(This is a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”.   I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then.  It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.)

POSITIVES

1.  Any RB not named James Conner, again. What a great supporting cast at RB we have. Conner gets a hip pointer and is pulled after tying the ACC TD record and chasing hard after Famous Tony Dorsett’s record and our running game doesn’t skip a beat.  We were up against a Syracuse defense that wasn’t too bad against the run (139 ypg & 30^th nationally) and pretty much had our way with the.  True FR Chris James was the lead horse but the other two RBs certainly chipped in when needed.  The box score reads like this:

James: 19-122, 6.4ypc;  Bennett: 11-75, 6,8 ypc;  Ibrahim: 3-23, 7.7 ypc.  When you have three backs that average above  6.4 ypc over the course of 33 carries both the backs and the OL are clicking.

Bennett had a nice 9 yard ramble on a 2^nd & 3 yards play that got us a 1^st down and led directly to Voytik’s TD pass to Ford to make it 17-0 and an easier game to play. But all three of those guys had very nice running skills and are a mixture of some power, Bennett and James particularly and shiftiness (all three).

We all want Conner healthy and able to set some records of his own against Miami this week but it helps us fans to know that we have some pretty reliable backs behind him.  I thought earlier this season that if Conner had gone down with an injury it would be a loss but we would also have the OL and the RBs to still mount a successful rushing game.  Glad that it didn’t happen for many reason and on is that having Conner behind Voytik has allowed this staff to bring Voytik along slowly and that has paid dividends in the second half of this season.

2.  Chad Voytik to Tyler Boyd passing game. In this game Voytik continue his progress that he has been building in the second half of the year, especially since week eight when his QB efficiency rating started to steadily rise. Boyd is still his main target and they are clicking enough that Boyd has gone over the 1,000 yard (1,077) receiving mark for a second straight year.

Against Syracuse Boyd had 7 catches for 189 yards (18.0 ypc) with a long of 49 which was also his only TD.  That pass on the 49 yarder was a real example of how a ball should be thrown in close.  So that is half of his passes to the primary Boyd which has just about been his approach all year.  Both guys did a great job of showing us what the 2015 season could look like.

We can’t let Tyler Boyd off without a small scolding for his pulling up on a 2^nd & 9 pass where he made a nice catch and elected to have a discussion with the DB regarding the skill in which he caught the ball rather than walk two more yards for the 1^st down.

Oh well, kids will be kids and the game was well in hand.

3.  The defense. Alright!!   The defense has played poorly over the course of the season, we all recognize that.  But these MMQB articles address specific games and in this one the defense did well.  We held the Syracuse offense to 149 yards passing (6.0 ypa) and 106 rushing  (3.7 ypc) which in turn led to a seven point score for our opponent.

We recovered a Vinopal forced fumble that led directly to our first score and intercepted two passes.  Those INTs haven’t been happening for us lately so to have two in a game, even though the INT by Bradley was a gift bobble by the SYR receiver, was good to see.

NEGATIVES

1.  Chris Blewitt.  He’s been battling a case of the “Yips” since the VT game and it continued on into the first half of the game this week. With the score tied at 0-0 he missed a 46 yard attempt and later in the half he was wide on a 44 yarder that would have put us up 10-0.

I like Blewitt and feel we really need him to be able to settle in and put points up when it matters.   Over the last five games he’s gone 0/1,  0/0,  2/3 (Let’s not think about this game),  0/1  and now  3/5.  What is so strange is that this negative run didn’t happen after a defining moment as you would think like that missed FG against Duke would be but he just seemed, to me anyway, to gradually sink. He had that one try blocked when we were down 21-9 against VT and since then he’s been spotty at best.

That said he’s still crushing it on kickoffs with what seems like a low percentage of returns allowed and he’s made three tackles (better than some of our DL) so that’s good on his part.

2.  Our 3^rd down defense. The only drawback by the defense that I could see was that SYR converted 6 of 13 3^rd down tries. That is too much to allow and still win if it was a close game – which this wasn’t. It was a bit surprising to me as we are actually competent at 3^rd down defense this season coming in at 33^rd nationally with .359 % allowed (51 of 142 attempts).

3.  Matt House. Just because and why break tradition now?

Ying & Yang (More Ying than Yang lately)

This is a special weekly section dedicated to the quarterback play of Chad Voytik so that we can look specifically at how he’s doing, whether he is progressing or not, and what his impact on the team and games are week to week at this point in the season.

With this last 14-20 for 189 yards 1 TD and 1 INT showing he’s steadily climbing the NCAA passing efficiency rating over his last four games to now sit at 33^rd nationally with a 141.6 rating. That is not bad for a first year QB and in my opinion it seems like he and the staff have settled into defining what his role will be in the offense and going with that.

I believe that the offensive staff has realized exactly what Voytik’s strengths and weaknesses are and are no longer ‘testing’ him to see what he can do.  As the season has progressed Voytik is being asked to do more than the bare minimum as far as passing the ball and it seems that lately in each game the passing game play calling is a bit riskier than the week before.

That 49 yards delayed screen to Boyd was one of those riskier passes and one that was executed by Voytik to perfection.  He stayed for the two count while Boyd cut to his left then threw a fine leading pass that allowed Boyd to enter the defense at full speed… and off to the races.  Personally I think it was one of the best plays he’s thrown all year and was also a great call by the OC.

On a separate note but sticking with the QB:

One point that has jumped out at me over this season is what the staff has asked Voytik to attempt do in the passing game. We know things ebb and flow with how a staff reacts to a QB’s abilities and execution and we’ve seen that with Voytik in his first year.  But if you look at the game results versus the passing game plans there seems to be a disconnect, at least lately.  After a slow start in his first four games Voytik has be asked to do this since week 7.

Game #7         VT        17 attempts   W    21-16       5 point loss

Game #8         GT        20 attempts   L     56-28       5 point loss

Game #9         DUKE   24 attempts   L     51-48       3 point loss (38-38 before overtime)

Game #10       NC        16 attempts   L     40-35       5 point loss

Game #11       SYR      20 attempts   W    30-7         23 point win

As noted above he’s been more accurate and more productive over the last four games so you’d think we’d see him passing more. It wasn’t like we were winning games right and left with a 2-3 record either but the staff never changed up their offensive approach.

So don’t take last part this as a criticism of Voytik’s play but as facts we have seen in his starting year.

So far this season is that the staff has Voytik throwing only 22 passes per game on average which is very low for a D1 QB. By comparison over the last four years our QBs were passing on the average 29 times a game.

Looking back over the years we’ve  had Tom Savage throwing 30 passes per game last season.  In 2012 when Graham and Shell combined for 1600+ yards Sunseri was called on to pass 30 times per game.  In 2011 Sunseri had 29 passes per game and even back in 2010 which was Sunseri’s first starting year he was called to pass 27 times per game and that was with Lewis and Graham combined for almost 2000 yards rushing.

Just to clarify things if the rebuttal to this is the fact that this season is Voytik’s first as a starter; here’s how the historical pass attempts broke down:

’13       29.9        Savage

’12       30.2        Sunseri

’11       29.6        Sunseri   (w/TG’s offense)

’10       26.6        Sunseri

’09       24.9        Stull

’08       25.3        Bostick/K. Smith/Stull

Granted, the fact that James Conner, and the other RBs, are kicking ass rushing the ball impacts Voytik’s attempt numbers a bit and of course along with the fact that it is Voytik’s first season as a starter but it’s a bit of a head shaker that the OC & HC aren’t calling his number more often, especially given the fact that he’s thrown less than one INT per game.

Makes even a skeptic like me wonder if this coaching staff isn’t stuck in a rut.