Even though I've cooled off from the outcome of the game itself, I'm still pretty upset by what happened. Not the loss itself, but the fact that we lost that game as much as Clemson won it. They deserve all the credit in the world for coming into a rowdy atmosphere, in their first road test, and not making any mistakes leading to their eventual win. But at the same time, we did almost everything we could to help them.
We all had to know, whether we admit it or not, that we weren't going to play perfectly on offense this season, even with all the skills we have throughout all the positions. The frustrating part (and I've been using the term "frustrating" for weeks now) is the fact that we're not playing anywhere near our potential, let alone at it.
LT fires a hard pass, as he's known to do, Boykin can only get a hand on it, and it gets picked. Ok. DW plays with a great deal of confidence, holds the ball out of position at times, and a perfect hit jars the ball loose. Fine. These things happen, and they happened at inopportune times. But when we have the ball 1st and Goal on the 2, and the chance to take the lead, after all the other unfortunate events took place, and we need to blame a false start on 3rd down for why we settled for a FG, that is unacceptable.
Honestly, I don't care about how pretty things look, as long as they're smart and effective. When we have four plays from the 2 yard line, I don't care if we QB sneak it every play, because the odds say we probably won't fumble, and we'll probably get the yards and points. When we're running the ball successfully multiple plays in a row, then try to get fancy with a pass that results in a loss of down with no yards gained, I want to know the reason behind it. Same goes for when passing is in the zone, and we run right at the line for no gain.
Like many VT fans, my younger brother made a comment about the offensive playcalling, and I tried my best to describe my opinion on it in this way. If you're a team who is filled with players without many individual skills, and you're playing a higher quality opponent, you need to make your play calls in a way that tries to outsmart the other team. If you catch them off guard, it won't matter if you're slower or less powerful than them, because you'll gain the yards you need if it is executed properly.
The problem however, is that the Hokies have the talent and skills at all the spots, but our coaches seem to make their decisions, at least on offense, like we need to outsmart the other team. In most cases, it won't matter if the defense knows that DW is going to get the ball, because unless they completely sell out and load the box, one or two players most likely aren't going to stop him. If we have a 3rd and 1 play, with JO in the backfield, why on earth would we do anything other than QB sneak, or give JO the ball up the middle? Instead, on Saturday night, I saw the exact same scenario happen, but we gave JO the ball to the outside, and he lost a couple yards. Ironically enough, on either the next drive or the one after, we had another 1 yard to gain situation, and there wasn't even any hesitation to give LT the ball on the sneak. And guess what? It worked!
Now I'm not an X's and O's kind of guy. I've never coached nor played football in any organized structure. So clearly I'm nowhere near as qualified to say what is wrong and how it should be fixed as the coaches who are getting paid lots of money to make those decisions. But I have watched and followed a lot of football in my life, and I can tell the difference between a bad team, and bad execution/decision making, and right now something has to be done to fix what is going on with our offense.
Obviously I have not made any comments yet about our defense, and that is because I feel they did everything we could have asked from them this past weekend. I don't even count the last TD against them, because at that point in the game I'm sure they were pissed off at how many times they had stopped this high powered offense, only to never see the deficit shrink.
This week we get a Miami team that is very Jekyll and Hyde. What we do know is that they have the talent to play anybody, even if they squander it more often than we tend to do. At least when we don't play to our potential, we still usually win most our games. Hopefully we figure out at least a quick short-term solution to our offensive woes, and that the D continues to do their thing, and we can get back on track quickly with a possible rematch set for early December.
Across the ACC
As I was either riding to the game, tailgating, or riding from the game all day Saturday, I didn't get to watch any other ACC games this week. Technically I watched the 4th quarter of the Duke game thanks to my sweet new iPhone, but that's not enough to talk about how everyone in the league played.
While I may have technically predicted the winner wrong, it is clear to me that UVA has come down from their early season high. UNC did their part in getting past a loss, like I hope the Hokies are able to do next week. GT and WF continue to look better in their respective ways than many predicted at the beginning of the year, which is good for the conference.
Overall I went 5-3 on game predictions, which I guess is technically better than 5-4 from last week. For all three that I got wrong, it was a conference team I predicted to lose, so I can't take it personally they went out to do their job and prove me wrong. Although if any team is doing anything to me personally, then I am receiving way too much credit from somebody.
Week 5 Predictions: 5-3
October Predictions: 5-3
September Predictions: 30-8
Overall Year-Long Predictions: 35-11
H-O-K-I-E-S HOKIES!!!
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