Monday, April 09, 2007

Jags as OC: Game 6, Virginia Tech 1997

The latest in the series. The Virginia Tech marked another low spot for the offense. Scoring struggles continued, Hasselbeck proved ineffective after returning from injury and the two headed backfield may have been giving the wrong guy the ball. Here are the stats.

Stat Line
First downs 10
Rushed-yards 28-123
Passing yards 153
Sacked-yards lost 0-0
Return yards 43
Passes 10-24-1
Punts 8-41.1
Fumbles-lost 0-0
Penalties-yards 5-28
Time of possession 23:52

What can we learn from the game?
The protection remained strong. That's a good thing. That was about the only good thing from this game. MHass couldn't take advantage of the quality protection, so he sprayed his balls around the field. Jags hadn't worked with him very long, but during his senior year, you never would have guessed that Matt would go on to be Pro Bowler. Other challenges: with Dicosmo still out, this team did not have many guys who could make plays in the open field. At this point Cloud was a known gamebreaker, yet he was still splitting caries. Sure he didn't explode in this game, but he caught two passes for 60+ yards. We should have given him the ball more (a mistake we would correct in 1998). In addition to not scoring points, this team did not do itself any favors grinding out the clock.

Virginia Tech would prove to be one of the better teams on our schedule. However, that doesn't mask the offensive problems from this game.

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