In lieu of allowing my poison pen to author an O&M exegeses on a night that suffered plenty of pain, I shall tell you a story…
18 April 2012 A.D.
“I will greet this via demonstrating both honor and wisdom.”
Yah; right.
That’s what I said at Church that night, after being 100% blinded in my left eye and while waiting for my very very generous optometrist to get to his office that night for a true emergency after-hours consultation.
What I said about 3-4 days later after a couple of trips to the Retinal Eye Surgery clinic up in Beckley was…
“…not a good day for my ego, a great day for my humility.”
That is pretty much where Monday nite down in the New River Valley left things.
Not quite an O&M humiliation, our halftime lead says so,
although a pivotal O&M, blinding going forth…
from wiki: Clavicles:
- most common broken bone in the body!
- only 5-10% of the most severe are considered operable.
- athletes involved in contact sports may need a longer period of rest to heal to avoid re-fracturing bone.
- a person should be able to return unrestricted to any sports or work by 3 months after the injury.
Don’t like what I am reading there; do you? Michael Brewer is a pure football slinger (pardon the pun), trapped in a baseball body.
God Bless the pint-sized Sean Glennon with a vastly more fluid passing game.
And if you doubt just how good this kid truly is, go outside, set-up a trashcan to your left, roll to your right, and then try to put just one throw outta 10 into said trashcan from 20 yards away; with the arc Brewer put on his throw to Mallack. Qb1 put it right in the center of the trashcan, how ’bout you?
Enter Sandman:
Awesome made for national TV entrance; was it not? However, did we open up too amped up? As I saw the following early on for the first 15+ minutes of film-study:
- lack of iso’ (Island-Man) pass coverage leverage downfield all over (hence the toggle to Zone).
- accordingly, coverage hind-4 or secondary hips getting turned so much you would have thought this to be a Twist Contest from the 1955 V.P.I. Ring Dance!
- several guys (Clarke in particular) with no sense of penetrative depth that subsequently overran said penetration into the Oh.State backfield in an aggressive though too far northerly direction.
- lack of tackling leverage, tackling too high, or several H.G.Winslow vs. J.m.u. moments all over again
- way too shallow tackling angles (and almost too low) from the secondary when a play was spilled free to them.
- only thing being: Oh.State is nobodies J.m.u. And a miss vs. them was a code for a 1st down; and a miss on an erstwhile 1st down gallop was code for six. As in 6 points. Damn. They do have some talent, and I heard several rumblings that u.Meyer said his 2015 offense had a long way to go to figure out what works best, when. (Quad play-off teams beware!)
So that’s where we are men –that’s where things stand, and where you stand is where you sit. And as things stand right now? Well, there are a whole lotta small, to medium to at least midsize things that need some work; oddly enough, more so over on defense than on offense. As coach Bud and Coach Gray have more than a few things they need to sit down on during this short Paladins (Furman’s nickname) 4-day work week.
- D that needs work: Rover, Nickle-back, Fuller’s knee, Whip and ‘backer to lesser extents
- D that needs outright help: Mike-Lb
- O that needs work: edge blocking Ot’s
- O that needs involvement: Bucky Hodges
- O that needs outright health: Pivot or Qb
- O that needs time/reps and patience: replacement Qb(s), plural
So much here, so little time… (sigh)
So what do we have left? Well, for starters (pun intended), the tuaman is about all we got’s at Mike-Lb. So get used to him, get used to his slappy looking version of hand-fighting, his furthest away from the play easiest to block lack of shoulder-leverage. As Sean Huelskamp is down at least 10 lbs. of muscle and that was 2 healthy A.c.l.’s ago to boot. Huelskamp (great name BTW) is Fs or Whip sized right now; or 31 lbs. south of the tuaman! See what I mean? #44 Carson Lydon does at least field prototypical MLb size (6’3” 233 lbs.) Though how well would he set the calls, alignments, coverage, red-dogs (blitzes)? Prolly not as well in his rookie year of voting as the tuaman currently does. The 455 lb. squat and a 32o lb. power-clean from Carson are fascinating enough. Though with some secondary holes to plug, can Foster afford the potential lack or rookie acuity to make this swap work, now? Or which problem should you try to fix first? As swapping a Mike out now -with some real live secondary foibles behind said MLb- might just be code for robbing Peter to pay Paul.
***
“In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”
-Erasmus-
And yes, even though it does not always feel like it, it is only a game. Amazingly enough -after being blasted in the left eye by a Mylar encased metal-ball doorjamb from a brand new resistance band that put a “W” sized gouge dead-center on my pupil, and 28 exit scratches nor-by-nor-east- I got virtually all of my left eyesight back; PRAISE be to St.Helen and coach God!
So the way I see things, we still have 11 more games left to play. I further foresee this team taking a major jump once my boy Michael Brewer is cleared to return; and in the meantime I foresee a whole buncha tight football games not named Furman. Each one of which could go either way; as there are NO gimmes sans Michael Brewer after o9.12.
…so let us try to address come what may by demonstrating both honor and wisdom.
As there may be more humility on its way, before Michael Brewer heals-up or before Motley and/or Lawson gets’ practiced up.
Loading ...Virginia Tech=24, Ohio State=42
“LETS GO!”
“Hokies!”
bourbonstreet**
Faith starts with believing what you can’t see… ( no pun intended re: said doorknob).
* Foster plays ‘double eagle’ no more this season, thus our normal 4-3-4 / 4-2-5 fronts will be restored and the defense will return to its best in class status by October.
* Mike LB has to be natural born football player, not size of dog but it’s fight…. BF success requires Mike 10+ tackles per game…. Fill the void like QB with next man up mentality. No excuses here, none!!!
* Out of conference games now used to prepare QB committee (& may the best man win the majority of playing time) for ACC games.
* Sam Rogers takes leadership role as starting Tailback to help said QB committee (maybe a pass or two along this journey to keep defense honest) & Peoples is now VT starting FB).
CSL, with little talent found ways to score. before, This team has offensive talent. Have Faith offense will produce points.
HCFB earned his bones on special teams— time to retro-punt blocking & punt returns for touchdowns!! Faith in HC Frank Beamer!!!
CBF fixes his defenses when they break, Faith in CTG & CBF.
Have faith, book hotels now in
Charlotte as Coastal Champions!!!!
Nice!
That surely wins P.A.T.T. POTYear!
: )
We needed that, too.
b.street
That being said, and I wanted to his this above…
…The even-front, Bear/Eagle or Buddy Ryan 6-man look?
REALLLLLLLLLLLLLY super exposes the play of the tuaman!
He is on a 2nd-level ALL by himself.
He will break (or even make) that look.
With his geometry.
(that look may keep a few pads off of him, though the Euclidean fit is still entirely incumbent upon, him)
b.street
p.s. I am NOT adverse to a Peoples/Rogers backfield set, then go Jumbo or Elephant Te’s up front!
B’st, this might be one of your best ever…at least from my neck of the woods. Appreciate it.
Well thanks.
Sometimes the Right thing to say just comes to me.
(with a capital “R”)
: )
b.street
Well, we are exactly where we will be starting next year at the QB spot . Unless Brewer does not come back this year and would be able to get a medical year. I wonder now can we really be all we can be without a dual threat QB ? . A playmaker at that spot . I love Brewer and think he was going to have a big year . Lefty said Mot had really improved as had Durkin. Teams like VT have the best chance when you have a Dual threat guy or at least that option . I liked OSU in this one because the best talent in the USA and the best Coach and months to prepare and the toughest game on that schedule till late Nov, if then and they were coming in to make a statement . Yet near the end of the 3rd only trailed by 4. The MLB spot is perplexing . Maybe the hair but it draws attention when you can play and also attention when you make mistakes . How about RVD is he the player that #41 was last year ? I don’t know about QB by committee , Urban has a few great ones right now and he said he picked his man and that who he is going with .I am not a knee jerk reaction type guy but Lydon was here in the spring and I will be interested to see who takes the field and plays this week because I am almost saying lets put him in and get some experience now because I feel we have 7-8 excellent spots on D but 3 head scratchers that need to step up.
Yah; 10-4.
Tuaman REALLY stands out in that Predator look.
Good, tough prolly not fair to him call.
Frank does love him some dual-threat Qb.
That is code for Lawson. (if that is his code, this time)
thx for reading and commenting!
(nice thoughtful post)
b.street
Excellent article. Although I might not be so quick to overlook the Paladins especially if it is calling for rain this weekend. I am not suggesting the Paladins will pull a JMU, but as Corso would say, the game could end up being “closer than what the experts think.” Regardless of who ends up playing at QB on Saturday, I do hope that Lefty open up the playbook instead of running a very vanilla offense even if it means RUTS.
The experience gained by running base offense (not some watered down version of the base offense) will make it much easier for the QBs to grow when he faces Purdue’s defense and then grow some more when he faces ECU’s offense. I truly believe all 3 QBs can eventually fill the void left by Brewer’s injury. Now I am not expecting any of them to make a big splash like Michael Vick. However, sometimes all an offense needs is a QB that is a game manager (see Ken Dorsey, Eli Manning, Alabama’s recent QBs, etc.) in order to be successful. What is going to be fun (and interesting) to see play out is what the coaches decide to do at QB when Brewer is cleared to play (not saying 100% healthy) and the team has found success with a QB that is a good game manager. Do the coaches stick with the QB that has filled in for Brewer or do they risk disrupting the offense’s chemistry late in the season by switching back to Brewer?
Something else that jumped out at me is Fuller’s performance in that game. I realize that his injury had an impact on his performance. What I don’t know is whether that is the only explanation for him not living up to the “shutdown corner” label NFL scouts, media personalities, and coaches placed on him during the past offseason. I believe he was projected to go somewhere in the 1st Round in next year’s Draft, so I will be interested to see how much impact the Ohio State game has on his draft stock. Also, I will be interested to see if it has enough of an impact (i.e. he drops to either the 2nd or 3rd Round) that it influences him to come back for 1 more year. If he did decide to come back for 1 more year, then I would expect him to play with a chip on his shoulders to prove to the scouts that he should be a 1st Round pick.
The Furman game has ugly, sloppy, flat, dullard.
Written all over it.
“Do the coaches stick with the QB that has filled in for Brewer or do they risk disrupting the offense’s chemistry late in the season by switching back to Brewer?”
I have NO idea?
I doubt they do, either.
Methinks that shutdown rep got out in front of him a bit. Juiced OSU up to go right at him. And that ex-Qb is a stud, wherever he lines-up. Geez!
b.street