First of all, thanks to Mark for actually mustering up the courage to write a post last night. I just shut it down and watched Hoarders. Also, a huge thank you to Sir Patrick in Florida for making me feel better about myself. I may take Virginia Tech football too seriously, but at least it's not dolls.
Random Things:
- At some point today, one of my friends is going to get punched in the throat. Sometimes it's just gotta happen. A good throat punch always makes friendships stronger.
- On the unis: The helmets looked sweet, but the numbers didn't work for me. The circuitry fade-pattern looked fine on the pants and shoulder stripes, but didn't look good on the numbers and made them hard to read at times. The visibility of the numbers were my biggest complaint.
- Stop scheduling non-cupcakes for the opener. Just quit doing it.
- This season is far from over. While the national title is out of reach, the conference title isn't as long as we improve. However, if the players feel like the season's over we're going to lose three or four more games. It's up to the coaches to keep that from happening.
- Let's see. In the first quarter we had a botched snap, had a punt blocked, had a kickoff go out of bounds, made some inexcusable mental errors in special teams and made life pretty easy for Kellen Moore. A whole lot of that boils down to coaching and having your team ready to play. And I'm convinced there is no coach in this country better at having his team ready to go than Chris Petersen. Every time I watch Boise State, they are prepared for everything that's thrown at them.
- That said, I have a feeling we're going to play like garbage against James Madison.
- I really wish OBNUG would just send over their post for the blog bet so I can start posting about the Dukes.
The Offense:
- Yes, I realize that every time we lose a game it's Bryan Stinespring's fault and every time we win it's because of Bud Foster. I got that memo long ago. There's no need to re-send it after every game. Thanks.
- While we're on that subject: It's B-r-y-a-n S-t-i-n-e-s-p-r-i-n-g.
- Continuing on that subject: The one play call that was absolutely horrendous was the decision to pass on 3rd-and-8 at our 33 with a little over two minutes to go in the game. Yeah, if we get the first down, the game's over. But Boise State had no timeouts left. If they had one left I'd be all for going for the first down and ending it. But since BSU couldn't stop the clock, they would have gotten the ball back with about one minute to go if you run the ball on that play.
- Surprisingly, the Stiney Screen actually worked in this game. After the first one in the second half, which was stopped for no gain, we gained a first down on it the next drive and might have had a nice gain on it on the next play if Jarret Boykin hadn't slipped.
- Those screens also forced Boise to not clog up the middle as much and gave Ryan Williams probably the only running room he had all day.
- We couldn't run to the left or up the middle at any point during the game, but runs to the right weren't failing nearly as dramatically as Mark pointed out during the game thread. So it was really frustrating to watch us try and run to the left side on nearly every down.
- Tyrod Taylor was a man possessed last night and should have erased any doubt that people had about his abilities as a quarterback. He led the Hokies back from a 17-point deficit by completing 15 of his first 18 passes and running for 85 yards (with sacks taken out). It was one of the gutsiest performances we've seen from a Tech quarterback and if he'd had some help he would have come away victorious.
- Our offensive line is horrible. Their D-line was as physical as advertised and we got manhandled. If there isn't some serious improvement up front it's going to be a long season for Williams, Taylor and Darren Evans. Two-point-nine yards per carry. Every year we hear how this O-line is better than last year's and how everything's going to be fine and the world is filled with lollipops and balloons. And then every year the O-line is terrible again. Of course, next August we'll fall for it all over again.
The Defense:
- That was some of the worst tackling I've seen from a Virginia Tech defense. Bud Foster said before the game that his fear was shoddy tackling and he turned out to be spot-on. We had a lot of guys going for kill shots or grabbing at the ball instead of trying to bring guys down.
- We didn't hear John Graves' name a whole lot during the game. That's never a good sign.
- Steven Friday did a decent enough job of getting pressure on Moore after the first quarter.
- I actually though Jeron Gouveia-Winslow, Rashad Carmichael and Antone Exum played well. JGW's pass coverage was good for the majority of the game.
- We couldn't defend any passes to the middle part of the field, meaning we have issues with our middle linebackers and free safeties in pass coverage again. Although I did think Davon Morgan had a decent game.
- Take away the 71-yard tribute to arm-tackling and we still have up 4.2 yards per carry, which kind of surprised me. I thought we did a good enough job of stopping their run game when it mattered, but we were never able to stop their run game consistently enough to make them one-dimensional.
- So how do we fix the defense? Is it as simple as fixing the missed tackles? It was in 2008 when the defense did the same thing in the loss to ECU and struggled early only to rebound to win an ACC title. The defense might be fixable if we cut down the missed tackles and shore up the middle of the field.
Hey, Boise:
- Your team is certainly ready for prime time, but your fans aren't. That's the only thing I'm going to say on the subject.