Hills out for the rest of the year

Too bad for Hills. I hope the broken leg doesn’t cost him too much money.

On the first full drive with Burnette at center, I think we had trouble with the center-qb exchange at least twice: the first play (rocket pitch, I think) and last play (QB sneak TD) of the drive. It looked like Colt had trouble with another snap on that drive, but it’s hard to tell for sure from the stands. Things seemed to go more smoothly after that drive.

However, our run game slowed considerably in the second half and a lot of the backfield penetration by Tech seemed to come right through our center. Tech also brought LBs consistently in the second half.

Do some of you smarter guys who watched the game on TV have any feel for how much we should allocate the run game’s slowing in the second half among offensive line shuffling, JC’s ankle and Tech’s defensive adjustments?

On the plus side, Tech couldn’t cover anyone in the second half, which helped us convert a lot of third downs, it seemed.

I think the issues were:

1. JC’s ankle – Vondrell is a very good RB but he’s not JC. He doesn’t hit the whole and GO like JC does. And for all of JC’s issues earlier in the season with trying to stretch it out, the past 3 games, he’s been hitting a hole and hitting it hard.
2. Tech’s adjustments – They did make some changes, especially once JC went out.
3. The OL shuffling – I really thought this new MASH unit looked superb in the first half. After Tony went out, we had several really nice drives where we looked as good as we have all season with Buck at center. There might have been some snap issues but the line blocking was very nice. Colt had time to throw and there were nice holes for the RBs.

One thing I did notice more this game was Colt having a pocket to step up into. He did this several times in the first half (in particular) and made some good throws.

It was obvious watching McGee that he didn’t have the vision of JC. He’d go to the hole, if it was stuffed, he would just keep pushing and get a yard or two. JC, the way he’s been running lately, would have found the cutback lane with his superior vision.

I thought Burnette got tired in the second half. He played well, but he’d be a lot better about 15 pounds lighter. I haven’t watched the film yet, but it looked like Tech changed the alignment of their DTs in the second half. In the first half it looked like they had them lined up over the guards, but in the second half it looked like one would be shaded over Burnette.