A Lack of Trust: Georgia Tech Film Review

Saturday's game against Georgia Tech was one heck of a missed opportunity for this young Hokies squad. Despite putting up huge offensive numbers in the passing game, controlling the Yellow Jacket's flexbone option offense for long stretches, a sloppy performance that featured numerous breakdowns in terms of executing individual assignments, coupled with some inopportune play-calling at critical moments and three brutal interceptions by Michael Brewer, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. In the midst of all the breakdowns, there were som some terrific performances. Corey Marshall was fantastic on the inside for the Hokies, and Dadi Nicolas played a terrific game after some breakdowns on the opening drive. The offensive line protected Brewer better and started to get some movement for Shai McKenzie, who was having a breakout game. Cam Phillips and Isaiah Ford continue to develop, and the Hokies got contributions from Demitri Knowles and Kalvin Cline. Take away a handful of throws from Brewer, and he had a spectacular game. But, this team's margin for error is so small that they can not overcome critical mistakes and a lack of trust in their teammates to execute the game plan properly.

Defensive Breakdowns on Option Assignments

Stopping the option requires the same thing from all 11 defenders. Each player must honor and complete his assignment, win a one-on-one physical battle and trust his other 10 teammates to do their job. Early in the football game, some of the Hokies' stalwart defenders did not play solid assignment football.

On Georgia Tech's first offensive play the Yellow Jackets run a triple option to the right (top of the screen.) Kyshoen Jarrett jumps to the inside, taking the dive.

Dadi Nicolas also got sucked inside on the dive when he should be zoned in on the quarterback or the pitch (at least based on Jarrett taking dive). That means four defenders (Jarrett, Williams, the defensive tackle, and Dadi) are grabbing at the dive fake! Once Justin Thomas gets outside on Nicolas, Detrick Bonner finds himself on an island with the quarterback, the pitch man, and a lead blocker. Bonner's assignment on this play is the pitch and he doesn't have help outside, so he takes outside leverage on the blocker. This leaves a huge lane for Thomas until the inside pursuit of the defense (in this case, Donovan Riley, who is aligned as a field side safety to the bottom of the defensive formation) can make the tackle. Again, if Dadi doesn't chase the dive fake and lets Jarrett, Williams, and the defensive tackle take the dive, he is squarely in position to force a rushed pitch by Thomas.

Later in the same drive, the Yellow Jackets run the triple option at Nicolas again. But, this time Deon Clarke (who is aligned just behind and outside of Dadi) also jumps on the dive.

Thomas reads Clarke diving, and runs outside of his contain. Again, this leaves Riley all alone with the QB, the pitch man, and the lead blocker. The problem gets compounded when the Yellow Jacket wide receiver crack blocks inside on Riley, leaving Chuck Clark unblocked to take on three players. Clark falls down. Brewer may have had his Yakety Sax touchdown recovery, but this play really is a comedy of errors that all starts with Deon Clarke's assignment breakdown.

However, the game plan was solid when executed properly. Here, Clarke is again stacked on Dadi's outside shoulder. Georgia Tech again runs triple option to the boundary.

Dadi takes the dive. This time, Clarke takes the quarterback and forces the pitch. Chase Williams is clean and scrapes to trip up the dive, and even if he misses, both Bonner and Riley are there for support. When everyone completes their assignment, Georgia Tech wasn't getting any yardage. The Hokies held on the drive by using a stunt to confuse Thomas, but again, it would not have worked without assignment discipline.

Foster sends a run blitz, with Clarke darting through the guard-tackle gap to take the dive. Riley crosses behind Clarke to take quarterback. Dadi Nicolas does a fantastic job of fading to the outside to keep quarterback contain and support against the pitch. Chuck Clark defeats the block of the A-Back. The key to the play is Nicolas. If he had crashed too quickly on the dive or the quarterback, Clark doesn't have the opportunity to shed his block and the pitch man likely gets the first down or scores. This completely goes against Dadi's instinct to chase the ball. He did a great job here.

Those assignment busts could have been compounded, but Georgia Tech didn't capitalize. Chase Williams (who played a whale of a game) over-scraped twice, leading to a long run by Laskey in the second quarter and a long run by Thomas in the third. Kendall Fuller tried to come up in run support instead of staying in man coverage when Thomas was showing pass on 4th-and-2 early in the second quarter. Only an inaccurate throw by Thomas prevented a touchdown. While the Hokies don't play this kind of system again, elements of option football are key components of North Carolina, Boston College, and Virginia's offensive systems.

Offensive Line Chemistry—Trusting Your Teammate to Execute

Trust in a teammate to complete an assignment doesn't just impact the defense. It impacts offensive line play, significantly. As of late, I've been bombarded with complaints about the offensive line. Some are warranted, but it appears to be more singular breakdowns and a lack of chemistry or "trust" in each other that is plaguing the front.

On this play, Trey Edmunds runs the ball on a sweep. The play is well blocked at the point of attack. Jonathan McLaughlin and Bucky Hodges seal the defensive end and tackle inside. Augie Conte and Caleb Farris pull and lead around the end. It looks like the Hokies have a big play in the making.

Conte pulls around the outside of Hodges block and seals the Yellow Jacket defensive back to the outside. Farris has the assignment of turning up inside the block and sealing the scraping linebacker inside. But, seeing Hodges start to lose a little bit of ground, Farris chips the defensive end engaged by Hodges. The linebacker scrapes free and makes the tackle on Edmunds. If Farris gets a piece of that linebacker, this may be a touchdown. Farris also can't see the running back, and doesn't know that Trey has made it to the edge. That lack of trust in Hodges making the block caused Farris to try and help versus complete his own assignment. That lack of trust sometimes has merit. Here is the exact same play, but this time, Hodges seals the end inside.

Farris executes his block on this play, but Hodges loses his seal on the end, and the end trips up Edmunds. It gets old to hear, but again, failure to execute one block results in a potential big play turning into a pedestrian 4-yard gain. Keep in mind, Hodges is the backup tight end, and has only played the position in a blocking role since the spring. It isn't surprising that he isn't a finished product blocking, but it isn't like the Georgia Tech defensive line was blowing up the offensive line every play. In fact, sometimes the design is part of a bigger package and the offensive line has nothing to do with the tackle.

This looks like a package play. Shai McKenzie gets the ball on a weak inside zone. It seems to be packaged with a quick bubble screen by the wide receiver at the top of the screen.

Note the safety to the top of the screen. He is supposed to support the corner against a screen, but at the snap, he is bolting in a direct line towards McKenzie. The corner is backpedaling at the snap. If Brewer pops up and flips the ball out to Byrn, it's a huge gain. Instead, Brewer hands the ball to McKenzie. Gibson does a good job of sealing the end outside. Teller does a terrific job of sealing the defensive tackle inside and driving him downfield (getting good push has been a problem with the starting group, even when they are solid on assignments.) Unfortunately, that safety is unaffected by the screen feint, and McKenzie can't make him miss or run through him in the hole. This is a well blocked play that looks bad because of the result.

Despite not dominating the line of scrimmage, the offense got whatever it wanted in the passing game time and again for the better part of three quarters. The line protected extremely well. Ford, Byrn, and Phillips got seperation and made plays down field, and Brewer made throws until the Hokies got into the red zone. In the red zone, Brewer rushed a throw to a wide open Ford on a slant to kill the first drive (resulted in a field goal). On the second drive, Brewer took a coverage sack instead of getting the ball out, and then on third-and-goal, Hodges was wide open down the seam, but wasn't looking for the football because he was a diversion route to pull the safety deep so Phillips could run a dig route. The Georgia Tech safety abandoned Hodges to cut off Phillips, and Hodges never turned his head around.

On the third drive, the Hokies finally started to get some movement up front. That push came on one of the most basic plays an offense can run: power. I have discussed the concept before. On the play side, the tight end lets the d-end get upfield to seal him outside. The front side linemen block down. The back side guard pulls around, and leads through the hole with the fullback. The tailback follows their blocks. Unlike zone blocking, there is a clear, defined location for where the ball needs to go and the back doesn't have the responsibility of reading zone blocks for a cut. Either the hole is there, or you improvise.

After a beautiful third and long conversion to Isaiah Ford on a dig route (that featured Marshawn Williams doing a wonderful job picking up the blitz), Williams was rewarded with two consecutive power plays. Here is the first.

Cline seals the end out. McLaughlin doubles the defensive tackle with Conte and then slides off to the linebacker. Rogers leads through the hole and chops down the blitzing safety. Wang pulls around and seals the linebacker to the inside (with help from Demitri Knowles, who crack blocks inside on the play.) Williams does the rest. This is terrific push up front, especially at the point of attack by McLaughlin.

Loeffler gets them lined right back up, but this time the power blocking gets adjusted because Georgia Tech aligns the defensive end inside of Cline and moves the linebacker up on Cline's outside shoulder. Cline blocks down, and Rogers seals out the edge defender.

Cline drives his man back into the endzone, and Wang kicks the linebacker to the outside. Williams isn't going to get a much easier touchdown. This is so well blocked, I wish Loeffler would utilize it more often.

Chasing Defeat

Despite some of the defensive breakdowns and the execution errors by the offense in the red zone, the Hokies dominated the first half (four drives, three scores) and most of the second half. Two small windows where the Hokies committed a series of critical errors at the end of the second quarter and the end of the game snatched defeat from the arms of victory.

The first series of breakdowns started after the Hokies forced a quick punt on the drive following Marshawn Williams' touchdown. Georgia Tech's confidence sagged, and then Brewer completed a beautiful fade route to Cam Phillips down the right sideline to get out of a third-and-15 in the shadow of his own end zone. Loeffler decided to go for the kill; a deep throw off play-action.

The Hokies run a three-man route. Byrn runs a drag, Ford runs a back side post route, the receiver split to the field (can't make a number) seems to run a fly. Georgia Tech drops under the crossing route for Byrn, and there is a corner and a deep free safety over the top. It wasn't open. Edmunds is in the game at tailback, and instead of staying in his hole off the play fake, he immediately goes outside to help Hodges with the defensive end. The middle linebacker slips in behind Edmunds and rushes the throw. As a lifelong quarterback, raised by a family of quarterback, Brewer must understand the game situation. Tech has 10-point lead. It is first down. All the momentum in a game where retaining possession is absolutely critical is with the Hokies. He can't throw this football.

Then the Hokie defense starts to breakdown. After a couple of positive plays, Chase Williams busts a coverage assignment. Georgia Tech motions an A-Back across, leaving two A-Backs and a wide receiver to the wide side of the field.

Fuller has the wide receiver going deep. Riley is shadowing the motion man (indicating man coverage to Thomas). Normally, the other shallow safety (the Hokies are using Riley as a third safety), in this case Jarrett, would have the stationary A-Back. But, Jarrett is blitzing on the play, meaning that Chase Williams has the stationary A-Back (Deon Hill, No. 31). Hill leaks to the right flat, and Williams eyes are looking right into the backfield. Hill is wide open, and since both Fuller and Riley have their back to the football running downfield with the receiver, it becomes a huge gain. Follow that play by a simple rollout where Jarrett and Bonner both lose outside contain, a borderline personal foul (Thomas stepped out of bounds after Clarke left his feet), and then Jarrett getting trapped inside again by the A-Back on another rollout and GT thunders back into the game with a touchdown.

Those were veteran players blowing assignments, not freshmen. This just isn't good enough when you need a stop to prevent a huge momentum swing. The offense recovered enough to get a field goal before the half, but you knew at that point that things were going to be tougher than they should have been in the second half.

The third quarter was much of the same. The Hokie defense performed better, and Foster's game plan of forcing the quarterback to keep early, take hits, and then switch things up to force a bad pitch paid off. Thomas pitched behind his A-Back on a counter option on Georgia Tech's first drive of the second half. Unfortunately, the Hokie offense couldn't capitalize, and some of that fault lies on Scot Loeffler. On the touchdown drive, the offense ran the power and jammed the ball right down the Yellow Jackets' throat, but on first down Loeffler got cute (which is becoming an alarming trend).

If there is one thing that Ted Roof was certain of coming into this game, is that if J.C. Coleman is the tailback, the Hokies probably are not running power. Coleman is in at tailback, and the Hokies are in a power alignment. The defense knows this has to be a pass, a reverse, or something quick to the outside. Loeffler calls a counter-pitch, using Knowles motion to try and get the defense to pursue to the bottom of the screen. It doesn't work.

Coleman is unable to get by a defender. McLaughlin and Hodges execute a beautiful pin and pull block, with Hodges sealing Kyle Travis (No. 43) inside and McLaughlin steamrolling the corner. Coleman is one-on-one with safety Jamal Golden (No. 4) who motions back with Knowles but stays at home. In the red zone, running backs have to win one-on-one battles with an unblocked defender. Coleman has an angle on Golden, and he doesn't even wrap his arms, but Coleman runs out of bounds. That just is not good enough. If he gets the edge, this is either a touchdown or at least he should fall forward for 4-5 yards. Instead the Hokies find themselves behind the sticks. On the next play, the Hokies were flagged for their fourth illegal substitution penalty. The video doesn't indicate who was responsible, and neither does the official play-by-play.

On the video, you can't see who ran off late, but Shane Beamer was tearing into somebody on the sideline, so I assume one of the running backs screwed up. The drive stalls after a sure fire touchdown to Hodges on a crossing route gets tipped at the line of scrimmage, and the Yellow Jackets block the chip shot field goal.

The next critical veteran breakdown came at the start of the fourth quarter. The Hokies forced a three-and-out, picked up a first down on a 15-yard gain and then a 9-yard gain. On second-and-one, the Hokies ran an inside zone with Williams to get the first down. Williams gained plenty of yardage, but David Wang was called for a chop block penalty. What happened?

Georgia Tech executes a stunt on the back side, with the linebacker blitzing to the inside and the defensive tackle stunting to the outside. Wang makes the correct play by taking the linebacker. Gibson should take the defensive tackle (who is less of a threat) or move on to the next level. Instead, Gibson sort of collides with Wang, who didn't need the help. This is a mistake by Gibson. It puts the Hokies behind the sticks. Farris then jumps offsides making it second-and-20. Loeffler, as you would expect an offensive coordinator to do in a second-and-long situation with a lead, calls a screen, and Brewer gift wraps a pick six for the Yellow Jackets.

By the virtue of good fortune, the Hokies score on their next possesion and were in a place we've seen before. Virginia Tech has fourth quarter lead and the defense is well rested. Everything was on schedule for Bud Foster as the defense forced a three-and-out capped off with a beautiful sack by Nicolas. Now, it was time for the Hokie offense to put the game away with a long, grind them down type of drive. But Loeffler, whose game plan was brilliant up to that point, didn't trust his offensive line and Shai McKenzie to ice the game.

You could see the Yellow Jackets let down on McKenzie's first down run. The Hokies run inside zone and Gibson, Farris, and Wang pick up the Yellow Jacket blitz and open up a big hole. McKenzie finishes the run by punishing the Yellow Jacket safety.

At this very moment, I thought the game was won. The Hokies were going to line up and pound the demoralized defensive line, move right down the field, and either use up the clock or score the clinching touchdown. My serenity lasted one play.

Loeffler calls a quick wide receiver screen out to the left, I guess hoping to catch Georgia Tech in another blitz. Instead, he should have trusted his line and tailback.

First, Brewer snaps the ball with 27 seconds left on the play clock. There are six minutes left in the fourth quarter and VT has a touchdown lead. The opponent has trouble playing from behind with their option offense. There's no reasonable explanation for snapping the ball with 27 seconds left on the play clock. As a football purist, this may have made me more angry than Brewer's second interception. Ford misses his block on the screen, and it's almost another pick six. Cam Phillips gets tackled for a 4-yard loss, which eliminates almost any chance of another run on third down. The last four Hokie running plays had gained 9, 4, 10 (not including the yards after Williams' fumble), and 6 yards. Line up and let your offensive line and tailback win the game.

With a lead and less than five-and-a-half minutes left on the clock, Foster's defense delivered, putting Georgia Tech into 4th-and-15. Then, all hell broke loose.

I was critical of Foster during the game for using man coverage, but reviewing the film, it turns out that Foster was running a double coverage on Smeltzer. Smeltzer runs a deep in route. Foster has the correct coverage, with Derek Di Nardo (who had barely played to that point) and Chuck Clark bracketing Smeltzer.

On this play, there has to be a clear understanding of leverage. Di Nardo goes underneath and to the outside of Smeltzer's route, taking away the deep comeback that Smeltzer had beaten Kendall Fuller on earlier in the drive. With Di Nardo going outside, Clark has to maintain inside leverage on a dig route. This means that Clark has to be playing at a depth where Smeltzer can't just plant and break to the inside without anyone being between him and the ball. Unless Di Nardo was supposed to have inside leverage (and therefore busted the coverage by going outside), Clark can't allow this to happen. If he is going to be beaten, it has to be on a go route to the outside, which is a much lower percentage throw and the sideline acts as an extra defender. This is way too easy for the offense.

The secondary still had chances to put the game away. Bonner dropped an interception off a deflection on the next play. The following play, Foster brings Clark on a corner blitz. Riley has over the top deep coverage as the safety. In that coverage, the safety has to be deeper than the deepest receiver. Thomas gave a great pump fake, Riley bought it, and the Yellow Jackets tied the game.

And, despite all this, the Hokies still had an opportunity to win the game, either in overtime or with another two-minute drill. Brewer's pedigree in these situations is strong, as he lead critical scoring drives to win the game against Ohio State, tie the game against East Carolina, and generate a field goal to cut the Georgia Tech momentum at the end of the first half.

Unfortunately for the Hokies, Brewer made a poor read on a simple smash route concept to put the Hokies chance of winning on life support. The interception was especially frustrating since Brewer had executed the smash route perfectly several times earlier in the game. The concept is simple. The outside receiver runs a quick out, and the inside receiver runs a deeper route (either a deep out route or a corner route.

Back in the third quarter, the Hokies execute the smash route properly. Demitri Knowles, who had a solid game after languishing on the bench for several weeks, runs a hitch past the first down marker on the boundary. Kalvin Cline runs a corner route.

The quarterback reads the corner. If the corner sluffs off on the deep corner route, the quarterback throws to the near receiver. If the corner is in cover 2 and plays the short route, the corner route is open.

Brewer reads the corner dropping deep into a cover three, and he hits Knowles for an easy first down. All game long, Georgia Tech dropped that corner deep, and when Brewer wasn't killing the Yellow Jackets with dig routes, he was hitting that quick hitch or out for numerous key first downs.

That is, until the final Hokie offensive drive. Again, the Hokies call the smash route to the boundary. Again, the Georgia Tech corner plays behind the out route marking the corner route. But, for reasons that only he can answer, Brewer throws the corner route.

The cornerback backs off the out route, as he had numerous times throughout the game. Instead of taking the easy 5-yard completion, Brewer forces the ball into triple coverage. Again, this is a one-read route. If the corner is behind the hitch, that's where the ball goes. This is a brutal decision, and it likely means that Mark Leal will at least get more repetitions in practice this week. Brewer can't be that careless with the football. Of Brewer's three interceptions, two came on first down, and one was with a huge lead and good field position. As a quarterback, he has to understand when you may or may not need to force a ball in, and when you need to live and fight another day. The Hokies just are not good enough yet to overcome that kind of carelessness with the football.

We are a third of the way through the season; one that began with such promise. The win over the Buckeyes now stands on the precipice of becoming a lost season. Every team remaining on the schedule has a matchup with can be tough for the Hokies to deal with, and at the same time, Virginia Tech is talented enough to run the table. Coach Loeffler needs to start to show some trust in his offense to execute without so much emphasis on different packages and matchups. I would expect that Frank Beamer may intercede some this week, and ask for Loeffler to give McKenzie and Williams more touches. I'd like to see Coach Foster devote a significant amount of time to leverage in zone and man coverage for his defensive backs so we can see more coverage variety against teams that can throw the football.

Getting the season back on track starts with a win against Western Michigan. The Broncos are not a powerhouse program, but they have won two consecutive games and their offense is averaging 41 points a game. The Broncos have their own big freshman tailback who can make plays from the spread formation. 6-0, 220 pound Jarvion Franklin has rushed for 542 yards on 82 carries this season, for an outstanding average of 6.6 yards per carry. The Hokies can't treat this game like a scrimmage designed to work out the kinks.