My biggest concern going into this year was the offense. Mora, in his first two years here, has shown a good amount of competence on the defensive side of the ball. To me, it seems like his biggest failure has been trusting his OC to handle all of the offensive duties. Many college teams have a small army of analysts to scheme together an offensive game plan. You saw during the Wake game how there were multiple people in a booth doing the play calling. And Wake, as you know, is bottom of the barrel in terms of football investments. They ONLY spend 3M on their head coach, which is more or less what we pay our entire coaching staff.
The outcome of this game obviously sucked, but I am walking away with a bit of encouragement about Nick Evers. Take a look at his interception. (You might think it weird of me to use his INT as encouragement, but stick with me.)
This is the start of the play:
UConn is in their 11-personnel. QB shotgunned. Usually this means RPO. Wake is in a nickel defense, cover-2. Obvious zone. Pre-snap, the most likely and optimal outcome is some sort of inside slant to Sheffield lined up in the slot position. 5-7 yard game. That's exactly what Evers read. Good job there.
Post snap, 1 second later (I have a photo, but can only upload 2), confirmed zone defense. OLB is covering Sheffield. Evers is looking downfield instead of at Sheffield. Another good job there by Evers.
This is about 1 sec before the INT. All the middle defenders are looking at the QB, seemingly knowing this was an RPO. Defenders know it's a pass play at this point. Sheffield is about to make a big mistake, followed by Evers throwing to him. Sheffield should have cut inside right there before meeting the OLB. Instead, he kept running another 5 yards -- a different route -- past the OLB, delaying the expected throw. The play is broken. Evers could have thrown it to Cam, but he was a bit slow to get open. Evers should have also tried running it outside with Cam as the lead blocker. Wake was rushing only rushing 3, so room was there. Instead, he throw into quadruple coverage.
Sheffield made the first mistake and Evers didn't adjust to the mistake. This is the inexperience part Ever's game, learning not just how to adjust to a defense, but how to adjust to your teammates messing up. However, inexperience is something that usually goes away with more reps. Keep in mind here, I'm showing you stills, but all of this stuff happened in this one play happened in less than 5 seconds. High level football is much harder to play than watch.
Later in the game, UConn ran the same formation and Wake the same defense. Evers threw a dime to the streaking Gathings running an outside post resulting in a TD in the 3Q. The throw only took 2 secs, the entire play 3. It took awhile for OC Sammis to see that our oline wasn't playing their best. The adjustments Sammis made were good, just slow. Seems that the inexperience isn't all on Evers.
In saying all of this, I do think we have something here in a potential Evers, but I much rather we have a six year senior like Bachmeier with a couple 3000 passing seasons under his belt and 225 LB frame. Unfortunately, those are kind of rare and we just fell short in recruiting and short in the game. Still, this year's team is much improved and will probably get better.
How many of you would have taken 7-8 wins at this time last year, even if it came against all G5 teams?
- and a total of 8 points separates us. UConn had chance to win in both games.
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