I wanted to change the topic somewhat because we're in a Bye Week and we have to look forward to the 2nd half of the season don't we? I'm sick of the words "one yard" frankly:
1. I'm blown away with the most obvious and that's Lamar Jackson's ability to put up staggering numbers and do things I have never seen a quarterback do athletically at any level. But I am further blown away by what I see as a growth within the offense, particularily getting Brandon Radcliff productive. Radcliff is a great kid and you could see last year that the offense that was somewhat designed around him in November 2014 wasn't the offense we were running by mid 2015. Seeing him run with command in the third quarter of the game the other night--and landing a big decleater on Ben Boulware on a block--have me optimistic that we're going to continue to see great things from him for the remainder of the year. You can tell that the linemen really attack their blocks when Brandon has the ball, because he runs with every last ounce of energy he has.
I will also say this about Boulware...yeah the choke was junk, but have him change jersies before the game Saturday night and we win the game in a rout. That kid's a War Daddy.
Jeremy Smith has been big out of the backfield and in short yardage; I think people might be surprised to see that he has 13 grabs. LJ Scott finally made it back onto the field against Clemson; I don't recall having seen him since early on at Syracuse.
2. I might be picking nits here, but wide receiver production has been a little disappointing. That might sound disingenuine given the yards per catch numbers but there's no getting around the fact that there have been a pretty big number of drops the bulk of which are coming from wideouts, and quite a few from a Jamari Staples who came into the season in a UofL uniform with none next to his name. Reggie had a few against Syracuse and I still get the sense that we're trying to find new and creative ways still to get Reggie the football and he was used to some success in that capacity against FSU. He still has great growth potential in his game. Jaylen Smith saw little of the ball against Clemson, and he's got a boatload of talent to turn it up in the 2nd half of the season. One thing that should be pointed out about our receivers...they collectively are a very good group at blocking both at or around the line of scrimmage and downfield; as a downfield blocker James Quick should be singled out as being very good and it's generally something completely unnoticed because your eyes aren't trained to watch a guy doing grunt work twenty-five yards downfield.
3. Heretofore unmentioned....Mason King punting the football. Punt return yards have been precious few; fair catches abundant. He flipped the field at Clemson in a very critical period of the game twice Saturday. With our offense it's taken for granted that you're not going to punt too much, but when called upon...it can be a major factor in determing the quality of field position you have when you get the football back.
And I'm not all that bent out of shape about our placekicking; God knows we have enough candidates and Creque looks like he's settled in a little to me. Lost to many is the big return that probably beat us Saturday was kicked two yards deep into the endzone. We lost our lanes with the added depth and the fumbled catch; that extra space and depth contributed to it.
4. Tight end play has thinned out a little, but that remains a huge weapon; there has to be a reason that Mickey Crum was on the field to start at Clemson (I think we going with a max protect on the first play from scrimmage and a two man deep combo route like Syracuse; the penalty wiped that possibility out because it pulled the believability of a playaction play)...we had Towbridge back also, and I saw some of Standberry. I was saying in my hotel room when we lined up on 3rd and short with the throw to Hikutini to setup the first score that we were throwing to the tight end because that's where Petrino LOVES to hit teams on big plays. We see tremendous flexibility there and Hikutini is clearly emerging as an NFL prospect as expected. Clemson did an exceptional job of anchoring the edge and neutralizing our ability to outflank people with our tight ends across the formation.
5. In the 2nd half I hope we'll see some improvement in run defense, which if we don't we don't have a realistic shot at making the playoffs and will be behind the eight ball if and when we play in a BCS caliber bowl. We're averaging a yield of 3.7 ypc...and that's a little below average. In fact I'd say if you're talking about the Top 7 teams in college football that's a clear deficiency in us vs. that upper echelon of college football. Too much is being made of not sacking Watson because that's alot easier said than done, he's outstanding at getting the ball off and we did flush him multiple times in what wasn't registered as a sack...but if you're flushed on 3rd and 7 and get two yards out of it the end result is the same. That happened at least twice. We lost for many reasons Saturday night, but I'd say a big part of it was yards after contact on first and second down was as big as any; tackling at the point of attack wasn't exactly a coaching clinic. I suspect we'll start seeing a little more Jonathan Greenard (who I never noticed Saturday) and hope we start seeing a little GG Robinson and Amonte Caban. Judging from the Georgians obsession with Grantham's scheme complexity, I suspect much like Rick Pitino and freshmen that Grantham will always defer to scheme knowledge over just getting youth some trigger time. That's why he goes with a smaller number of defensive players than most currently do in college football.
...and that's what makes that 3.7 ypc number so critical. We get sacks when it's 3rd and 6+ because as pointed out so well by Herbstreit with a veteran front seven Grantham's players are very adept at disguising where pressure is coming from; you have no idea how many are coming or where they are coming from. We are a zone blitzing scheme; we rarely jailbreak and go straight man and I suspect that has something to do with our safeties not being really good one-on-one coverage guys. If it's 3rd and 3 you're stripped down in the types of pressure you can bring because running the football or shortening of routes is still a realistic option for an offense.
6. We need more productivity from our kick return unit; I suspect some blocking adjustments or personnel change might be in order because we're too athletic in our returners not to have any crease or crack to penetrate.
7. Our offensive line really settled down in the 2nd half; I noticed a healthy stretch where Kenny Thomas was playing the tackle often manned by McNeil and he had a couple really nice blocks, one that sprung Radcliff straight up the gut on a zone read. Whatever you can say about our offensive coaching staff, you can't say they don't make quality in game adjustments and we changed some things at the half very subtly and it reaped huge dividends against the best defensive team we've played in at least two years.
We have a great deal to build on moving forward; our schedule shapes very similar to last year where we have some open ground and I suspect much will be done in prep for Houston since that will be a short week for us in mid-November.
1. I'm blown away with the most obvious and that's Lamar Jackson's ability to put up staggering numbers and do things I have never seen a quarterback do athletically at any level. But I am further blown away by what I see as a growth within the offense, particularily getting Brandon Radcliff productive. Radcliff is a great kid and you could see last year that the offense that was somewhat designed around him in November 2014 wasn't the offense we were running by mid 2015. Seeing him run with command in the third quarter of the game the other night--and landing a big decleater on Ben Boulware on a block--have me optimistic that we're going to continue to see great things from him for the remainder of the year. You can tell that the linemen really attack their blocks when Brandon has the ball, because he runs with every last ounce of energy he has.
I will also say this about Boulware...yeah the choke was junk, but have him change jersies before the game Saturday night and we win the game in a rout. That kid's a War Daddy.
Jeremy Smith has been big out of the backfield and in short yardage; I think people might be surprised to see that he has 13 grabs. LJ Scott finally made it back onto the field against Clemson; I don't recall having seen him since early on at Syracuse.
2. I might be picking nits here, but wide receiver production has been a little disappointing. That might sound disingenuine given the yards per catch numbers but there's no getting around the fact that there have been a pretty big number of drops the bulk of which are coming from wideouts, and quite a few from a Jamari Staples who came into the season in a UofL uniform with none next to his name. Reggie had a few against Syracuse and I still get the sense that we're trying to find new and creative ways still to get Reggie the football and he was used to some success in that capacity against FSU. He still has great growth potential in his game. Jaylen Smith saw little of the ball against Clemson, and he's got a boatload of talent to turn it up in the 2nd half of the season. One thing that should be pointed out about our receivers...they collectively are a very good group at blocking both at or around the line of scrimmage and downfield; as a downfield blocker James Quick should be singled out as being very good and it's generally something completely unnoticed because your eyes aren't trained to watch a guy doing grunt work twenty-five yards downfield.
3. Heretofore unmentioned....Mason King punting the football. Punt return yards have been precious few; fair catches abundant. He flipped the field at Clemson in a very critical period of the game twice Saturday. With our offense it's taken for granted that you're not going to punt too much, but when called upon...it can be a major factor in determing the quality of field position you have when you get the football back.
And I'm not all that bent out of shape about our placekicking; God knows we have enough candidates and Creque looks like he's settled in a little to me. Lost to many is the big return that probably beat us Saturday was kicked two yards deep into the endzone. We lost our lanes with the added depth and the fumbled catch; that extra space and depth contributed to it.
4. Tight end play has thinned out a little, but that remains a huge weapon; there has to be a reason that Mickey Crum was on the field to start at Clemson (I think we going with a max protect on the first play from scrimmage and a two man deep combo route like Syracuse; the penalty wiped that possibility out because it pulled the believability of a playaction play)...we had Towbridge back also, and I saw some of Standberry. I was saying in my hotel room when we lined up on 3rd and short with the throw to Hikutini to setup the first score that we were throwing to the tight end because that's where Petrino LOVES to hit teams on big plays. We see tremendous flexibility there and Hikutini is clearly emerging as an NFL prospect as expected. Clemson did an exceptional job of anchoring the edge and neutralizing our ability to outflank people with our tight ends across the formation.
5. In the 2nd half I hope we'll see some improvement in run defense, which if we don't we don't have a realistic shot at making the playoffs and will be behind the eight ball if and when we play in a BCS caliber bowl. We're averaging a yield of 3.7 ypc...and that's a little below average. In fact I'd say if you're talking about the Top 7 teams in college football that's a clear deficiency in us vs. that upper echelon of college football. Too much is being made of not sacking Watson because that's alot easier said than done, he's outstanding at getting the ball off and we did flush him multiple times in what wasn't registered as a sack...but if you're flushed on 3rd and 7 and get two yards out of it the end result is the same. That happened at least twice. We lost for many reasons Saturday night, but I'd say a big part of it was yards after contact on first and second down was as big as any; tackling at the point of attack wasn't exactly a coaching clinic. I suspect we'll start seeing a little more Jonathan Greenard (who I never noticed Saturday) and hope we start seeing a little GG Robinson and Amonte Caban. Judging from the Georgians obsession with Grantham's scheme complexity, I suspect much like Rick Pitino and freshmen that Grantham will always defer to scheme knowledge over just getting youth some trigger time. That's why he goes with a smaller number of defensive players than most currently do in college football.
...and that's what makes that 3.7 ypc number so critical. We get sacks when it's 3rd and 6+ because as pointed out so well by Herbstreit with a veteran front seven Grantham's players are very adept at disguising where pressure is coming from; you have no idea how many are coming or where they are coming from. We are a zone blitzing scheme; we rarely jailbreak and go straight man and I suspect that has something to do with our safeties not being really good one-on-one coverage guys. If it's 3rd and 3 you're stripped down in the types of pressure you can bring because running the football or shortening of routes is still a realistic option for an offense.
6. We need more productivity from our kick return unit; I suspect some blocking adjustments or personnel change might be in order because we're too athletic in our returners not to have any crease or crack to penetrate.
7. Our offensive line really settled down in the 2nd half; I noticed a healthy stretch where Kenny Thomas was playing the tackle often manned by McNeil and he had a couple really nice blocks, one that sprung Radcliff straight up the gut on a zone read. Whatever you can say about our offensive coaching staff, you can't say they don't make quality in game adjustments and we changed some things at the half very subtly and it reaped huge dividends against the best defensive team we've played in at least two years.
We have a great deal to build on moving forward; our schedule shapes very similar to last year where we have some open ground and I suspect much will be done in prep for Houston since that will be a short week for us in mid-November.
