I grew up in southeast Georgia where armadillos are constantly playing Frogger with cars. An armadillo is woefully unprepared to successfully cross the road when a car is approaching and ends up a victim of his own indecisiveness and instinct to jump when scared (often into a bumper). The car, however, is also inept at missing the armadillo. It can neither anticipate the movements of the armadillo and when it attempts to straddle it, it inevitably hits the bumper or bottom of the car.
This describes the clash on Saturday between Virginia Tech's inept deep passing game and North Carolina's inept deep pass defense. More below.
Let's first start with the computer rankings for each team:
UNC has clearly disappointed thus far relative to expectations, and generally ranks lower than the Hokies. One inaccurate computer has Virginia Tech ranked No. 16!
However, they are playing at home, so predictions are fairly split on the outcome:
The odds of a 2.5-point favorite winning are 55.5%.
Now let's look at any overall offensive or defensive advantages before diving deeper.
By S&P+, these are two evenly-rated offenses but VT thus far has a substantially better defense.
When Virginia Tech Has the Ball
Here is an explanation of S&P+ ratings, and FEI ratings.
First, a note to clarify how S&P+ breaks down teams. In the first 7 weeks of the season, the overall offensive and defensive S&P+ numbers are adjusted for opponent, but the individual personality characteristics (rushing, passing, standard downs, and passing downs) are not. FEI personality stats are also unadjusted at this point in the season. So those characteristics seen here should be considered relative to one another and not as a true overall advantage at this point.
Who has the advantage in the passing and rushing game?
The Brewer-led offense has a clear advantage in multiple areas, especially passing downs. The Hokies match up very well in passing situations, where Tech has succeeded despite defenses knowing it's likely a pass. The Tar Heels have inexplicably struggled in such situations and given up numerous big plays. Brewer has shown some difficulty putting the right depth on longer passes, but if he can do a decent job and avoid bad decisions and passes Saturday the defense should give him plenty of opportunities to make them pay. Armadillo, meet car. The car is trying to let you cross the road, so let's see if you can get out of your own way and succeed.
Now let's take a look at the FEI personality traits of the Tech offense versus the UNC defense.
Slight advantage across the board with the most important stat — efficiency (which IS opponent adjusted) — giving the Hokies a huge advantage. If Tech's not moving the chains, things are going very wrong.
The Virginia Tech offense is closest in personality to:
- Central Michigan
- Washington
- Idaho
The North Carolina defense is closest in personality to:
- Troy
- Buffalo
- Louisiana Lafayette
I kid you not.
When North Carolina Has the Ball
Again, look at pass-run comparisons first:
Bud's D comes out ahead on all metrics, with a little more advantage against the run than the pass. As for personality traits:
Again things are leaning Hokie, but the ability to prevent explosive drives is still haunting the defense and may be something the Tar Heels are able to exploit.
The Virginia Tech defense is closest in personality to:
- Oklahoma State
- Florida
- Air Force
The North Carolina offense is closest in personality to:
- Clemson
- Oklahoma State
- LSU
Who To Watch Out For
- Sophomore WR Mack Hollins has 11 receptions for 277 yards this season. Do the math.
- QB Marquise Williams is a threat to run or throw, with a 141 QBR thus far and a team-leading 38 rushes for almost 4 yards per.
Statistical Key to the Game
By far the Hokies' biggest advantage comes in the passing game, and moving the ball through the air should not be difficult. However, if those drives don't turn into enough points this could be anyone's game. It's tempting to look at Brewer's interceptions for the game, but I don't know that the UNC pass defense will be in position to take advantage of errant throws as much. Instead, I'm looking at Virginia Tech's points-per-red-zone-trip. If Tech's driving like we expect, but then stalling as they approach the goal line and turning to predictable run plays, they might have trouble scoring enough to stay ahead.
My Prediction
Fearful of another jinx, I will make no mention of avoiding serious injuries this week.
Instead I think Brewer's aggressiveness pays off and despite 1 or 2 interceptions, 350 yards passing might be in the cards for the Hokie offense. I think 2 TD's come off of long passing plays where the Tech WR's get behind the defense and the Hokies score 5+ points per trip into the red zone.
Virginia Tech 31, North Carolina 24
As always a thanks to Football Outsiders, cfbstats.com, and Minitab Statistical Software.
Comments
This:
And Armadillos analogies for the passing game. We see their battle with cars here in Florida all the time...
Its gonna be a nail bitter if we can't move the ball on the ground to loosen this up.
If we get ourselves in a situation where we're trying to run the ball to keep UNC's offense off the field, we've already lost the game.
Play your strength against their weakness. Their GLARING weakness is against the pass, and our strength this season is passing the ball. Exploit this early and often, and hang some points on the board. Our defense has a clear advantage over theirs, so lets play like it. Allow our offense to score at will if the matchups present it, and let our defense man up like we all know they are capable of and blow this team out of the water.
This is NOT a game where we should be focusing on establishing the run all game long. Use the run to keep them honest, but destroy these guys through the air.
But our glaring weakness on defense is giving up big plays. If we're not controlling to clock, and continually giving UNC time on the field, the odds increase that we give up big plays. It's just a matter of probability, unless our guys are all totally playing out of their minds. But so far this year, aside from the OSU game, they haven't really done that.
Exactly. We can't get into a shootout with UNC. We tried that 2 years ago. It didn't work then and it likely won't work now.
I'm sorry, I must have missed where they had the 2nd coming of Gio Bernard on their roster.
Gio ran wild, but Williams > Renner. Also, don't sleep on Quinshad Davis and Ryan Switzer.
Switzer is a BEAST do not let that kid return a single kick.
Teams have been playing away from him with high punts or other methods. Practice reports said Hughes was working on hangtime. I'm sure Beamer has drilled the importance of that into him for this week.
Kick it out of bounds do not let him catch it at all
I'll be working with his uncle this weekend. Please keep it away from him. I don't want to hear about it.
Wiliams>Renner? With his feet, but not as a passer.
Elijah Hood is very good.
Yes, there is that chance, but if our defense is as good as they are advertised (even this year with their issues giving up the big play) we should still be able to keep separation between ourselves and them on the scoreboard. Who cares if they score 21-28 with our defense suffering 3-5 mental breakdowns over the course of the game if we hang up 45-50? I honestly think if we punt more than 3 times this game, it's a disappointing effort, offensively.
Well, there's been a lot of "ifs" and "shoulds" so far for this team. The general point you raise is true - if everyone's playing to expectation (offense and defense), yes, this is a very winnable game. I expect to win and I think we're good enough to win. But if the strategy doesn't rely on controlling the clock, then I get less confident. Beamer will always try to play ball based on controlling the clock, playing good defense, and when necessary, winning field position by kicking. That will never change with him at the helm. If we ring up a ton of points, awesome, but I expect that to be less a result of huge, fast plays, and more a result of consistent execution and proper playcalling.
Controlling the clock has changed - note he has allowed Loeffler to use a hurry-up offense at his discretion and not just in situations where it is needed.
True, I just worry about the shootout mentality. Yes, if we can exploit weaknesses in their secondary, I'm for it. But if we're scoring too fast, I really worry about our defense's stamina and consistency. Situational use of hurry-up is great, but predicating the game plan on faster scoring or only using the run game if we have to just sounds like a recipe for trouble.
In college football in 2014, there is no such thing as "scoring too fast." Just score, and score some more and score again.
Remember the Sugar Bowl against Michigan? We ran a pass-happy wide-open offense all the way up into their red zone. Then we turtled at the 20, settled for a FG attempt too often, and kept them in it. I know everyone freaks out over the Danny Coale catch/non-catch, but the reality is that it never should have gotten to that point. We should have been so far ahead of them by the middle of the 4th that they couldn't have even caught up.
But we were so scared of "scoring too fast" and we wanted to keep whats-his-name, runny Mcgee off the field that we stopped doing what was working once we got to the place where points were scored. As a result, they stuck around and a few explosive plays were exactly what beat us.
Just score. Score as much as possible and everything else will work out.
Our D currently rates 103rd in explosive play defense while theirs is 123rd. Our O is 110th in creating explosive drives while theirs is 33rd.
However, the biggest advantage in the game is the VT offense in passing situations so it could be argued that running isn't as important since we don't necessarily need to get to 2nd or 3rd and short to find success.
If you methodically move the ball down the field and score most drives, you are going to control the clock. We need to use the offense to do their job, which is score. The Defense will need to do it's own job, which is prevent the opponent from scoring.
"Keeping them off the field" is one thing, but when your fear is big/explosive plays it doesn't really matter. They don't need 5-7mins to score on a big play, they just need 30 seconds.
Yes - if you believe that you will score more points per drive than your opponent, then it is in your best interest to increase sample size and have as many drives as possible.
That's why killing clock and limiting drives is an underdog strategy while FSU, Oregon, and Alabama aren't particularly worried about scoring quickly.
That wasn't really my point, I don't think we should "get into a shootout" with UNC. I'm saying that we should utilize our strength, which is methodical drives, to move the ball down the field and control the clock that way. If that is through the short-med passing game because that's where we are strong and they are weak and that's what they're giving us, that's how we should do it.
Running for the sake of running and "controlling the clock" when it's not working is ultimately less effective at the stated goal of "controlling the clock" if you keep punting the ball back to them.
Agreed with all points.
My biggest fear in this game is that we try to spend so long trying to establish the run while trying to methodically slow down the game in order to keep their offense off the field that we slow it down too much and either never allow our offense to get into a rhythm or wreck whatever rhythm we do have during the game, or that we spend so much time focusing on trying to possess the ball and keep their offense off the field that we miss opportunities for our offense to pick up a quick 15-20 yards through the air on a given play.
Nobody is going to care if UNC breaks off a few big plays if we hang over 40 on them. Our end goal should be points on the board, not winning the TOP battle.
As a statistics teacher in high school, I look forward to your analysis each week. Good stuff!
More like armordillo amirite (nerd alert)
I can't get past armadillos being in Georgia. I had no idea. I thought they were in Texas.
Glad to see Purdue isn't our comp any longer!
Fun thing to try, sneak up behind an armadillo and smack it on the backside. Watch it jump high up in the air and scurry off.
When I was in Costa Rica I saw my first real live armadillo. It was in the driveway of the shack we rented and it wouldn't get out of the way of our car. I got out of the car, walked up behind it as it was waddling away, bent over, reached out to grab it, and it jumped, hitting it's back on my face. I ran away like a frightened schoolgirl.
Pwned by an armadillo...
They jump pretty high don't they? When my dad smacked one, he said it jumped a few feet up into the air and ran off squealing.
It is hard to fathom how an animal has survived in such numbers for so long when the best thing it knows to do when scared it to jump. All I can image is a predator thinking "WTF?" While the armadillo finally just digs itself a hole to hide in.
It's best defense is actually similar to a turtle. the jumping is usually when it is first startled and serves to break a hold or get the fleshy parts out of a grasp so it can "turtle up".
Yes, they jump surprisingly high. Just ask my face.
In my case, the armadillo wasn't the one who ran away. I think after he hit me, he may have felt sorry for me and just walked away slowly, knowing that the threat had been neutralized.
It was probably pretty shocked to see a horse getting out of a car
Well, he doesn't exactly need a treadmill if he's walking everywhere, now does he? How would you expect him to travel?
Haulin' trailers is expensive these days, and I hear from Amtrak that horse-class isn't the greatest. Renting a car is the way to go (or in this case, a dualie)
Be careful there. The UNC defense may look bad in a lot of areas, but they are currently ranked 7th in the nation in INTs with 1.75 per game. That kinda scares me since that's about how many Brewer throws per game.
The nice thing about Brewer's INT's is that it is a relatively easy fix.
It's not about the physical inability to make accurate throws, or a lack of arm strength. It's not due to bad play calls, or even bad protection, although both have an effect. With very little exception, It's not about bad execution by your target like last year's debacle when throwing to Knowles.
At the end of the day, it's about Brewer recognizing the game situation and internalizing the necessity to just throw the ball away when the percentages are bad.
There are schematic things that can be done to get him better throwing lanes and better protection.
And the receivers are only going to get better.
So that leaves the stuff between Brewer's ears, and I have faith that Loeffler will help Brewer get that squared away.
While true, 5 of the 7 came against Liberty and San Diego State.
Against Clemson and ECU they gave up a 10:2 TD:INT and faced 90 pass attempts. 45 attempts/INT is not a good rate.
My worry here is that they obviously know Brewer's prone to throwing int's so how many can they bait him into. I think they will try and bait him into passes and then jump the route. That's my main concern this game.
Thanks to this thread and this video, I have wasted my entire afternoon looking up other videos of armadillos, then on to hedgehogs, then on to the top 20 creepiest moments in childhood cartoons, then on to....
Wow, where your mind takes you...lololol
I wonder if anyone else is thinking this...but here goes.
In my mind, Brewer has been lax with the ball trying to get it down field; however, it looks like he has done pretty well in red zone ball control. Yes, his interceptions have been bad for the most part. He hasn't thrown a pick in the redzone (I think), and generally has shown good decision making once he gets to the opponents 30 or 40 yard line. To me, this means we can run and pass down the field, then have some confidence in the redzone passing and running game both being successful in their own rights, even if our TD-per-RZ percentage isn't super high.
Put another way: It wouldn't shock me to see Brewer have 3 picks against a good defense, but I would be shocked at him having two picks in the endzone a la Logan Thomas against Duke last year.
You are correct, all 9 of Brewer's passing TDs are inside the 40 yard line of the opponent (showing no big plays for us) and he only has 1 interception to go with it which was last week's INT in the endzone. Inside the redzone, he has 7 TDs and no interceptions. As far as our redzone efficiency, we have scored on 18 of 20 trips to the redzone, 12 of which have been TDs. That's not a terrible number, but it's not great either at 60%.
60% is still a breath of fresh air compared to what we're used to in the RZ.
I think you guys are onto something. If we can just get him to realize that plays on your own side of the field are just as important as plays in scoring position, and get him to cut down on the careless throws which result in easy picks, we should be golden going forward. Really, thats our biggest problem this year. Even with the defensive struggles, even with the inability to really get the running game going, we have an offense that is doing enough to really win every game we've played this year. We just need it to click for a full 60 minutes and we need our QB to stop throwing INTs, and suddenly these nailbiters turn into 10 to 20 point wins almost immediately.
Break the field into 20-yard chunks...in the first four chunks his rating ranges from 100 to 118. Then get to the red zone and his rating is 201.
He's phenomenal in the redzone, it's just getting there that's the problem.
Unfortunately that's probably a small sample size situation likely to norm.
Agreed - the trend may remain but is not likely to be quite so stark. I provided the numbers as a way to quantify what he has done to date.
Also it should be noted that generally QBR's go up as you progress towards the end zone; you have a higher QBR against weaker teams and also more trips towards the end zone.
A lot of trepidation in these comments on this thread about our offense. I remember after the Directional Mich game that almost everyone here was saying we need an "offensive identity" like what we used to be - a slightly more dominant running offense with the ability and will to pass and to use this combination without being predictable. So that identity is to establish the running game which loosens up the passing defense (of which UNC doesn't have). Now I see a lot of "exploit their weakness and throw the ball immediately and often." That has been our problem. By doing this we can also control the clock, which is another theme we all tend to agree with - for every game... This all works together in my mind.
Being only reactionary every week to the opposition creates a reactionary plan which will fail overall. We need to impose our will week in and week out and instill our identity in our young players mentality.
That is how you win the game and establish a future juggernaut that recruits can also identify with and want to be a part of, folks!
http://youtu.be/W42iiCcFbxE
I for one, have no problem controlling the clock and doing methodical drives mixing the run and pass. Heck, I think it even works better. But we can't force ourselves into a "We must run" or a "we must pass" mindset. Take what the defense gives us, based on the last two weeks that could be a lot.
Would it be possible to see the post-game data compared with pre-game data to verify margin of error?
Good idea...what specifically would you like compared?
The "prediction" would be straightforward as would some of the personality stats, although being drive based there's somewhat of a sample size issue to consider. In other words, differentiating would likely be due to a limited number of drives in each game and not because the personality stat has a team wrong.
Let me know your thoughts!