Natty week part 3

[tsweezy]

Here we go, the meat and potatoes posts coming in. A little birdy told me the game has run and result is finalized. Scroll to the end to see the actual gameplan used. 

Tennessee Offense vs. Baylor defense

Alright, time to take a look at the most explosive matchups first. A little run down of the position groupings, strategies, gameplans, and how the teams matchup when the Volunteers have the ball.

 

Tennessee Offense

QB

It all starts with the QB. Brandon Savage won the Heisman last year and finished 2^nd this year. He’s a monster who’s thrown 69 TD and only 3 INTs this season to go with his ~7500 yards in 15 games on 70% completion percentage. If those numbers don’t scare the opposing defense I don’t know what will. Landrum and Knebel are the only guys in college football in the same stratosphere of ability right now.

Score: 5/5

RB

This is a much less heralded group. The only guy who really gets starter duty is Joe Williams, another class of 2021 recruit who’s currently the highest overall RB from that class. While he may not hear his name often, he has pretty solid production when he does get carries. 15 TDs, 800 yards on 137 carries for a 5.86 rushing average projects to about a 15 carry, 65 yard game if he plays the whole game (he often doesn’t). His real strength though is his receiving skills. He has a 73% catch rate for 943 yards AND an additional 13 TDs. He’s phenomenal at picking up first downs and has a nose for the endzone.

Score: 4/5

WR

The divas and ballers of the team. Hayes Edwards is projected by some as a first round pick in this draft, and has an 80% catch rate for > 2000 yards and 23 TDs. He’s popped off big time in a number of big situations and is one of very, VERY few WRs to have back to back 2k yard seasons. At the WR2 slot is possession 2021 recruit Alex Smith-Schuster (ASS). Not very ass though, with 1284 yards on 100 targets (although not so many TDs). The big name is at WR3. True freshman BJ Flash might just be the fastest player in the entire recruiting class of 2023. He exploded onto the scene this year hitting 2500 yards and too many bombs to count. He does need Savage’s ball placement though, as he is truly abysmal when Koch is throwing to him. He mostly sticks at the WR3 spot so he doesn’t need the finer points of route running, just to run fast and dust the safeties that usually get put on him. Eric Barnhart is the big body short yardage senior threat to round out the usual starters.

Score: 4.5/5

TE

Tennessee usually only runs a TE out on the field about 30% of plays. That WR is usually Kendrick Mateo, who’s not very active in pass catching, but has A+ pass and run blocking which is a key for this game. TE2 has Audry Black, a senior FB. Again, he may be playing out of position but he has great blocking abilities and really just serves as a jumbo OL when in the game.

Score: 3/5

OL

The biggest weak spot. There aren’t any *terrible* players, but not really great ones either. At tackles you have Lazard and Hernandez, who are B+ pass blocker attribute guys, and have B/B+ in pass blocking with average grades on the rest of their attributes. OG is a little weaker. JJ Bolt is a balanced B+ senior with B-/C+ pass/run blocking grades which is pretty meh but startable. On the other side we have Crosby, a red shirt freshman who is horrible at everything *except* pass blocking, which he has a B in. All he can do is serviceable pass pro and is definitely the weak spot, but there are no better options. C has been a back and forth battle between Sophomore Morrow and senior OG Dare Bazata. Despite playing out of position and Morrow getting the starts against WVU/ND, Bazata was picked to start this game as he offers slightly higher upside in pass pro (B) even with the out of position penalty.

So L-R in terms of overall: B+, B+, B+, B-, B+ and in terms of pass pro: B, B-, B, B, B+. Very average all around for a team in the natty and definitely the achilles heel of this offense.

Surprisingly when they’re healthy they’ve kept Savage upright pretty well. In 13 games with all starters playing, Savage took 20 sacks on 550 attempts (about 1 per 27 dropbacks). Quite a good ratio! Of course in the two games where Hernandez was injured Savage was sacked 35 times on 120 dropbacks which is… very not good (those were also the only 2 games this season Tennessee did not win by 21 or more). Fingers crossed the guys stay healthy

Score: 2.75/5

 

Baylor Defense

Ok now it’s time to talk about the Baylor defensive personnel front to back

DL

On paper this is an ELITE defensive line, on par with the best in the country. Baylor is playing run stopper Darrell Sadler at one DE position (A overall, A+ run defense) and Balanced Zach Lundblade at the other (A overall, A in pretty much everything). These guys absolutely shut down the outside run game for almost everyone they play (allowing 3.8 ypc on the season), 29.5 TFL. The only thing they might be slightly weak at is pass rushing. They still have 17 sacks between them, but the pass rush grades are B and B+.

Up the middle at DT, it’s the same story. Pass rusher Mike Gallman gets the start (A overall, A’s all over) with 11 TFL and only 3 sacks on the season. Seems to be a bit of a blocker clogger hm. At the other DT spot (I assume this is a recent development and not all season) is… DE Darrell Sadler again! Baylor figured out a way to get their best A overall DL on the field twice and he shows all A and A+s at DT which is a scary proposition.

So there we have it, 4 A overall DL, slightly skewed towards stopping the run. Terrifying. Silver lining is that the run defense is almost immaterial against Tennessee

Score: 4.75/5

LB

Linebacker is another very strong position group. They’ve got Coverage – Coverage – Pass rush archetypes with Carter, Cole, Connor from L-R. Carter is a B+ and just good at everything (but great at coverage). Cole is a 5-star junior who is even better at everything (A+ coverage, B+/A- everywhere else). Connor is the “weak” link here as a B+ who is really only great at agility and pass rushing and average elsewhere (and does not get the scheme fit bonus the other two do). Overall this is actually a group well positioned to stop Tennessee and they’ve cleaned up this season

Score: 4/5

CB

Now we finally get to the first actually soft position group on this team. Bonifacio is an A overall CB1, but he’s more of an athlete as he only has B+ coverage skills. Behind him are some guys who just aren’t quite ready for superstar limelight. Eckmann and Villasenor are both redshirt freshmen who sport Cs and Ds across the board for attributes. This is the bright red Death Star exhaust port for the team and they have had games of giving up a TON of yardage. The whole defense centers around preventing these two from being exposed too badly honestly.

Score: 2/5

S

Safeties are a little bit better, but not by much, and can’t make up for the CB skill. Jabari Williams is the ball hawk FS A- overall who looks good on paper, but all year has 0 pass deflections and only 1 INT despite his A+ catching abilities. A bit of a letdown. At SS is Brusules, another (Fr) B overall who is not very good at anything but does have a B man coverage grade. These are not great mistake erasers, and Baylor better hope Brusules isn’t getting sent to match up with Flash 1 on 1.

Score: 2.25/5

 

Overall Philosophies:

Tennessee offense:

It’s no secret, this is an air raid team that wants to leverage Savage’s arm and the WRs as much as possible. Joe Will is good, but the OL can’t run block. Most of the year has seen Joe get just enough carries to try and stop defenses from totally keying in on the pass, but the engine for this team is the long ball. In this particular game, there’s no need to set anything up for the future. The run percentages have been dropped to near 0 and basically every play is going to be a long pass, or a screen / quick pass to beat the expected heavy blitzing. With how good the linebackers are and how weak the secondary is, the short pass and TE/RB focus have been cut and there's no point to play action when we don't expect Baylor to play any run defense. The only wrinkle is Tennessee did try and add a lot more TE formations to get those A+ blockers on the field and buy Savage just a hair more time to find an open receiver.

Baylor Defense:

On the flip side, I think Baylor knows exactly what their path to slowing down the offense will be (there’s no way for them to stop it entirely with that secondary). They HAVE to get to the QB FAST. Last week against Tulsa they blitzed as much as possible and picked up 17(!) sacks to hold them to 28 points despite allowing 701 offensive yards. That’s pretty much going to be assumed to be their gameplan here as well. Blitz as much as possible, as heavy as possible, and try to get lucky enough to stop a few drives that way, or at least only allow FGs. They gave perfunctory service to playing run defense, but I’d be surprised if they even do that much in this game. Baylor really only wins this if they get 10+ sacks in my opinion so the OL/DL battle is worth everything, but they have shown they are capable of rising to that level.

 

Final matchup tally

TENN	TENN Score	BAYL	BAYL Score
OL	2.75	DL	4.75
RB	4	LB	4
TE	3
WR	4.5	CB	2
QB	5	S	2.25
Total	19.25/25 (3.85/5)	Total	13/20 (3.25/5)

 

 

Prediction:

Tennessee throws for 600+ yards, only scores 37 points.

 

Also here’s my gameplan that I set on offense (@vivid you can drop your defensive one in the comments, I expect to see total pass focus + amped up aggressive blitzing along with a long pass defensive focus). Not much I could do to counter that though except bump up the percentage of TE play (Probably could have done that even more tbh)

[tsweezy]

Drop your predictions for points / yardage Tennessee will get! Bonus for sacks and turnovers guessed.

closest answer jumps the line for class grades

[Vivid]

Went conservative blitzing and sold out on the run

[Vivid]

So some real thoughts in no particular order.

My secondary is just not set up for an air raid team. I hope the scheme bonus helps me here but the talent is in my front four to be honest. 
 

Putting more TEs on the field makes it easier for me to put more LBs on the field making them better rushers than the DBs. I think the “pass protection” boost from that isn’t really beneficial since you don’t get to audible and keep your TEs in to protect. Anytime I can put my OLB on the field and not a third CB I’m taking it.

 

Last week was the first time I’ve blitzed,,, moderately. Also the first game my blitz package was implemented bring my pass rush OLB instead of my coverage OLB. We will see if it helps again this week. 
 

To be honest I don’t have all that much faith in being able to stop the chunk plays so I’m going to hope I can get some turnovers or something to keep me in the game.

[tsweezy]

3 minutes ago, Vivid said:

So some real thoughts in no particular order
 

Putting more TEs on the field makes it easier for me to put more LBs on the field making them better rushers than the DBs. I think the “pass protection” boost from that isn’t really beneficial to keep me in the game.

Do you remember your formations used or blitz percentages?

[Vivid]

No and the interface has moved on to next week

[LordLittlebutt]

tsweezy wants to know what's going to happen without knowing what happened.....

 

And... is this a thing?  We could have been playing our best guys at multiple positions all season? Whatever the interface allows?
 At the other DT spot (I assume this is a recent development and not all season) is… DE Darrell Sadler again! Baylor figured out a way to get their best A overall DL on the field twice

 

Edited August 29 by LordLittlebutt

[Vivid]

1 hour ago, LordLittlebutt said:

tsweezy wants to know what's going to happen without knowing what happened.....

 

And... is this a thing?  We could have been playing our best guys at multiple positions all season? Whatever the interface allows?
 At the other DT spot (I assume this is a recent development and not all season) is… DE Darrell Sadler again! Baylor figured out a way to get their best A overall DL on the field twice

 

Honestly did not even try to do that. It should be Cory Henderson there. He’s also an A and relatively similar rating wise

Edited August 29 by Vivid