Breaking Down the Physical Phase: What the Hell Happened in the 3rd Quarter?

First of all, I wanted to inform everyone that I'll be live tweeting the Beesball intra-squad matchup, white and gold game, starting at about 3:30 today. I'll have a breakdown of what I saw posted in the next few days.

On Saturday, I covered the mental phase of the game vs. BC, today I move to the physical part. You could say, in these terms (at least on defense), that this game was a tale of two halves. In the first, the zones were blanketed, the tackling was fierce, and guys were flying to the ball. Starting in the 3rd quarter, they couldn't cover a zone to save their life, and started tackling as if they were taught that simply their proximity and gravitational field would be enough to bring down the ballcarrier (hint: unless you're TJ Barnes, this is not the case). Another thing struck me not so much as bad but more so as odd: inconsistency on the lines. Not just from quarter to quarter, but from play to play. The offense started getting a good inside push in the 4th quarter when ran the clock down to nothing on a PJ death march, but before that they were getting manhandled on the dive sometimes and blowing up the d-line on the dive sometimes. It was really very odd, and I didn't expect it versus such an inferior athletic team. The defensive line was pretty lackluster the whole game, but it looked like they weren't even trying on some plays, even in the 1st half. Sloppy hand work, laggy reaction times, etc. However, we still dominated them overall, as the time of possession will tell you (GT's was 43:45). Physical domination was also apparent in the run game. We held them to 8 rushing yards in the first half and 32 yards overall. I think that stat really just speaks for itself.

Overall, it was an interesting game in both aspects of play, and I think it showed how much talent this team has and how far they have to go to fully use it.