First off, what a fun game to watch! Things clicked on both offense and defense and mistakes were kept to a minimum. That is the recipe for winning football games and that is just what we have seen in our two games so far. The fact that last night it happened against a higher caliber team than last week’s opponent is cause for a bit of relief also.
ON OFFENSE
Right off the top of my head I have to acknowledge the fantastic job the offensive line played last night. They opened up space at the line of scrimmage for Conner to get through so that he could bull his way around in the second level. They protected Voytik very well giving up zero sacks and gave the young QB some time to make decisions on passing plays.
Since an offense is really only made up of two things, running and passing, that good work they did was critical. Plus they did it with injuries and shuffling of players. The fact that in their third year Chryst and Hueber have big, talented bodies to plug-n-play on the line shows me all I need to know about Chryst’s OL recruiting. In just two full recruiting seasons he’s brought in more OL talent than I can remember in a long time.
Rowell went down with an injury and Gabe Roberts stepped in and played as well or better at the Center position. Jaryd Jones-Smith rotates into the game at Left Tackle and gives Voytik better opportunities to set up in the pocket and pass the ball. Look for that to be a permanent move possibly.
Holtz as the stay at home Tight End made some excellent pull blocking plays that allowed Conner to get the corner and pick up big yardage. It pretty much clicked like clockwork and that is very heartening to see given the talent we have at the Running Back position. Helping our rushers to 6.0 yards per carry is certainly something to hang your hat on.
Our RBs, or more accurately James Conner, had a steady and very productive evening racking up 203 yards on 35 carries. One of his better runs was this 23 yarder – note the excellent pull block by our C Artie Rowell. That 35 carries number worries me a small amount as I think 35 carries was a bit much for one back. However, knowing the importance of getting a FBS win on the road and the need both ball control and ball security last night it doesn’t surprise me.
I do think that running Chris James a few more than five times, especially when we had those bigger leads, might have helped both Conner and James but that’s a small bone to pick. We ran James twice in a row at the end of the 1st quarter where he picked 14 yards then he basically disappeared for the rest of the game.
Notice that the rumblings about having James get carries enough so that he could supplant Conner as RB1 and allow Conner the move to DE have completely died out at this point. Of course some of that is the fact that our DEs have played well so far this year. I do remember a commenter on here who was adamant that Conner “wasn’t a D1 running back”. Huh.
We are seeing game-to-game progression out of QB Chad Voytik which is exactly what we thought would happen with a first year starter. After a pretty rocky 1st quarter (1/4 for two yards and a INT) he played OK last night with two TDs passing and with his rushing abilities. He had two very good passes, one in particular a 22 yarder perfectly placed to WR Manasseh Garner to get a first down at the Boston College five yard line late in the 2nd quarter. That pass was bracketed by two other completions, the last a TD to Boyd to give us a nice 20-7 halftime lead. Voytik’s other pretty throw was a 41 yard pass to Boyd down the middle, a bit underthrown and thus we missed a long TD, but a nice deep completion that set up a score.
That scoring series of passes went Holtz for nine yards, Garner for 22 yards and Boyd five yards and a TD. That is exactly the type of play we need, and I think we’ll see, from Voytik as the season moves on. He used three different receivers and averaged 12 yards per completion. It is also just what OC Rudolph wants Voytik to be able to execute from his QB position.
So Voytik had a pretty good evening but if you look only at the stats you’d think his passing wasn’t that well done. Those stats, even if a bit deceiving, do show some areas to be concerned about though. He must be able to complete more than 50% of his passes and better 5.5 yards per attempt against FBS teams if we are to rely on our passing in later games, and you know there will be times when that will be necessary.
On the short season so far he has averaged 97.5 yards per game with 5.91 ypa. Those are poor numbers and even given our run first offense they have to improve. We know a football team doesn’t live by stats alone but if that trend persists we’ll lack the ability to consistently move the ball downfield through the air. I think we’ll see Chryst let Voytik open up his passing game if we get out to a big lead early against FIU so that Voytik is more comfortable out there and he can work on seeing the whole field when he drops back.
In one sense Tyler Boyd gives Voytik a crazy good outlet for passing yardage and TDs but in another real sense he hinders Voytik’s ability to go through his passing progressions and choose a second or third option. A (small) knock on Voytik so far has been his locking onto one receiver. Well, duh! Especially because that receiver is Tyler Boyd as evidenced by this TD catch.
On the other hand, he’s been locking on Boyd when he’s had other receivers wide open elsewhere on the field. A good example of this was Voytik throwing his interception in the 1st quarter when he wanted Boyd on a buttonhook as the defender read his eyes perfectly.
Those are ‘young QB’ mistakes and understandable given the dynamics of having a safety blanket like Boyd with him out on the field. But this is also something that was being drilled into Voytik in the camps and will most probably resolve itself with experience and comfort as the season progresses.
ON DEFENSE
Our defense was up to the job. We had a shaky first series with the BC QB running twice for 63 yards to set up a TD but after that we played containment well and kept him in check. What I liked especially was the fact that House kept up the aggressive defensive play with, at my count, five blitzes by our LBs and DBs. Two of those resulted in sacks with Bam Bradley getting the QB for a nine yard loss and Gonzalez following up with a four yarder. Throw in one other sack by Rori Blair and the QB felt some pressure when he stepped back to pass.
For me the biggest, but not most surprising, positive on defense has been the interior of our defensive line. Render has been getting good penetration off the snap at the Defensive Tackle position and Mosley-Smith has been the almost unmovable presence at Nose Tackle. I don’t think we are forgetting about Aaron Donald anytime soon but these two kids have really stepped up in his absence so far.
If we set aside QB Murphy’s rushing totals we see that BC’s RBs carried the ball 17 times for a total of 52 yards. That’s 3.0 ypc for a team whose HC said the most important thing to do in this game was to establish advantage in the trenches and run the ball against PITT. Didn’t happen that way as their RBs’ longest run from scrimmage was 13 yards but other than that the other RBs had six, six and five yards as their long runs. Good solid play by our DL and good run support by the LBs also.
Our DBs played well overall also. FS Ray Vinopal missed some tackles early but came back with an interception later on. SS Terrish Webb also had an interception on the last play of the game. Layfaette Pitts is not playing too well at all this season.
SPECIAL TEAMS
A very positive part of the evening was watching our Special Teams play, both by our kicker and punter but also by our kick return coverage. K Chris Blewitt set the tone early with a 49 yard field goal on our 1st series where he had to account for windage. He followed that with two other scores; a 42 yarder and then a 41 yarder to give us our final score of 30 points. So far in 2014 Blewitt is 3/3 and averaging 44 yards per FG. Not too bad. Blewitt’s kickoffs were effective also having touchbacks on four of seven kicks.
Not to be overshadowed, our Punter Ryan Winslow, had five punts averaging 42.5 yards per with a long of 48. That 48 footer was a line drive that squibbed downfield and was down by our coverage team at the BC four yard line. His other punts had excellent hang time and very good accuracy and went like this:
Punt 1 – 48 yards downed at the BC 4 (The score was 7-3 BC at this point so great ST coverage)
Punt 2 – 40 yards for a touchback
Punt 3 – 46 yards fair catch at the BC 23
Punt 4 – 42 yards fair catch at the BC 30
Punt 5 – 36 yards fair catch at the BC 36
So between the field goals, punts, the punt coverage team and the kick return coverage team (averaged 27 yards) we saw some nice play by units we were concerned about coming into the season.
Finally, I can’t say that I saw anything from the coaching staff that wasn’t positive and they made successful decisions, especially given the context of the game they were coaching last night. As stated above I’d have liked to see more carries by James and more passes by Voytik but that will happen as the next games come. It was a well played game against a FBS opponent on their home turf – what else can we fans ask for?
