Showing posts with label Jacoby Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacoby Ford. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Saturday, 21 November 2009
De-Fault
As Homer would say the two sweetest words in the english language. De-Fault! De-Fault!
What is going on at the half against Virginia?? Groh and his coaches are playing and play calling with nothing to lose. We can not defend the wildcat/mobile Qb for the life of us. I'm just sick...this wont get it done against USuCk or GT. Defense isnt getting penetration and is getting out schemed. That wheel route at the end was inexcusable.
Ron Cherry you've outdone yourself...I know you threw that intl grounding flag and then had to be talked out of it. A penalty for saluting the crowd?? What is this Communist Russia?
We are moving the ball well and putting up points other than that awful fourth down call on the early turnover. I like going for it on fourth but not on the roll out--Parker didnt know where he was going. But man, what a pass to Jacoby in the endzone...Can we retire the word trickeration??
Steele, lets make the adjustments and let CJ and all the seniors get in the game and go crazy...
What is going on at the half against Virginia?? Groh and his coaches are playing and play calling with nothing to lose. We can not defend the wildcat/mobile Qb for the life of us. I'm just sick...this wont get it done against USuCk or GT. Defense isnt getting penetration and is getting out schemed. That wheel route at the end was inexcusable.
Ron Cherry you've outdone yourself...I know you threw that intl grounding flag and then had to be talked out of it. A penalty for saluting the crowd?? What is this Communist Russia?
We are moving the ball well and putting up points other than that awful fourth down call on the early turnover. I like going for it on fourth but not on the roll out--Parker didnt know where he was going. But man, what a pass to Jacoby in the endzone...Can we retire the word trickeration??
Steele, lets make the adjustments and let CJ and all the seniors get in the game and go crazy...
Sunday, 27 September 2009
On the Red Zone Offense
I usually take a couple of days to collect myself before posting after a loss--keeps me from writing things I might regret. But I'm noticing a really disturbing mantra starting to take root in the Clemson community that needs to be addressed. Something along the lines of, "Well, if only the offense played better in the red zone we'd be 4-0". I've heard various message board posters, pundits, analysts repeating a similar refrain.
This is flat-out wrong. In all meaningful games we've played to date, our offense (and I mean that in terms of offensive output, not offensive design) has consisted almost entirely of C.J. Spiller or Jacoby Ford getting the ball in space and using their superior athletic abilities to gobble up large chunks of yardage. When we get to the red zone, though, the field shortens and there's no open space left. Our red zone offense is essentially the same as our normal offense without Spiller or Ford--it's non-existent. To put it another way, we struggle in the red zone like we struggle anywhere else on the field, the only difference is Spiller and Ford can't bail us out with big gains.
We can debate the reasons for the offensive struggles (inconsistent line play, soft wide receiver routes, baffling playcalls, dropped passes; to name a few) but let's not let delude ourselves into thinking this offense is adequate except when it gets in the red zone. We need drastic, fundamental improvement in a lot of areas before we even approach a league average offense. I sincerely hope the coaching staff sees this, but from what I gather so far they've been more or less content to prop up this phantom red zone issue as the central problem. The fanbase/media needs to hold their feet to fire over the real issue, or anytime we play a top defense we should expect to come away as losers.
For now, if anyone tells you the key to Clemson's struggles is to "figure out" the red zone, feel free to ignore everything else they say.
This is flat-out wrong. In all meaningful games we've played to date, our offense (and I mean that in terms of offensive output, not offensive design) has consisted almost entirely of C.J. Spiller or Jacoby Ford getting the ball in space and using their superior athletic abilities to gobble up large chunks of yardage. When we get to the red zone, though, the field shortens and there's no open space left. Our red zone offense is essentially the same as our normal offense without Spiller or Ford--it's non-existent. To put it another way, we struggle in the red zone like we struggle anywhere else on the field, the only difference is Spiller and Ford can't bail us out with big gains.
We can debate the reasons for the offensive struggles (inconsistent line play, soft wide receiver routes, baffling playcalls, dropped passes; to name a few) but let's not let delude ourselves into thinking this offense is adequate except when it gets in the red zone. We need drastic, fundamental improvement in a lot of areas before we even approach a league average offense. I sincerely hope the coaching staff sees this, but from what I gather so far they've been more or less content to prop up this phantom red zone issue as the central problem. The fanbase/media needs to hold their feet to fire over the real issue, or anytime we play a top defense we should expect to come away as losers.
For now, if anyone tells you the key to Clemson's struggles is to "figure out" the red zone, feel free to ignore everything else they say.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Swinney and Special Teams
Time to give credit to the coaching staff where credit is due. The season's only three games old so I might regret writing this in a few weeks, but there's one area of the team that has clearly improved in performance relative to the last few years: special teams. Its not just Spiller and Ford and a bunch of guys throwing bodies around in front of them this year, the execution looks a lot better on both returns and coverage. Special teams has been so good that it has turned into both an offensive and defensive weapon for Clemson this season by giving us a large measure of control over field position (even with Zimmerman shanking a thirty yard punt every three times or so). Not that the defense particularly needs any help, but without the fine special teams play and the accompanying excellent starting field position on Saturday, the score would have been a lot closer. As it was, though, Clemson typically only needed to grab a first down or two to get into Richard Jackson's range.
Andre' Powell gets a lot of credit. 2009 builds on his 2008 campaign (the year he was officially designated "special teams coordinator"), which was a marked improvement over the special teams disaster that was 2007 (keeping in mind it had to be difficult not to improve over a unit that doomed the entire team on multiple occasions). But Dabo Swinney deserves credit, as well. They couldn't have improved this much without practicing more, and at some level practice time is ultimately allotted with Swinney's approval.
I think the real interesting angle here is the reasoning behind improving the play of special teams. When Swinney looked over the past year's performance way back in January, he must have seen a waste of two outstanding talents in the return game. It's also an area that isn't emphasized by a lot of other programs in the ACC (excepting, of course, VT), witness BC's perfectly adequate but uninspiring performance on Saturday. So here we have the coaching staff targeting a part of the game undervalued by other teams which they know will result in outperforming the competition with relatively little cost (in this case, the cost of practice time). This is the kind of decision that smart coaches and programs make, it results in maximizing the odds for any game with a minimal amount of effort--think of special teams at VT, the discipline instilled by the coaching staff at Wake Forest, or, to jump sports for a moment, the emphasis Coach Purnell puts on defense.
Its just one facet of the game, its just one break from their predecessors, but its encouraging to think Coach Swinney & Co. are thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of the team. I don't expect this level of play to continue--there are too many factors in a given special teams play outside of the control of the team and too few plays thus far to accept this as the true level of talent for Clemson. It's also likely this is a short-term advantage for the Tigers, it's unclear where special teams will go without Spiller or Ford. But so far special teams play has at least partially masked some of our offensive deficiencies, and paid noticeable dividends on the field. If it wasn't responsible for the victory last week, it sure made things more comfortable.
The real question for me is whether this is the kind of thinking that will become a hallmark of the Swinney years, or if it's just an anomaly. The answer to that question could very well determine the length of the Swinney tenure as we struggle with a less-than-fully formed offensive philosophy and a possible emerging talent-gap with some of the rapidly-improving teams in the ACC.
Andre' Powell gets a lot of credit. 2009 builds on his 2008 campaign (the year he was officially designated "special teams coordinator"), which was a marked improvement over the special teams disaster that was 2007 (keeping in mind it had to be difficult not to improve over a unit that doomed the entire team on multiple occasions). But Dabo Swinney deserves credit, as well. They couldn't have improved this much without practicing more, and at some level practice time is ultimately allotted with Swinney's approval.
I think the real interesting angle here is the reasoning behind improving the play of special teams. When Swinney looked over the past year's performance way back in January, he must have seen a waste of two outstanding talents in the return game. It's also an area that isn't emphasized by a lot of other programs in the ACC (excepting, of course, VT), witness BC's perfectly adequate but uninspiring performance on Saturday. So here we have the coaching staff targeting a part of the game undervalued by other teams which they know will result in outperforming the competition with relatively little cost (in this case, the cost of practice time). This is the kind of decision that smart coaches and programs make, it results in maximizing the odds for any game with a minimal amount of effort--think of special teams at VT, the discipline instilled by the coaching staff at Wake Forest, or, to jump sports for a moment, the emphasis Coach Purnell puts on defense.
Its just one facet of the game, its just one break from their predecessors, but its encouraging to think Coach Swinney & Co. are thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of the team. I don't expect this level of play to continue--there are too many factors in a given special teams play outside of the control of the team and too few plays thus far to accept this as the true level of talent for Clemson. It's also likely this is a short-term advantage for the Tigers, it's unclear where special teams will go without Spiller or Ford. But so far special teams play has at least partially masked some of our offensive deficiencies, and paid noticeable dividends on the field. If it wasn't responsible for the victory last week, it sure made things more comfortable.
The real question for me is whether this is the kind of thinking that will become a hallmark of the Swinney years, or if it's just an anomaly. The answer to that question could very well determine the length of the Swinney tenure as we struggle with a less-than-fully formed offensive philosophy and a possible emerging talent-gap with some of the rapidly-improving teams in the ACC.
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