad. Takes a special kid to go there. They need to grow up in a hurry. If we get a good snap at the 3 and go up 14, it's a different game. That's not on the QB.

I agree. It’s about the O line growing up.

 

[SpiderFanatic]

Losses like these- two games in a row- are the head coach's fault, not the QB's.
Quoting the Spider Football Sage:

When you run #16 to the A gap repeatedly,it’s easy to shut down.

When you pass to the RB in the flat repeatedly their corners play up.

Passing pocket collapsed in a hurry on most pass attempts.

Vanilla schemes are easy to breakdown in the halftime locker room

Cahill is a superior coach for sure. Did you see how they lined up for the coin toss? Quite obvious that Cahill has them motivated and together. I expect he’ll be looked at for big time heading coaching jobs after this season.
All that being said, you can still win even when their coach is better and I think this had more to do with the O line being inexperienced.

 

[Gallipoli]

This issue can be coached- Passing pocket collapsed in a hurry on most pass attempts.
Our coaches will have to be teachers to improve the passing game and the running game.

 

[Gallipoli]

What is the scheme that we run on offense? From the commentrary, i gather we are a run first offense and that we run vanilla schemes.

Do we run an RPO- type offense, where Wickersham has the option to run? Or were most of his running plays called from the bench?

 

[Arachnid]

Why would any running back or receiver want to come to a school that has a qb centric offense?

Personally, I would run the air raid O with Shealy splits. Set the RB back a distance like Clawson.

And keep the QB under center within the 5 yd line.

 

[Mojo-Spider]

what happened to Andrew King?...thought for sure his quickness and speed would come in handy against the Hawks....0 carries...0 catches...0 yards...0 participation...what's up with that?...seems like some of those passes to RB's in the flats might have been right in his wheelhouse, not to mention having the speed to get outside on the sweeps...Dawson looked a lot like King!

I don't know how he blocks, but maybe Foster-Powell and Brown were needed to provide pass protection, or better blocking for KW's runs?

if he's not injured I sure hope we see him at Wofford...Russ talks about the speed of the team and then we have Foster-Powell, our power back, and Brown also a power back...but neither has the speed and quickness of King...

Go Spiders!

 

[32counter]

#16 is not fleet of foot so getting to the edge with an RPO can’t be taken seriously.

Pocket collapses onto QB not only because of OL inexperience but because
#16 has no escapability to run from a collapsing pocket in order to get to the edge.Coleman had that ability to get outside the pocket with a true RPO.
He was very rarely swallowed by a collapsing pocket and could see the open field to throw to open receivers or run.

 

[CityStadiumFan]

Play better defense. 46 defensive plays doesn't give your offense any time on the field and yeah I know the defense needs to rest. It's a team game. We got beat on both sides of the ball. Not fair to lay it at the feet of the QB. You can't throw it down the field with no time. The one time he had some time he completed a 40 yd pass and a guy was in his face then. The key to our season is the offensive line. They don't get enough credit when we're good and not enough blame when we're bad. Takes a special kid to go there. They need to grow up in a hurry. If we get a good snap at the 3 and go up 14, it's a different game. That's not on the QB.

Very fair assessment. This is going to seem like a back handed complement but I don’t blame Wickersham…I blame the staff for having him as our only option at QB. I actually think he played fairly well for a good part of the game (including the one deep ball) but we have to be almost perfect around him in order to beat good teams. Defense (which was excellent in the first half) and special teams (kick return TD, amazing) actually did a lot of good things but as soon as we lost the lead we all knew we were cooked. Lehigh made adjustments at the half and started moving the ball on us (they have a very good, experienced offense). Great points on the OL. We use Wickersham as a battering ram but he’s not very mobile in the pocket as mentioned so there’s a premium on another position around him (OL) to be great. Lehigh is the preseason favorite in the Patriot League for a reason…they are a good team that exploited our weaknesses and inexperienced spots. That said I don’t have any confidence in converting 3rd and medium to long because of our passing game deficiencies. We have to have the lead or be within a score in order to operate our “offense” and the margins for error are too thin (one botched snap) to overcome against good competition.

 

[whampas]

Very fair assessment. This is going to seem like a back handed complement but I don’t blame Wickersham…I blame the staff for having him as our only option at QB. I actually think he played fairly well for a good part of the game (including the one deep ball) but we have to be almost perfect around him in order to beat good teams. Defense (which was excellent in the first half) and special teams (kick return TD, amazing) actually did a lot of good things but as soon as we lost the lead we all knew we were cooked. Lehigh made adjustments at the half and started moving the ball on us (they have a very good, experienced offense). Great points on the OL. We use Wickersham as a battering ram but he’s not very mobile in the pocket as mentioned so there’s a premium on another position around him (OL) to be great. Lehigh is the preseason favorite in the Patriot League for a reason…they are a good team that exploited our weaknesses and inexperienced spots. That said I don’t have any confidence in converting 3rd and medium to long because of our passing game deficiencies. We have to have the lead or be within a score in order to operate our “offense” and the margins for error are too thin (one botched snap) to overcome against good competition.

Fair enough. If you look at the QB stats on both sides there's not a lot of difference. They beat our defense running the ball in the second half and keeping the ball away from us. If it wasn't for their QB making mistakes we maybe don't score yet their QB is seen as better than ours. Line play is where we've got to drastically improve and the young defensive backs can't keep committing penalties. 4 PI calls is way too many. Without those calls maybe they score 1 less TD. A winnable game so it's not the end of the world if a few things get fixed.

 

[CityStadiumFan]

Play better defense. 46 defensive plays doesn't give your offense any time on the field and yeah I know the defense needs to rest. It's a team game. We got beat on both sides of the ball. Not fair to lay it at the feet of the QB. You can't throw it down the field with no time. The one time he had some time he completed a 40 yd pass and a guy was in his face then. The key to our season is the offensive line. They don't get enough credit when we're good and not enough blame when we're bad. Takes a special kid to go there. They need to grow up in a hurry. If we get a good snap at the 3 and go up 14, it's a different game. That's not on the QB.

The defense gave up 300 yards. In today’s cfb world that’s not bad….especially on the road against the best team in the conference. Goes to my earlier point that our offensive limitations put a tremendous amount of pressure on the entire team to almost be perfect. On the other hand our offense only musters 200 yards. Not all on Wickersham as you mentioned but that’s really quite poor production. They were able to run on us in the 2nd half which certainly was a problem but we weren’t able to put together any offensive drives and keep our defense off the field/fresh either.

 

[whampas]

The defense gave up 300 yards. In today’s cfb world that’s not bad….especially on the road against the best team in the conference. Goes to my earlier point that our offensive limitations put a tremendous amount of pressure on the entire team to almost be perfect. On the other hand our offense only musters 200 yards. Not all on Wickersham as you mentioned but that’s really quite poor production. They were able to run on us in the 2nd half which certainly was a problem but we weren’t able to put together any offensive drives and keep our defense off the field/fresh either.

I think we're saying the same thing. The QB play was fairly even, they ran it better and stopped the run better. It all comes down to line play. They were better.i don't think we've seen the best of our QB play because it all starts with the OL.

 

[URFan1]

I think we're saying the same thing. The QB play was fairly even, they ran it better and stopped the run better. It all comes down to line play. They were better.i don't think we've seen the best of our QB play because it all starts with the OL.

KW was 14-20, or 70%, will take that most days. And there were a few drops not on KW, but we need to give him better protection.

 

[Gallipoli]

Fair enough. If you look at the QB stats on both sides there's not a lot of difference. They beat our defense running the ball in the second half and keeping the ball away from us. If it wasn't for their QB making mistakes we maybe don't score yet their QB is seen as better than ours. Line play is where we've got to drastically improve and the young defensive backs can't keep committing penalties. 4 PI calls is way too many. Without those calls maybe they score 1 less TD. A winnable game so it's not the end of the world if a few things get fixed.

This is an excellent analysis. Our coaches have work to do. Are they capable of doing more than screaming at people?

 

[Gallipoli]

Being a good QB depends on having natural talent and learned skills. Skills, whether math or muscle memory can be taught Right?

Can a QB be taught to have better vision and to speed up his progressions on passing?

Can a QB be taught to have better footwork, to give him greater mobility?

Can a QB be taught to have a quick release on his throws? The average pro release on a pass play is about 2.5 seconds. Wickersham seems to have a round house arm motion (I think). Can he be taught to speed up his arm motion?

 

[carolinaspider]

This issue can be coached- Passing pocket collapsed in a hurry on most pass attempts.
Our coaches will have to be teachers to improve the passing game and the running game.

Our coaches want a running QB and less than 70 yards rushing is a huge problem.
I am just as concerned with our passing game. Wickersham is not a real threat passing beyond
ten yards. Snelshire is a much better downfield passer. The other concern with Wickersham is
telegraphing his throw. Snelshire is a more Cam Coleman type player you know where that got
us last year.

 

[carolinaspider]

KW was 14-20, or 70%, will take that most days. And there were a few drops not on KW, but we need to give him better protection.

Ok but how many passes went beyond 10 yards?