A day late here, I had a lot of friends in town and couldn't get to posting yesterday. I did want to share my thoughts as I watched the Griz offense open up all over the Vikings. Looking back at what I posted in the scouting report:
Tough call. You can spin this both ways. The Griz D held the highest scoring offense to 27 points, where they average 41 usually, they forced 4 turnovers and 2 additional red zone stops. On the other hand they gave up 511 yards, almost 400 through the air, had two pretty bad breakdowns on passing TDs and showed issues with containing runners, arm tackles, and taking bad angles to ball-carriers. I'm ever the positive guy and quite frankly if the defense can create this many turnovers (6 essentially with the RZ stops) then I'm happy.
Done
Had a few too many issues with letting a receiver get behind the coverage. The deep TD to Dean late, the trick TD to Richard. They had some bigger passing plays on our defense. Not sure if it was safety confusion or the defense by design there to put the corners more 1 on 1 a lot. Although Chief had an incredible game, but I'll come back to that.
Done. I liked the aggressive approach from the offense, trying to add more points with about 1 minute to go in the half, and the continual attack until it was crystal clear who was winning the game.
I posted this thought on twitter but I'll say it again, I don't know if I've ever seen such an undisciplined coaching regime as I have seen under the Nigel Burton term as head coach. PSU's continual stupid and borderline dirty plays hurt them so bad early. And it has for 4 continual years now. You'd think they'd want to correct that because it's costing them games. PSU had 108 penalty yards (3 of which were personal fouls), the Griz had 15.
This was done two-fold, first of all the O-line showed up and were much improved on the field yesterday. Secondly Jordy showed much better pocket presence and ran the ball when there were no options or heavy pressure. Good improvement all around
Not really a factor, Griz sniffed out the PSU fake PAT, also Portland's questionable kicking game really hurt them in the red zone (in 6 games now they've not made a fieldgoal in the red zone). Meanwhile Worst went 2-3 with one blocked. Needless to say if Will Poehls has aspirations of becoming a returner in the NFL I have some bad news for him, haha.
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Some additional thoughts:
- Coming off a rough NAU game I thought Chief Goodwin had a stellar day. Both of his interceptions were incredible, seeing the play, knowing where the ball is going to be, and going after it. He was going against a WR that was much taller than him, however he broke up several passes and played much more physical than PSU's #1. I don't know if I've ever seen one player get credited with 7 PBUs in one game. I think Chief deserves the team nomination for Big Sky defensive player of the week.
- When it's rolling our ground attack is impressive. What I've really liked to see is Joey Counts coming into his own. We all saw early on (and continually have seen it maybe save the NAU game) that Van and Canada can be a lethal 1-2 attack. Early on though, against App Counts looked like he was still coming along, then he had a big reception against UND and has been working to improve since. His vision and finding open lanes has improved and thus his stats have shown improvement. I like the balance in the running game, Canada 13 carries, Van 14 carries, Counts 10 carries with 324 yards to share on those 27 carries.
- Yesterday we saw the Clay Pierson that was playing in fall camp. If he can stay healthy we've got two very dangerous pass-catching TEs. Going back to even his high school days, Jordy really connects well with TEs in the passing game. This is a welcome addition to our offense, actually using the TE position to win in the passing game downfield. Both Pierson and Harper have been working out great this year.
- DJ Adams, who some on egriz have said are better than Bauman, was held to 79 total yards on 18 carries, a 4.4 ypc average. Add in that his longest was 17 yards, so take that one out and he had 62 yards on his other 17 carries, a 3.6 ypc average. The front seven deserve big props for that.
- Really liking it that a pair of Missoula kids were both pretty big factors in the defensive effort yesterday (and this year so far). For the criticism that Missoula high school football gets I've got to say that right now our two most talented defenders both hail from right here in Missoula, which is really cool.
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Areas of improvement:
- Pass D overall had issues. Safeties breaking down and being out of position and some of our corners looking a little lost out there. I think it was pretty rough day for Dennard as I believe he allowed two passing TDs, including the long 80 yarder late. Far too many arm tackles and losing containment on quick screen passes.
- Its already been posted and discussed on here but Jordy's accuracy, especially early, wasn't good. Not sure if he was still shaking the ghosts of last week's pass rush still. He got real lucky a few early passes weren't picked off.
- After 1 short kickoff the UM special teams almost turned the tables back to PSU when Poehls fumbled his 2nd return attempt. The coaches shouldn't have put Will in that position, why not put Nguyen or Counts up on the 25 yard line and make sure that we don't have O-linemen trying to catch kickoffs? Other teams are going to test the fact that we've got two guards standing on the 20 for kickoffs and no "hands" players there. I think they should have prepared better for that 2nd short kick.
- Glad the 1st Grizzly series on offense didn't set the tone. That 3 and out was gross, it had me worried the funk from last week was carrying over. Good to see that after that possession the Griz scored 5 consecutive TDs. I always like it when an offense can show it's dominance on the 1st series, if possible. That was a fairly unorganized and sloppy 1st series.
- I didn't really like how they had the corners practically running away from the WRs as the ball was about to be snapped. Not sure how that worked. Obviously Goodwin did his thing but PSU's WRs also dropped a lot of wide open passes where they would run up 5 to 8 yards and turn to catch a short pass. Also the running back didn't seem to really stop some deeper pass plays.
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OK so all in all this was a nice improvement from last week and it might be the first game where we saw the Griz face off and beat a team that could still do some damage in the conference. PSU is undisciplined and sloppy, that will be their downfall this year, as it always is. However is was a good measure for the Griz to show what they can do in-conference other than last week's game. The play calling and planning for this game was very good, the Griz knew what it would take to win this game on offense for sure and were really helped out by a few guys excellent performances on defense. There's a lot still needed for improvement, a defense that allows 500+ yards in a game is not going to get it done, and a QB that completes just 50% of his passes is also an issue. However it's easier to gloss that over in the face of a blowout win. The Griz need to keep working to improve and stay sharp for every game.
Griz are back to their winning ways, and now they're off to face UCD who may be a little tougher than we thought as I saw they beat upstart SUU yesterday by a few TDs.
Go Griz!
Tough call. You can spin this both ways. The Griz D held the highest scoring offense to 27 points, where they average 41 usually, they forced 4 turnovers and 2 additional red zone stops. On the other hand they gave up 511 yards, almost 400 through the air, had two pretty bad breakdowns on passing TDs and showed issues with containing runners, arm tackles, and taking bad angles to ball-carriers. I'm ever the positive guy and quite frankly if the defense can create this many turnovers (6 essentially with the RZ stops) then I'm happy.
Done
Had a few too many issues with letting a receiver get behind the coverage. The deep TD to Dean late, the trick TD to Richard. They had some bigger passing plays on our defense. Not sure if it was safety confusion or the defense by design there to put the corners more 1 on 1 a lot. Although Chief had an incredible game, but I'll come back to that.
Done. I liked the aggressive approach from the offense, trying to add more points with about 1 minute to go in the half, and the continual attack until it was crystal clear who was winning the game.
I posted this thought on twitter but I'll say it again, I don't know if I've ever seen such an undisciplined coaching regime as I have seen under the Nigel Burton term as head coach. PSU's continual stupid and borderline dirty plays hurt them so bad early. And it has for 4 continual years now. You'd think they'd want to correct that because it's costing them games. PSU had 108 penalty yards (3 of which were personal fouls), the Griz had 15.
This was done two-fold, first of all the O-line showed up and were much improved on the field yesterday. Secondly Jordy showed much better pocket presence and ran the ball when there were no options or heavy pressure. Good improvement all around
Not really a factor, Griz sniffed out the PSU fake PAT, also Portland's questionable kicking game really hurt them in the red zone (in 6 games now they've not made a fieldgoal in the red zone). Meanwhile Worst went 2-3 with one blocked. Needless to say if Will Poehls has aspirations of becoming a returner in the NFL I have some bad news for him, haha.
------------------------
Some additional thoughts:
- Coming off a rough NAU game I thought Chief Goodwin had a stellar day. Both of his interceptions were incredible, seeing the play, knowing where the ball is going to be, and going after it. He was going against a WR that was much taller than him, however he broke up several passes and played much more physical than PSU's #1. I don't know if I've ever seen one player get credited with 7 PBUs in one game. I think Chief deserves the team nomination for Big Sky defensive player of the week.
- When it's rolling our ground attack is impressive. What I've really liked to see is Joey Counts coming into his own. We all saw early on (and continually have seen it maybe save the NAU game) that Van and Canada can be a lethal 1-2 attack. Early on though, against App Counts looked like he was still coming along, then he had a big reception against UND and has been working to improve since. His vision and finding open lanes has improved and thus his stats have shown improvement. I like the balance in the running game, Canada 13 carries, Van 14 carries, Counts 10 carries with 324 yards to share on those 27 carries.
- Yesterday we saw the Clay Pierson that was playing in fall camp. If he can stay healthy we've got two very dangerous pass-catching TEs. Going back to even his high school days, Jordy really connects well with TEs in the passing game. This is a welcome addition to our offense, actually using the TE position to win in the passing game downfield. Both Pierson and Harper have been working out great this year.
- DJ Adams, who some on egriz have said are better than Bauman, was held to 79 total yards on 18 carries, a 4.4 ypc average. Add in that his longest was 17 yards, so take that one out and he had 62 yards on his other 17 carries, a 3.6 ypc average. The front seven deserve big props for that.
- Really liking it that a pair of Missoula kids were both pretty big factors in the defensive effort yesterday (and this year so far). For the criticism that Missoula high school football gets I've got to say that right now our two most talented defenders both hail from right here in Missoula, which is really cool.
------------------------
Areas of improvement:
- Pass D overall had issues. Safeties breaking down and being out of position and some of our corners looking a little lost out there. I think it was pretty rough day for Dennard as I believe he allowed two passing TDs, including the long 80 yarder late. Far too many arm tackles and losing containment on quick screen passes.
- Its already been posted and discussed on here but Jordy's accuracy, especially early, wasn't good. Not sure if he was still shaking the ghosts of last week's pass rush still. He got real lucky a few early passes weren't picked off.
- After 1 short kickoff the UM special teams almost turned the tables back to PSU when Poehls fumbled his 2nd return attempt. The coaches shouldn't have put Will in that position, why not put Nguyen or Counts up on the 25 yard line and make sure that we don't have O-linemen trying to catch kickoffs? Other teams are going to test the fact that we've got two guards standing on the 20 for kickoffs and no "hands" players there. I think they should have prepared better for that 2nd short kick.
- Glad the 1st Grizzly series on offense didn't set the tone. That 3 and out was gross, it had me worried the funk from last week was carrying over. Good to see that after that possession the Griz scored 5 consecutive TDs. I always like it when an offense can show it's dominance on the 1st series, if possible. That was a fairly unorganized and sloppy 1st series.
- I didn't really like how they had the corners practically running away from the WRs as the ball was about to be snapped. Not sure how that worked. Obviously Goodwin did his thing but PSU's WRs also dropped a lot of wide open passes where they would run up 5 to 8 yards and turn to catch a short pass. Also the running back didn't seem to really stop some deeper pass plays.
-----------------
OK so all in all this was a nice improvement from last week and it might be the first game where we saw the Griz face off and beat a team that could still do some damage in the conference. PSU is undisciplined and sloppy, that will be their downfall this year, as it always is. However is was a good measure for the Griz to show what they can do in-conference other than last week's game. The play calling and planning for this game was very good, the Griz knew what it would take to win this game on offense for sure and were really helped out by a few guys excellent performances on defense. There's a lot still needed for improvement, a defense that allows 500+ yards in a game is not going to get it done, and a QB that completes just 50% of his passes is also an issue. However it's easier to gloss that over in the face of a blowout win. The Griz need to keep working to improve and stay sharp for every game.
Griz are back to their winning ways, and now they're off to face UCD who may be a little tougher than we thought as I saw they beat upstart SUU yesterday by a few TDs.
Go Griz!
