sacks!!!

[jofus]

are flowing!

 

[VinceHung]

I think we had 9 total.

 

[hornpharmd]

Box score shows 7. Also 9 QBH's (or hurries), 10 TFL, 1 FF, 8 PBU, and something like 4 or 5 stops on 4th down causing turnover on downs. Pretty good defensive stats there.

 

[Knoxville-Horn]

Does anyone with some "X's" and "O's" knowledge know if the pressure AFTER the 1st quarter was due to adjustments or just Rice's lack of depth/o-line size? We didn't do much in the 1st quarter. After that, it was a jailbreak.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

I'm not an expert, but it looked to me that in the second half, Clement wasn't just dropping three steps and firing. He was actually having to look for receivers, and even in the first quarter, he really never would have had time to do that.

That leads me to believe that the secondary was actually covering people - and the great thing about a good pass rush is you don't always have to cover every option for the entire play, if you can take away that first option, a lot of times you've done your job.

So personally I thought it was a combination of better coverage and a worn down Rice OL.

 

[GatorHorn]

From what I saw, the secondary starting doing a better job of taking away the screens and the first reads, forcing the QB to hold the ball longer and thus allowing for the pressure to actually get to the QB.

Sacks are often tied to the secondary being able to slow routes down as they develop, too. A good defensive line's pass rush can be mitigated if the defensive backs are allowing hot reads to get open early or if they fail to read properly at the LOS.

The 1st Quarter was hard to watch because our guys in the secondary were a hair off their reads at the snap and this allowed Clements to find receivers before they pressure got to him.

One other thing, the defensive line also did a better job of keeping Clements from escaping after the 1st Quarter. You can get pressure but still give up negative plays if you're not disciplined in your rush (see many of the opponents' breakdowns versus Vince when he was here).

 

[hornpharmd]

Agreed. In the 1st half their QB was throwing to his 1st and 2nd target easily every time. As the game went on he was having to go thru progressions which gave the UT DL more time to make plays. And our DL was wearing down their OL as well, so it was a combination of things.