I know the fumbles in the third quarter on Thursday night were tough to watch, but I keep coming back to the same question about our lack of a vertical passing game during the past few weeks. Can we win without this? It seems that the current situation gives opposing DC's a decided advantage in terms of scheme. I know this sounds like a play-calling discussion, and maybe it is. I am truly just asking about what everyone thinks of our odds of winning any game over the remainder of the season if this element continues to be absent for us. To me, the inability to throw a quick strike to get big yards fast makes it very challenging to win any of our remaining games not played in Winston-Salem. I believe we have the WR's and TE's and honestly want Leal in the game IF the reason we're not throwing these balls is a lack of faith by the staff in Brewer. Am I too worried about this or do others also see this as a key stumbling block for us over the remainder of the season?
Can We Win Without a Vertical Passing Game?
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Well, somehow we won 8 games without one last year.
You can say a lot about LT's QB play, but the man could throw a deep ball. Brewer and his spagetti arm could fire the ball out of a t-shirt cannon and still be short of where LT could throw it from his knees.
not sure why the down vote but i thought this was both true and funny so ill up vote you to even out and if i could get you another to put you up one i would.
Agreed. It was the overthrows on short passes, either in height or in lack of "touch," that kept LT3 from being a great passer.
That can likely be attributed to the additional Fuller on our roster last year.
That is not likely, it is just a plain fact. As soon as Kyle Fuller got hurt (Duke game, right?) we went on a skid. Defense just wasn't quite the same, and you can bet Kyle Fuller might have made the difference needed to pull out some more W's against either/all of Duke, BC, and Maryland.
Yep, his sure-tackling abilities were sorely missed in the second half of the season.
A better defense and LT3 get most of the credit for those 8 games last year. It seems that other teams can get away with making mistakes because they have a better passing game. We currently do not, and the mistakes are dooming us.
You had me at "can we win"!
Nope. What do you think practice was like the last couple weeks to make Loeffler call the Miami game the way he did. It was must not have been pretty.
Defenses aren't scared of our offense. They know Brewer won't threaten to throw the deep ball so they stack the box. Even if a WR is open down field Brewer won't hit him because his confidence is destroyed and he has a weak arm. We won't win a game unless we keep a defense honest.
Based on the 60 yard throw he made as time ran out against ECU he has the arm.
60 yard throw that sailed 5-10 yards OB.
I have yet to see him consistently connect on any pass over 15 yards. Sure, he's got an arm to throw it 60 yards, but he doesn't have the accuracy to connect on anything, which is just as worthless as not having the arm to get it there.
Valid points. But we also don't really know. He hasn't been allowed to throw the ball beyond ten yards since the third game of the season.
He's had a couple chances every game to throw at least 20 yards except for the Miami game, really. He just consistently missed each and every single one of those times. The only time he hit a guy like that it was to Bucky, and he had to fully lay out to make an unbelievable catch.
Brewer proved to these coaches early on that he cannot throw an accurate deep pass in a game situation and they have adjusted their gameplanning to account for it. You don't keep trying the same thing that isn't working for more than 5 or 6 games before you're forced to abandon that strategy. Unfortunately, that means abandoning all hope of a stretch play that opens up the defense, which allows the opponents to sell out to stop everything short, which neuters anything and everything we can do on offense.
Well, that play needed to be 50 yards to have a chance, so just getting distance is not always the issue. Guaging it is.
What? no.....
I would change that to the entire season. The only pass play over 40 yards all season was the diving catch Bucky made against Pitt. And, before the Miami game, I would argue that we have taken shots. Brewer has just proven to be awful at making throws down field that give his receivers a chance to make a play. Never trying it in the last game, especially when down big, is troubling though
Anyone who watched VT in the early 2000's knows: We can win without a vertical passing game IF WE CAN GRIND OUT YARDS WITH A DOMINANT RUNNING GAME.
We haven't had a 1,000 yard rusher since DW left for the Giants and last year our QB led the team in rushing.
Thats the problem... we're trying to run an early 2000s offense in the mid 2010s. Football evolves, coaches learn how to stop certain schemes and the best coaches adapt with the times and continue playing at a high level throughout the years.
We have not changed. We have not adapted. At least not on offense. We're still trying to run the same offense right now that we did in 2002 under Grant Noel, and we're expecting that, with 12 additional years of gametape that we're still going to have the same kind of success as we did back then, without really making adjustments.
Football has evolved. The better teams right now are running an up-tempo attack with an emphasis on getting points on the board. Sure, you might be able to say teams like Stanford and Wisconsin are having success running the same style offense as we do, but there's a reason you can point to them so quickly. Those schools are the exceptions. Its a fools errand to think we'll quickly recover to have that same kind of success when we can't recruit nearly as well as they do, especially at OL, where they both excel, and we'll be happy with just not converting players anymore.
I agee. I am not saying to go back to counting on a grind it out running game, that is simply not college or pro football these days. We were able to win without a dominant vertical game, but I don't think we should keep to the style. We definitely need more running than we have had, but we were unable to throw past the sticks with any reliability all season. If we can't move down the field in chunks, the defense is going to keep everything in front of them and wait for Brewer to screw up or be unable to string 3 passes together to get a first.
I disagree that you have to change what works because everyone else is doing something different. Our problem was our OL talent dropped way off and we are still suffering because of that. Adapting to the talent we have on the roster is different than changing the scheme because the scheme is 10 years old... I have said this at least 10 times this year but look a the film. The games we committed to running right at teams we have been successful. Leoffler has either abandoned that plan or never tried it in the other games. We can win with a power running game, controlling the clock and playing strong defense. We have done it this year, I saw us do it! We ran the same play like 8 times in a row to start the 2nd half against Miami and it worked every play.
Coaches learn how to stop different schemes but they can't learn how to not get physically dominated. Don't you think Bud Foster would have done something differently against Miami if the issue was his scheme? They manhandled us up front running a very vanilla offense. They didn't come out all Oregon or Texas A&M style on us. The constant in football has been power football. The other schemes have come and gone but the power running game has been around forever and teams always go back to it. The spread, up tempo offense is the latest fad but that doesn't mean we have to use it to be successful because that is being figured out already by the coaches.
I am not saying that we should not use the up tempo or spread but use it to do what we have always done and what we are actually best at this year and that is running right at the defense. Urban Meyer has made a very successful career doing that. We can bring in extra TEs and go Wisconsin on them. We can leave those TEs in the game and go Stanford on them and throw to those TEs.
Our scheme from 2002 was to run the ball right at them and maul them up front. I don't see why that should be any different now ESPECIALLY since we have a OL that struggles doing anything else but that. And to answer the original question of this thread, use the vertical passing game from the play action when the safeties come up to stop the run. It works, see Bucky's TD catch against UNC.
And what does it say about our coaches that they're still trying to run an offense that relies on being able to physically maul the opponent in the trenches when we no longer have the personnel to do just that? Its one thing if we have these big guys lining up at OL that can manhandle anyone on a given play that teams like Stanford and Wisconsin have, but we don't have those guys. We don't have anything close. We haven't recruited anything close in over 10 years. So why do we insist on trying to run an offense we simply don't have the guys to run?
Denial......it'll get after ya
I am not convinced that this is what SL is all about and what we thought we would see. It looks like beamer/stiney playbook and beamer said let me see your playbook, ripped 3/4ths of it up and said this is the playbook we will run here. Again I'm not saying its a bad idea but when the o line can't block running the ball is the last thing you want to do.
Honesty why did Grimes leave.... not only was LSU a huge step up from us but maybe he didn't want to deal with what Searels is dealing with. DE's turned to OL, lack of competition in OLine depth ect ect. Look at what LSU did this past week, it was unreal. yeah they have 4 and 5* athlete's all over the place but it was still 80% new to them and they're executing it. Not to mention they have a freshman RB and a sophomore qb who only threw the ball 29 times last year.
My Point- It starts at the top and trickles down. When Beamer says ohh 2015 will be a good year I say screw that, we have a 21 year bowl game streak on the line and you want to talk about next year. That's not what I want to hear out of my coach..
I'm sorry, I guess you missed the part where I pointed out a few examples where we have been able to exactly that. Brief refresher, WMU(granted it is WMU), UNC, 2nd half against Miami, 2nd half against Pitt with Rogers running for 7 yards a pop.
WE CAN DO IT. WE HAVE DONE IT. I am not sure why this is lost by almost everyone. We haven't committed to doing it is the problem. Please tell me in what aspects of the game our OL has played better than firing off the ball and going right after the defense? Pass protection? Stretch plays? I'll wait for that answer.
don't know if that was at me but my 2 cents..
we can't commit to the run because: we can't hold onto the football, there is never a feature back (we sub way to much) and teams will continue to load the box and bet us to go deep. French showed that our O-line couldn't handle a simple stunt.. when you see that time and time again that has to be tough.
I would agree lets give rogers the ball 10-15 times a game, why not? ohh that's right because we have a redshirt rb that magically came back and we have burn that redshirt for 3 carries instead of trying rogers.
Also not trying to start a fight but you mentioned 2 games where we succeeded with the run late in games...but we were already down by 7-24 points. Miami clamped down when it needed and we basically played from our 2 to their 30 yardline all game. ohh and fumbled when it mattered.
It wasn't at you but the fumbling issues from Miami have not been that bad all season so that should not be an excuse. The featured back part, I agree with to a small extent that we do need one, but to call the run plays we do not. The stunt play in the film review that I recall was on a pass play with Conte and Wang not passing the guys to the other. There will be breakdowns regardless of whatever play we call but we have to do what we do best and I have not seen us do anything better than shoot off the ball and get on the defender. We have struggled mightily with the blocking on the outside zone. We have struggled picking up stunts in pass protection. We have been able to run downhill.
The Miami game, the downhill running game was the only thing that worked. It worked on the first drive and then we had a missed assignment on the 3rd and 1. (Missed assignments are going to happen regardless of what we run) It worked the next drive and then we got a way from it until the 2nd half where it worked for 3 drives until we got away from it and threw bad passes to the sidelines.
Brewer threw the ball with success when the teams loaded the box to stop the run and we had a threat of play action. His best games have been when the running game has been going downhill and the LBs have to respect the play action. There a lot of issues with the offense and the playcalling but from my observations, our offense has been its best running downhill. I just want to know where we have been better on offense if anyone can point that out.
Go to, I think it was the GT film review. Stunts blow up our running game too. The "just block the guy in front of you" ideal that you have I don't know is a thing. Look at the 2nd film review here. They don't even know who they are supposed to be blocking, and it's about as simple as you can get.
That said, with all due respect, citing what is working when you are down 24-0, isn't really a great argument. They were up by 24 points and we were choosing the shorten the game by running the ball, that's literally exactly what they wanted us to do, of course it worked.
I'm not saying we go all Air-Raid, but we have some of the best receivers we have ever had on campus and a match-up nightmare in Hodges. Is in not time to try to throw him some jump balls or some fades to Ford before halftime?
I agree. I don't think we should be GT and run it 95% of the time but I think the staple of our offense should be the downhill run to set up the pass. The lack of fades thrown to Bucky in the redzone is just plain stupid.
Well, its obvious we lose when Brewer throws 0 interceptions. Maybe he has a higher probability of throwing an interception in the vertical passing scheme.
When you have defenses scheming to not even defend against the deep passing game, and its working because we cannot take advantage of it.... then no, we cannot win without a vertical game. You can't allow defenses to cheat and take away one area of your game without making them pay for it and expect success.
Can we win without a vertical passing game?
Consistently? No, definitely not. Essentially what you're asking is, can we win by being one-dimensional on offense? By the luck of the bounce, it may work here and there, but it's not something to hang your hat on.
Effective offense requires forcing the defense to defend the entire field. When parts of the field are not threatened by an offense, that offense becomes much easier to defend.
i would add, when we lose one aspect of our offense (reliable running game), our other areas of weakness (Brewer's inaccuracy down the field) become exponentially more apparent. I've noticed this all season, but once we lost 3 RBs, I feel like those are the only opportunities to score (no wheel route/crossing route/screen pass is going to make up for that, SCOT!)
Right now I don't know why any defense would have a safety any more than 15 yards off the line of scrimmage against VT.
Loeffler, I think, has been unfairly criticized for the play calling. Yes there were too many horizontal passes. But the quiet message being communicated is that Loeffler lacks confidence in Brewer's down field passing. Can we win without the down field threat? No. A defense not worried about the deep ball with stack the box and play the short pass aggressively. And that is exactly what Miami did. And the few times where Miami could have and should have been burned deep or with one-on-one .. well guess what ... there was an errant pass or no pass at all.
If our starting QB can't throw a pass more than 10 yards down the field to the point the OC won't call any plays like that, you are going to tell me that we don't have any other QBs on the roster who can do that? That falls on Leoffler.
I have said since ECU that teams know that we can not beat them vertically and they play defense accordingly - freeing up safeties to stop passes underneath and jump routes.
VT is ranked 124 of 127 in completed passes of over 30 yards completing (I think I remember correctly) 4 passes of over 30 yards. That means we are basically playing in the red zone every play from scrimmage...