Blue Devils look to air it out against Pack

'09 Football37

WRAL says that Duke will look to air it out against the Wolfpack on what may be a raining day in Raleigh this weekend.

Who could blame them after the way our defense has been playing? Maybe we should really be asking — Will Mike Archer’s defense find a way to hold an opponent under 30 points?

Thad Lewis certainly can’t complain about the opportunity.

He’s a senior with 39 starts at quarterback for Duke and is playing for a coach who has built a reputation around throwing the football. And when he takes the field Saturday against North Carolina State, he’ll face a defense that allowed a bevy of yards through the air last week and will likely have overhauled its secondary.

It seems to give the Blue Devils – the top passing offense in the Atlantic Coast Conference – an edge. They just have to take advantage.

Ultimately, they key to Duke’s quest of stopping NC State’s eleven game winning streak in this series probably lies with NC State‘s execution – or lack thereof. As this article points out, You Can’t Spell “Mistake” without (NC) “ST”.

But Obie’s bottom line is what bottomed out State in Winston-Salem last week: the Wolfies aren’t a good enough team to make so many mistakes and consistently get away with it.

How many times they have to re-learn that lesson, if they ever fully learn it, will dictate whether this is the club many thought it could be.

Where do we begin?

Related

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NC State Depth Chart Discussion for Duke game

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'09 Football

37 Responses to Blue Devils look to air it out against Pack

  1. VaWolf82 10/07/2009 at 1:40 PM #

    I don’t know what team or what games some of you are watching…expecting State to “establish the run”.

    NCSU vs. PITT – Saturday 9/26

    91 of the 208 rushing yards came from Russell Wilson scrambling. That game doesn’t make much of a case for State being able to establish a power running game.

  2. Plz2BStateFan 10/07/2009 at 1:47 PM #

    If we cannot establish a running game with our current running backs, how are we with next years? Do we even have a power runner after Baker?

  3. SeaWolf 10/07/2009 at 2:11 PM #

    @ncsufan13
    “I thought that draws were run out of the shotgun (which we do) and delayed handoffs were run from under center (we don’t do often).”

    You’ve got it backwards I believe. You can do either, but we predominantly run delays from the shotgun.

    @Plz2BStateFan
    I think that Barnes could develop nicely into a hybrid type of runner. Good agility and hopefully can drag a few guys a couple extra yards. He certainly has the size to do so. Still, he’s not quite as stout as Baker. I could definitely see Barnes as a power guy if needed. Think Joseph Addai maybe?

  4. bradleyb123 10/07/2009 at 3:48 PM #

    ^^^ “91 of the 208 rushing yards came from Russell Wilson scrambling. That game doesn’t make much of a case for State being able to establish a power running game.”

    Maybe yards-per-carry is a better measuring stick (throw out Wilson’s yardage if you want). I tend to think we had to throw more against Pitt because we found ourselves behind for a lot of the game. That doesn’t mean we weren’t ABLE to run against Pitt. I don’t know the stats, but I thought we ran the ball OK in that game.

    Never mind, I looked it up:

    NET YARDS RUSHING…………. 208
    Rushing Attempts………… 46
    Average Per Rush………… 4.5
    Rushing Touchdowns………. 1

    Russell rushed 10 times for 91 yards. Removing Russell leaves these stats:

    NET YARDS RUSHING…………. 117
    Rushing Attempts………… 36
    Average Per Rush………… 3.25
    Rushing Touchdowns………. 1

    Those numbers aren’t great, but they’re not the worst numbers in the world, either.

  5. pack44fan 10/07/2009 at 4:34 PM #

    I would like to see a little more “finesse” mixed into our running game instead of an all power attack. Heck, I’d like to see a run to the outside every once in a while. O’Brien wants a big ten power running type attack, and to be truthful, our o line is not there yet. Has anybody else noticed that there is never presnap motion in our offense?

  6. packalum44 10/07/2009 at 5:05 PM #

    Posted this on the forum earlier and thanks for the feedback TVP. Wait till you get to the second half though. I haven’t re-watched it, only remembered Cole’s large frame moving like a snail and tackling the tailback a foot after the first down marker. A faster linebacker would have been there two yards earlier.

    Posted this on the forum but did anyone notice that Wake Forest exploited Audi Cole at linebacker? Can’t recall how many times a simple screen pass was used to convert a 3rd and long. Work beautifully because Audi is a slow and un-athletic linebacker who couldn’t make it to the ball carrier until after he just BARELY got the first down. He also got juked pretty bad at least once. These first downs turned into TDs.

    Nate Irving makes this teams 4-1 easily.

  7. tjfoose2 10/07/2009 at 6:30 PM #

    I vote the secondary as needing the most improvement. There is no quick fix. Experience is what they need. They’ll improve some along the way, but the best way to make them ‘better’ is for pressure up front.

    Special teams is a lot easier fix, though the fix is not so desirable. We’ll see a lot more starters on special teams this week, and probably for the rest of the season. Expect a big improvement from our kick coverage teams.

    Wake ran a schematically similar scheme against Wilson as did South Carolina… controlled presssue while containing with the front four, spy with a speedy LB. Wake was moderately successful. SoCar shut us down due to the speed of their front four, and Norwood #40 (their spy), is a beast.

    Any coach watching our SoCar and Wake games while probably try to do the same. Duke, however, probably doesn’t have the players to employ this scheme effectively.

    Because of personnel, UNC could give us BIG problems w/ their ‘D’ if Butchie gets his head out of his rear by Nov 28. I don’t have faith that he will though, so hopefully all that defensive talent will continue to be coached into an average defense.

    If Lewis in on, and the turf holds, it could be a shootout.

    Defensively, our main focus will be to pressure Lewis. Our front four should be able to do that w/o the blitz, but I imagine we’ll see at least a moderate amount of blitzing. How much more will depend on the success of Willie and crew. Look for Manning to be big in our pass rush.

    I wouldn’t expect us to focus on trying to establish a power running game – that would be playing right into Duke’s hands, playing away from our strengths and marginalizing their talent (quality and quantity) disparity. It would be playing not to lose.

    If Duke plays too loose on ‘D’ and overplays to stop Wilson, leaving the run wide open, then yes, we’ll take what they give us and run all day. But I doubt that will happen.

    Our strength is Russell Wilson. We’ll use him early and often, w/ the plan being to get an early lead, expand it, then slow down into a more settled attack. At least, I would expect something along those lines as the plan going in.

    Our ‘D’ is the X factor in this game. Will we stop, or at least slow down, Lewis, or will State be in a shootout all day?

  8. tjfoose2 10/07/2009 at 6:42 PM #

    “If we cannot establish a running game with our current running backs, how are we with next years? Do we even have a power runner after Baker?”

    It’s not so much the backs as it is the O-Line. We should start seeing marked improvement sometime next year. We should start seeing dividends from the investment in our OLine recruits. If we don’t, I would start being concerned.

    From an earlier post:
    http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2009/10/03/awful-pack-handed-awful-loss/comment-page-6/#comments

    ———————————————–

    “For those interested, our last 2 offensive lineman classes:

    2008 – All were redshirted
    4Star R.J. Mattes Starting Guard
    2Star Ahmad Jaradat No longer w/ Team
    3Star Andrew Wallace 2nd String Tackle
    3Star Zach Allen 2nd String Guard
    3Star Mario Carter (TE) Injured, out for year (I think)

    2009 – True Freshmen
    4Star Sam Jones Redshirt?
    4Star Asa Watson (TE) 3rd TE
    3Star Duran Christophe Redshirt?
    3Star Camden Wentz 2nd string Center
    4Star Denzelle Good Redshirt?

    Redshirt? = I haven’t seen them play, so I’m assuming they’ll be redshirted.

    And that’s not including 2010’s 5Star Robert Crisp, rated by everyone as a top 5 tackle, nationally.”

  9. tjfoose2 10/08/2009 at 2:41 AM #

    “I thought that draws were run out of the shotgun (which we do) and delayed handoffs were run from under center (we don’t do often).”

    Draws are usually run w/ the QB under center. QB takes the snap, drops back, shows pass (usually showing pass by putting the ball up to shoulder) w/ hopes of getting the LB’s to drop into their coverage (or at least hesitate), then the QB quickly drops the ball down, handing off to the back.

    The idea is for the RB to pick a lane created by the DLinemen coming in on a pass rush, and slipping into the open space created by the LB’s dropping back into coverage.

    Our delays, out of the shotgun, seem more like the read option Rich Rodriguez ran at WVU. Only we don’t seem to have an option, it’s almost exclusively a running play for our RB’s.

    The basic read option, in theory, has the QB keep the ball and scoot to outside of a crashing DT. If the DT goes wide or holds position, the RB gets the ball and runs up the middle, aided by the DT taking himself out of the play and/or being trapped by an O Lineman.

    I don’t know how we run it though, since RW rarely runs out of it. Perhaps we are reading how the D handles it, then we adjust later with a pass option. I’ve seen RW pull the ball back and throw much more than I’ve seen him tuck it and run.

    This topic has come up on numerous threads now. I might have an ‘in’. I’ll see if I can find out specifics in the next few days.

  10. Wufpacker 10/08/2009 at 5:43 AM #

    ^I find it interesting that this subject (draws/delayed handoffs) came up today. For a while now I’ve actually been wondering about things in the opposite direction. It seems to me that we rarely, if ever, use any type of play action. I saw at least 2 or 3 occasions in the Wake game where I thought it would be perfect to call play action. On 2 of those we ran just straight running plays for little or no gain, and the other was a straight pass into double coverage that was knocked down (not one of the interceptions).

    Admittedly, when I’m watching a game I’m usually doing other things and I certainly could have missed one here or there (Also, I am getting older and more forgetful quite honestly, so who knows there). But it just seems to me that we could utilize this to our advantage, even if only every so often. And, certainly the relative threat of the run (or lack thereof as the case may be) probably determines how often a team would go to it. Since our OL still seems to have a hard time run blocking and therefore the running game is middle of the road at best, the threat of the run is minimized. Even still, on a so-called obvious running down (2nd and 1 for argument’s sake) I would still think we could catch a defense napping and strike for a big gain.

  11. tjfoose2 10/08/2009 at 7:01 AM #

    Many of you have mentioned you expect problems w/ the turf. It was my understanding that w/ the new methods of re-sodding instituted a few years back, there would be little noticeable issues w/ the field.

    The turf didn’t seem to play a role in the Miami v Oklahamo game. Land Shark Stadium was re-sodded last Thursday, just 2 days before the game.

    But I don’t know. Any turf grass guys out there who have the straight scoop?

  12. Alpha Wolf 10/08/2009 at 3:08 PM #

    @ncsufan13
    “I thought that draws were run out of the shotgun (which we do) and delayed handoffs were run from under center (we don’t do often).”

    Seawolf answered it correctly. As I understand it, a draw is run from a QB under center.

    But then again, I am not even an XBOX All American. My nephew fairly whooped my rear end in Madden the other night.

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