I'm sure Godwin's injury impacted the results but it seems to me that the way to beat us is to toss it up one on one, on the outside downfield. With both Godwin and Kyle possibly not playing, who will start at Safety?
Our Defense showed a weakness last night
- Thread starter Turk
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With the coverage that our guys had, tossing it up one-on-one to a 6'-0" receiver will not get you much. For this to work, you have to have someone like Ball State's #8 to throw it to. I don't know if Minny has receivers like that. We will see some through the season, though.
You also need a near perfect throw. The slightest under throw is picked. Go for it.
I went over to the Minnisota Rival's page and looked at the current depth chart posted. They actually list 5 recievers in their two-deep chart. One is 6'4" and two more are listed at 6'3". The remaining two are under 6'. One of their injured recievers as listed in another post is one of the 6'3" guys. It will be intesting to see how much Minny tries the jump ball type throw. Go Cats!
Their longest pass play is 38 yards; even our offense has had two longer pass plays than that. If they resorted to this strategy to beat us, I believe our coaching staff would be delighted
I would agree. Some of our coverages were right there, but that Ball State receiver, Jordan Williams, made some great catches. Give that guy some credit. Their quarterback, Riley Neal, also reminded me a little bit of Jarod Goff from Cal when we played them 2 years ago when he was a freshman. Both were gunslingers, cold-blooded, and daring. He did throw a pretty ball and was tough to bring down. No one really laid a good hit on him yesterday.
I was very disappointed when I watched the game live last night, but watched replay on TIVO this morning and felt better.
We are not that bad. Ball State is not a bad team.
I was very disappointed when I watched the game live last night, but watched replay on TIVO this morning and felt better.
We are not that bad. Ball State is not a bad team.
Agreed, I think that Ball State's weaknesses are on defense, and our offense wasn't quite at the point yet to fully expose those weakness. But we're making progress.
I was impressed by him, especially as a true Frosh. No bad mistakes, he runs the read option pretty well and put the ball where it had to be. He unloaded it to safety when he needed to. Defense was right there and he put the ball right where it needed to be. His hand offs were also pretty clean. I think he is going to be a winner for them. I have to wonder how bigger programs missed him. While I think CT is going to be special, at 6'5" 210 and with his presence and mobility and ability to run the read option, would like to see us have a guy like Neal on the roster.
I think that is the only way they can beat us. So it may come to that and we should b delighted if it does since it would show that we stopped their running game.
Being able to hand off the ball is now a reason to be impressed by a QB? After a game where a botched QB/RB exchange played a key role?
I'm not trying to disparage the kid. He's got an interesting set of size, speed, and arm skills. But after Hank and the D adjusted to the quick-hitting short passes Neal was hitting early on, the only real pass offense BSU had was "chuck it up to Williams and hope." Neal made some poor decisions, could/should have had 4-5 INTs, and definitely needed an extra ice bath after all the shots he took.
From a casual reading of the posts of the last few days, I noticed quite a few snarky posts from you about Neal, bordering on the obnoxious. He's like the anti-Lowery to you. It is as if this kid mixed up your order in a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru a few years back while you were passing through Indiana. Do you mistake Neal complements as thinly veiled critiques about Thorson? My guess: Neal's decent performances to kick off his career - an afterthought of a recruit, a freshman quarterback who plays for a mediocre program - goes against conventional wisdom, which is what you're all about.
I don't think he was that good. Williams was very good. Neal came out strong, then fell off pretty markedly. He's got a lot of potential, but was nothing special against NU.
I think Neal looked like the best QB to play in Ryan Field this season. Ice bath? Was he ever sacked?
Hogan certainly did not burn up Ryan Field. But if you watch his tape vs. USC, you will see the best QB we have faced this year, and likely all season.
Kid was definitely limping around starting in about the third quarter. He took some serious shots either after releasing the ball or on his runs.
Were we watching the same game? The kid looked like he could run a marathon at that point just to warm up for the triathlon, decathlon, and mathathon in quick succession.
I thought Neal played quite well for a freshman, but he was definitely limping almost the entire second half. He didn't get sacked or hit much while passing, but I think he took a few good hits running the ball, and it looked like it slowed him down in the second half
The kid took a lot of shots, did you not see the one where he, in perhaps not the best decision he ever made, ran bolt upright into Walker. If you didn't see him limp away from that contact, I think you were watching Utah/Oregon.
My take on the CB play being a weakness on Saturday is that on the throws to No. 8 of Ball State, Brandon Williams that beat Van Hoose, there was poor pressure by our defensive line. Van Hoose appeared to be in good position on the plays. When CBs are on an island and QBs are not pressuring the QB, CBs are going to get beat, particularly, if you have an accurate QB. Also, when one of your ball-hawk safeties is out of the game (Godwin I.), it creates more difficulties. I think the Ball State offensive line did a very good job in stopping the pass rush with probably an emphasis on stopping our stud DE Lowry. The issue with our defensive line is that our defensive tackles are servicable, but don't create much of a push and collapse the pocket. Deonte Gibson is solid but he not a great finisher on sacks. Odegnigbo is the playmaker and needs to play more because that would take a little more double-teaming on Lowry. The problem occurs in the Big 10 conference games when big offensive linemen are allowed to get away with more (holding) and we get beat up on inside power runs. I believe that is what Minny, UM and Iowa are seeing on the tape that we are not too strong right up the middle.
I was impressed with his ability to avoid sacks. I thought he had a real good feel for where the pressure was coming from. In that respect, he didn't seem like a first-time starter. I thought that part of his game was special. As for the rest of his game, I will defer to you.
He was under heavy pressure all night, and did a good job of avoiding taking sacks and getting rid of the ball (often on target) with rushers in his face. Pressure forced several situations that should have been picks.
I thought their O-Line generally did a good job of holding onto their blocks. Our guys were stronger (which was good to see) and pushed them back towards him and collapsed the pocket from all sides. So we did not get highlight reel type sacks but were impacting him on a lot of plays.
Not exactly what I meant but I agree that I yelled at the television more than once when there was an obvious hold. And with my pixelated picture, if I could see it then it would be visible from space.
I knew exactly what you meant, I just used it as segue into my point about non-calls.
On one of their big QB scrambles, their center blatantly held Lowery (playing inside) who was spying the QB and would have gotten him for no gain. Instead it was a big gainer.
Gibson was abusing his man all night and the guy was grabbing on for dear life. Their QB broke contain multiple times after a great DE pass rush was followed by a OT desperation grab from behind. I hope the ref paid for his ticket because he was a spectator except when it came to the random DL to the OL's face call. Hey ref, maybe you should start watching the OL's hands instead of their faces.
+ 1,000,000. If it went both ways and we were holding their players and it wasn't called, than perhaps I could understand the officiating. But they called a hold on Mogus when he whiffed on his man completely and could not have possibly held him! Worst officiating I've seen in some time, believe it was a MAC crew since I didn't recognize the referee (and an internet search of him reveals little...)
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