(10-17-2021 10:58 AM)Buc76 Wrote: Hopefully Sanders will look at what plays worked for big gainers, plays that caught the D off guard, plays that kept the D honest, plays that keep the D from loading the box and blitzing the QB constantly and use them again. They were painfully missing in yesterday's game plan.
I know Buc76 was referring to Sanders's playcalling (altho our biggest gain yesterday was something like 25 yds., excluding Saylors's burst), but on the other side of the ball...........Bucs blitzed like I can't recall them ever before. It was like Terry Bradshaw was back there again (referencing that successful tactic in '69, for you youngsters). Not sure why we did that, but Chatt did a *wonderful* job of picking it up 90% of the time. It's like they had practiced that over and over. The big gainers down the middle for them for TDs were likely cases of that, too, altho I'm not gonna go back and look. With Chatt's qb not known to be a huge passing threat, I was surprised at that tactic.
More globally, tho............................Chatt has a good team. It's not hard to see how they gave UK fits. Conference-class RBs with great power and adequate speed. Really pretty good DL work a lot of the time (not always) - and especially on the pass rush. "Duh" on that. Did they have *any* busted coverages the whole game? Not sure any, except maybe a couple of very short ones across the middle.
But indeed Sanders's play calling was head-scratching, esp. in the 2nd half. And does it drive you all crazy how long it takes to get a play called? That was the problem on the fumble Riddell had as we were driving down in the red zone. [And again, IF we had gone for 2 earlier, it might have been 14-11 at that point, and we obviously kick a FG to tie the game up.] (I remember the good ol' days, when teams huddled, the QB called the plays (most of the time), and then they ran them. Back when men were men, etc........LOL)
But yeah, 4/13 on third downs isn't going to win many ball games. And..........the story there was mostly in the second half, when Chatt's D had figured out that Sanders was going to keep running Holmes into the line. They figured that out fairly easily.
Some of the sacks were Riddell's fault for just not getting rid of it, but I also wonder how good the RBs are at blocking. I didn't see closely enough how that played out, other than the hideous miss by Adkins I noted earlier. AND................as also noted earlier WHERE WAS THE SCREEN GAME that had been a huge weapon in recent games? Did we run one single draw play? I don't think so. That's normally a good weapon against a strong pass rush. Or do we even have a shovel pass in the playbook?
I'm not all gloom and doom.......as I think most of us who've been around a while knew we were on borrowed time, anyway. So to speak. We've got a very good team, but we're not good enough to beat every team in the league in consecutive games all season long. We're just not. But I do take the blame for at least not trying the reverse jinx.
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Official Game Thread: Chattanooga (L 16-21)
