The Grab Game part II, an @Boston College primer and a south going… DAX!!!

Virginia Tech is now only a bicentennial or Philadelphia hoops team… or 76 more shopping, training, practicing and hopefully winning days removed from facing Boston College up on the parquet football floor @4 pm on the A.c.c. Network.

The Hokies (apparently— although my personal looksee could not verify this one) the Hokies apparently opened as a stunning five-point betting favorite (VT-5) out on the Vegas big board for this in-conference opener. The three sportsbooks who do have week-no.1 lines up currently posted do show Virginia Tech as a 2 point betting favorite (VT-2). So someone musta really liked and pumped that opening line good-n-hard if it is to be believed. Nevertheless, we have one more catchy section to finish off, then I wanna take a look at last years rather flat looking Bud Lyte’s recovery speed -or lack thereof- and we might as well get that @Boston College preview craking and get things 2019 started. Although you wanna know who is gonna win, right? Read on… to find, out!

Catch Crisis 2019???

Rutgers 2016

For the very few true pot-stirring obFu’scators remaining among you who naysay’ed my last grab-game piece, how say you on this set of not so catchy metrics?

(folks, do remember to do mouse-hovers on graphs/graphics for hidden Easter eggs and/or more…)

Do you see a trend; again?

Eye do… in point of fact what I see is that there is a pretty fair to middling objective, researched, line-of-best-fit, regression and 4-squares analysis science-fact(s)… that our Fu’fensive butterfingers Bart Simpson plays Flanker and Split-End for Tech trends appear probable to 2019 continue.

As you can plainly see… -and reading top-down in descending graphical order- Rutgers 2016, Rutgers 2017, and Maryland 2018 all have one thrid-base thing in common…

They suck at fingering and they can not catch a cold.

Seriously, as I thought our catch rates under Fu’ and Corny were pretty slippy looking until I looked up Rutgers and Maryland’s catch-rates under our brand spanking new Wide Receivers coach.

Rutgers 2017

Yikes!
Triple-double yikes to mix my upsetting N.b.a. Finals sporting metaphor.

Because when you actually bother to take the time to add it all up, out of the ∑ (summative) top-24 of total pass-catchers who (tried) to catch the oblong spheroid under our new Wide Receivers coach?

One of them, and if you get me good and drunk; well, in that case maybe two of them, two of ’em performed a reasonably receptive job.

That’s a mere 8.33% of them that did solid work in the pigskin collections department people.

And none% -as in nobody- out of any of them did a truly great job of receiving.

Again; do you see a trend here folks?

oOo

And how do you feel about your -not mine- how do you feel about your 2018 30 ppg call in 2019 subjective/discussable pre-season terms now?

I mean, don’t we have to learn to catch the ball, before we can catch up to such a lofty looking 30 ppg prediction itself?  (or did that just make too much, sense?)

Maryland 2018

I know this primarily because, (“THX” @Coach God); I played this position, see; it is the one football position that I can coach. And believe you me, there is a lotta handsy coaching the (verb) that needs to be done here men.

These 2019 returning Hokie catch corps members need to live in front of the jugs machine. Receptive to two-handing footballs and one-handing tennis balls alike. They need to do pure 1-hand football lob drills galore. They need to do the simple homeschooled roof drill under the garage floodlight ad nauseam. They need to carry a young Kevin Bacon’s and Animal House dweeby ΩΘΠ Chip’s hand-vice and crush that bad-boy in sets of 100’s. 25/8 and 366 are entirely how often they need to do all of these grab-game so-called: Grip-Strength enhancers and more. As power-lifters, hoops Pt.Guard’s and pure shooters, football catchers, pitchers/Qb’s and martial artist all swear by these hand vices and as we all know… to present problems sans marrying them to a solution(s) is to do no better than to complain.


And if you don’t believe me, just ask momma bear and poppa bear Willis, or even Coach Jackson for that matter. (and the parental units of BAX and Q’ might want a to get a well-received word in edgewise here themselves).

On the other hand(s)… I do like the fact that Jafar actually played this position and played it fairly affluently in collegiate terms…

Baller Williams played wide receiver for the Terrapins from 2000-03 and ranks Top 20 all-time at Maryland in both career receptions (90) and career receiving yards (1,301). Jafar averaged 20.07 yards per catch in 2002, the third most in Maryland Terrapin gridiron history! Williams, who caught a 64-yard touchdown for the Terps in the 2002 Orange Bowl, after which he then received a Bachelor of Science degree in health and human performance from Maryland in 2003. After this, he had a cup of coffee with the Washington Redskins. Which is vastly more Sunday Funday caffeine than you or me… tho’ I tangent.

Accordingly, yes Coach J’s resumè is encouraging enough… although coach J’s kids catch-rates are worse than the Fu’fense’s catch-rates and that gives new meaning to suffering a case of pigskin dropsy.

So, our inchoate grab-gang HAS to improve and they have to improve significantly and they have to improve in a 2019 hurry.

Or you girlfriends’ should go ahead and cool your 30 p.p.g. P.A.T.T. (high) heels right here,
right; now!

As (barring a sudden Feaster Rb binge over in Owens Dining Hall,) the R.A.T.T. physical-forecast is for dovish or reasonably incremental Fu’fensive 2019 improvements at this time.
NTTAWWT…

This from the one VeeTee football media pool member with a career 97.91% catch-rate.
(“THX” @St.Julia of Corsica, the Patroness of… hands!)

(READERS note🙂 PFF uses qualitative and opinion-based grading as the root of its 0-100 Player Grades — not advanced statistics. As such, the 0-100 Player Grades are not truly quantitative and could be seen as being prone to bias, poor sample sizing, and other issues.

And your grader his ownself you sagely ask… “aye” he was an English footballer. LOL!
The zebra flavored: “look mum no hands” föutball kind!
i.e. the guy who invented this is a soccer-head!

And oh by the way… they only bother to grade what? 130 outta 130 D-1 football teams?
How ’bout at least 100 outta all 130 D-1 football squads?
Can I get a mean/median/mode of ~65 clubs?

 ***

Negative g.rider their grab-game patterning is well south of full. As they actually subjectively graded a whopping 29.3% of all D-1 football teams catch-rate and then passed themselves off as being… caught-up. Or in other words… why not grade the whole population gene-pool? Or did that just make too much, sense?

And now…” you and Coach Paul Harvey “…know the rest of the story.

As this story must be a serious contender for the truth.

Boston College 2018 record: 7 up, 5 down and .5oo or an even at a decent 4-4 in Atlantic Coast Conference games.

Flying Eagle Defense: (starters back=4)

  • Bill Sheridan, a former NFL coordinator for the Giants and Bucs, is the new sheriff in town— demoting a 50-year vet’ (Coach Reid) to De/Dt coach.
  • 70th in Total D. (+28 spots better than VT)
  • 53rd vs. the run. (+53 spots better than VT!)
  • 30th in passing efficiency defense (+50 spots better than VT!)
  • 55th in scoring D (+35 spots better than VT)
  • 36th in Red Zone D (nearly tied).
  • 26th in Qb’s sacked. (+66 spots better than VT!!!)
  • 42nd in Tackles for a Loss (TFL) inflicted. (+23 spots better than VT)
  • 37th in dLine Havoc. (+22 spots better than VT) Only one dLine starter (Ashburn, Va., escapee: Dt, Karafa, 6′3″, 286 lb. r-Sr. year Hewitt+ type baller), returns here. Gone as well are a whopping 29 sacks in that 75% worth of front-line expiring eligibility. Yikes! Brandon Barlow might be the next solid/good De for BeeCee; however, the other one is a Te/basketball retread and a then we see a lifer back-up at Dt in the other hog-on-hog crime spot. Could be a lotta white chalk or crime-scene tape if Boston College faces a real live oLine/Rb combo’ here. Because even if I am too low on the Eagle front-4 on D? That’s really only code for being 50% to 75% solid at max’ or at best. And that still easily affords you one obvious run-fit shape to: “plum git after”; and if Eye am right it could actually be closer to 50% or two guys to target in the 1-hole or regular season debut game upfront. As only four d-linemen had ≥11 total stops last year and only one of them is back! (i.e. the 2018 starting D-line was very good last year, depth was very thin, and now those starters are gone… you do the maths!)
  • 65th in Linebacking Havoc. (+47 spots better than VT) Jr. year stuffers Isaiah McDuffie, Max Richardson, and John Lamot all return for the Eagles; and Richardson was even more of a play-maker than the only starting departer (Strachan). Plus, r-Fr. Vinny DePalma looked fantastic in run defense in his late season three-game understudy audition and incoming t-Fr. Shitta Sillah was the crown jewel of the 2019 Boston College recruiting haul. This is hands down the strength of the 2019 Boston College stop-unit folks and it is indeed an above average A.c.c. second-layer including a pretty fair to middling one on the quality depth and back-up caddying at Lb for 2019.
  • 70th in Secondary Havoc. (+15 spots better than VT) BeeCee has a penultimate world-leading 36 picks (INT’s) in their last two seasons worth of scrumming. With 18 defensive points tallied off the same. That’s the news… the good news for B.C. opponents is that seven of Boston College’s 2018 hind-4 top-9 are gone! Including an extremely experienced 113 combined starts of last years top-flight 3-way Cb-Fs-Ss stars. All shinning somewhere other than on Chestnut Hill this fall. As all less one side of the Flying Eagles coverage field looks pretty well grounded -if not downright inviting here- and if wheat on Ry’ does not eat this up he never will. The one returning left-Cb (B.Sebastian, who plays in a seldom seen eye-black Cross, may St.Sebastian bless) is a lively play-maker— tho’ why not roll away from him to Ry’s strong (right-handed) orthodox passing side for the duration? (p.s. spies say one Safety was very unsettled all spring long, FWIW)
  • D overall: Boston College does play the man not the ball and they do teach old-school Beamerball advancing the ball (as opposed to covering the ball). 41st in defensive points scored says so, as does finishing 2nd best in passes pilfered and forcing a reasonable 11 fumbles last campaign, with a very trendy virtual 80% defensive recovery rate. And somewhere John Madden’s pig-n-the-blanket drill (don’t’; ask) is, blushing. That being fairly said… Boston College looks down on D this season and honestly, they don’t look much better than centrist to average+. Accordingly, I am dubious that they can open the season with a 2.0 defensive grade-point average— as playing decent defense could very well be 12-15 quarters of play or maybe even October removed for Boston College.
  • ∑ (summary): N/A or TBA or TBD.

(tentative) Bee Cee Defensive letter-grades:

I feel the need, the need for speed!”

Per this sections segueing lead-in quote… Top Gun or ballistic jet-hopping out at Miramar Cali’ this 2018 defense simply was not. Eye noticed it time and time again and @Pittsburgh truly electron-microscope magnified it all the more. As we deployed the stiffest legged version of Bud Böck since Frank’s WT-6 (wide-Tackle-6) Claiborne era defense bit the 1-cylinder gocart dust.

Seriously… our recovery speed not named an actually healthy Caleb Farley was well below average in 2018 and our recovery speed not named an actually healthy Farley plus an actually not dinged/dented Divine Deablo when he was actually playing a fairly fluid looking centerfielder type of game flat out sucked.

A leaner meaner ‘backer Dax is now on trax?

Whispered to be an approximate ~4.8o (forty time) and the reasonable 55 flat grueling 400m timed Dax was picked on again and again in coverage as the year wore on for reason(s); plural. Like being leg dinged to end the year.

(Although he has shed some of those very reasons to convert his home position Mike-Lb body into more of a Sam physical set). Ashby tricked his knee up down @U.n.c. and was not the same baller again until the uva/Marshall boundary in late-November/early-December give/take.

Wiles, Hilgirth and Fu’s one actually quite kinetic defensive lineman threw himself under the Hill, their best overall 4-point-stance manchild wrenched his Class-II ankle meaninglessly vs. Bill and Mary and the one occasionally spry De (H.Gaines) blew-out his knee (may St.Sebastian and St.Nikhon bless, plural!) Now mix in some smaller and habitually beat-up year away type Cb2 to Cb4/Cb5 quality guys who probably should have Ben successfully S&C broken-in come 2019 or maybe even 2020 and you are left with very modest to middleocore recovery speed and we 2018 never recovered indeed.

This was a very static 2018 halt-unit by former electrifying Big East to Beamerball standards. That went from 220v decades-long T&F type metrics to a more residential or 110v setting and then, well, (Ω) oooommmh, it was more like an old-school Lantern-Battery. Albeit a leaky, acid crusted nearly drained one. And lest you take me to task for actually pensive analysis driven the glass is twice too large opining… think about this set of sieve-like 2018 defensive halt-unit metrics… as we were…

  1. 128th worst in explosive rushing plays given up!
  2. 125th worst in standard downs explosive plays give up!
  3. 123rd in passing downs explosive plays given up!
  4. 1o8th in Open Play (big play rate in good field position) give up!
  5. 1o5th in passing explosiveness overall given up!

This with a never seen before 100th success rate on blitzing-downs from Blitzburg, Va. itself! (meaning even when we tried to dial up the bonus rushers heat, our stop-unit still chilled right on out).

And if you still question my veracity on all of ^that^?

Go back and break the tape on the @Pittsburgh game. And watch what has typically been a rather 3 to 3.5-yards in a cloud of the proverbial dust pride of Panthers claw, gash, and rip us to shreds with guys who prolly ain’t getting that T&F Cole Beck summertime Pittstop work anytime soon.

That’s not good sport-fans… tho’ beyond the blessings (foreshadowing intended) of improved health, who did we bring back or restock that really does have Jessie Owens to recent Texas “white lightning” Matthew Boling T&F prodigy fast-twitch type of velocity?

The biggest X-Factor to the 2019 (possibly final) Foster D, is... what?

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Because the health of one (+12% defensive efficiency) Divine Deablo… and his ability to square our defensive alignments/sets, rotations and last-second pre-snap coverage rolls could amount to a one-man O&M 2019 X-factor indeed. (Ditto our one pretty speedy hind-4 guy or one Caleb Farley, who does industrialize some legit recovery-speed and a staggering +40.7% increase in defensive efficiency when he is out there on the field at full speed).

Those two and the rest more/less remain upright, locked, cocked and ready to rock and this 2019 Bud Bock could be at least BOGO happy hour back on tap and make an All Coaching Conference jump up to respectable or maybe even a flat-out C letter grade.

Those two get hurt or Dt does not pan out and it could yet again be Katie bar
the IsoPPP advanced stats big-play,
door!

Qb1 or not to Qb1… or is it as his very own caption says… just a matter of… time?

#wimps!
Virginia Tech=highmedium, Boston College=highmedium

LETS GO!

Hokies!

 bourbonstreet**

 

 

 

God Bless all Hokie pops, uncles, and granddads!

9 Responses You are logged in as Test

  1. Thanks ‘street. Analytical tale of caution. Will you speak about the teams spirit at some point?

    I don’t argue against any of your sobering points, however…what is your sense of the overall teams heart, spirit, commitment, dedication – whatever word you wish to use – that binds the men together and carries them upward? My sense was things in that area weren’t all they could be in recent past. I raised my eye brow reading statements about some players having “dad bods” ( If that was the quote) in the past. That didn’t jive with the hi intensity strength and CONDITIONING I read so much about. Made me wonder…

    Maybe improvements in “spirit, dedication, chemistry whathaveyou team glue”, will get us that famous extra inch or 3, extra fraction of a second spoken so often about.

    Do you sense the guys recognize catch rate can be better? Doyour spies see the receivers walking around town/campus squeezing the hand grippers?

    Counting down the days. VT flag ready for porch on 1 August.

    1. my sense is… there is a new story; here.
      Tho’ it ain’t my side of the street… no selfie pun intended.

      And I had thought it pretty good b4 the last 10 days or so… now Eye understand why Fu’ has been in the weight room himself. cats away and mice will play…
      —————-
      Catch rate almost can not worsen… although more cohesion would sure help.

      b.street

  2. I know a lot of great points in here but do you have the laymans version of this?

  3. Orange Clock, its like this (I think): our catch rate by WRs was bad and teams under our new WR coach were mostly even worse; BC’s D loses 7 starters and will likely be bad; VT’s D was bad last year, cannot afford injuries to Farley and/or Deablo; VT’s D, though maybe better, may still be sub-par in the CBF era.

      1. What I think would be a good study/research project would to analyze the QB/WR talent at Rutgers and Maryland when our current coach was there and compare that to what he is inheriting here. My uninformed impression is that both QB and WR talent at Rutgers was significantly below what VT has now. I don’t have any gut feeling on Maryland’s talent level last year is compared to VT this year. Could the talent disparity be a major reason for CJW’s unit catch rate being so low?

        1. Yah; that could be.
          Tho’ how do I (for sure) measure that? Recruiting rankings?

          As June is not for my Eye to open on non-VT film.
          ————–
          Tho’ I do get your point– you could be right; just tough to off-season verify.

          b.street

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