Acceptable topics may include: 1) Whether our Wide Receivers will actually run block this week? 2) Whether Kyle Hamilton and Tommy Tremble were legitimate recruiting misses under the Kirby Smart regime? 3) How much joy Georgia Tech losing to Citadel brought us? 4) Who was on the right side of the great Euro/Dallas war, a historical analysis?
Tried to go to a couple sports bars with my wife and kids after the game Saturday and everywhere had like a two hour wait. On a whim, I discovered the game day lifehack of hitting up the lobby bar at the hilton. Was quiet so my daughter could nap. Had air conditioning, plenty of seating, and a full bar restaurant. Food wasn't the best but didn't care. Wound up watching the end of the tech game with some old timers at the bar that enjoyed techs misery as much as I did. Just a great experience all the way around.
Good thing we had the foresight to schedule a good non-conference home and home. Also, Redav will you put the thread icon back up? I think it defaults to nothing when you edit the thread title.
Random musings after the game. Defense played well, but 47 drop backs with 0 sacks is concerning, as is only 3 TFL. Nonetheless impressed by the defensive performance considering the injuries. I was also impressed by ND's physicality. Didn't expect to see that. McGhee is utterly horrendous. I'm so confused by our RB usage. Cook and White combine for 1 touch? I've got to hear why we threw so many balls in the flats/within 3 yards of the LOS. I suspect it's Fromm, but I'll wait until we hear more to opine further. It's a shame, because Fromm's deep ball is fucking incredible. UNLEASH THE GODDAMN FURY from time to time. George Pickens not getting a catch is criminal. Covering opposing TEs is going to be a recurring problem this year, I think. Hot Rod was the MVP last night. Jake Camarda is a flat out liability. JR Reed seems like he's taking that step from underrated star to household name. Tyler Simmons has never been known as a great hands guy, so why in the balls did we have him fielding punts a week after injuring his elbow? I've shit on Lecounte a lot, but I thought he played a great game. Divaad Wilson is a stud. Somebody named Aaron Olalude is credited with 2 tackles. I'm assuming on special teams? Even with the injury situation, OL wasn't great. Swift was fantastic, and made a lot of chicken salad throughout the evening. Can't be upset with a win over a top 10 team.
Supposedly Zamir has ball security problems in practice/we saw it once in a game But I would still have him in over Herrien
Having both our starting corners out was killing us down the stretch. Claypool was abusing McGhee. And yeah Dean has said there's ball security issues with Zamir. I don't hate herrien though.
I still don’t understand why Stokes came back in on the last few plays. Did we just need the stop so badly that he decided to tough it out?
Didn't someone say that he and Daniel were back out there with no McGhee on the last drive? If so, that makes sense and I'm glad Stokes gutted it out.
I didn't get that either. How was he so hurt he couldn't come back until then. Were we that desperate at the end?
I mean there were 2 mins left the last drive where a td/extra point wins the game We had to be desperate
Some of your complaints are because of how ND plays On defense ND schemes to keep everything in front of them, they try to limit at the expense of everything else the big play. The belief is that college offenses cannot consistently drive 75+ yards. It works, that’s why Fromm kept going to checkdowns, the routes aren’t open. ND also started 4 seniors at DB and all 4 will be drafted vs your extremely young WRs. ND’s Oline is very good at pass blocking, only Georgia and Bama recruit better than ND on OL if you look at recruiting rankings. (Although OL recruiting rankings are a scam since it’s obvious kids from the midwest and plains are underranked as OL recruits.) It’s fucking criminal ND cannot get RBs to play behind that talent. ND is also built to stand up to the physicality of Georgia because the schedule they play demands that type of roster. That shouldn’t have been a surprise considering 2017 in South Bend was a fist fight as well Georgia will be fine, you played a really disciplined team that makes you beat them. You did don’t forget that. Go win the whole thing, you only get a talent like Fromm once in a generation
Same thing with Wilson really. Couldn't go in the first half, appeared to mash people the entire second half. Almost makes you wonder if he was suspended.
The two back shoulder throws that Fromm made to pretty much win the game were unstoppable plays. Can’t even blame the cb on any of these, just perfect
I don't know I thought UGA played pretty good last night. Kmet lit UGA up, but outside of him the defense kept ND's offense down. ND had one successful drive the entire game that led to a td, which happened after UGA was up 2 scores late in the 4th quarter. The offense was shutdown in the first half, but came out strong in the second half.
Disagree. Herrien is solid and is a violent runner. He’s a great compliment to Swift. I don’t fully trust Zamir yet. He needs to continue to ease back in against UTenn and SCU. Herrien had a nice run around 12:30 in the third quarter. He could have gone out of bounds standing up but instead he lowered his shoulder and punished a defender on the way out. It was a microcosm of why I love Herrien. Talent wise he is a B- but the kid plays like his life depends on it. He’s a perfect compliment to Swift.
Without knowing shit, I'd assume Herrien is probably one of if not your best pass pro back with Swift being solidly ahead of the others atm with the ball in his hands in the actual game. That usually explained the #2 back being the veteran guy for us in the past. Herrien isn't chopped liver or anything though, Swift just has you spoiled and Cook has shown flashes.
Herrien runs hard as shit. One of our beat writers mentioned previously that Kirby said Herrien is the hardest guy to tackle in practice. I also don't recall Herrien ever fumbling.
dont know whether i congratulated yall back on saturday (as it was 6am for me) but yall played great and were a very deserving winner
im worried about next weeks game against UVA given how much we struggle with mobile QBs but yeah, i feel better about the loss on saturday than i did about the 2 wins
He punishes every single tackler. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more physical runner for a guy his size.
given the youth (right?) in your defensive backfield i was really impressed with those guys. Sure Book sucks, but still. My super quick feedback on your team QB: Fromm is awesome, can do more than the OC allows him to do I think. RB: Swift is AMAZING, as great as guys like Herrien played i wasnt holding my breath like i was with Swift. I had the same with ETN in the playoffs and with USC way back when, but it doesnt happen often. WR: Second game against us where Cager was amazing. I think he was the best of the guys out there. Id love to get transfers in like him and Robertson. The Frosh receivers will be great, but I think mainly next year. Id feed them in the rest of the blowouts as you really only need 1 of em to get ready for the SECCG/playoffs TE: nothing much to note OL: Was a bit surprised they really didnt do any deep drops, i understand it given our (thusfar unproductive) talents at end. The dropoff was very limited. Think yall actually looked better on the OL when Kindley was out, but think that was a correlation =/= causation thing DL: Solid, less scary than the last time we played. Really good at keeping the linebackers clean. Dont read tooo much into killing our run game, our backs suck and our best 2 backs were injured. We really fucked up recruiting there LB: No Roquans but damn there is still so much lateral speed. Had 1 or 2 times where I thought we were gonna have the edge and ended up just having to cut upfield as your backers closed down DB: So many PBUs. helped that Book sucks and things became predictable as he wont ever challenge anyone deep. Kickers: Ruxin is automatic wrapup: yall can stomach injuries and we cant, at least not at some positions. The talent gap was noticable at a few spots, mainly at LB and RB. Think if we play the game 100 times ND wins about 10-15 which would equate to a difference of about 10 points. Think the default score for this game would be about 27-17 or something like that
I'd pretty much agree with all your points. I think a lot of the way the game played out makes sense from a motivational stand point and Kirby said something about it post game. Notre Dame played like a team that everyone told them how they hadn't won big games and they were going to get blown out. They seemed really motivated to prove a point and UGA had to really work for everything they got and ND wasn't going to lay down and die. I think the difference in the game was the depth like you mentioned.
That many drop backs without a sack doesn’t mean much to me because we had to account for Book’s running ability. We had to contain him more. So that added to not having Campbell or Stokes is going to end up a bad time.
I think it's humorous that Auburn can go absolutely steal a game they should have lost and get mad props for it. LSU can go beat a good Texas team on the road but with the caveat that their defense was torched and get mad props for it. We take care of business against a team that is arguably better than both Oregon and Texas (I think they are, from what I saw - but they are in the same class regardless) and we get nothing but a bunch of shit for not scoring more points and for kicking a FG. Any win against a top ten team is a good win. Yes, Kirby needs to adjust his style from time to time and the jury is still out on Coley overall. It just seems like the "I played saxophone in HS" national media is wowed by gaudy offensive numbers while completely ignoring the fact that we probably have the best overall defense in America.
honestly there is an expectation point involved here. Yall were already considered to be elite (or if you are of the bama and clemson are the only 2 elite teams kinda guy a tier 2 team with OSU and OU) whilst LSU was a surprise and expectations for auburn were just (nationally that is) way lower, which feels stupid to say in an odd year
I hear you and obviously that’s true. But Clemson managed 24 whole points against an average TAMU team at home and Bama hasn’t played a team with a pulse and yet has still struggled to run the ball. There is a double standard for sure. I mean, a lot of people are ranking LSU ahead of us and they just gave up 38 to a putrid offense.
Just based on the podcasts i listen to but ive heard plenty of comments about Clemson sleepwalking through the season
UGA played well, passing game will continue to improve and the younger guys like Blaylock should become a bigger piece of the offense in the coming weeks.
Things that make me feel good about our performance against Vandy vs. LSU’s. We gave up 225 yards to 374. Gave up 3.9 yards per rush to 4.3. Gave up 3.4 yards per pass to 5.9. 8.1 yards per rush to 5.0 323 rushing yards to 181. 2 sacks to 3. Things that concern me about our performance against Vandy vs. LSU’s. 156 passing yards to 418. 6.8 yards per pass to 11.0. 3 TFL to 9. 2 pass breakups to 9. Against ND, we were credited with 0 QB hurries to go along with 0 sacks. Our havoc rate has to be pretty bad at this point.
PBUs is also part of havoc rate and yall had like 8 of those (thanks to book partially, partially cuz of awesome DBs)
I actually thought Book played well outside of the Divaad Wilson pick where the throw was behind the receiver. I expected much worse based on the way you guys talked about him.
I hear you but this season should be this season. What happened last year is barely relevant if it’s relevant at all. LSU can’t stop anybody.
I get what you are saying but he is deceptively mediocre. The way he is bad isnt about what he does, he is accurate and fairly mobile. Its all about what he didnt and doesnt do. He never ever took a shot deep despite having great players to give those 50-50 balls to. A bunch of the PBUs wouldnt happen if the DBs would have to worry, just a little bit, about the ball going over their head. When you dont have a running game, like we didnt, you cant allow the D to not cover the whole field. Basically you could play a zone with 2 men over the top and 5 guys taking a zone 5-10 yards behind the LOS and rush 3 and he cant do a thing and your DBs are still covered if they fuck up tackling.
i listen to PAPN, Solid Verbal, Shutdown Fullcast (barely a football podcast) cover 2, cover 3 and the audible. Keep in mind im in my car a ton and dont get normal CFB coverage as im dutch so podcasts are my main source of info