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UP NEXT: Lehigh
When: Saturday, 12:30 p.m. at Goodman Stadium
Record: 2-2
All-time series: Yale leads 16-6
Last week: Turnovers and penalties doomed Lehigh in its 52-26 loss to Princeton last week. Lehigh turned the ball over four times and had 10 penalties. It's high-powered offense, however, gained 561 yards. QB Nick Shafnisky threw for 348 yards, Dom Bragalone rushed for 129 yards and Troy Pelletier set a school mark with 15 catches for 158 yards. .
Top players: QB Nick Shafnisky (281 ypg, 7 TDs, 6 INTs, 70 ypg rushing), RB Dom Bragalone (59 ypg), WR Troy Pelletier (75 ypg, 4 TDs), LB Colton Caslow (51 tackles), DB Brian Githens (2 INTs).
posted by Anonymous at
12:01 AM
14 Comments:
Chris--I noted last week your explanation that if you breathe so much as a word about injuries, you will be denied access to practice. Can you therefore suggest where we might look without endangering your access? Best I can tell, we are missing our top receiver, our top defensive back and our top running back. A matter of no small interest to loyal fans. Bob Semple
I agree with Bob, I am very curious about the injury information also. Injuries are part of the game, teams have to adjust. We have done ok without Hines. Having Oluokun out for an extended time could definitely hurt us. Carlson did a nice job this past game in his absence after he adjusted. If Rich is out there is going to be a big problem. Even though he has not played to his own potential yet will we have to go into the game with Salter and Reuland? That may get ugly.
Here is how I see it. Obviously things need to get better as we will face some tougher teams & our schedule progresses. However we have won each of the games we have been in so let’s start there; 2-0 is as good as it currently gets. Lehigh will be an interesting game. They do not count towards our league of course. Everyone is saying Penn is better, which they seem to be validating this by beating a good Villanova team on this past Thursday (Villanova was ranked 4th in the country at the time). However the week prior they got handily defeated by this Lehigh team, which in turn this past week got handily beaten by Princeton. This proves the main and most important factor; forget what you may think, you have to play the games.
Defensively we obviously need to play better in the first half of games. In 2 games we gave given up no points in the 3rd quarter and 7 in the 7th quarter. This obviously proves that we can adjust well and finish; however we do need to get a better start on stopping teams early. Lehigh’s offense is their strength and we should be tested there. I was hoping to see us pressure the QB more with the front 4this season. It seems like the only pressure we are getting is coming from blitzes. 2 of the 3 sacks we have on the season are from LB’s. We need to get more pressure on the QB. Our LB’s are struggling in coverage as well. To me the DB’s are playing better than last year so far. There were some beat on a few plays, however if there is no pressure on the QB you cannot expect them to cover WR’s all day long.
Offensively everyone wants to point at the fact that we don’t have an “RB”. First we need to acknowledge the fact that our OL has not played as well as we would have liked them to. Morgan Roberts has had some good stats in 2 games. However if you have watched the games he has thrown the ball under pressure it seems much more than he has had to in the past. To his credit he has thrown only 1 INT so far in close to 100 attempts with some shaky protection. Running the ball has been a struggle, but we knew that we needed help from the OL early to be successful here until our new RB got himself comfortable in that role. I think Rich has been ok (122 yards in 2 games; 61 yards a game average, 3.9 yards per carry average), and Salter has been ok too (51 yards in 2 games; 25.5 yards a game average, 3.0 yards per carry average). Without good blocking what do you expect them to be? They are not Varga. They have run within the offense well and are not break away backs. They are going to churn out yards as they are given. Reuland got in the game this past week and they never gave him the ball. He had a good spring, should he get a shot?
11:28 PM (in the LIVE BLOG article chain) mentioned taking an “athlete” and putting him there like they did with Todd Scott in 97’ to get something out of him. The staff did that last spring by switching Jamal Locke from DB to RB. As of now he does not appear on the 3 deep. Last weekend we watched him field a rolling kick off that bounced head high with one hand and then returned it 84 yards. This was the longest kick return for Yale since 2006. I’m sure they switched him because they knew he could do that. Think it may be time to give him some reps there? I know coaches have to make “safe” decisions to protect the team, but the vision and explosion that he has shown on KOR looks like it could serve us well coming out of the backfield in some way. Looks like he may be able to do some things from there that the others may not.
Bottom line is that we have won both games, which is what counts so far. We are a team that shows resilience, which is a great trait to have. We have to improve as time goes on, and we need to make a big jump in one of the early weeks in the season. I’d like to see it this week.
TNC
Bob,
I wish I had an answer for you. You can try contacting the football office or SID Steve Conn, but not sure how much help they would be.
Nice job, TNC. Mirrors my take as well. One additional issue: penalties. That includes false starts, pass interference and hitting out of bounds. the last two were I think called maybe a little to tightly last week, but you have to play the game the way the officials let you.
It is definitely the offensive line that has been the weakest link this season, which explains Rich and Salter and, to a lesser extent, Roberts as well. What I thought was interesting last week is that we stopped throwing the flanker screen, a mainstay of spread offenses for teams that don't trust their offensive lines. I am very offensive line and clean up the optimistic about this team if we can improve the performance of the penalties. Otherwise, not so much.
Rich being out is like the guy batting 9th in the lineup hitting .152 going down. next guy up.
Wow that got garbled! Make that next-to-last sentence: I am very optimistic about this team if we can improve the performance of the offensive line and clean up the penalties.
Oh, and it should be a little "too" tightly above.
Among other things, we lost a starting guard.
Rich averaged 7.5 ypc last year. Guy has talent and will definitely be missed if he is in fact out, its idiotic to say otherwise. Not Varga but no other backs in Ivy are.
31 RUNS FOR 122 YARDS, 60 YARDS PER GAME AND 1 TD? SIGN ME UP FOR 8 MORE GAMES OF THAT!
You got it tough guy. whats the name.?
Those fools will NEVER identify themselves. Cowards.
Anonymous says "these fools will never identify themselves." Anonymous said that. You guys are funny
Yes you guys are aces in a cowardly pathetic way.
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