What I saw Saturday night looked a lot like a Tyrone Willingham coached football team. Last week I said there is no excuse for losing 33 to 3 to any team on this schedule. We have too much talent to lose like that and it means there is a coaching inadequecy. Well, this week is no different. There is no excuse for us to be last in the country rushing. There is also no excuse for us to give up 15 sacks through two games or to have more three-and-out's than I can even count. Our third down conversion and red zone touchdown scoring percentages are downright awful. I'll concede that a new, inexperienced offensive line, with a young, inexperienced quarterback, and defenses that stack the line of scrimmage and play press-man coverage make it tough to move the ball. But 15 sacks through two games and dead last rushing in the country? There is also no excuse for going 10 quarters of play without scoring an offensive touchdown and suffering four 20+ point losses in a row.
The reasons for playing like this are two-fold, coaching, and players. First, I'll delve into the coaching. We played not to lose rather than playing to win on Saturday. Our offensive strategy was conservative. That's acceptable (in fact it's preferrable) coming out of the gate trying to break in a new, young quarterback, but at some point you have to take the reigns off and try and win. He did what I suggested in my keys to winning, he got the ball to Allen in the open field, added some screen passes into the game plane, and he grew Clausen's confidence with short, safe routes. But Penn State's defense is pretty good (albeit not great) so it was expected that they would zero in on what we were trying to do. We never made an adjustment to open things up and stretch the field. We had two inexcusable penalties the coaching staff was directly responsible for, a delay of game and twelve men on the field, both after time outs. If that isn't classic Willingham I don't know what is.
Now, I know what I said above is true: we have a young, inexperienced offensive line and quarterback, and defenses are going to put eight in the box and force us to throw it. I also know that we have very little talent, relatively speaking, in our two upper classes. That does spell disaster for our offense. However, the results thus far haven't been disastrous, they have been catastrophic. If you have a young, inexperienced offensive line, you simplify things. You change your blocking schemes to something simple like man-on, man-inside. You focus on a physical, angle-based blocking, downhill running game. You cave everyone down and kick the defensive containment outside. You don't use zone run blocking schemes or complex pass protection schemes. You dumb it down until they can handle it and then you expand from there.
That is why I thought our offense would look entirely different this year from the previous years. In 2005 and 2006 (especially in 2006) we used the pass to open up the run. The running game was much more of a finesse running game predicated primarily on zone blocking schemes and consisted of a lot of draws and runs we could utilize in our play-action passing game. Since I didn't expect us to have much of a passing game this year with a young, inexperienced offensive line and quarterback, I thought our running game philosophy would shift to one that was more straight ahead and more physical. It's tremendously more easy to execute and it lends itself to bootleg and roll-out passes. Unfortunately, Weis hasn't adopted this running philosphy, preferring to stick with this more finesse running game. Without a passing game to open it up, we are left with very few options. And adopting the spread option shown against Georgia Tech isn't a viable option. You stick to what you know, you stick to the type of pro-style offense that is proven. But you only use the simple parts of it that you can practice often and perfect. The offensive progression so far, to me, has been a coaching disaster.
I think some of our struggles are related to the bad combination of our offense and the defenses we have faced thus far. But I think the rest has to be pinned on coaching. The offensive football genius and strategic X's and O's advantage that I believed we had with Weis (and he promised) has evaportated. We need dramatic improvements on the offensive side of the ball, and we need them quickly.
It doesn't help when your players don't hold up their end of the bargain. When you are young, playing with a conservative gameplan that isn't going to stretch the field, you can't afford turnovers, penalties, and poor special teams play. Last week it was turnovers, this week it was penalties and poor special teams play. And both weeks it has been a lack of physical play up front on our offensive line. That isn't Weis, that is poor execution, poor decision making, and the attitude of the players. Some of it can be attributed to a lack of team discipline and attitude and that has to fall on the shoulders of the coach but he isn't the one on the field. Against Penn State and Georgia Tech we were in the game until our defense tired and couldn't carry us on their shoulders. And we were in the games despite the poor player performances in the form of turnovers, penalties, and poor special teams play. To me that says two things: our defense is playing pretty well and Penn State and Georgia Tech really aren't that good.
I'm not saying we need to panick and fire Weis. It's been two really bad games. But I am saying there is plenty of evidence to believe that Weis may not be the person to turn things around. I think a better indication will be how much we improve by season's end. However, playing the lower quality teams on our schedule might not be the best indication of our improvement. I'll briefly go into our offense, defense, and special teams without talking too much about the overall game. I think most of our problems lie in what I said above.
I'll get it out of the way up front, Clausen looked good. There are concerns, but not many. I'd like to say that it's impossible to project a quarterback's success based on a single game's performance. That said, I'll try and detail what I saw. He played with poise, he played loose, he didn't force anything. On the balls I saw that he did "force" he pretty much put it where only our guy could get it. He ran the offense pretty well. His statics were decent but were really better as quite a few of his incompletions were balls he threw away or dropped passes.
Many times he held the ball too long. Many times he starred down his receiver. Some of it was deeper routes by our recievers, some of it was Clausen not being experienced, and some of it was just the adrenaline, environment, and crowd. Additionally, his mechanics weren't great. Many of his motions were rushed, he didn't execute play action very well, and his footing wasn't the best. But that is mostly expected in his first start. The bottom line is that he showed the tools to be a very good quarterback and the mechanics, the execution, and the speed at which he plays will improve with time. His release and mechanics were what really jumped out at me on his high school film. He hasn't lost that, he just needs a little time. In fact, I thought we should have gone no-huddle starting in the second half.
My only major concern with Clausen is his arm strength. I'm not sure he has the velocity on his ball and strength to a) stretch the field and b) throw the deep out. The former is something we desperately need and the latter is a staple of Weis' offense.
The running backs didn't look bad. I thought Jabbie looked pretty good. I thought Allen looked pretty good but a little slower than last week. Again, no one had much room to work due to the poor offensive line play. Thomas looked timid again and hasn't, to date, shown me he is the physical running back he's been advertised as. I'm not sure where Aldridge was. I think he's the best back of the bunch. Schwapp missed a huge block on the third and short that Thomas couldn't pick up on the sweep. Coming into the season I thought this was going to be a strength of ours. We have yet to prove that is the case.
I thought our receivers, once again, looked good. They caught the ball well minus a few exceptions and they seem to be very capable of getting open. If we could only protect our quarterback long enough to get the ball to them. I don't know where Carlson and company are. I echo Dave's observation concerning Carlson. He's still the same player he was last year but the perception at the end of this season may be that he isn't as good as he used to be. In the NFL draft where momentum seems to be every bit as important as production and level of play, Carlson might have lost himself quite a bit of money coming back this year. It seems completely obvious to me that a great way to stretch the field is throwing down the middle to our trio of excellent tight ends. I guess it's just too obvious for Weis to do it.
Our offensive line played horrendously. I'm in favor of benching Paul Duncan for whoever we have that can stand and take up space. For the second straight week he was abused. On the play where Clausen was clocked Duncan, playing left tackle, took his first step with his RIGHT foot. That is punishable by death in some states. Apparently, Indiana and Pennsylvania aren't two of them. I still don't know why we don't have our running backs chipping to the side of Duncan. If we don't improve our play here in a hurry we are in for a very long season. Latina might be looking for a new job at season's end.
I thought our defense really played well given how long they were on the field. Occasionally we gave up some inside runs we should have stopped, but we were physical, we played fast, and we were aggressive. I really think our defense is night and day from last year. It might not show up on the scoreboard or in the yards surrendered but that is as much about special teams play and field position as it is anything else. At the end of the game Penn State's two and three yard runs showed up as seven and eight yard runs as our defense wore down. An offense that does nothing but three-and-out has that effect.
Trevor Laws was unblockable. He had a superb game. Kuntz was disruptive at times but he also plays his way out of position at times.
The linebackers had much better containment this game, although I'm not sure they were challenged as much. The only negative I would say we had on defense was that our inside linebackers, particularly Smith and Brockington, still have trouble shedding blocks. We may need a solution for John Ryan on the outside. He can't play in space due to a lack of speed, he doesn't generate pressure from the outside, and he doesn't play well at the point of attack.
Our secondary played well. We didn't give up but one big play and I thought that was a good one to give up. At that point of the game Bruton had to gamble to try and make something happen. We kept things in front of us and tackled well for the most part.
The punt and kickoff returns were terrible. Zibi's return was nice and Bruton continues to impress as a gunner on our punt squad. I thought Whitaker showed a huge leg. Overall, this has been a disappointing group for us. We have too much potential to not make this area of our team a difference maker.
Things might get worse before they get better. Right now Michigan is the talk of the town but the attention will quickly shift to us if we lose to them next week. And just wait, since a mobile quarterback and spread offense has tormented Michigan for the past two weeks, Weis might get cute again and pull Demetrius back out of his bag of completely useless tricks. Additionally, I thought Boston College looked like one of the better teams in college football on Saturday. And if you think Georgia Tech and Penn State have good defenses, just wait until USC comes into town.
If Saturday proved anything it's that there aren't many good football teams or coaches out there. Many teams were in games they had no business being in from a talent perspective. Anyone can beat anyone on any given day. This is something we should all take solace in as we move forward in this season. It may provide the only palpable hope we have for watching our games.
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