The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(01-12-2022 01:01 PM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 12:48 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 12:22 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Watched the highlights of the SMU game the other night. I realize the talent level was different but we should have incorporated a lot of the game plan for that one, such as the jet sweep to Jordan Jones that turned into a pass to Des and some WR, TE and RB screens. There was also a great deep call Des threw over the top a couple times. Des just hurled it on both occasions before the DL had a chance to move. Even with their superior DL I think we could have gotten a couple off just to test their secondary and to keep the Tide honest at the line of scrimmage.

This one right here is a little too far for me to fly...Des had no time for practically the entire game. We were running quick passing and he was still sacked 8 times...

He was "only" sacked 6 times, but when you dig deeper I think there were plays to be made on early passing downs. Bama wasn't blitzing hard on early downs. They were concentrating on lane integrity and getting their hands up. Then they unleashed the dogs on passing downs. I think there were shot plays to be made on early downs and it was painful we never tried.

We were sacked on
2nd and 5 (the one exception to this rule)
3rd and 10
4th and 14
3rd and 16
4th and 3 (on a stupid, slow developing play action play call that wasn't really on the line)
1st and 10 (last drive when Bama knew we were passing).

So 4/6 sacks were in obvious passing situations (3/6 on third and 10 or longer) and a 5th was on a really bad 4th down call where we tried to fool bama and they weren't fooled. Early downs we needed to attack and didn't.

They didn't sack us on early downs and in short yardage because we were running one and three step drops for short passes...every time we got sacked, hurried, or disruptively pressured was in those scenarios where we needed 5 or 7 step drops (something that would be required for deep/long developing pass plays). Bama really wasn't blitzing at all, because they didn't need to and they knew it. I told some buddies after the first couple of drives that we had no chance at winning, and they looked at me like I was crazy for calling it that early...once I explained why (Bama was doing base rushes and still disrupting everything and our front 6 were getting annihilated) they understood. It didn't take long to figure out we weren't winning that game without Inspector Gadget on the headset...and Denbrock is the OC equivalent of a Baptist Church in backwater Arkansas.

I don't have access to them anymore, but what do PFF's play disruption numbers look like for us. I'd imagine we were only at like 35-40% of plays getting to the point of action...that's the bigger problem. I just think they were far too disruptive up front and far too compact in the middle for us to be able to hit them deep...we need to stretch the field horizontally, then once the safeties came up to cover the flats and gaps, we start going deep (or at least moderate, which we weren't even doing for the most part).

Essentially, you're arguing that because we weren't sacked when we ran quick drops on passes, we could have taken long drops and not gotten sacked. My argument is that they were disrupting our passes on any drop, so if we did run long drops, we were going to get lit up (like we did when we ran them...as stated in your post). We did take a few deep shots, but Des was off. When you're in that situation, you stretch horizontal to stretch vertical...we didn't take step one...we ran slants and ins straight into the most compact box we've played against all year and played right into their hands.