Game Analysis: Pack Runs Through Georgia Tech

Author's note: I have ran into some technical difficulties with GIFs/our hosting platform that I haven't been able to solve. I apologize for the poor quality.

The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are a good football team, but I think a lot of people recognize what kind of good team they are: one that’s 3-0 in one-possession games and carries a win over Duke (in which it was outgained) as its signature win. The bill was coming due for these guys, and it was NC State that served as the collector, racking up 48 points and almost 600 yards of offense in the upset win.

There were elements of this game that were predictable, the first being that it was competitive. Georgia Tech is going to run the football at your face, and it’s going to do it with a zillion motions, counter and gap actions, and all sorts of plays ran off of those actions. The run game is the crux, though, and NC State has had a mostly good run defense this season. Georgia Tech posted 151 rushing yards, which is not a terrible number, but is the 2nd lowest output of the entire season for the Jackets.

Georgia Tech also sports a porous defense, so it made sense that State could be in this, even as it gave up its requisite 408 passing yards. What was less predictable was the Wolfpack outrushing Georgia Tech by almost 100 yards and hanging 48 on the scoreboard without Smothers or Joly. That I did not see coming. 

Kurt Roper deserves a tremendous amount of credit for this game. He spun the dial. One thing that’s become clear over the past two years is that State’s offense is at its best when it doesn’t build the whole game plan around CJ Bailey. Send $5 to Kurt Roper’s Venmo for this one, because State made it easier on its quarterback this week, a process that added up to 600 yards. Doeren has coached 103 ACC games. Saturday’s was the third-highest scoring output out of all of them. 

The home base of this offense most of the year was 11 personnel, AKA the power spread. This is where a lot of teams are trying to live. Plug in a versatile tight end who can run block and run a full route tree, and you can run everything from 4 verts to zone to counter to tight end leaks from the same personnel grouping. That was the intention with Justin Joly. 

With Joly out and the offense reeling in general, State got into more two tight end sets in this game and it ran the dang ball. Jacarrius Peak, Cody Hardy, and Dante Daniels were all very good, and Duke Scott was nearly flawless. State ran a decent complement of run plays including inside and outside zone, counter, and healthy dose of Duo, which it’s sprinkled in at times this year. Scott looked really good in basically everything. Ironically, his longest run was his least interesting play, as Georgia Tech just kind of peed down their leg trying to fit an inside zone play. 

Scott's reads and cuts were so good. There is no wasted movement with this young back. Here's his long run.

This is inside zone. Duke is going to be reading the first down lineman back side of the center. When that guy slants to the A gap, Duke's eyes reach the next guy over, who is slanting into the B gap. He reads off the leverage of both of those guys and makes his cut. #2 for Georgia Tech blows the play by misfitting the run, and he's off the races. Hollywood told him before the game to not look for the home run every time. It will come to him. He's just executing here like he did all night. Eventually, the defense messed up.

Here's Peak and Daniels helping the cause.

Look at the movement Daniels (87) gets down blocking the circled guy. Then watch Peak (65) as he leads the counter play. This is nice from those two.

This helped CJ, but the big highlight was the play calling. State’s passing offense had become boring and repetitive. We’ve talked before about these two specific plays, smash drive and Y cross, and how Bailey has liked them. Both are pure progression reads with four progressions and an alert component, and State was running one of these two plays in way too many high-leverage situations. The last play against Virginia Tech was Y cross. The 4th down against Pitt where the ball was thrown away was smash drive. Smash drive was called like six times against Notre Dame. It got predictable. 

A lot of this felt like State was trying to run the offense through CJ while still trying to keep things relatively simple. A lot of people don’t like pure progressions, but the ability to start in the same spot with your eyes every single play has benefits. Roper still ran each of these plays I believe once against Georgia Tech, but there was a lot of stuff that we hadn’t seen before in this game. It felt like they truly went back to the drawing board.

It all started with the 12 personnel (two tight ends, one running back), which was everywhere against the Jackets. Cody Hardy and Dante Daniels both played a ton of snaps together, and both gave State versatility as blockers and receivers. Roper was able to parlay this into a number of successful pass plays that were single-read, single-side, or simple designs in some other way.

There were a lot of single-side and split-field reads here, and State used the tight ends to run variations of leak plays that had a high rate of success. The full-field reads and five-man progressions weren't as common, and when they did show up, they generally weren't successful. State wasn't super explosive through the air. Its two biggest pass plays came on a scramble drill and a defensive meltdown. It was efficient, though. There was less to look at, and Bailey was able to just distribute more. The scheme was nice and complemented well by the ground game.

This was on the opening drive.

State aligns in 4 strong here, a formation we haven't seen much of, and it runs the screen-and-go. Hoffman fakes like he's blocking for the bubble and then releases. State gets an explosive play out of this single-read concept.

This was the very next play. I love this play.

State runs play action with the counter action, something it's been able to do because of the counter presence in the playbook. The guard pull gets the box defenders to bite down and State runs Daniels right them. This is a simple 2-read single-side play where the ball can go to the back if Daniels carries a defender. State also has a late leak on the other side in case the whole thing breaks down.

I don't know how replicable all this will be. Georgia Tech's defense stinks. But it worked on this night. There was beauty in simplicity and building plays off of plays. Of course, this all starts with running the ball. It's not as if every play was like this, but State's usage of Daniels (and his performance) was exceptional.

Bailey has been a bit of a wildcard this season, which is the ultimate reason for this long-winded point. State needed to do more for him to get some moxy back. It was able to do that on Saturday and leave less at the feet of the dropback game, which had been and still is inconsistent.

Here's 4 verts.

This is CJ Bailey doing everything you want from him. State runs 4 verts and Georgia Tech plays cover 3 cloud (essentially cover 3 from a two-high look). Bailey drills the seam here because he's able to ID the rotation from the safety and briefly hold him. You can see the QB look back to the boundary before getting over to Cody Hardy. These types of rotations have been a weakness for the young quarterback, but here he is doing a great job.

More of that, less of this.

State's again going to run 4 verts while Georgia Tech is going to bail out of a pressure and play Tampa 2. The sequence of reads here is fine with the Tampa defender widening to the field. Bailey starts there, but there's no reason for this pocket drift that he has. When he progresses to the other seam and the safety works toward it, the ball should get ripped to Noah Rogers. He's late to it and behind, and the ball drops.

State ran 4 verts I think four times. It ran HOSS twice and it ran some dagger-type stuff as well trying to attack the middle of the field. The success rate on these was low, but everything else it did in the passing game was really impactful. What this means to me is that State has to run the ball well the rest of the year. The team is 4-1 when it rushes for 200 yards and it's 0-3 when it doesn't. Not exactly breaking new ground with that correlation, but the point is it's really struggled offensively when it's had to live and die with the dropback game.

Defensively, State also kept it very simple. Caden Fordham mentioned that simplicity was a focus in practice, and it showed. State played a ton of cover 1, something it has slowly been shifting toward as its quarters base has been mostly a mess. The man free looks allowed DJ Eliot to even the box counts and keep assignments simpler. Whether or not that worked depends on your definition of worked. It was enough to win. 

Caden Fordham’s eye discipline and ball reads on Saturday night were excellent. He had a good game between the tackles. Georgia tech’s offense still moved the ball with plenty of gusto, but State forced four field goal attempts. The mold for this team is still the same as it was in the preseason; balanced offense capable of explosion and a defense that can force field goals in the red zone. The level of competence against the run makes that realistic for the defense, provided they don’t allow the offense to score prior to the red zone.

No better example of this can be found than Georgia Tech’s opening possession of the third quarter where it failed to score from inside the five, ultimately false starting on 4th and goal from the 1. Tech tripping over its shoe laces helped, but State didn’t make a mistake during that sequence and it created the situation that led to the penalty. 

If State was going to be a good team this season, this is what I thought it would have to look like. 35-31 over Virginia. 48-36 over Georgia Tech. Those are the two examples of this exact type of game, and there's a decent chance that State could finish the season 2-0 against ACC Championship participants. That would lead to some fascinating discussions about the inconsistencies, but that's for another time. Ain't nobody telling us nothing this week.

I’m so happy for Dave. He kept telling everyone the team wasn’t going to quit, even as it was starting to look like it didn’t really matter if they did or not. The coaches stay working, though, and they had a good plan for this game. The team did not quit, and this was the scene as a result. This is why I say that, no matter how it ends, you’ll never make me hate Dave Doeren. Just this year in college football, you’ve seen guys throw in the towel, you’ve seen cultural collapses, and you’ve seen guys throwing other guys under the bus. This State team kept fighting, and that’s a reflection of its leadership.