Cincinnati=27, #25 Virginia Tech=24

Today’s word is confidence:

con·fi·dence

[kon-fi-duhns]

noun

1.  full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing: We have every confidence in their ability to succeed.
2. belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance: His lack of confidence defeated him.
3. certitude; assurance:

This is “confidence” as taken from the Life Equation© mind you…as authored by yours truly years ago. In all of life, no matter the 9.81 (m/s/s) or gravity of Social Darwinism, no matter the 24060 rungs of Ladder Theory, no matter how much 3.14 (or pi) you get, no matter the Pythagorean of (an offense gone stallfense)^2 + (10 wins)^7 ≤ a 18 year bowl streak…

…no matter any of that and no matter how you slice it, in the game of life this empirical always holds true…

 confidence
-doubt
———
=trust!

Or, and borrowing on simple algebraic manipulation…

Confidence-doubt=trust
And therefore…
Trust less Confidence equals doubt.

Accordingly, and not to get too N.A.T.T.  —  the 2012 issue is eminently in doubt…

1^st quarter, 14:36 remaining:
Watch the very front of this play and the very tail end; now watch them reading right-to-left. The obvious part is #58 J.Tyler making a solo-stop while getting trucked by the mere 2o9 lb. G.Winn #32 of Cincinnati – now watch #92 L.Maddy get borderline hi-lowed right at the end of the play on the left-hand side of your screen with an eye on his right-knee and watch his day nearly come to an accidental (B.Taylor roll-up) or otherwise (Bearcat roll-up) end. See what I mean? Who was setting the punchy tone to begin the game here? Was it the team that was pitching or the team that was catching?

1^st quarter, 9:43 remaining:
Let’s see, 10 guys, all crowded into within 4 yards of the line-of-scrimmage so-called Tackle-box and Cincy nets a 8 yard gain? Note as well the unveiling of the 20-look with only two down dLinemen from Bud Lyle and 9 other guys erect in 2-point stances. On the next series note the even five-two or 52-look from Bud Lyte. Now consider that the longer this season lasts the deep Coach Foster is digging into his bag of tricks.

1^st quarter, 6:30 remaining:
#37 R.V.D. ran a long way and hell-by-damn he was gonna hit somebody! Just watch the end of the pile-up as R.V.D. takes two Cincy Bearcats out (Te and right-Ot) at the end of this one. R.V.D. finished with 1 solo stop and 1 assist on the day and not much else beyond this steal of two Bearcats along the sideline on this Cincy carry. Sometimes the ever popular move of starting the back-up is needy if not reachy when it comes to in-game wherewithal. (READERs note: Winslow had no tackles in very limited play)

Game Duration:
Observe #58 J.Tyler the one-armed-bandit with the singular right-hand Chicago Maroon sleeve and the cut-off or left-hand muscle shirt look. That’s pretty damn kool and “yes” I’ve been reduced to writing about O&M haute couture when we get upset like this. (big PIC link)

2^nd quarter, 14:11 remaining:
Typically I’m pretty rough with the Refs, however this is a pretty dang good no-call here by the Zebras if you ask me; as #97 K.Haley accidentally cuffs “Munchie” right under the facemask with his left-foot as Munchie is trying to regain his feet after the play. Haley could have been whistled for a late-hit, a facemask, kicking, maybe even roughing the passer as the entanglement was severe enough to flip Munchie backwards and onto his shell like a poor tortoise stranded on the highway upsidewrong via some mischievous summer-camp kids.

2^nd quarter, initial Cincy offensive drive:
I’ll tell you what; if salt is your favorite condiment than this Cincy possession is the one for you as these two teams got salty indeed. I counted 3 Bearcat steals, one Cincy pancake, one VT head-slap, and one VT groin kick. #86 for Cincy “…can drink from my canteen any day.” Talk about a scuffling to the echo of the whistle volatile guy. Geez! You turn your back on #86 at your own peril. Likewise, notice as well that Virginia Tech finally started to play a bit better/harder after this series as we finally exhibited an O&M esprit de corps.

2^nd quarter, 6:52 remaining:
Michael Cole is a lotta things; one of them not being perfect; just ask the tackle he just missed up-field on the catch, run, and subsequent fumble by #18 of Cincy if you don’t believe me. However, he is also a hustler, although he prolly was not hustling much of anything on Saturday nite after the accidental blast right to the junk by #18 of Cincy at the end of this never say die effort outta our very own #2.

 2^nd quarter, 6:32 remaining:
Watch Michael Via, block-down, peel back towards his right, apply some efforting indeed; only to ultimately trap-block our very own LT3 out in the flat on a Read-Option keeper off-tackle through the right-side C-Gap. I know. Nuts, ain’t it? (big PIC link)

2^nd quarter, 4:06 remaining:
I’ve heard of throwing into double-coverage, maybe even triple-coverage if you are throwing to a Lynn Sawnn or Jerry Rice. However, throwing into quad-coverage with the Cincy Fs playing centerfielder behind all of that is just plain nutz. That’s not pressing; that’s forcing the issue and right now the biggest issue that I see is that we need our big-man at Qb to remember how to simply have fun while playing the game. (big PIC link)

Longfield Management (Lo.FM):©
Virginia Tech:
positive=|||| (1 VT TD)
negative=|||| |||| ||| (1 VT INT)
neutral=|||| (1 VT fumble)

Cincinnati:
positive=|||| |||| |||| | (2, Cincy TD’s, 4 VT penalties)
negative=|||| |||| |||| ||| (1 Cincy INT)
neutral=|||

“Two ships passing in the night.”
-Aurthor unknown-

Yup, pretty much; except these ships belonged to the very same O&M navy! As the Virginia Tech offense opened slowly; stalled and had to have harbor-tugs push the same back into the Duck Pond drydock like a beached whale. Zero  first-downs and 23 total yards of offense in the opening 21 minutes of play says so. However, in the final 30 minutes of play the Hokie offense -per the pet play diagrammed below- and via just enough passing from LT3 who hit for 11 second-half completions -nine to us, two to them-  manged to manufacture a nifty full-speed ahead virtual 300 yards of total offense in the two closing quarters of scrimmaging. If you divide that out that’s basically one first down for every 60 seconds and that is pretty damn good. On the other hand Bud Stout opened up like a brand new battlecruiser only to finish like a leaky torpedo-boat in need of an engine overhaul as we ran outta steam down the stretch. When Munchie and D.Julian combined for an electrifying pitch-n-catch come from behind cardiac moment to close the show.

Now observe the Lo.FM metrics proper. Are you seeing a seasonal pattern beginning to emerge? (HINT: the VT positive plays count) Do you see what I see? You can call this offense whatever you want, “slow starting”, “inert” and “out of synch” all come to mind. However, you dare not call it “clutch”. As it was Cincinnati who nailed 320% more clutch plays when chasing the sticks on long down-n-distance situations on Saturday up in Maryland than we did. However, note that Virginia Tech had a sloppy self-inflicted spoiler finger in the pie; as it may have been September 29th on your calender, and yet it was Christmas all day long for the ‘Nati. As Vah.Tech gift-wrapped no less than a staggering four 1st-downs in this one for the Bearcats. That’s not exactly a purfect football game men and yet in the end we only got beat by less than one full play on what I’d generously call a 10% odds-on catch by Cincy.

“You’ve got to trust people around you,”
-Frank Beamer on the VT offense-

I agry; and yet, don’t they need to trust the plays that are being called in the first-place? Or does that make too much sense?

To make my point a little bit further allow me to compare and contrast that to last seasons’ total by position(s). Whereby in 2011 the VT Qb’s accounted for 18% of our total rushing, the VT Rb’s tallied a smart 82%, and the VT Wideout’s caught up to 0.99% on the ground. I do get that desperate times call for desperate measures; I also get that T.Gregory was back in Blacksburg, Va. sitting this one out, in sweats, in rehab and back in a knee brace for the forth time in his career. Yah; I get all of that; and yet I also get that there is something more than a little ‘rong with your offense when your Wr rushing total increases by 3,188% from year-to-year. That’s what happens when your rushing offense plummets from 28^th best to 77^thnationwide. That’s the bad news. The good news is there is no more bad news and things will actually prolly get better inch-by-inch once T.Gregory gets back and we begin to stretch the field horizontally once again.

---

On the other hand right now this rushing attack has about three things working for it; which I have color-coded to the right for your viewing convince. First up we have the wannabe Split-End-around or Jet-Sweep to D.Roberts or the Flanker-Counter to M.Davis which you see in white above. Even though this is an option hand-off to a Fl or Se, it really is the Belly-Play from the Veer even if it is keyed to the C-Gap on either edge or beyond. After that LT3 can tuck the ball to the same side as the Se or Fl (top orange arrow) or he can play old-school pitch-out option football to the southern part of your screen via his lower orange-arrow to the shortside or weakside opposite the Te with the given Virginia Tech Tb. Note a couple of things here men. The Tb gets the rock well less than 25% of the time. That’s not a lotta trust in the Tb –is it? Note the given Fl or Se likewise gets the rock at least 25% of the time and that is a tremendous amount of confidence in the Wr. And then LT3 can call his own signal when either the handoff or pitch-out is in doubt. Now, granted, LT3 is a M1 Abrams of a tank at Qb, though do notice that our true power-Tb (M.Scales) got the rock 5% of the time Saturday. See what I mean? Talk about being predictable! Geez! It’s either the end-around, or LT3 rumbling as best he can north-south sans nearly any moves with adequate yet not great acceleration. And all the while taking incoming fire less 3 pitch-outs to the trailing Tb in this particular game. How long until someone figures that tendency out as the next time LT3 looks really comfortable –much less fluid- on the true option pitch-part of this play will be the first. LT3 pitches very early when he does not tuck and he has yet to go old-school Oklahoma or Nebraska Qb and fake his pitch-out before turning upfield or cutting-back against the grain to the overloaded Te side. This is what happens when your Qb is still about 10% Te and your Te just is not an option Qb by trade.

***

Don’t wanna hit this too hard after a hard L; and yet I don’t wanna ignore it either. Monday night the other Coach Beamer called the allegations of lack of leadership, effort and energy “ridiculous” on Tech Talk Live during what I can only describe as a very “defensive” or maybe even “denial” based performance that evening. And yet he is right, as I’d gladly write about “leadership, effort, and energy” if I could only find some on film.

And then something truly profound struck me like a telephone-pole Klitschko lead-jab. I’m seeing words thrown around in the cyber and print media that read like: “apathy”, “disconnect”, or “lack of emotion”.

Are you all so sure? In consideration I offer you the chance to note the INT by K.Harley in the 2^nd quarter. Dood totally flipped out after this gift fell right into his sizable lap –he looked like he’d just won the lottery; twice! He’s too heavy to jump any higher than he did though he did jump as high as he possibly could. Now notice the LT3 Qb keeper 1-hole (left-side) rumbling scamper for 6 (points) near the end of the second-quarter. How much emotion did you see after that scoring play? We needed that like a dead man needs a coffin and yet we barely had a pulse. Do you see the difference yet? It is the young guys, a J.Tyler, a K.Harley, a Kyshoen Jarrett, a R.V.D. and the like who are fired up and plum ready to knock you out. In fact it is the guys who have been there for a 4+ years while who seem to be disconnected. Why is that? Could it be because the youngling Coach Beamer just said “…we may have called 2 or 3 plays we’d like to have back”? Or in other words, the onus, the burden and the responsibility is placed yet again on the offensive players themselves. Call that what you will, trickle-down economics, or an outright recession as confidence and therefore as “trust” goes.

To parapharse Timothy Leary: “turn on, tune in, and drop-back” and put the game in the hands of your best offensive player. Can we stand to do that and become a pass-first football team?

I have my doubt(s)…

“LETS GO!“

“Hokies!“

bourbonstreet**