Virginia Tech-NC State Review: Close, But No Cigar

The Hokies continued their outstanding performance as college football’s rebound win, this time giving NC State a needed confidence boost. I’m writing this on Halloween, so in the spirit of the spooky season, let’s put on our long rubber gloves and pick through the corpse a little.

The Hokie offense sputtered on its way to scraping up 21 points, while along the way garnering an unholy number of false-start penalties (more on that later) that made the Hokies look like they had the discipline of an antsy JV squad. But there were some good moments, particularly when they showed they’d watched NC State’s loss to Syracuse with some focus. Let’s rewind back to the preview:

That’s Outside Zone, run from a five-man unbalanced formation with two backs. Check out the Hokies here:

Like Syracuse, the Hokies have a tackle-over unbalanced formation, two backs, and the action is Outside Zone. Nick Gallo (#86) is the fullback, and Malachi Thomas (#24) is the halfback. This formation, along with the 1st and 10 and the Hokies OL all settling into three-point stances, strongly threatens a run to the left, and there’s no doubt the Pack defense has been repping against it after their errors against ‘Cuse. Not only that, but Tech had already run some OZ from this and gotten yards against NC State.

What’s different is Dae’Quan Wright (#13) at the right tackle spot. Although he’s the “right tackle” in this formation, by alignment he’s an eligible receiver. This leads to an error by Aydan White (#3) on that side, as he releases Wright after falling for the Hokies’ very nice step-down. This lets Wright sneak free for an easy catch. You might remember a few years back when Georgia Tech sneaked a true wide receiver into a tackle-eligible spot and got a long TD over Mook Reynolds off of it.

To finish the drive, the Hokies returned to the same formation on 1st down:

This time, though, the Hokies split the backfield flow by sending Gallo across Wells’ face to kick the DE. The timing was great for this call, as the linebacker smears Wright to keep him out of a route. This plays right into Tech’s hands: in eliminating a pass that isn’t coming, the linebacker takes himself out of the play. Thomas turns into a lead blocker, and Wells gets a TD off a rare QB Split Zone play.

This play also went after Aydan White, though most of the time, the Hokies played the percentages and tended to stay away from him in coverage. Kaleb Smith made the most of State’s lesser corners, and like Syracuse’s receivers, he used a physical play style to create separation:

On this call, he sends the DB stumbling by swatting his arms before the ball gets there.

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