Funny how football goes sometimes, eh? Coming into the season, there were thoughts that Ohio would be able to run the ball early consistently and the back end might help give the front seven time to mature. That hasn't materialized.
On offense, the talk has been about slow starts and improving the running game, and rightly so. I'm interested to see how we try to address these issues. Ultimately, what I think this boils down to beat cincinnati is better passing game execution in the first two quarters. One thing I havent heard discussed about the running game but I think is a major issue is that teams have stacked the box against the run in the first half and practically dared us to throw which we havent been able to do consistently. The O-Line's run blocking in the first half appears to be generally good but, particularly against Virginia, we had 6-7 blockers against 8 and 9 man fronts. Virginia had 8-9 men in the box on 6 out of the first 10 running plays. The runs on predictable downs were stopped for little to no gain in the first half. Even though the QB can be thought of in the various options as accounting for an extra defender, we were still outmanned in the box and that QB-accounting-for-defenders becomes less effective when the QB cannot or does not pull the ball from the dive play on the read option.
Not being able to run against a loaded box early, we had excellent opportunities to pass but did not execute on 5 of the 8 drives. On the 1st 8 drives against Howard and Virginia, we had a long qb scramble setting us up for a td, a fg, a missed fg, an oline breakdown or missed block for a sack/fumble/turnover, and 4 punts. On the 4 punts and the missed fg, Ohio stopped itself via execution errors on every one where the plays were there to make. All 5. On four of those drives, balls in the 5-20 yard range were inaccurately thrown at least once or more than once on a drive where the pass blocking allowed for 4-5+ seconds to throw the ball and wrs were open. Ohio will improve there. On one drive we had a missed fg after what looked a dropped pass in the endzone. One of the drives with the overthrows where Ohio did not convert 3rd down also occurred because an out route was run short of the first down marker. I think we can and will execute better in the passing game early.
Cincinnati so far has shown an attacking defense with excellent DT play against the run and pass. What I'd like to see is how we approach this based on what Cinci does and what we learned from the first two weeks. I think it is critical to find a play or two for the QB to have early success and protect the QB from the blitz.
I think if we attempt the run in the first half with the same plan as previous weeks it could be another slow start, especially if we use a ton of TE single wing read option where the QB cant pull the ball and run and we are outnumbered by 2+ defenders in the box. What would be interesting for me to see is using more heavy sets (two TEs or a TE an extra O-lineman) if Cinci is stacking the box. There are big running plays to be had if Ohio can get to the second level and we might be able to use cinci's aggressiveness against it. I really hope Ohio mixes in more 4 wr sets if we can execute the throws because the O-Line, except for a few plays, has provided a ton of time to throw and if we can reduce the number of defenders in the box I like our chances run. Based on what we saw VS Virginia, I'd like to see what our frosh WRs can do against Cinci's 3-4th dbs.
Last Edited: 9/20/2018 11:27:31 AM by Rufusbobcat94