Clemson Post Game Pandemonium

by BirdGT on Sep 11, 2009 8:51 AM EDT

I'd like to hit up several key points about last night's game:

Players of the Game
I agree that Scott Blair was crucial in making his 3 kicks but the play of Jerrard Tarrant and Derrick Morgan kept Georgia Tech from getting blown out at home. Tarrant's 7 tackles, 2 pass break ups, and a HUGE punt return for TD made up for our secondary's inability to stop Jacoby Ford in the second half. Derrick Morgan is a sack machine. All-American defensive end? I think so. Anyone that has to be constantly double teamed and is still racking up 10 tackles plus 3 sacks is gonna get some mean media time come end of season selection committees.

Offensively, Anthony Allen was the only guy that consistently produced last night. Ultimately everything came down to Josh Nesbitt marching the team down the field twice in a row when we couldn't find any rhythm at all in the second half. Nesbitt defines the phrase "quarterbacks have to have short term memory."

3rd Down Woes
Here are the third down play selections we had and the yardage to gain a first down: incomplete pass (13), -3 yard rush (4), incomplete pass (6), incomplete pass (5), incomplete pass (8), 0 yard rush (4), 5 yard rush (6), 1 yard rush (3), incomplete pass (9), 24 yard pass (9), 4 yard rush (1), 2 yard rush (9), 39 yard pass (11), 4 yard rush (5). So play calling on third down included 7 passes (50% of 3rd downs). We only converted 3 of them. I'm not the coach and I'm not complaining about a win. I'm just wondering why we passed 50% of the time on third down when we passed only 23% of the time all game. Our passing game is a huge liability at this point, in my opinion.

I think a lot of the 3rd down issues were caused by Clemson's D selling out on stopping D-Train. Every time Dwyer touched the ball, all Clemson defenders swarmed him like bats outta Hell. They would not let our offensive game breaker do his thing.

Field Position
Average starting field position (excluding GT's kneel): Clemson on the CU 30.3 yard line, Tech on the 29.4 GT yard line. First half average starting field position: Clemson on the CU 30.0 yard line, Tech on the GT 33.8 yard line. Second half average starting field position: Clemson on the CU 30.7 yard line, Tech on the GT 23.5 yard line. GT gave up 10.2 yards of field position per drive in the second half, which was definitely a contributing factor to Tech's huge reduction in offensive production. Here's a diagram of what I'm talking about:

Other Stuff
I thought the whiteout looked awesome on TV. I looked up the attendance and saw there were about 3,000 empty seats, which is not bad for a Thursday night. We only had 49.3k for Miami last year and 52.2k for VT in '07. I do believe this is the first time we haven't sold out for Clemson in a long time, however.

Also, here's something slightly ironic and reassuring for those paying for my psychic hot line (1-900-BIRD-MIND). One of my questions for Block-C was, "How many trick plays will Dabo call tonight? How many of those trick plays will result in a turnover or points for GT?" Winfield censored my question for the Block-C crew but my foreshadow paid off huge, eh? I'll give myself a pat on the back for that one.

Closing Thoughts
We had very little offensive continuity last night. Clemson obviously schemed for us. Paul Johnson adjusted for our final two drives (BLESSED BE ALLAH). We won. It was terrifying, disheartening, and relieving all in one fell swoop. Thankfully, Scott Blair and Josh Nesbitt are money. Sadly, Miami got a front row seat to our inefficiencies and an extra 5 days off to practice for us.

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Thoughts

In my opinion, the offensive problems we had were all ours, not Clemson doing anything right. It seemed like, in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, we went away from the pitch and concentrated on the dive. I get ther fact that the dive sets up the pitch, but I think we overused it. Our playcalling seemed very stale for the midpoint of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Nesbitt and the fact that he took the team on his shoulders on those last 2 drives last night, but he is amazingly inconsistent when he throws the ball. That drive at the end of the 2nd quarter when he threw 2 consecutive balls out of bounds on opposite sides of the field made me crazy…

Maker's Mark--nectar of the gods...

by chrisinindy on Sep 11, 2009 11:01 AM EDT via mobile reply actions

Yeah

For a bit there, I was afraid Nesbitt was channeling his inner Reggie Ball. But after replaying the game last night, all of his picks and most of his horrible throws were all the product of him not setting his feet before releasing. He was either on the run or doing some wierd jump thing while releasing, all of which should be easily correctable through solid coaching.

As for the dive issue, I almost agree. But from watching CPJ throughout the years I know that’s his intent. He will purposely go three straight series with nothing but a dive, just to pull the counter (or pitch) we saw in the fourth quarter that was integral to those two successful drives, or in some cases the long pass. It did have me scared a bit though and I was telling my wife that he needed to switch it up soon or we were going to run out of time.

"This is America, if we can’t self-righteously look down on others and blame them for our faults, the commies win."-----Cormican on Bleeding Green Nation w/r/t fans overreacting to the Eagles signing of Michael Vick

by Jesse28 on Sep 14, 2009 2:23 PM EDT up reply actions

It was obvious that Clemson was not going to let Dwyer be the one who beat them. Fortunately, we have so many playmakers on our team that when one player just can’t get it done, we have others who are able to do so (Anthony Allen, Scott Blair, Bey-Bey).
The 4th quarter is the reason why CPJ is our coach. He took advantage of Clemson going after Dwyer every time and let Nesbitt run w/ the ball or pitch it to the outside, taking advantage of Clemson’s weakness.

The college football season is so fragile. It's like a glass ball being pushed around from stadium to stadium by a rhinoceros.

by Winfield Featherston on Sep 11, 2009 11:48 AM EDT reply actions

Clemson has a TON of talent on both sides of the ball. We obviously have a lot of things to improve, but I think there are very few teams who aren’t saying that right now! After watching the opening week, I saw few offenses look like they were in rhthym. We won the game because CPJ outcoached Swinney in the 1st half on Special Teams, and because the good guys had a lot of grit and never gave up! There was a lot of back and forth on possessions and I think that contributed to our poor 3rd Q on D.

I also think that their DC is one of the ones who actually has seen the option in action because he coached under Tom Osborne. He might have more experience than anyone we face. The fact that we still racked up 418 yards of O despite the fact that they spent a large part of spring and summer prepping for us, is good I think.

by Melinda on Sep 11, 2009 12:24 PM EDT reply actions