10-27-2024, 11:45 AM
6. That fact, hardly in need of more evidence, came into stark relief here with the 1-2 punch of Brown flailing in his opportunity and Daniels being just Daniels enough for us to lose. Brown has simply been atrocious in both (that is, all) of his action against FBS opponents. Across his three games (so including stats padded by the Cal Poly outing), if he had enough action to qualify his Total QBR would be 128th of 130 quarterbacks nationally. Complete disaster, not even close to worthy of being on a major college football field. We have to hope that being a true freshman and coming back from injury/wearing a glove make this an unrepresentative sample, but I think anybody still harboring major expectations should temper those and wait for any evidence of competence before jumping back on that bandwagon. The truth is that Brown was a very good but not great recruit by reputation and college coaches, Elite 11 evaluators, and recruiting services were all united that he wasn't elite, putting him in a category that can succeed spectacularly but empirically ends up with about a Ryan Burns type as the median result. Then when Brown got on campus Taylor kept Daniels as QB1 until Daniels' performance made that untenable and now Brown has had back-to-back outings showing Daniels gives us a much better chance right now. If that weren't depressing enough, Daniels just had one of his better games but it wasn't enough to beat a horrible team. Even with the interceptions, Daniels was a respectable 60th of 117 quarterbacks nationally in Total QBR this week (edging out Hank Bachmeier yesterday, actually), but it wasn't good enough. As I had predicted, Daniels appears to be positively reverting toward his mean a bit after a nightmare September. He is now no longer dead last among Power Four QBs in Total QBR on the season, instead fifth to last (106th of 129 overall). Based on what we have seen the last several weeks, if Taylor handles playing time decisions meritocratically and with the team's interest in winning at the forefront, he probably should go back to Daniels as QB1. My tentative prediction is we again see both QBs next week.
7. The other thing holding us back the most is the offensive line play. Brutal to see a team like Wake Forest (the 88th best team in the nation, patently failing program in the transfer portal era) make life difficult for us up front. Giving up only two sacks felt like a reprieve, but no other FBS opponent has given up more than one to Wake. Only giving Ford, Davis, and Butler four carries each gives a clue on how much Taylor trusted the run blocking. In PFF's view, McLaughlin finally making his return to the starting lineup graded the best of the OL (surprise surprise!), in the solid range, followed by Leyrer in that same range. Pale, Maikkula, and House all struggled. Leyrer is a limited player but is generally playing better following a few rough outings in September. Pale is an up and down player within a generally sub-par band at this point of his young career. Maikkula had his worst game of his career. House has had a rough three weeks after showing a lot of promise relative to his age. On the season, our OL now rank like so among 850 OL nationally: 399) Rogers (out indefinitely), 417) McLaughlin, 657) Pale, 726) Maikkula, 763) Baklenko, 771) Leyrer, 811) House. This picture looks really catastrophic when you compare just to the ACC: among 110 ACC OL, every healthy OL we have other than McLaughlin is 96th or worse. Ok, I spoke too soon above. THAT is the read that again stat of the week. [With an OL that plays like this it is pretty freaking stupid that eight games in McLaughlin has only played more than 15 snaps twice.] This does not seem like good player development. We are going to continue to hear ad nauseum about how young the group is. Young only means something if you are expecting to get older. We should be watching closely whether Rogers and McLaughlin come back for sixth years next year. Seems like a lot to ask but right now that plus holding out hope for year-to-year development for the others and/or transfer ex machina are the only things I think could give us even mediocre OL play next year. That may be optimistic. In the meantime, it's awfully hard for skill position players to excel in this offense with QB and OL in such dire straits simultaneously. Shout out to Ayomanor and Roush for very good games willing the team to competitiveness in the face of so many problems around them. Ayomanor is clearly the best player on the offense and Roush's touchdown was the offensive play of the game and one of the plays of the year for us. I really like the strides Roush is taking. He has been an adequate player three of the last four games. I think he could finally graduate to being a good player next year. I'm glad Mosley did good work moving the chains too, but I wouldn't call it a good game and I think he bears some responsibility for Daniels' first interception. [Moving the chains (first down) leader board: Ayomanor (6), Daniels (5), Roush (3), Mosley (3), Butler (2), Ford, Lamson, Bachmeier, Cisse]
8. Don't have to think very hard to identify the defensive play of the game! A sack, forced fumble, recovered fumble, touchdown (on a nearly half field return to boot) is as big as an individual play gets in football. For Tafiti, that was one of seven positive plays he gave us in the box score, giving us another sack, run stops, and two of our bigger defensive plays in fourth quarter crunch time. He has had a mediocre year but with good games in three of his last four we may be turning that corner so many of us have been waiting for. After so many years expecting it, OLB may now genuinely be a shining strength of the team. [Bailey had a quieter game but did set the edge nicely on Rose's run stuff and in the big picture Bailey has been our best player this year.] Along with Tafiti, we had 7-8 players who showed up with multiple positive box score contributions (Tafiti, Sinclair, Morris, Phillips, Bernadel, Nicholson, Edwards, and arguably Galvan depending on if you give credit for a stop on 3rd and forever....I probably wouldn't and would say seven defensive players with multiple helpful plays). Tafiti impacting the scoreboard like he did shuts the book on my game ball, but that is a shame for two other big efforts that were great to see. Morris came back from injury with a vengeance and played in a way I frankly did not even know he was capable of, with two pass breakups and multiple run stops, including goal line contributions in crunch time. PFF assessed Morris' game the best of any player on our team yesterday and by far the best game of his life. Man possessed. Really didn't know he had that in him. Interesting. The other performance to enthusiastically shout out is Phillips, who one takes for granted for quiet contributions to our good run defense but can be forgiven for forgetting about since he basically never makes plays. Not last night. Multiple sacks! Fourth down goal line stop! Way to go, Big Tobe! I also liked seeing Nicholson's interception, which was a massive gift to us that it wasn't called a catch but nonetheless showed the ball skills that made me salivate over Nicholson as a recruit. It seems like defenses are staying away from Wright, giving him less opportunity to show us his overall football player acumen. Pretty quiet few weeks and not always showing up in the rare opportunities (e.g., the missed tackle yesterday). Staples' roughing the passer penalty was devastating. Feel bad for all the players (as I said above, there are many) for whom film review will show single plays that made the difference yesterday (although there being so many proves that it wasn't any one play).
9. We can pretty definitively say special teams was part of the mix yesterday where individual errors lost the game. Kenney missing the 46 yard field goal try (he made a 40 yarder) and the punt coverage breakdown stand out in particular. Kenney is now 35th in field goal percentage and 43rd in field goals made per game. Karty he is not but that was never a fair expectation. Flintoft had net punts of 53 to the 14 (very nice), 56 to the 18 (very nice) and 5 to midfield (back-breaking breakdown in coverage). The life of a specialist where everything could be going pretty well and then one play ruins your week. Without re-watching multiple times (or having All 22 film) I don't know which individual(s) to blame most for that return, I just know the return really hurt (although I probably don't put it quite with some of the other single play goats as one can easily imagine an alternate reality in which Wake simply takes longer to go down the field on the ensuing drive and still beats us with a field goal). If particularly bad hang time was to blame I will feel silly about my game ball, but I have to give to somebody and there's no obvious pick this week. In the return game, Bachmeier had a solid 22 yard return to the 31 and Galvan had a good kick coverage tackle (Nicholson and Sumlin also getting tackles in coverage).
10. Game balls: Ayomanor, Tafiti, Flintoft, Williams
11. As long as there are games left on the schedule, we soldier on. I hope the players will too. Opinions may vary on how much fight we are seeing from the players but if past is prologue there is always a risk of catastrophic levels of failure leading to demoralization. It's kind of hard to imagine things getting much worse than October has been though. More fun is to think about rays of hope during a weaker part of the schedule. We blew the best opportunity we had but there are still opportunities to show we're worthy of fielding a team. NC State is another very weak opponent. Once again, show us something, coach!
7. The other thing holding us back the most is the offensive line play. Brutal to see a team like Wake Forest (the 88th best team in the nation, patently failing program in the transfer portal era) make life difficult for us up front. Giving up only two sacks felt like a reprieve, but no other FBS opponent has given up more than one to Wake. Only giving Ford, Davis, and Butler four carries each gives a clue on how much Taylor trusted the run blocking. In PFF's view, McLaughlin finally making his return to the starting lineup graded the best of the OL (surprise surprise!), in the solid range, followed by Leyrer in that same range. Pale, Maikkula, and House all struggled. Leyrer is a limited player but is generally playing better following a few rough outings in September. Pale is an up and down player within a generally sub-par band at this point of his young career. Maikkula had his worst game of his career. House has had a rough three weeks after showing a lot of promise relative to his age. On the season, our OL now rank like so among 850 OL nationally: 399) Rogers (out indefinitely), 417) McLaughlin, 657) Pale, 726) Maikkula, 763) Baklenko, 771) Leyrer, 811) House. This picture looks really catastrophic when you compare just to the ACC: among 110 ACC OL, every healthy OL we have other than McLaughlin is 96th or worse. Ok, I spoke too soon above. THAT is the read that again stat of the week. [With an OL that plays like this it is pretty freaking stupid that eight games in McLaughlin has only played more than 15 snaps twice.] This does not seem like good player development. We are going to continue to hear ad nauseum about how young the group is. Young only means something if you are expecting to get older. We should be watching closely whether Rogers and McLaughlin come back for sixth years next year. Seems like a lot to ask but right now that plus holding out hope for year-to-year development for the others and/or transfer ex machina are the only things I think could give us even mediocre OL play next year. That may be optimistic. In the meantime, it's awfully hard for skill position players to excel in this offense with QB and OL in such dire straits simultaneously. Shout out to Ayomanor and Roush for very good games willing the team to competitiveness in the face of so many problems around them. Ayomanor is clearly the best player on the offense and Roush's touchdown was the offensive play of the game and one of the plays of the year for us. I really like the strides Roush is taking. He has been an adequate player three of the last four games. I think he could finally graduate to being a good player next year. I'm glad Mosley did good work moving the chains too, but I wouldn't call it a good game and I think he bears some responsibility for Daniels' first interception. [Moving the chains (first down) leader board: Ayomanor (6), Daniels (5), Roush (3), Mosley (3), Butler (2), Ford, Lamson, Bachmeier, Cisse]
8. Don't have to think very hard to identify the defensive play of the game! A sack, forced fumble, recovered fumble, touchdown (on a nearly half field return to boot) is as big as an individual play gets in football. For Tafiti, that was one of seven positive plays he gave us in the box score, giving us another sack, run stops, and two of our bigger defensive plays in fourth quarter crunch time. He has had a mediocre year but with good games in three of his last four we may be turning that corner so many of us have been waiting for. After so many years expecting it, OLB may now genuinely be a shining strength of the team. [Bailey had a quieter game but did set the edge nicely on Rose's run stuff and in the big picture Bailey has been our best player this year.] Along with Tafiti, we had 7-8 players who showed up with multiple positive box score contributions (Tafiti, Sinclair, Morris, Phillips, Bernadel, Nicholson, Edwards, and arguably Galvan depending on if you give credit for a stop on 3rd and forever....I probably wouldn't and would say seven defensive players with multiple helpful plays). Tafiti impacting the scoreboard like he did shuts the book on my game ball, but that is a shame for two other big efforts that were great to see. Morris came back from injury with a vengeance and played in a way I frankly did not even know he was capable of, with two pass breakups and multiple run stops, including goal line contributions in crunch time. PFF assessed Morris' game the best of any player on our team yesterday and by far the best game of his life. Man possessed. Really didn't know he had that in him. Interesting. The other performance to enthusiastically shout out is Phillips, who one takes for granted for quiet contributions to our good run defense but can be forgiven for forgetting about since he basically never makes plays. Not last night. Multiple sacks! Fourth down goal line stop! Way to go, Big Tobe! I also liked seeing Nicholson's interception, which was a massive gift to us that it wasn't called a catch but nonetheless showed the ball skills that made me salivate over Nicholson as a recruit. It seems like defenses are staying away from Wright, giving him less opportunity to show us his overall football player acumen. Pretty quiet few weeks and not always showing up in the rare opportunities (e.g., the missed tackle yesterday). Staples' roughing the passer penalty was devastating. Feel bad for all the players (as I said above, there are many) for whom film review will show single plays that made the difference yesterday (although there being so many proves that it wasn't any one play).
9. We can pretty definitively say special teams was part of the mix yesterday where individual errors lost the game. Kenney missing the 46 yard field goal try (he made a 40 yarder) and the punt coverage breakdown stand out in particular. Kenney is now 35th in field goal percentage and 43rd in field goals made per game. Karty he is not but that was never a fair expectation. Flintoft had net punts of 53 to the 14 (very nice), 56 to the 18 (very nice) and 5 to midfield (back-breaking breakdown in coverage). The life of a specialist where everything could be going pretty well and then one play ruins your week. Without re-watching multiple times (or having All 22 film) I don't know which individual(s) to blame most for that return, I just know the return really hurt (although I probably don't put it quite with some of the other single play goats as one can easily imagine an alternate reality in which Wake simply takes longer to go down the field on the ensuing drive and still beats us with a field goal). If particularly bad hang time was to blame I will feel silly about my game ball, but I have to give to somebody and there's no obvious pick this week. In the return game, Bachmeier had a solid 22 yard return to the 31 and Galvan had a good kick coverage tackle (Nicholson and Sumlin also getting tackles in coverage).
10. Game balls: Ayomanor, Tafiti, Flintoft, Williams
11. As long as there are games left on the schedule, we soldier on. I hope the players will too. Opinions may vary on how much fight we are seeing from the players but if past is prologue there is always a risk of catastrophic levels of failure leading to demoralization. It's kind of hard to imagine things getting much worse than October has been though. More fun is to think about rays of hope during a weaker part of the schedule. We blew the best opportunity we had but there are still opportunities to show we're worthy of fielding a team. NC State is another very weak opponent. Once again, show us something, coach!