Twitter Spaces “USF Emergency Podcast” The Sky is NOT Falling

[BucsandBulls]

I am not sure how much overlap there is between members of this board and Twitter, but last night there was a live 3 hour long airing of grievances on there that made this message board look like we all homers who wear green and gold goggles. I get that people need to vent after a loss and as long as you continue to support USF on gameday I won’t gatekeep USF fandom, but my god it was embarrassing how irrational fans can be. It just showed how much typical USF fans don’t understand the game of football other than Winning Good, Losing Bad.

I am glad we have someone like Brad moderating this space, so we at least have some semblance of reason most of the time and not senseless bashing of USF players, coaches, and admin. I am all for criticism as long as it is well thought out and helps to impact change and improve the results in the future. But things like making a pipe dream wishlist of coaches we want to hire (none of whom would actually come to USF anyways) when we lose 1 game is why our fan base gets mocked incessantly.

So here is my breakdown of the game which I think will refute a lot of the panic that was occurring both here and on twitter since about 5 minutes into the 1^st quarter. Fair warning this will be LONG.

First of all, off the field I think we are doing everything right with fan engagement, student support, donor relations, facilities plan and OCS. Unfortunately, most of this doesn’t matter if we don’t get wins, but it’s still important to recognize process over results. And we didn’t always do these things right when we were winning, which is why we didn’t capitalize on those results and turn them into continued sustained success in the past. Also huge shout out to the student section for coming back out strong after the rain delay; that was great to see. I hope they come back out strong for Howard and the rest of the season and aren’t deterred by this one game’s result.

On the field, we lost a blowout to a better team, simple as that. I know it was especially deflating because of expectations this year and conditioning from the past couple seasons of losing in similar fashion. But I don’t think it was nearly as bad as it felt and feel hopeful still for the rest of our season to be competitive in conference and hopefully make a bowl game.

BYU may be the best team we play all season, Florida looked good too, but no one in conference looked unbeatable (think Cinci last year) and OOC Louisville looked vulnerable. Should be able to get a better judge watching them and UCF on Friday night.

We got boat raced in this game and that has happened too often recently, but most of it looks correctable in this case versus being a talent/depth deficiency in the past. Just remember in 2015, we were 1-3, coming off two atrocious seasons, and ready to bench Flowers for Steven Bench and fire Willie Taggart before we got it turned around against Syracuse and went on a nice run in conference play. I have a similar expectation for this season, which hopefully starts against UF or Louisville (more likely the latter) or in conference play.

My biggest concern after re-watching the game this morning was defensive play calling. There is no excuse for DC Shoop not being able to get the plays called in timely. I’m not sure if it was a communications/head set issues, coaches not knowing their assignments for calling out offensive personnel/formations, DC being up in the Box, or missing a key defensive leader on the field in Grier or what, but that needs to be corrected ASAP. Besides leading directly to several of BYU’s big plays, this also sapped the confidence of defensive players and did not allow them to be aggressive. This was on defensive coaches and not the fault of players. BYU recognized this and jumped on it with up-tempo offense too compounding the issue. I fully expect other teams to try to use tempo against us until we prove that we have this figured out. The good news is this very correctable.

1^st long TD, we blitzed from the backside of the play and were rotating the safeties away from the play side. I think we just got unlucky and got caught in a bad play call. It happens. Ideally, LaPointe should have taken a better angle and turned this into a 30 yard gain instead of a TD. But BYU#12 will play on Sundays, so not going to complain too much there. LaPointe led the team in tackles and had an int, but he also missed a couple crucial tackles on big runs and a maybe a blown coverage for a later td too? He has been coming off injury, so I expect him to shake off some rust and return to form as the season progresses.

2^nd TD drive, talk about football being a game of inches, a bad screen/flat pass to the RB for BYU almost makes this game 7-7, while the same thing for USF unfortunately makes it 21-0 one drive later. My takeaway from this drive is that we still don’t show enough situational awareness/intensity on 3^rd and 4^th down. After the overturned fumble, we still had 3^rd and 11 and let them convert on a draw, and also let them convert on a 4^th down later in the drive as well. I’m not sure what more can be focused on here as I see CJS on the sidelines getting the redshirt players involved and firing up the defense for “money down”. The actual TD was similar to the 1^st where our defensive numbers didn’t seem aligned correctly and there was no shift/check with the WR in motion.  BYU’s Tight Ends also did a good job blocking our DB’s.

3^rd TD (offensive turnover), I’ve seen it discussed on the board already, but Xavier Weaver just needs to make the block. He still had a big game though, but could have been even better for him with a 4^th down and TD drop. He is going to have a monster season though and you saw flashes of him and Gerry connecting.

4^th TD, this was an up-tempo problem again. BYU converts with a big run 3^rd down then immediately goes no huddle. We don’t get the play call in, blow the coverage, easy TD.

5^th TD Good play design by BYU which stretches our zone coverage. Hard to tell without being involved with the team and coverage calls which DB was meant to be with the wheel route. The only TD that I feel like BYU truly “earned”.

6^th TD, long TD run where we need better gap fits from Linebackers and Safeties. Not to harp on LaPointe, but this is a tackle he needs to make and our CB gets picked by the ref too.

5 TDs allowed by defense is obviously unacceptable no matter how they happen, but BYU has a monster OL and TE’s, a couple good RBs and 1 WR who hurt us early. QB Jaren Hall had a pretty easy night where he didn’t really have to make any tough plays, but was nice to see the INT, a sack, and quite a few TFL’s (Tramel Logan stood out to me). Talent wise we looked alright. Get the play calls corrected and get off the field on 3^rd downs (big IF) and we will see night and day improvement.  

Offensively, I don’t have nearly as much to judge on or obvious concerns to share. Score got out of hand which throws the gameplan out the window. BYU sits back in coverage rushing 3 or 4 DL all night and throwing the ball downfield gets pretty tough. That’s why we saw a lot of check downs to RBs. Play timing, a few overthrows and a few drops looked pretty typical for a week 1 performance for any team. It will be concerning if it continues all season.

Run game was disappointing early on, which put us in some bad situations and had hoped to see better from experienced OL. The pass protection was good (1 sack allowed), but nothing to write home about since BYU didn’t really try to pressure us too much. Similar to our Defense we need to see more intensity and attention to detail on 3^rd down conversion attempts. I thought play selection was not particularly bad or good. We targeted our playmakers (Weaver, Horn and Ajou) quite a bit and tried to get them the ball with screens and end-arounds etc. Unfortunately there is only 1 ball to get spread around. Execute a little better with more effective early down runs, eliminate drops, and GB hits Horn on the 1 deep ball against the man blitz and we probably have another 14-21 pts easy left on the field.

Overall definitely disappointed in the result, but we kept fighting and even had the smallest glimmer of hope of clawing back into it until the 3 and out and the snap sailed over the punter’s head for safety. Think we will be in line for a fun season with some very manageable improvements against lesser competition. Go Bulls!

Edited September 5, 2022 by BucsandBulls
typo

[79 Bull]

Agree with all the above that this was not that bad.  Don't want to be an "if this, if that" fan but if we don't give them a safety and subsequent TD plus if receivers could make fundamental blocks and receptions that are in their hands,  This game could easily have been a 41-35 loss.  And if the scoring was more balanced for both teams through all 4 quarters, we'd be having a totally different conversation and CJS might look like the second coming.  We really were not that far off from a whole different perception.  Well, I hope we learn and get on fundamentals this week in practice.  I still have hope for this year.

GO BULLS! 

Edited September 5, 2022 by 79 Bull

[Bull Matrix]

Great breakdown & analysts. As for Twitter I took a break after that game this past weekend because I’m sure the trolls were out in force lol. I will be back on there after we destroy Howard. I hope this past game awakened the defense because we need to see improvements moving forward to get those 6 or more wins this season. Go Bulls!

[Peatearpan]

Is there anywhere we can rewatch the game?

[Triple B]

16 minutes ago, Peatearpan said:

Is there anywhere we can rewatch the game?

ESPN+

[puc86]

22 minutes ago, Peatearpan said:

Is there anywhere we can rewatch the game?

Do you use one ply toilet paper? 

[Gobulls90]

This is the most full game I could find on YouTube. It’s missing some parts but it might be easier to use than the espn app replay.

[bulloni]

See people on twitter saying in the twitter space last night someone reliable was saying stuff along the lines of the players not believing in Scott. Not sure if this tweet is related but it has me intrigued.

 

[USFRaider]

4 minutes ago, bulloni said:

See people on twitter saying in the twitter space last night someone reliable was saying stuff along the lines of the players not believing in Scott. Not sure if this tweet is related but it has me intrigued.

 

Some current players fathers were on the Twitter space last night revealing some interesting but not surprising information from what I heard 

[bulloni]

2 minutes ago, USFRaider said:

Some current players fathers were on the Twitter space last night revealing some interesting but not surprising information from what I heard 

oh wow thats big, would love to hear about what that was if anyone knows. Curious if its correctable and could give any reason for optimism, or just a sign that things are headed to a coaching search