bitching about refs

Finally! No,... FINALLY!!!!!

So that game was closer than it should have been.  Raise your hand if you think the replay official had taken Ohio against the spread.  A touchdown would have made it a 10 point game with Michigan covering the 9 point spread. But let's bitch about that later.

WOOOOOO!!!!!!

10-2 with wins against ND and OSU! It's beyond all expectations. If we hadn't laid an egg at Iowa and gotten screwed by the refs that game, we'd be sitting with just one loss, 3 close wins, and 8 curb stompings.  You could say that I'm sold on this coaching staff.  I had no idea the coordinators and position coaches would be this good.  We still have a lot of issues with our WLB and our secondary, but we're light years ahead of where we were last season. 

On to the pics!

Fickell

I have to give him credit for coming out with an aggressive gameplan that put a lot of pressure on Braxton Miller's arm and Posey's ability to get separation.  It almost worked.  But the punt from the 36 yard line was a pure Zookian moment.

fickellMVP

It's 4th and 4, the game is a high scoring affair, you've been moving the ball pretty well with your mobile QB and there's a strong possibility that you'd only be gaining 16 yards with a punt anyway.  There's no debate.  This was a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE decision.  Their punter did a good job executing the coffin corner kick, but that still doesn't justify the thought process.  

Add that to Fickell's continued clock mismanagement, and I doubt you'll find a single bucknut fan who is sad to see him go (or demoted, or whatever).  Not forcing a punt at the end of the first half was not that bad with a one point lead, but wasting 16 seconds for a 3rd down spike on the last drive was just awful.  You could even hear Spielman rolling his eyes at that. 

F* That guy

Miller is going to be a problem going forward.  He fits "Urban Meyer's offense" as Spielman called it during the game (so much for the two weeks of pretense) almost perfectly.  He doesn't throw a very accurate ball but *cough*tebow*cough* that doesn't mean he can't be successful in that offense. 

millerstats

It is interesting to note that Miller had 9 TD's and only 3 picks.  Yeah, he didn't have many yards or attempts and was under 50% passing, but that's still pretty remarkable for a true freshman.  He's been missing his receivers in safe ways and pulling it to run if the coverage doesn't look right.  That's pretty good ball security for someone you'd expect to misread coverages due to inexperience. 

Millerscrambleryanblitz

He started out the game doing what we expected, we just weren't ready for his speed on the first couple of plays.  On this 2nd and long, Ryan is blitzing from a walked off OLB spot.  

Millerscrambleryanblitz2

But his path is a little too much to the outside.  I know he's thinking about contain, but he's got to aim more directly at Boren and then use his arms to stay off the block. 

Millerscrambleryanblitz3

Instead, he gets pushed outside and the tackle is free to release onto Demens. 

Millerscrambleryanblitz4

Morgan has to do a better job of reading that lineman crossing the LOS and react quicker to Miller.  Ryan would adjust later, but this gave them an important early 1st down. 

kovacssack

Mattison really sold out on stopping the run and stopping Miller's scrambling.  On Kovacs' delayed blitz, you can see we did a much better job of filling the running lanes on the rush.  Morgan is playing spy (which was kind of useless...) and the D-line is free to shoot the gaps away from the blitzer. 

kovacssack2

But Miller is very elusive and showed great leg strength in getting away not only from Kovacs, but also RVB.  Fortunately Demens and Martin have followed the play allowing Kovacs a second shot at the sack. Meanwhile, Morgan is .... well I think Ohio watched a lot of film on Morgan and decided to go after him all game. 

rvbstuntsack

Martin and RVB were great all day (of course), and they were twisting on most passing downs.  This is a pretty good idea when the O-line you're facing is known to have communication problems. On this play RVB is supposed to go around Martin, but Brewster gives Martin a pretty good pop. 

rvbstuntsack2

That's no problem for the two seniors, RVB just decides to go first and Martin swings around.  

rvbstuntsack3

The center and guard are so concerned with Mike, they let VanBergen go free for the easy TFL.

millerqbdraw

Miller picked up 1st downs with his legs all day.  The early bombs really messed with our gameplan and gave him more room to run.  On this 3rd and long, we've got Kovacs in the box in our crazy lineup with all the guys on the line and different people dropping out. Because of the earlier passing success, three people are dropping into coverage, even though Ohio LOVES to call the QB draw in this situation.  

millerqbdraw2

The result is that Morgan got caught with his weight going the wrong direction and Miller galloped over Kovacs for a big gainer. 

kovacstfl

But I think Mattison just decided he wasn't going to let Boom Herron beat us.  I think Herron ended up with less than 40 yards because of plays like this.  Here we've got Kovacs coming off the receiver to run blitz. 

kovacstfl2

And again you can see the linemen shooting gaps away from him.

kovacstfl3

Kovacs gets in there so fast that both Boren and Posey are blocking air.  Jordan gets the TFL and the Ohio is stuck in another 3rd and long. 

Miller ran the speed option a lot the last few games and that continued against us.  On this touchdown, he cuts against the grain and makes Roh miss in space.  Spielman was babbling about how great a play call this was and how it was a counter speed option. 

milleroptioncounterTD

I call bullshit.  They definitely do have a counter speed option, but this play wasn't it.  You can tell because Roh is unblocked. On the designed counter, the tackle engages the end and tries to seal him inside or kick him outside. 

This looks more like improvisation by Miller. I think they just tell Posey to block on the backside like he means it on every play. They got a TD here simply on Miller's talent, not on any blocking scheme.  You can see he takes a hard jabstep upfield that fools Roh just enough so that he can get outside.  

millerjumpcut

After that he makes an amazing jumpcut and his momentum carries him into the endzone. 

millercounterspeedoptionPA

THIS is the counter speed option, except it's a playaction pass.  The tip off that it's a pass is that Miller turns away from the LOS instead of going nose towards it. 

millercounterspeedoptionPA2

It's a well designed play that turns into a rollout to the right.  They've got three layers with a deep corner, the intermediate cross, and Stonebrunner is going to release into the flat. If the Defense over pursues the rollout, there's even a throwback available to Herron. 

millercounterspeedoptionPA3

But Stonebrunner doesn't hold his block long enough or Miller doesn't get enough depth and Roh is right up in his face. 

millercounterspeedoptionPA4

A more experienced QB might have tried to hit #11 who is open, but like I said before, Miller has been very safe with the ball.  Morgan does a good job of knowing who he's playing against and comes up expecting the run instead of uselessly trailing the TE.  

millercounterspeedoptionPA5

He was wide open though.  And Denard made a similar play that turned a sack into a short gain. Maybe Miller will be making those plays in the years ahead.  Guh. 

mattisongoallineRPS

I'm just glad we'll have Mattison.  Because when push came to shove and we needed a stop on the goal-line in the 4th quarter, Mattison basically declared that Miller wasn't going to run the ball in.  And credit Kovacs for picking up the TE on playaction so that Miller didn't have an easy throw.  

F* this guy too

With only one game of film to watch, our DB's were not prepared for Posey's talent.  

poseywideopen

But after a couple of short passes to him, they were very concerned about his presence.  A little too concerned. 

poseywideopen2

If Gordon hadn't screwed the pooch on this, the ball was not well thrown and he could have given Brown a harder time catching it since Miller threw it to the wrong shoulder and brown had to turn around to find it. 

countessposeytriplemove

I'm going to give our DB's a tiny little bit of slack in saying they haven't faced anyone with Posey's skill except for Michael Floyd.  And they had a lot of safety help against Floyd that they didnt' get for this game.  Posey is as close to Mario Mannigham that I've seen on an oposing team.  He does a great job of getting on the DB's toes and making them turn their hips. But still...

countessposeytriplemove2

Even though this is a triple move, (headfake outside, cut inside, cut outside)...

countessposeytriplemove3

You can't let a guy get that wide open.  Lucky for us this duck was overthrown.  

poseypostTD

If you're going to put 8 men in the box and play man up against the WR, then freaking play man up.  Troy has Posey one on one, but because he's lined up so far back, there's no chance for him to make a play on anything but a fly.  

poseypostTD2

This deep cross was not a fly.

poseypostTD3

And it didn't help that Posey turned Troy around with an outside fake.  Amazingly, Miller hit him in stride (no it wasn't a tight spiral). 

poseyphew

Posey did it to all three of our DB's (Kovacs was essentially a LB this game).  On the last drive he turns around Floyd.  J.T. was thinking about getting an interception, and we almost paid dearly for it. 

poseyphew2

We were about a yard and a half from being down by a point.  There would have still been 1:30+ left on the clock, but I was pretty happy to see this ball hit the ground.  Our offense was pretty good, and Denard was pretty accurate, but no offense to Gibbons, I'm glad we didn't have to drive for a winning field goal.  

[hit the jump for the remainder]

[Ed: argh, having some editing issues. Bump.]

"Play hard and play with great effort"

Immediately after the game, I was struggling to come up with a thru-line for what had just happened.  But then Brian posted "Defensive Annhilation Muppets" and then the video of Mattison getting emotional surfaced. And for a moment I thought, 'you guys are over-reacting. Illinois does not have a good offense'.  I like when coaches just give coachspeak. But then I thought about the last three years and yeah, it makes sense.  The difference in emotion between Chip Kelly's comments and Mattison's are where you're starting from.  

A couple of years from now, a win like this will only be notable for constructive criticism.  There were a lot of bad plays that need to be corrected.  But given the circumstances of where we were last year and what we were expected to be this year and the fact that we're 8-2 with a decent chance of picking up at least one more win and a very small chance of getting to 11 wins, emotional celebration is more than appropriate. 

What a difference a week makes!

Al Borges didn't have a great game against Iowa, and I pointed that out.  He had a much better gameplan this week.  I don't know if he or anyone close to him reads blogs or not, but he responded to several very specific criticisms leveled here last week.  

Holding the backside DE

I mentioned something about a lack of reverses.

endaroundfake

Thanks Al!  Odoms is coming from his slot position to take an end around fake.  Not only did it hold the backside OLB and prevent the DE from crashing down on Denard, it also froze the MLB just enough for Fitz to run right by him. 

But that wasn't the only trick up Al's sleeve. He pulled out another wrinkle from the Richrod days.

backsideend

One of the problems with protecting Denard and limiting his carries is that the DE that you're optioning on the zone read doesn't have to respect the keep and is free to chase the TB. But here we see Koger coming from his H-back wing to block #9.

backsideend2

The O-line is getting good lateral movement and both Denard and Koger are eliminating defenders from the pursuit.

backsideend3

One caveat is that their safeties were pretty bad (someone mentioned they had backups in the game). #5 has badly misread this play, and he's too slow to catch Fitz anyway. Meanwhile, if you wonder how a guy can get over 100 yards in the first quarter, you can bet he's breaking tackles.  This arm tackle didn't even slow him down.

backsideend4

This arm tackle slowed him down,

backsideend5

 but it didn't stop him. 

backsideend6

So Fitz had about 45 yards of YAC from the first arm tackle and then about another 15 yards of super YAC downfield. 

The offense as a whole had a much better day (despite some derpiness in the 2nd and 3rd quarters). The O-line was doing a great job with the zone blocking in the first quarter and opened up some nice running lanes. 

zoneblocking

Here we've got Hopkins blocking the DE from his FB position instead of Koger, but the result is about the same. Gallon cracks down on his man and Omameh does a good job scraping off the double team and getting to the linebacker. 

zoneblocking2

Huyge takes his man where he wants to go and it opens up a nice line. 

On this next play, there's only 5 in the box because the OLB's are out on the slot receivers.

zoneblocking3

Molk does an excellent job of tracking down his man and we've got a hat on a hat. 

zoneblocking4

The Zen of zone blocking is you just get on your man and take him away from the play using his own impetus.  Of course you need a guy like Fitz back there who is patient enough and has good vision to see the hole developing. 

zoneblocking5

Even though the OLB crashes down for contain, he's nowhere near Fitz and Denard has read him properly.  If this were the pros Fitz would be owing five really large guys a nice dinner for this play.

The Numbers Game

We had some issues in the red zone last week. Part of that is due to Iowa's talent on the D-line and part of it is having Denard sitting in the pocket or handing off or otherwise not putting pressure on the defense to account for him.

numbersgame

If this were a normal pitch play or off-tackle dive, it would've been completely stuffed because they've got more defenders than we've got blockers on the playside.  But when Denard keeps it, we've got an even matchup and Denard just has to pick his way through and find a hole.  

numbersgame2

But what really makes this play work is that Omameh gets a great cut block, upending his man.  Now we've got 6 blockers against their 5 defenders and Denard with no one to track him down. 

numbersgame3

Omameh's block freed up Molk to get on the pursuing linebacker and the result is an easy touchdown for shoelace.

So what happened in the 2nd Quarter?  Well let's compare to a play where we don't have a numbers advantage. 

numbersgame4

They've got 9 defenders in the box with both safeties playing up.  If Denard has the freedom to audible (or we had gotten to the line with more than 8 seconds so that the coaches could call a check play #misshightempo), then he should be throwing a fade or "z out" to Roundtree at the bottom of the screen. We've got 9 in the box, but because we're in I form, the defense doesn't have to account for the QB (as his first 5 steps are backwards).

numbersgame5

The play is a lead draw. The line shows pass blocking and then the center or whoever is free is supposed to head upfield after a couple beats. But this call means that Illinois has a lot of unblocked defenders. It doesn't help that Molk misreads the defense and doesn't scrape off to one of the linebackers. This means that Hopkins has three unblocked people he has to choose from. If Denard had been running, then both Hopkins and Fitz would have hit the MLBs so Denard would just have to juke the safety to get in the endzone. 

numbersgame6

Instead, Hopkins gets one LB and the other stuffs Fitz for a loss with both safeties racing up to make sure he doesn't fall forward. 

[ed: follow the jump.]