In TKP Slack, Henry honed in on, and shared an interesting Xs and Os quote from Bud Foster. Foster detailed the sweep that garnered Georgia Tech so much success.
"Not really. [Georgia] Tech did some different things than what they've done against everybody else. Everybody copies what we've done. That's the compliment to us, over the years defensively. That little bit extra time, they changed everything up. They just had one more blocker, a hat on a hat, and the next guy to the safety was the quarterback. You noticed, any time they ran a true option play, they didn't have success. The ball was on the ground, everything they did was keep the ball in the quarterback's hand. They weren't going to get it on the ground. Everything they did was quarterback follows. Which was basically a double iso blast, where they folded the slots and had the fullback leading up on all your linebackers. And then the quarterback was basically just a quarterback sweep and getting everybody over and blocking the alley. And get it to the safety. They did some unique things blocking wise that they had not shown. In my opinion, usually our strength has been our adjustments and we didn't do a good job, I didn't go a very good job in the adjustments during the course of the game."
Had that commentary occurred before French's dissection of the Yellow Jacket's attack was published, you bet it would have been in there for additional context. With hindsight, as the publisher 'round these parts, it's awesome to see how on the head French's breakdown was. He picked up and broke down the sweep, identified the utter lack of true triple option, noted the wide receivers cracking down, and multiple lead blockers through the hole.
Comments
However much you pay him, it's not enough.
This probably isn't PC, but I'm sure in the deep recesses of French's mind, he be like:
via GIPHY
So, why didn't we use Dax to follow the QB then? in the past, when the QB goes wide it was usually the backer that went after him. But in this game I noticed Dax was crashing the fullback up the middle on the Dive play
I think this falls under...
They were also running QB follows which is basically a double ISO play, so that would take away the Dax just follows the Qb thing.
Fuck Paul Johnson
Ding!
A single ISO play is typically an offensive back isolation blocking a linebacker. Therefore a double ISO play would be two offensive backs isolation blocking two linebackers.
I have been collecting a bunch of these terms in a spreadsheet and hope to publish some kind of a dictionary in a post later this year.
We ran a triple option one year when I was in High School. The QB follow was installed after a couple of games.
Also, the backer has to crash the dive. Otherwise, the QB will just give it to him the entire time.
Your defense has to be extremely disciplined when you play a triple option team.
You're doing the Lord's work here. Bless you.
I honestly knew we were in trouble the first couple of times I noticed Dax selling out to stop the dive, because it meant Foster didn't trust our DTs to stuff it.
What Foster didn't say, and no other outlets seemed to pick up on, is that GT was running a zone dive to the same side off the same motion. On the sweep, the QB opened the same way and then the dive back bent outside to be the lead blocker. That froze the LBs on the dive. Plus, Dax got blocked, a bunch. It is still a read for the BBack and the QB based on the DE. If the DE goes wide, the BBack and QB turns up inside. If the DE stays inside, they bounce wide. The only think that stops that play is to have the free hitters up in the box at the snap to have extra hats in that space. Of course, if they do that, other things open up (veer release pop pass, toss play.)
The key to success wasn't the sweep. It was sequencing the sweep and the dive to keep VT on their heels.
Clips are in the review which play this out. Now is a great time to join as a TKPC member and see how this sequencing plays out.
I get what you are saying and thanks for that. I did go back and look at the game and on that particular play I'm still seeing Dax jumping into the dive regardless of what play GT runs. Seems like there was a lack of trust with the DTs.
In come cases I'm seeing Dax just tackling air, it just doesn't make sense.
I hate Georgia Tech
GT definitely had a good scheme, but for Bud not to have an answer after halftime is extremely puzzling. What adjustments were made, didn't work...
Here's my take. To make an adjustment to a wrinkle you have to communicate a change to scheme. You can only do that if your defense understands the scheme to begin with. It's not likely that was possible with the number of players that never played GT before.
There's also the fact that I've read somewhere, either here or on TSL, that the defense was practicing a different defensive concept for the first few days, and reverted to what they used in the game later in the week. If that's true, it sounds like they tried a more advanced concept defensively during practice, but wasn't able to make it work, and reverted to something simpler.
they had 10 days which is more than most can usually say.
That's true, but what I was trying to say is that my guess is that they weren't able to make it work because of the youth/inexperience on the defense. If that's the case, then it's understandable that Bud may not have been able to make the adjustments that he wanted to during the game (especially if they were similar to what he tried in practice that they weren't able to make work).
you know what, I'm starting to think the extra time is a disadvantage.
It's also extra time for GT CPJ to scheme as well.
The 2013 win on 5 days rest certainly backs up your theory.
It's a terrible thing to be the team that catches a lot of change-ups and breaking balls when we play them. That said, we are historically a strong adjustment team and that was an area where we faltered last Thursday. However, as we've gone through this many times, we did make some adjustments, and I'm not quite sure there was a magic adjustment that was going to work with the way we were just losing physical battles at the point of attack.
a lot of folks are asking for accountability. if that isn't it from bud I don't know what is.
there's a TKP slack ?
staff only NO SLACK FOR YOU
Yeah, it's part of the process that makes the magic around here. (It's how the staff communicates.)
I get that the name is a play on "picking up the slack" but it really just makes you all sound like a bunch of Slackers
(and how the staff spews hot takes that Joe has to extinguish before they hit the website)
There's things we haven't seen on tape, there's adjustments, and then there is GT punting ONE time when the game was in the balance. That's the disconnect for me. They didn't just have success with the QB lead/counter we haven't seen, they destroyed our defense for 4 quarters.
regarding this particular game, isn't this the same thought, repeated. The yet-to-be-seen QB sweep was successful the entire game and destroyed the defense for 4 quarters.
Sweep, zone dive, and the toss to the field were every play but 3 on the first 3 drives of the game. The QB sweep and dive were at least 2/3 if not 3/4 of those plays. Yes, a two play series beat VT.
After that stretch, they had a few more short yardage situations so they sprinkled in the double dive (fakes the inside dive and then follows the FB) which looks just like the QB sweep except they run it inside and they have used it as their primary shortyardage play for years.
Lol at Paul Johnson. To me, if he's bored by the opponent or just simply he believes that his team is grossly overmatched, he doesn't try as hard to figure out how to beat them, and generally that's how his team plays. If he has respect for the coaching staff on the other side, or he has an ax to grind (Louisville), they're world beaters.
I don't think I've ever seen a team so affected by the attitude of their head coach.
At least Bud Foster is willing to admit he was out-coached. Now...fix it.
I think PJ truly likes the chess game between him and Bud.
He knows he's never gonna win a National championship with that offense and rarely will he reach the acccg. So the only other thing is to beat one of the best defensive minds in the game. How can he do it year in and year out as he knows Bud can scheme specifically to him. So as mentioned above he won't due certain things during the year and perhaps lose games only to break out new wrinkles against us.
After that everything gravy as far as he's concerned if they beat us. Which they have the past 3 years.
I honestly think you are giving us too much credit. Johnson wants to win every game. He is ultra competitive.
Except that PJ always holds something for our game.....sooooo
I know your super pessimistic so we suck balls and should really be lucky to win any game at all. I for one can't wait till we are the status of pre-cutcliffe Duke. Then we won't have to worry about winning anything. Those will be the days.
LOL.. yeah I feel that way... rolls eyes... Where do you get that? Because I dont log on to post unicorns and rainbows after GT kicks our teeth in? my bad. I'll try to do better. In terms of your post, does PJ always hold things for our game? I don't think so, and if you have proof, I'm all ears. We haven't been the top dog in the ACC in about 7 or 8 years. PJ plays Clemson and UGA every season- those are his biggest rivals. Yes, Bud Foster is a legend, but it's not like PJ has never beaten him or there aren't other equally important games. To say he wants to beat VT more than say UNC is crazy, IMO.
When we can recruit, retain, reload a defensive front 4 that is disruptive, big, and our preferred "twitchy" like Klempson and UGA, we will dominate GT year in year out. Until that happens, we'll always dread this game every season.
The use of rainbows, unicorns, and dork magic in the TECHmo bowl are forbidden until we can dominantly beat GT.
The thing is that CPJ has been at GT for 11 years, and we haven't dominated him at all - not even close. It's not like this is his second year. 11 years is a long tenure for ANY college coach. I guess if he coaches 25 years, we might hold a 13-12 lead in the series or something- if we get some twitchy lineman.
Depends on what you consider dominating. Is it winning or winning convincingly? We won 6 of the first 8 against CPJ including 4 straight, but none of those wins were by the same margin as last week.
I would consider 8-3 dominating the series. I think that's fair when you are talking about teams in the same league. That is our record vs. UNC in the last 11 for reference. Miami is 8-2 against CPJ, UGA is 7-3... We are now 6-5. That's not dominating.
Georgia has nt really dominated them either...
Agreed, no coach is willing to lose games in order to hide certain plays for a specific team. You might add wrinkles for a team you have earmarked on the schedule, you might focus on certain things that you've seen on tape going in to a specific game, you might try to motivate your players more for that ONE team.
No coach will sacrifice a win. You, as a coach, spend too much time all year long getting ready for a season. No coach wants to lose regardless of the situations. That's just coming from youth coaching experiences.
A wise man once said, "You play to win the game."
I look at it like this. Bud vs PJ is a chess match every year. Usually, regardless of the final score, Bud comes out on top and they hold GT well below their season average in yardage. It just so happens that PJ won the battle this year. Does it suck? Of course it does, but we cannot reasonably expect Bud to out-scheme PJ every single year, especially with one hand tied behind his back with the lack of experience on D. The young guys most likely spent the extra prep time getting a crash course on the triple option with some extra wrinkles to try stop the long pass plays that killed us last year, only to get in the game and see something completely different. PJ isn't stupid. He's working just as hard to out-scheme Bud.
Sometimes, PJ will win the chess match. IIWII.
CPJ oughta go play chess with Duke and Coach Cutliffe for a few years. Duke is 5-1 against the Jackets since 2014. The one GT win was a 38-35 last play winner.
That might be more of a challenge.
An interesting note, in that time span Duke scored 30+ in all but one year, where they scored 28 and still won.
That 28 points, Duke's lowest since 2014 and on, is more than our offense has scored against GT since... 2011. Our offense did score 28 last Thursday, but that final TD did not occur when the game was even remotely competitive anymore.
If we had scored 31 points in each game from 2014 on, we would be 5-1 against GT as well.
hey, jackhole, stop trying to blame the offense for last week's loss /s
This info makes me sad. Duke lights up the gt defense year in and year out and we have made them look good since David Wilson left.
Come on guys
I posted all the scores and rushing yards from the 11 PJ vs VT matchups since 2008 in the Film Review thread. We've only broken 30 points on them once, in 2011. Truly embarrassing and unacceptable. Even years where we had a good defense like 2017, or 16, we found ways to try to blame defense for losses. "Well if they hadn't given up this pass, or if they had just stopped them one more time! In reality, we can objectively look at the data over an 11 year span and see that our offense does not do their part against GT, a team that I cannot remember one single instance where they had a top of the line defensive unit under Paul Johnson. We have won games where we absolutely shut down their offense in a major major way. The 2012 and 2013 wins were way above and beyond what anyone could realistically ask of their defense, yet we expect that kind of defensive performance every year or it's some kind huge failure on Bud's part. We got absolutely shredded this year defensively, there is no other way to describe it, but this is the first time I can confidently argue that they held the primary responsibility for losing.
^^ Yup. I found it comical to see people blaming the defense last year ("but they gave up 2 big passes!1!11!!1!!"). Nevermind that the defense only allowed 28 (and scored a TD themselves, for a net of 22 allowed). The offense only scored 16 all game, which was why the team lost.
Conversely, I think folks are so conditioned to blaming the O over the years that they can't comprehend the defense losing a game.
You don't always get the choice of how quickly you score. Scoring, period, is the goal for every possession other than some late-game situations.
This is completely unrealistic. No offense facing a competent defense will score every possession.
This is honestly more an indictment of the VT defense than the offense.
Should they have scored more than 21 while the game was in doubt? Yeah, maybe, but fans are acting like this game was some abject disaster on offense. It wasn't. In fact, IIRC they only got the ball once in the 3rd quarter at all (I could be wrong). That was, however, the single worst defensive performance I've ever seen from a VT team, and I've been a fan for 23 years.
What is horrible is that this season, we have seen some of the worst defensive games in Bud Fosters career. I know the cupboard is empty, they are young, etc. But really, ODU, UNC, GT? We need to fix recruiting on the defense ASAP!
This is true. It's no coincidence that two of, and probably THE, worst defensive performances I have ever seen from a Bud Foster defense (ODU, and GT) happened in the same season. Bud Foster had the 9th best defense per S&P+ just last year, and we lost a lot of guys to the NFL and injuries. We had above average attrition for what we can be expected to reload from. That can be true AND simultaneously be true that we missed on a lot of recruits that could have made this transition easier. If we had landed a few stronger DT targets in the previous two cycles we would likely be in a much better position defensively. It was a combination of attrition and recruiting/eval misses that left us with this current defensive issue. I would argue that the absurd level of attrition/injury luck is the primary factor, given that in a perfect world we would have Adonis, Webb, Trevon Hill, Mook Reynolds, and a healthy Mihota at DT this season to add playmaking, experience, and solidarity to the defense. That said, the recruiting/eval misses would still be hurting our DT depth.