Missed Opportunities

0:56 And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast, a part of the College Huddle Network. Along with my partners, Brian Siegel, Jonathan Tally and Shelton Moss. I am Curtis Wilson and this episode is brought to you by Doctor Jeremy Counts down at Counts Family Pharmacy, your friendly neighborhood pharmacy located 301 S Main St. in Blacksburg. We are also brought to you by Moments on the Moor. Are you looking for that weekend getaway but need to make it to Blacksburg? Then Moments on the Moor is exactly what you're looking for. Owned by Proud Hokey, located just outside Lexington, VA, just a little over hour drive from Blacksburg. This place gives you fishing, kayaking, or just relaxing by the river with a nice campfire there right out of your back door. Check out the link in our comments section and on their Instagram page at Moments on the Maury. Welcome back gentlemen, welcome back. Week 1's in the books.

1:49 Week 1 is in the books, not the outcome we wanted, but we're back at it. We're going to talk about it, we're going to break it down and then we're going to move on to Vandyman. Orange did not win games. It didn't, they looked good. Looked great in the game though. Popped they. Did not win the. Game but but we learned we learned some things about the team. I think we did I think most I I think most of fan base probably if I had to sort of, you know sum it up collectively was somewhat encouraged by the performance. I think with the way, well, not everyone. We'll, we'll not beat me. Not beat me. Not, no, Not Pete. But wait a second, didn't Pete be on this very program?

2:31 We're going 6:00 and 6:00 and then he gets upset and I was like what you said we were going to be 6 and 6. I think his his assessment is that the South Carolina team we saw is not a very good team, at least not at least not the team that he thought they would be. So relative to that he didn't think we played well. That, that that's, that's my take away from from what he said and what we've talked about. I'm going to I completely disagree with what because that defensive line is nasty. Them linebackers is nasty. They got solid secondary. I I think what it is we're pissed off because we saw moments right?

3:13 I know that we could have taken advantage of. I think I think they've got them pegged right. Well, 15 because sellers is a monster, but we can get into all that. So how's your Labor Day weekend? Y'all do anything fun after Sunday or before Sunday? Sit around the house and. Watch the whole work to do man, you got a new house. Sit around the house, tried to watch some football. Hey man, shout out to Bill Belichick. All I'm going to say for right now, shout out to Bill Belichick and his girlfriend. Hope they haven't. Been on the sideline during the game, man. I hope they're having a lovely evening. Have Michael Jordan in the building. Hey man, it could always be worse. That's what I'll say sometime.

4:02 I. Don't know. It could always be. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we lost. For us. It could always be worse, man. TCU was straight trying to punish them. The third string running back was running through people like that looked bad. So anyway, that's all I did on Labor Day for real, Was just kind of watch, watch some, watch some TV, put some boxes away, things like that, Brian. Well, we made a day trip down to Raleigh on Saturday, hung out with some friends, did a little bit of this, little bit of that, headed back.

4:43 Obviously, you know what I did most of most of Sunday? Watch the loss, unfortunately. But you know, it wasn't a bad day overall. Watching some games, had a few drinks, made some pot roast, you know, there, there there were worse things that happened elsewhere. So I I wasn't doing too bad over here. How about you, Sheldon? You doing anything or are you working? Oh no, I was working. We went down to to Rock Hill, SC for our volleyball tournament here at with William and Mary and they came back up and caught a couple soccer games. I was pretty, pretty exhausted by the time that the the weekend was over. But obviously I caught the, the UNC debacle the other night, which was fun. And then on on Tuesday, I had the distinct privilege of interviewing Brian Randall, the former Hokies legend. He sat down with us for about 10 minutes on our we do it. We have a Tribe sports podcast that we do. And he is the for, for those who don't know, he's the recently hired quarterbacks coach here here at William and Mary. So it was great.

5:45 It was great to talk with him. He's really cool dude. That's, that's awesome, man. It's awesome you got to interview a hokey legend like that. It's awesome. Look at Sheldon doing a little bit of everything, doing all these. Yeah, yeah. If you want to, yeah, head head to tribeathletics.com/podcast. It'll go out tomorrow if you want to, if you want to hear what Brian had to say. So just plug in that. Definitely, definitely and myself. Nephew Had a nephew's getting married early next year. Had a little shower for them. We drank some beer, we ate some BBQ. The Southern Plenty place in Bryan in South Austin. I know you've probably been there. The banana pudding. OK.

6:27 Boy, really good. Yeah, that was a paid endorsement. No, I wouldn't have paid endorsement. It needs to be, though. But you know, it is my it is Wednesday. But we always tell the truth whenever we get together after a game, and I can't wait to hear what not only the guys here have to say. We've chatted, of course, and texted back and forth and couple phone calls here and there, but we tell the truth on Tuesday or Wednesday. What went well, what went bad, what we didn't expect, and what we can do better moving forward. So whoever wants to start it all, like there were some bright moments in this game on Sunday and and Brian, Brian's ready like his.

7:10 His guys now know that I think we all kind of expected, but we were unsure about, but we I think we expected and that's that's a big defensive improvement. The defense for most of that game played as good as you could expected, especially against what was touted to be a above average to very good overall offense. And obviously a quote UN quote Heisman contender and you know, future NFL quarterback in sellers there for South Carolina. I thought we did a good job of mixing them up, getting keeping him confused, keeping him unsure of where he wanted to go with the football with the way we were mixing coverages and mixing the fronts up there it was.

7:56 It was a really, really good job, really good game playing by Seifkis. And I think, you know, for the majority of the game, the players executed it pretty well. Sean, what about you, man? What, what, what impressed you? What went well for you watching? I know you were running all around, so I don't know if you called it live or afterwards. And we know you, you dive in the stats and everything. What jumped out to you is what went well. Well, definitely the defensive line. You know, you look at the stats, 13 pressures generated against Lenore sellers, which I thought was pretty good in the run game. I thought they were really good. I know it was it was 5.7 yards per rush when you take out the sacks and the kneel downs, so that the rushing total was a little bit misleading in US ES favor. But still I thought for the most part, you know, we got some push in the D line.

8:44 They didn't look like they were getting, you know, blown, blown off the ball every single snap. So I was really I was really impressed with them Linebackers, you know, missed a few tackles here and there. Safeties too, had some, you know, discipline, discipline issues, but I thought the defense was pretty good. And again, I'm not a, you know, play calling, defensive play calling expert. But it seemed like for the most part, you know, guys were in the right position to make the play and sometimes they didn't make the tackle, which means it's probably more talented coach. Tally, what did you feel that you called me on Sunday about 9:00 and then you talked 20 minutes? Yeah, it was. I mean, Sheldon just did a lot of stuff, you know, defense looked, defense looked.

9:26 I'll say it a little bit better than. So here's the thing. I didn't go to Atlanta because I didn't expect much. Like it's three hours away from me. So I didn't go to Atlanta because I didn't expect us to be in the game again. I had my what I thought would happen, but realistically, I thought we would kind of show up the same team as we've been. Couldn't handle things getting pushed around. You didn't see much of that, You know, you seen a lot of good stuff, seen some bad stuff too. But Sheldon kind of summed it up. I mean, I seen a lot of people rotating in on that defensive line. Like it said, he played 29 people on defense or something like that. You don't need it.

10:09 You know, going through a long season, the more people that you can get reps and the more people you can get in the game that's doing something positive, the better #2 what you did wasn't positive. Oh, oh, that's this right here. But hold on, Kelly, I'm going to throw up some because something that you talked to me about on Sunday night, Sean kind of noticed it too. So I want you to hit on that because you, like you said that to me straight up. Oh yeah. First thing that came out of your mouth. Yeah, it's like, of course people now some people say South Carolina ain't going to be good. I don't know what they're going to be. I know they're big. I know they're SEC school.

10:51 I know that they have recruited, you know, pretty good over the last couple of years and they have a lot of NFL talent on that roster. So when you see our guys who I don't, you know, from my perspective, didn't think we had a lot of, you know, NFL guys ready to go next year on the roster going against their team. We didn't look out of place. You know, we looked big or we looked or as big we looked as physical, a lot of times more physical. We have more sacks than them and they've got arguably the best defensive player in the in the country on their team. So again, I think that we had a good game play and I think we we, we looked the part. Jarrett Ferguson definitely has been a from what I've seen an upgrade thus far.

11:42 And we weren't scared like you seen the, you seen the guys, you know, putting a nose in there. I mean, even the announcers who I freaking hated listening to talked about, you know, hearing what it's like it was car crashes happening on that field. Haven't I haven't heard that in the last couple of years. It's been a lot of rap and roll tackles. We was hitting people. So that was good to see. Yeah, for me, the one thing and me and Brian, me and you talked about this for a few minutes day after the game is that might have been the most best prepared Brent Pride team in three years. Like it it like there weren't some people were upset about the timeouts at the end of the half. Some people weren't.

12:29 I I think it was managed OK from where we were situationally, it was like it's not going to do anything when once his name went down, it's like, well, ain't no need to call the timeout because they can give you the timeout. But overall it like they had a game plan. They knew what they wanted to do. And then, and I think this probably has noticed more than one person, but me and Brian got a couple texts saying I think they've made more adjustments in the first half than they did all of last year during games. And I don't know if y'all saw that. I can't see that with my eyes. But Talia, you shaking your head, I'm assuming you saw some things that were different after a few drives. Yeah, there.

13:11 I mean, hell, the first drive, but somebody wasn't on the field on the first drive. So I ain't going to get into all that. But I will say we did see some different adjustments after the first drive and then just all throughout the game, you seen some, you seen some different things happening. Now again, I'm not, I'm not glazing a loss, you know what I'm saying, because we still lost. But at the same time, I do have to look at it's a long season. That was not a game that I counted as a win. I had us as a seven and five team. Still think we can get there. Watching that game may have made me think we can go to 8:00 and 4:00, depending on, you know, what the quarterback does.

13:56 But definitely look at Robbie. Robbie got his hand up. He said it was him. I know. Yeah, I know. It was Robbie watching you. Know it was Robbie. But it was. I mean it, they go back and watch it and see a lot of different twists, you know, a lot of ET twists, different things like that, that they were doing that I'm not really used to us doing. It was just APR beating his man, APR bending and getting around the corner, you know what I'm saying? Like that was kind of what our pass rush entailed last year. Yeah, 4 sacks and maybe from 4 different people. I have to go back and look. 6 Because there were some half sacks.

14:37 Emmett Laws Fall Kamari, Jaden Keller got one on the blitz, Kelvin Gilliam, Ben Bell all got accredited for a sax. That's yeah, that's what you got to do. And and that, by the way, you talk about that twist stunt, that move that Bell and Copeland pulled on the the left side of that line. Yep, Yeah, I sat here and watched that and and Brian, my assumption is if it's if that technique is pulled off the way, nobody is going to stop that. Nobody like maybe an NFL lineman that is beastly. But watching that technique, when Kamari comes over and Copeland wipes, it's just like, oh, he's dead.

15:18 Yeah. I mean, one of the things we talked about this offseason is that we knew we weren't going to have an APR on this team. And, and we knew we, we, we might not even have Ananias peoples on this team, but we needed to be able to replace their production and then some in aggregate. And I think we we shown that we definitely have that capability going forward as long as you know, what we saw against South Carolina was the aberration. Yeah, what what about this? I I agree with Robbie on this, Kelly. Robbie's the defensive guy. I can say this a lot of people, and I'm one of the people too. That's like when somebody's been at school for so long, it's like, man, you get what you're going to get, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not the kind of person who says, OK, this is the year he takes a step, you know, and he just becomes this man child or something.

16:06 But when I seen Keller and Woodson on the field compared to the other guys not saying they did horrible, it was a noticeable difference. Those two plan to run or chasing down, you know, ball ball carriers and things like that. You can see a difference in the other linebackers we have at this moment. I think #30 and 26 was the other two I've seen on the field. 2626 was getting. He looked like what's in that first, like the kind of close to the same size, skin colors close to the same. So I was like, is that him? Is it not?

16:48 It wasn't it was not it. Was now now. Short, on the other hand, made a couple good plays. I mean that one where Sellers broke from Copeland, I mean, anybody else the way Short tackled that would have been a sack. It's Sellers. You ain't going to do that to Sellers. But I think overall, defensively you, you feel pretty good. And like you said, but it's also tallying saying playing 29 guys against that caliber of talent on offense with Nick Harbor, with face on, with sellers, you know, they're rebuilding their offensive line a little bit. But to say you played that many guys and still were were creating pressure, you still were stopping them short, that says a lot about how they've retooled the defense. And I think that is a big step going forward because now, I mean, there were certain times last year when there's certain guys not on the field defensively, it was just like. Gas, gas, gas.

17:53 Gas. I'll throw this up there. We can we can talk about that a little bit. I I saw the PFF grade as well. I will say the consistency was better, but he did have some negative plays. So it's kind of, you know, you kind of take that, you know, as it comes, I guess I thought from a total snap count, he looked better than he than he has anytime in Blacksburg. But that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, we couldn't see some other guys step up and and and steal some of those snaps in the future. So I don't. Know 100% I'll let Shelton pull up the grade because Shelton does that stuff and while I'm while Shelton's looking that up, let's flip the offense. You know, not the best only no touchdown scored only 11 points, but she's still again what went well. And I do think the law firm of Green and green is going to make a formidable combo this year.

18:49 They neither one probably to the point of Jay Lane yet, maybe 8 next year. But you know, when you look at what those two guys did overall on Saturday, they had some, there was a drop. There was a bad penalty by both. But overall Sunday, you know, they're going out here. Diamond Green 3 for 94, eight and five for 71. I mean, you you do that for 12 games that's 1000 yard receiver and that's the guy right at the doorstep of 1000 yard receiver. Yeah. So I think I think wide receiver 1 and 2 is pretty. Yeah. And we had and we saw opportunities.

19:30 We saw opportunities that I think we didn't necessarily see for guys in a lot of games last year. Lot lot of catchable balls, lot lot of opportunities for them to really go out there and show their ability as a receiver. Not just, you know, routes that are coming open, but you know, opportunities down the field where you know, it's a one-on-one match up and you let your guy go up there, make a play and and both greens did a good, good job at that at different times of the game. Tell you about to say something. I forgot I'm reading these comments. Just laughs. It ain't it ain't no telling about. I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let the show go on. Let the show go on Free game.

20:12 What Free Caleb? Where's that? He's free. He missed his OneDrive. We'll wait till November to see what happens next. Right. So by the way, that's if y'all noticed that nasty ugly safety was. Supposed to be there. By the way, if you go back and look at the tape, looks like he he got caught peeking in the backfield on the play action there and. Great, Caleb, I'm pretty sure that was. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was bad back then. It. Was. Yeah. Yeah, that was a cover. Well, the whole thing is that was one of the first times all day we had went into like a cover one because we've been kind of playing cover 3, cover 2 shells all day. But again, I'm going to say something.

20:54 Why it's good. Cephus knew they were just going to pound the ball. They were up. They had they had been getting, they had been gashing, but they didn't get in 234234. They were trying to run out the clock and that's just straight up it. Another thing that caught my, I won't say caught my eye, didn't have the best stat day, but just the way he ran and Tally, I know we you mentioned it right before. Hawkins may not be tuned, but it's not a downgrade to the bottom of the barrel. No, I don't think they got a lot of. I think they got a lot to figure out in the running back room who they want to get carries to. You know, it's going to depend on health.

21:35 It's going to depend on, you know, what we're playing because I've seen some stuff out of everybody who got on the field. It just comes down to who's going to be kind of the guy. You know what I'm saying? Stewart didn't play. Hawkins did a better job than I thought he would do. They kind of kept talking about, oh, he came from, you know, D2 or wherever he came from and you know that it seems a big a different stage than he played on, but he didn't look scared. You know, the only thing again, I as a fan for the last couple of years, we've seen Tooten in the backfield and you don't realize how good he is till you don't have him. You know, Hawkins would break 1 tackle and he just don't have that burst to get away like Tooten.

22:18 Not saying he don't have burst, but he don't have that burst that Tooten did. Because when Tooten would when he would bend the corner, he's when he gets downhill, he was, he was, he was, he was 10 yards up the field. You know, I don't, I don't know that we got a back like that right now, you know, so I think Hawkins did a good job for what he was, you know, for what he was in the game for 'cause they was hitting him, you know, but he wasn't, he wasn't a easy, he wasn't a easy tackle and he got some hard yards. I'll be interested to see what the young man can do Saturday. I don't even want to say the rest of the season. We'll just talk about this next game. One game at a time, one game at a time, Shelton. Anything else on the offense that you felt went well as you were doing your research? I'm having to think because I don't think. That much went well, but.

23:10 I mean. Well, that's just, I mean, they just did it. That's it. It wouldn't. Last, well, I guess I'll, I'll give, I'll give the online credit. I thought they they did an OK job opening up some holes. I thought pass protection, pass protection was as good as you could probably expect to be against a front like that. I don't think we had this sort of, you know, just obscene gaffes that we kind of had last year. So I think they showed some progress and my hope is, as I talked about, hopefully Matt Moore can coach these guys up to where later in the season. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, I'm trying. I'm I'm grasping at straws here. The other. Thing I've got, the other thing I've got is like the preparedness.

23:50 I felt like on offense, we we look prepared. We didn't always execute, but it looked like there was a there was a game plan. Things were open at times we. Knew we knew what we how we wanted to attack South Carolina. We were doing it consistently. It's just that a lot of times the guys, especially when we crossed the 50, especially on those key downs, we just didn't execute the way we needed to to keep the ball in our hands and get points on the board. And we have a whole bunch of dumb ass penalties, you know what I'm saying? I mean, we had like 4 penalties, I think maybe 40 yards. But I think Garrett jumped off sides on kind of crucial third down or at the beginning of the game. But you didn't see a whole bunch of you know, pre snap penalties and things like that that I'm used to us doing. I think that when we continue in this in this episode, that chat y'all will see everybody thinks that we played really good. I think.

24:49 And I see people keep putting drones, drones, drones up here. And I'm not defending drones by no means because I want to win. But when you keep listening and if you go back and watch that game, I don't think it was as clear cut as people think. He got pressured a lot and that defensive line is good. He has to be better, especially at taking the layups, making the easy throws. He has to be better at that. You know, a 10 yard throw, we got to have it, but it wasn't a lot of standing around and let me just throw this ball to you. He was on the move and guess what? He's not a pro. I mean, he's not a pro. He he, he has some development that he still has to go through.

25:32 He has some development he still has to go through. But he was a lot of moving. He was a lot of moving around. He ain't, he ain't Lamar Jackson. He may not be good. He may not be good at throwing on the run. I don't know. We'll see. We will see. One last shout out to Trent for that Bend that corner, the jail reference. Bend that corner. Oh yeah. Good one. I thought about that too when Curtis said it, but I couldn't make the job. You couldn't make the job. Get it in there next time. Get in there. One last piece of what went well. God, we're going to miss this man so much next year. John Love, good boy, man. Player the. Game Savior. New Savior?

26:13 Well, it's it's to a point now if we cross the 45, he might can make this kick because that one Saturday, that was an NFL kick when you, I mean dead pipe down the middle, halfway up the crossbar. Yeah, I mean, it would have been good at least another 5 yards out. 6060 John loves a savior because that man can kick in next year. We ain't going to have it, but he is going to make an NFL squad. Oh yeah, he. Played on Sunday this past week and he'll be playing on Sundays next year. Damn, right, there we go and we get little brother next year. So absolutely.

26:55 All right, so you know, we start with sunshine and roses, but we know it was some bad shit on Sunday. Who wants to start it, where you want to start, how you want to start? Because there was quite a few things that we can talk about and I'm sure the chats going to tell us even more as we get into it. Well, Tally, you hit on some of it, so I'm going to let you lead on that first one there. Go for it, man. Oh, what went bad? Yeah. Inconsistency at quarterback. You know, I think Andretti was asking about it, so we'll get into it. Karen has to be much better to win, to put a team on his back and go win a game. He has to be better. I just that's what it is. It's more that goes into it than just him being better by himself.

27:40 But I think he's not fully understanding his ability, you know, and I get it, he should already know this and he's been playing a long time, but every game is different. He was, he was running for his life a little bit in that game, but I think that he was seeing a little bit of ghost as well because sometimes he was breaking the pocket and he could have took 5 yards and got out of bounds, 10 yards get out of bounds. And I think he's thinking, I got to get the ball down the field, I got to make a play. He's pressing. I don't think he has to do that. I think he's good enough to break that pocket, get the five yards live to play another down. So the inconsistency with Karen has to be better even for us to win Saturday.

28:26 Like he's got to do some soul searching and figure out what he wants to do moving forward. I'll talk a little bit more about it later on, what I think about the quarterback situation. But I'll tell you all this, if there was another quarterback on the roster that was better than #1 they would be playing that, playing itself. I heard some people say I put Pop in it. If Pop was in that game, you might as well put my son in there. That's in 10th grade. He would have got killed. Pop would have got murdered by that team. He would have got murdered. That's the main phrase in there. First of all, read the read the phrase real quick tally just so you know. Who said this, Wes? He said drones. He says drones is drones.

29:08 He he's the best we got. But like a tampon, we have to use him to his full capacity. Why it's got to be a tampon. How could? It be. Like a dirty How could it be like a dirty cooler or something when you camping? Why did it have to be? I don't know, but you know what? I, I that's, that's one for the you. Threw it. I was like, oh man, oh man, I, I, I couldn't even get. Through it. Yeah. Well, all right, Brian, what did you have just watching in general with Kyron and the inconsistency this day here? You know, Tally talked about it. I mean, I think the biggest thing for me was, was missing the layups and, and feeling like he had to, when that pocket did break, break down.

29:51 Like he had to make a play on that first interception. Like #1 You can't throw that where you did. And if you do throw it, you got to throw it in the back of the end zone where only your guy can get it. And you know where you are on the field. You, you got to, you got to understand the situational, have the situational awareness of where you are on the field because you're, you're at John loves field goal range there. Like you're, you're in field goal range. That's three points you're taking off the board by trying to do too much. And then we had other situations where you got to, you got to mostly clean pocket. You got to you got a wide receiver breaking open on a big are on a slant and the ball's a little behind.

30:36 The ball's not on time. It, it's, it was just the little things that just the inconsistency that happened at times where you are, you have established a drive, you're in a, you're in a spot where you can start to look at putting points on the board and now you're punting because you're not doing the little things right. Shelton, what were you able to dig up about the performance on Saturday? Statistics and deep brand? A little perspective. Yeah, well, Kyron didn't grade out particularly poorly according to PFF. So, you know, some of that might have been, you know, his wide receivers, you know, the pressure he was dealing with. Obviously, you know, you can't fault a guy for no having guys in his face. You know, every other play as a as a as a defense, South Carolina generated 23 pressures in total. So you kind of have to imagine how much that kind of hurt Kyron.

31:27 And that was a big negative for me, of course. But you know, he had he had two turnover worthy throws according to PFF, which obviously Brian mentioned, you know, that's not an ideal, you know, percentage just, you know, based on how much you're throwing the ball. So, you know, I know some of his drops and and Congress receivers could play better. But I also think it seems to me like in the second-half, Vt played a little bit more conservatively. And I think that was probably because Monty just wasn't really trusting car and storing ability. So I, I think, and again, that hurt the offense because again, we know this team isn't going to, you know, run the ball extremely well. So if you're limited in terms of what you can, you know, what place you can call, that's not, it's not good against a front like that.

32:13 So I just thought, you know, he was, he was, you know, from a standpoint of like technique and footwork and stuff like that. I thought we saw some kind of regression, you know, of course, or what we're seeing early, early in last season as well. Got it. I want to say the one thing where to me the bad with Kyron was there were some plays like design roll outs and stuff. Kalimenu talked about this on Sunday night design roll out. They took away the options and he kind of hesitated where if he just as soon as the first three one was to Benji, he threw it. Benji caught got tackled a line of scrimmage because the guy was on his back. If there were several of those, he just goes, I'm not saying he's breaking 30, I'm not saying he's even breaking 20.

32:57 But what I'm saying is it's five, it's six, it's 7 upfield. Now you're second and three. Now you're manageable where you can go downfield, you can make other decisions. So it was the inconsistency because a couple of those deep balls, I know shuffling, you've said in the past his deep balls where his struggles are, a couple of his deep balls were on the absolute money and where that intermediate range where he had done better in the short range. That's where the struggles lie now, is it? Is it because it's a new system? It's new routes, Guys are breaking a different spot, they're coming through different areas. That could be the case. He did miss part of spring, he did miss part of summer. So the whole thing with him you talk about the regression is can it be a progression? Can we get to put in those catchable balls out there? Well, you got to remember it's still the first game of your quarterback in a new offense with majority new receivers. I mean, there's really only one receiver that he's worked with heavily in the group that he's been practicing with both going back to 2023-2024 and now this year. And he didn't even get to work a lot of that in this offseason. So, you know, you, you wonder if this is going to kind of be a work in progress, if some of this is going to come along as, as we get a little bit deeper into the year, you know, the hope is that you clean up enough between now and next week that you know, you, you can at least win in the process, right? So I don't, I didn't see a ton

34:28 that, you know, if, if Kyron can hit a couple more of those that, you know, he was missed a little bit on, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you, you get a few more points on the board and you feel a little bit better about the way the outcome turned out there. So we'll we'll see if the footwork and the other consistencies with decision making kind of get cleaned up as the season goes along though. 100% let's go to the other one, even though they were few and far between it. Well Shelton, you got to numb probably, so I'll let you miss tackles. Do you have the miss? Tackles I can, I can, I can get probably about 30 seconds get the miss tackle. I just I, I will say just one more thing on on Kyron, go ahead. If you, if you want to, if you want to, you know, put this in a positive.

35:12 He did grid out extremely well when he was soaring from a clean pocket, about a 90 grid, which is elite. So obviously he struggled a lot when he was under pressure. But the one caveat to that is that he was throwing mainly in that short, you know, what is 0 to 9 yard range. So mostly, you know, short easy throws. So again, if if you're if you're looking for Silver Linings, when he was protected, he was pretty good. But we also just need to see things, see how things play out in the future. If you can kind of, you know, play a little bit better when he's under pressure. 1 100% there all right, so shelton's going to look it up and we're going to get the rate, but probably one of the biggest changes and if somebody put it in the chat was we get a sack.

35:56 Elijah fall breaks through and knocks the shit out of sellers. All fumbles goes back 20 plus yards. The very next play is one of the worst missed tackles. I don't understand because didn't use leverage. Look, Charlie's just shaking his head. Brian's just giving me a cock eye to Look and then Shelton Dorsey. But when Burgos missed that, it was such a deflator because it's second and 33. They're out of field goal range. They ain't going to be able to. At best, they're maybe trying to get back to the 35 to have a chance to kick field goal. It was that was a momentum shift because if you tackle him right, there would have been a TfL or at the line of scrimmage. It's second or third 33.

36:44 They don't go down, they don't score another point, they don't score 3 points. That was deflating Shelton. There were some others. I know Kamari missed the sack, Michael Short missed the sack. How many total missed tackles? Because it felt like it was more than two or three. It was definitely more than two. PFF has 15 total. So as a percentage of total tackles, that's about 27%, which is obviously not good. For perspective, South Carolina's missed tackle rate was about 12%. So I think if you're under, I don't know exactly what the what like the average is, but you definitely want to be under like 15, you know, low, high teens at best. 27% is not not good.

37:29 Yeah, yeah, 15% or under is usually kind of what your, what your target is. If if you're getting much above that, it's that's a poor tackling game. And, and I mean, we saw it, we saw that there was at times where tackling was an issue. First drive in particular, you know, that drive with, with Virgo's missing that tackle. There were a couple other instances in there where, you know, late the game. I think we saw a couple on sellers where you know, that extended drive, you know, later in the game there. So you know, you you had some, some definitely consistently there. There was missed tackles kind of throughout the game, but it's certainly weird. It's ugly head at at some bad times as well. So before Tally jumps in on this, we got to create a metric because missed tackles is one thing because you can miss a tackle, but if you gain tackle and the guy gets 1 yard and gets tackled, next we need the missed tackled like ratio. Like OK, you missed 15 tackles but it only accounted for 43 yards.

38:30 You missed it, but you guys were. All over it. So this tackle to yak. Exactly. But Yak's different. That's just contact that doesn't count from this tackle. We we got something there, Sheldon. Yeah. The one thing, one thing that's kind of adjacent to that is average depth of tackle. So that's where you track for like linebackers and different department and that's what I was looking at last year. Like Keller, I think Keller and was it what Keller and Lawson I think last year had horrific average have their tackle rates because they were getting when they were making the tackle. They were they were so far behind the line of scrimmage. So that's why sometimes, you know, tackle tackle numbers can be misleading. You want to look at like, where is the guy actually making the tackle? So that's where that's one metric we can look at to try to evaluate like, OK, how much, how well are these linebackers actually, you know, getting to the ball carry before he's getting to that second level? Yeah, so all your tackles are at 5 yards as a linebacker? Are they doing?

39:22 Anything. Right. Helpful, not great, Bob. I mean, you're, you're not, you're not surrendering a, you know, 30 yard run, but you only need a couple of those runs to get a first down. If you're not, get the stop, get close to the line of scrimmage. Tally, we'll kick it to you now. Yeah, now, so just talking about the missed tackles and stuff like that, to me, I feel like it's a little bit worse because you're playing so many players. You're coming off the bench. You should be fresh. You don't know when you're going to get an opportunity to shine because you're rotating in and out with a lot of guys. Burgos, we'll just talk about him.

40:03 You got to make that tackle, man. Like that's Showtime to shine. If you want to get, I mean, he's he's a senior, right? He's got to be a senior. He's been there forever. What other time do you have? You know you, I don't know how many plays he got, but again, I know he's rotating in with a lot of different guys. You should come in. You should be fresh, fresh, ready to go and come in and make an impact, you know, because that's what some of the D lineman did. That's what I was seeing. A lot of those guys is rotating in. Hell, I don't even know how they name. What's the white dude name? Heisman. Heisman. I ain't going to say I thought he wouldn't be good.

40:44 I thought he'd just, you know, get in and do it. He was, he was making, he was moving the line, you know, coming in, making an impact. That's what you that's what you want to see from rotational pieces. And when you don't get that, you see, you know, burst plays and things like that that we seen on Sunday. So I'm hoping that they clean that up. And probably, again, I know I don't know much about secrets, but if he's rotating all these guys in and you're getting in and you're not doing what you need to do, you probably won't see them more time and they'll probably rotate somebody else in. And sometimes that's what you got to do. Let's shout out Grayson Wimbish, forget the the Heisman in on the the preview panel as his surprise breakout player for the defense.

41:31 Yeah, by the way, I just looked at that play, it would have been a six yard loss had completed that tackle. It would have been at their 30. Six, yeah, that was just a big one. I don't want, I don't want to just yeah, I don't want to just keep harping on that one. I know, but it pissed y'all but it yeah, that was a big one. You know, you had the momentum going. You got the momentum going. That place probably would have went crazy. You know, that's the kind of place that we keep missing. You need to keep missing those players like that. Listen, it's the old. It's the old man with the fishing hook and the money. Yeah. Jeff, yes, yeah, you go get it real quick. One last piece of what went bad, the special teams error second year now on the opening game in error where one of the guys does not line up one of the Gunners does not get on the line, least that punt return.

42:26 So last year Vandy the air with the double numbers led to them kicking a field goal. Oh, that's not that big of a deal at the end of the game. It was because if they don't get that field goal early, we have a 10 point lead going into the last couple minutes, not a seven point. In this case, it basically leads to them going up 9 at that point. And Stu, Stu, he, he got rid of two coordinators. You supposed to be just doing special teams. Well, you know what, I've seen a couple things, special teams. That was kind of a little iffy. I get it. You know, Tuck part return is hard. You know I ain't, I ain't never been a part returner, so I wouldn't say that's easy.

43:12 But you got to catch the ball like you can't let it roll 20 yards. You know, I do what you got to do to stop it where it's kicked. I think we was letting the ball roll a little bit too much. Sometimes we have people coming out of the end zone, getting to the 15 or 16. Just let it go through the end zone, down in the end zone. Take it at the 25 S besides. That ball bends at the three. Get away from it. It's going to come in the end zone. Don't try to be a hero. Right. Just stuff like that besides that, but that that punt return or that punt team was definitely bad. There's some guys out there looking like me on the punt on the punt team.

43:56 I don't know why they was out there. I'm just wondering because they weren't catching nobody. Anything else to add on that or anything else of what went bad? All right, let's go around now. And anything you weren't prepared for and just one hitter, you tell me what you weren't prepared for, We'll start, Brian. So one thing I wasn't prepared for, I'll say this. So we, we had a, we had a couple different game plans to kind of neutralize what Stewart was able to do. We had, we had some delayed silence snaps, had to clap long delay. You get you get the you get the silence snap there. And we also did in the running game, especially in the in the option plan.

44:49 We were trying to get him kind of on island to make a decision, use him as the option man for the majority of the of the contest there. So I wasn't prepared for us to have that type of game plan to slow down Stewart outside of just shading coverage there and shipping him with an extra guy, stuff like that. So I, I was surprised pleasantly to see that they were, you know, taking that, that role seriously there. So what about you? Anything that you are not prepared for as you were looking through. Yeah, well, I definitely wasn't prepared for how much our, our D line really held up against them. I, I was very impressed.

45:30 I wasn't, you know, I wasn't down on the D line, but I just, I, I thought they held up really well against, you know, formidable SEC opponent. At least you know, what we think is a formidable SEC opponent. So I thought, I thought they're really good there. Kelly, what about you? I'm, I really, I ain't going to say I wasn't prepared, but like their front was better than I thought it would be. I didn't, you know, I thought, I don't think that we did horrible, but I think that their front was really good. I wasn't prepared for them to pressure US 25 times. You were prepared for Stewart and maybe a BIOS. Yeah, yeah, because we talked about a little bit, you know, how they had all these guys GoPro and and they were still pressuring us. I've seen somebody run through Johnny Garrett and he had his legs up in there like he was on a porno movie. I'm just saying it did look good. Oh, man, for for me, I think what I was kind of not prepared for, but I but I think I was was, I think we went in the yardage like getting as many yards as them was shocking. And then like dominating time of possession with how good they, you know, they sounds good.

46:46 I mean, he missed that tackle. He took it right up on us, but we won it. We slowed the game down. We got in our game plan to how to play them. So that kind of shocked me and and not necessarily losing by losing by double digits was one thing, but I told you all what was going to happen. We were going to fist fight this thing and which they did and then they were going to hit just one big play late. I said we did hit a play kick a field goal. They got a touchdown instead. That's what I saw happening. I saw a little bit, I saw a little bit more scoring, but as far as in the game with that's exactly the the fourth quarter, I oh, there you go. That's a good one right here, the safety, because they pounded him on that. But we wouldn't, we wouldn't -1 in that situation, not that it mattered, but we still wouldn't -1 All right, I know we're going to hit on some of this when we get on keys, but what's one thing?

47:41 Jonathan Talley, we got to do better moving forward. We got to score more touchdowns than interceptions. That's we probably need more touchdown passes than interceptions for sure. We got to get some turnovers too, you know, definitely got to get some turnovers, I'll say that. So I think that's what we need to do to kind of in this game. I don't even mean moving forward into the year, this game, we need to get some turnovers. Got it, Shelton. Red zone offense it was it was pretty bad. I think I saw I saw a stat from game on paper that our red zone efficiency was like in the 9th percentile of all games this season.

48:24 So can't can't be settling for field goals, got to score touchdowns. Yeah, score touchdowns, Ron Ziegler. I will. I will put this in tandem. Fewer turnovers and untimely penalties. If you look at the way things went down between the unsportsmanlike and the interception and then the procedure penalty that resulted in the repunt, that's about a 13 point swing there. That's something you can't let happen. You got when you when you get in the scoring area, you got to put points on the board and you can't let dumb penalties and turnovers affect that all. Right. How can we wait a second? I'm going to put Phil's up here.

49:09 Yes, yes, we have to complete one more than one pass in their territory 1000%. I think the one thing for me that I'll say that we did good and I'll see us even do better. One rush for a loss. We had one rush where we lost shortage. That wasn't the case last year. Even with Tootin, he got buried in the back till numerous times we were. And I think it's more impressive because we start looking at that line and Stewart and Barrett and Thomas and saying so we say we we stalemated at the line of scrimmage all every time but one. And the one time was on the jet suite, which Brian and Tally immediately said together in tandem, we missed the blah.

49:53 That's the only reason they got a loss. But to me, do that moving forward, continue to do that because if we're saying with South Carolina, we're stalemating them holes are going to get opened against some of these other defensive lines. So let's keep that going. I just wanted to mention real quick before we get over to know the enemy couple recruits the the kid down from Louisiana, Cole Bergeron, the six, four and a half, 210 quarterback, three star, pretty good pick up. I don't think I had that on my bingo card for recruiting this year. And then the other one, I don't know if I had this one either, but I think they're undervaluing this kid because of, you know, probably because he's coming to us, right?

50:42 Tally, he's coming to us and they ain't going to give him a four-star. Andrew Rogers out of Grimsley down in Greensboro, 66240. You know, he's like 3, somewhere above 400 in the national rankings. He's a four-star composite. I mean, 2 pretty good pickups in the class. It's not going to be that big because I think now what we're seeing is Virginia Tech is going to be 15 to 18 high school recruits and it's going to be a lot of formal guys. That's going to be our model from now. So anything on either one of these guys before we flip over to this weekend? Robbie saying good, yeah, You up there with him?

51:26 You up there with Robbie? It's not far it off and right about a 45 minute drive, all right.