1st Half Notes

by Mike (bart), Monday, September 01, 2025, 11:49 (240 days ago) @ Mike (bart)

- Love missed a couple of holes. On his first carry of the game we had it blocked up nicely but he cut inside instead of bouncing out where he had room and not a lot of colored jerseys. More frustratingly, on the 4th offensive possession we ran Counter and everyone blocked it up perfectly. Love didn't trust Knapp to pick up his block so cut it up prematurely for 3 yards whereas had he followed the path of the play it would have gone big.

- On the 1st half TD drive they must have also liked the look of that counter play Love missed because we came in with some OL movement. Price had a nice 14 yard run on a counter play. The explosive run was an iso play with Rairdon as a lead blocker. We also had a 3rd and 1 conversion on this drive where the OL reset the line of scrimmage rather nicely. The goal line series was kind of a disaster though. Definitely seemed like our OL was at an athleticism deficit vs. the Miami DL.

- On rewatch of the first half I'm going to revise up the grade for the DL and revise downward, rather significantly, the grade for the LBs. These guys -- Bowen and Sneed especially --- just did not trigger on anything. Catching everything; blockers, ball carriers, you name it. They also didn't seem to do great getting everyone lined up. Miami had a 4th and 1 conversion following Field's fumble where they went unbalanced and we were just totally flummoxed. Better LB play would have led to a lot more stuffs in the run game.

- We brought more pressure on Beck in the 1st half than I thought. We used a 6 man pressure to get off the field following Field's fumble (ball was deflected by Bothelo but might have been a pick). We got Beck off his spot fairly often.

- We ran some real garbage scheme in the end of half drive. In particular we had Miami at 2nd and 7 at the +45 or so and ran a play wherein we rushed 4 and had some kind of lame-ass bail coverage to the field so we gave them a free 8 or 9 yards in a critical situation. Barf.

- The Daniels TD has been covered already. Never should have been thrown and Shuler just biffed the hell out of the play. Moore got beaten by the double move, but he had safety help over the top so jumping the underneath route was fine.