Finshed both. Very brief breakdown. Offense: -Miami showed man, played man, loaded the box and said Mertz has to beat us. -Mertz had time and missed passes down the field earlier in the game, later he had no time -RT was being speed rushed like those blue blocker bags in practice -Route trees continue to be lackluster to say the least. -Run game was decent and often just 1 guy getting an angle on their block away from popping. -Lagway is an athlete, duh. Defense: -Safety play is still a glaring issue. -LB play was generally solid, step up from last year. -DE could not win 1v1's, DT were actually decent. One play had Slackman beat triple team faster than ends beat OTs. -Miami generally played well, even on plays where UF defended fine they were just beat by good playcalling/execution. -Several head scratching D calls, from Ward's perspective it was "taking candy from a baby"
The passing scheme doesn’t do the receivers any favors. The two missed TD opportunities by Mertz in the first half hurt. The conservative, predictable play-calling hurt. There is no excuse for a team to be able to play man-to-man all day against your offense all day without being punished for it. Miami knew exactly what our tendencies were in certain down/distances and we did exactly what they thought we would. The first 3 and 6 play that was a sweep to Wilson was an example of that. They stacked the box and were waiting for it. Expecting Boardingham to 1-on-1 block their rush end was another WTF moment. The OT on that side ended up blocking no one, and Boardingham got destroyed. Billy is stubbornly trying to run an offense that his players can’t execute consistently, and refuses to adapt. I feel a little better knowing that there were plays there to be made, but have little hope that changes will be made to build on those opportunities. The passing scheme is what it is, and changing it mid season will be almost impossible.
Watching back to back it's night and day watching scheming players open and QB delivering on time and with great placement. It looked HS vs NFL.
Wilson is quick, but he doesn’t have the mass/strength to fight through tough coverage. In general our WR route running is meh. Wilson would excel at the quick slants, but of course we don’t call them. Get him the ball in space and let him run. They also talked about having deep patterns called when you know a receiving TE is blocking their best pass rusher. We don’t option out. Shane and Harris, this week (both separately) talked about the little details the players miss that stop them from being good. Both attributed to coaching…. James alludes to the same things. Wilson is quick, but he doesn’t have the mass/strength to fight through tough coverage. In general our WR route running is meh. Wilson would excel at the quick slants, but of course we don’t call them. Get him the ball in space and let him run. They also talked about having deep patterns called when you know a receiving TE is blocking their best pass rusher. We don’t option out. Shane and Harris, this week (both separately) talked about the little details the players miss that stop them from being good. Both attributed to coaching…. James alludes to the same things.
He's never been wrong about lack of execution, but if they never execute that's still on the coach. Like OK your scheme isn't as terrible as it looks, you just can't teach the players to execute it. Is that better?
What I've noticed is Napier runs the same plays. How we started against Miami is exactly how we started against Utah last year. He had 7 months to come up with something new and all he did was pull out the 1st possession of the Utah game. So I was on YouTube this afternoon and came across Ali Peek's latest and guess what she discusses, the Miami DC knew exactly what offensive plays we were going to use and when. Said he was amazed how every game is a mirror of the Utah game, that it doesn't who we are playing, it's the same plays. If that's really true, defenses from now on have the blueprint to shutting out offense down completely. She talks about it at the 3:20 mark, the quote from the Miami DC.
This is why he has not given up the play calling. They watch the film and say "if we just execute here". Problem is, It feels like every play has to be a perfect 11 man show for it to be successful. We are not going to win 1-1s on every play. This offense is called "in a perfect world" offense. If all goes right and the QB make a high level read/throw, it works. While I do agree Mertz struggled, There has to be some easier passing concepts we can give him to get him going.
Which is exactly why this isn't a meltdown over one game. As I mentioned before, it's the same game every time which is what she says in the video. She also says how some of us felt about the offense last year overall. Didn't hate it as much as some but felt the flow of the calling was not good and he should have a coordinator to call games at a minimum. Sorry but someone who got ran out of Clemson for the same complaints and then continues to limit his own offense year after year is strategically limited. It's not arrogance if you don't know how bad your product is. It's ignorance. It also explains why he won at Louisiana and the way he won. He outalented his competition at that level and still, most games were very close games. The writing was on the wall and many on the other sites said as much but I didn't pay attention to them then because they always bitch. They were dead on.
Does anyone know if Mertz can audible/alter the play call based on what he sees? I do wonder about that.
Chris doering put a lot of blame on Badger for running a bad route on that dep post but GNFP showed a different perspective in that Mertz made a horrible throw that led him to flatten out his post route. First off I agree with the throw being the way bigger problem not the route. Secondly, careful about putting too much weight into some of the analayses including from former gators. These are interpretations sometimes. I prefer the Seth varnadore videos because he openly admits he doesn't know what players are being coached to do relative to their assignments.
That is my takeaway over the past seasons with the same mistakes by multiple players. Poor fundamentals, which equals poor coaching.
The Mertz situation is tough because he played tough and with so much heart but the reality is he is limited stretching the field. When he does take his shots the ball placement isn't good and it wasn't last year either. How do you not start him but at the same time.....