[qwerty49]

My two big concerns:

Our ILBs got crushed on straight up run plays.  BO had some great highlights but did not come off blocks up the middle.  Fortunately, Lance saw it early and adjusted, bringing more heat and more bodies in the box.  From there on we handled their O.

My personal pet peeve:  The O line did not block as badly as the Love numbers would suggest.  Look at the formations, D front and down and distance of those plays.  They played their Aztec D with a freeman up the middle and he filled enormous holes opened by the line.  Shaw ran against numbers, once again.  It's satisfying when it works but mind-numbing when it doesn't.   SDSU dared us to ran at those fronts and we kept doing it, just as in prior years.  Shaw admitted post-game he was "stubborn" about running it and then went to the pass game.  But it's not just run vs. pass.  It's using sets and personnel to make the D defend the whole field.  While our pass game eventually made them pay for running the Aztec safety and LBs at the line, the number of times we hit our head against the wall was truly remarkable.  Against better pass defenses we will need to run from more diverse sets and circumstances.  For some support, see SI's post-game take:

https://www.si.com/college-football/2018...bryce-love

OL, I appreciate your thoughts, but doesn't the fact that SDSU defended the run with cover 0 even on clear pass situations (third and long) when we had clear pass formations (3 and 4 wide receiver sets, no fullback), suggest that we weren't going to get SDSU to "cover the whole field" even when it was clear we were going elsewhere?  I mean, if you subtract the ballcarrier and the quarterback, plus four wide receivers in one-on-one coverage, then we are left with four offensive linemen trying to block seven players, none of whom showed much of a concern with retreating into pass coverage.

I think the only thing we could do to get them to defend the whole field is to keep passing until they dared us to run it, and they never did.  You can rightfully criticize Shaw for not turning to the pass earlier in the game, but I don't think spreading the field and running out of pass formations would have helped much.

BC

BC, you make a reasonable point, but when you see "Aztec" rover player Parker able to run free at the line unblocked, you are running against numbers at the point of attack.  In a typical O-D set up, the QB is the extra man on O and the FS is the extra man on D.  Against SDSU with the Aztec rover, you lose that balance.  There are a couple plays where the line opens a big hole but Parker literally is in the backfield to meet Love.  With no edge game and no screen game to speak of, SDSU keep doing it and and we kept running straight at it.  Yes, we did have wide outs, but that does not solve the numbers problem at the point of attack.

OL84, how do you run against that defense?  Sub in a FB for a WR?  

BTW you are absolutely correct about our ILBs.  They looked to be MIA for the first two-thirds of the game against the run.  Okereke closed hard on the safety but it was from zone coverage on the 10-yd line.

[qwerty49]

My two big concerns:

Our ILBs got crushed on straight up run plays.  BO had some great highlights but did not come off blocks up the middle.  Fortunately, Lance saw it early and adjusted, bringing more heat and more bodies in the box.  From there on we handled their O.

My personal pet peeve:  The O line did not block as badly as the Love numbers would suggest.  Look at the formations, D front and down and distance of those plays.  They played their Aztec D with a freeman up the middle and he filled enormous holes opened by the line.  Shaw ran against numbers, once again.  It's satisfying when it works but mind-numbing when it doesn't.   SDSU dared us to ran at those fronts and we kept doing it, just as in prior years.  Shaw admitted post-game he was "stubborn" about running it and then went to the pass game.  But it's not just run vs. pass.  It's using sets and personnel to make the D defend the whole field.  While our pass game eventually made them pay for running the Aztec safety and LBs at the line, the number of times we hit our head against the wall was truly remarkable.  Against better pass defenses we will need to run from more diverse sets and circumstances.  For some support, see SI's post-game take:

https://www.si.com/college-football/2018...bryce-love

OL, I appreciate your thoughts, but doesn't the fact that SDSU defended the run with cover 0 even on clear pass situations (third and long) when we had clear pass formations (3 and 4 wide receiver sets, no fullback), suggest that we weren't going to get SDSU to "cover the whole field" even when it was clear we were going elsewhere?  I mean, if you subtract the ballcarrier and the quarterback, plus four wide receivers in one-on-one coverage, then we are left with four offensive linemen trying to block seven players, none of whom showed much of a concern with retreating into pass coverage.

I think the only thing we could do to get them to defend the whole field is to keep passing until they dared us to run it, and they never did.  You can rightfully criticize Shaw for not turning to the pass earlier in the game, but I don't think spreading the field and running out of pass formations would have helped much.

BC

BC, you make a reasonable point, but when you see "Aztec" rover player Parker able to run free at the line unblocked, you are running against numbers at the point of attack.  In a typical O-D set up, the QB is the extra man on O and the FS is the extra man on D.  Against SDSU with the Aztec rover, you lose that balance.  There are a couple plays where the line opens a big hole but Parker literally is in the backfield to meet Love.  With no edge game and no screen game to speak of, SDSU keep doing it and and we kept running straight at it.  Yes, we did have wide outs, but that does not solve the numbers problem at the point of attack.

OL84, how do you run against that defense?  Sub in a FB for a WR?  

BTW you are absolutely correct about our ILBs.  They looked to be MIA for the first two-thirds of the game against the run.  Okereke closed hard on the safety but it was from zone coverage on the 10-yd line.