FanPost

A&M vs. Clinka 2020 -- Log of Mond Passes

Matt Bush-USA TODAY Sports

Did we win? *Checks morning paper* Hmmm, they say we did - why doesn't it feel like we did? Also, I guess all the PAC-12 games were "late" b/c I can't find their scores anywhere.

I guess that was just about the most unsatisfying win since... well... our first win this season. Vandy seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? 2020 goes on forever. At least I don't even remember hearing any damn cowbells, so, yay 2020!

We thought we might see some lapses from the team after such an emotional win last week. Apparently most of ESPN "experts" planned for our demise as well. I'd like to give Herbie a few thumbs-up (middle thumbs) for his previous comments about Kyle Field and his hate for us.

However, Championship teams don't have lapses. Clemson beat a Top 10 Miami team last week and celebrated by curb-stomping GaTech. We don't have that killer mentality yet. MSU was ripe for being buried (and I honestly felt bad for Costello -- he looked lost). But we still sputtered our way to a win where some of us were looking at the crazy bounces, tip-drill completions, and general foot-shooting as a sign of "are we gonna screw this thing up" ala UCLA?

IMO, the OL won their second game in a row. OL kept Mond pretty clean; it seems like MSU was stunting on every play and we managed for the most part. OL opened up big holes for Spiller, Smith, and ACHANE(!!). RB's held onto the ball as well, so that's good. Hopefully Spiller is OK and was just tweaked. Good time for a BYE.

Glad I didn't reserve my Heisman Ceremony plane tix. Mond was Happy-Feet Road Mond. 13/23 139 Yards, 2 TDs, 1 Pick-Six, 1 Delay-of-Game, No Fumbles. A whopping 80% of the passing yards were YAC, so the actual passing yards were even less impressive, not that 139 yards is impressive.

OFFENSIVE PENALTIES -- woof. Our perfectly clean game (on offense) last week was overshadowed by multiple offense penalties including a 53 yard play reversed. Every drive where we had a penalty resulted in zero points. Yes, even a delay penalty from our senior QB after an incomplete pass. Not acceptable.

SPECIAL (?) TEAMS -- Huge Blocked Punt where my BAS kicked in and I thought they were going to say we had possession and gave it up, which would have turned the ball over to MSU on their 1. Fortunately we survived that play and gave Spiller a gift TD.

Not sure I've ever seen 3 penalties on one play on the same team without a fight breaking out. Maybe we should have started a melee to get up to 5 penalties just to make it a complete Mike Leach experience. It really sounded like the white-hat was pissed off when listing off our crimes. We have to clean up special teams play and actually make it an intrinsic part of the game. Alabama does. Clemson does. We seem to tolerate it or let it kick our butts.

Anyway, let's see what the Throwing Tables tell us (credit again to Woodlands Aggie for saving my bacon with this No-Huddle post).

Pass #

Time of Game (Q/Clock)

Time on Video

Result

Pass Yds

YAC

Target

Read

Coverage

Pressure

# Rush

Comment

1

1

13:36

1.31

INC

13

N/A

Mike Leach

1

None

Some

4

Happy Feet Returns. No idea who this was to. Wyd fell. Smith stopped. Bad Throw. Bad start.

2

1

13:32

1.42

Comp

-2

3

Smith

1

None

Some

6

Slot WR Screen. Comfortable throw, but bad read.

3

1

12:25

2.10

INC

15

N/A

Smith

1

Light

Some

5

Pass OK, Smith Fell. Smith tip prevented INT (after false start penalty)

4

1

9:48

3.51

Comp

-2

15

Wyder

1

None

Some

5

PA, TE Screen Wide. Threw around DE, This ball was tipped against FL.

5

1

9:08

4.05

Comp

-3

10

Spiller

1

None

None

4

RB Screen.

1

7:53

4.29

Comp

23

26

Smith

2

None

None

4

HOLDING: Deep Middle. A lot of Time. Big Play Erased.

6

1

7:26

5.08

Comp

-1

2

Wyder

1

None

None

4

Quick TE Out

7

1

6:41

5.19

Comp

0

13

Spiller

1

None

None

3

RB Screen. Faked Blitz, but didn't cover Screen.

8

1

6:02

5.34

INC

23

N/A

Lane

1

Light

Heavy

4

Stunt Got to Mond. Hit as throwing. Short pass to open receiver. Bad throw.

9

2

6:55

16.01

INC

17

N/A

Smith

1

Tight

Some

4

Threw into Double Coverage. Could have been caught. Smith hit hard as ball arrived. (after false start, before Delay)

10

3

14:28

21.06

INC

13

N/A

Lane

2?

Light

Some

5

PA. Time. Delayed LB Blitz. Missed throw short. Happy feet. Bad throw.

11

3

14:21

21.16

Comp

5

6

Wyder

1

None

Some

5

Quick TE Out

12

3

13:11

21.57

Comp

-2

6

Smith

1

None

None

4

Quick Slot Out

13

3

11:53

22.20

PICK-6

5

-73

Smith

1

Tight

Heavy

6

INT: Low Snap (Timing Off), backside CB blitz (Spiller late). WR Slant, Throw Slightly behind, Hit Smith (should have been caught). Crazy Bounce back to blitzing corner. Mond missed tackle. Wyder open across middle a better choice.

14

3

11:38

22.38

INC

15

N/A

Lane

1

Tight

None

4

WR Hitch, Double Coverage. Air-mailed the throw. WR didn't know it was there. Smith open in middle left.

15

3

11:33

23.48

Comp

19

0

Lane

1

Tight

None

5

WR stop route. Good throw

16

3

10:17

24.13

Comp

2

49

Lane

1

None

None

5

TOUCHDOWN: Short WR Cross. Pick on CB. LB1 "rushed", LB2 followed Achane to flat. Opened middle, Lane speed to EZ.

17

3

8:45

27.19

Comp

1

5

Smith

1

None

None

4

TOUCHDOWN: PA to Achane, LBs followed. Slot Out, Pitch/Catch.

18

3

6:16

30.06

Comp

4

1

Wyder

1

Light

None

4

TE quick out. LB failed to cover. Thrown between 3 defenders.

19

3

4:53

30.28

Comp

9

0

Smith

2

Light

None

5

PA, Plenty of Time. 2nd Read. TE Out. Good Pass.

20

3

4:13

30.42

Comp

-2

2

Smith

1

Light

None

5

WR screen. Nowhere. 3 Defenders, 1 blocker. Bad read. 7 in box to stop run + 2 on edge. 2nd & 1 could have taken downfield shot.

21

3

2:31

31.23

INC

20

N/A

Smith

2?

Tight

Some

6

Plenty of Time. Receivers not open. Threw between 2 receivers (bounced), Could have run for 10.

22

3

2:25

31.36

INC

10

N/A

Smith

1

Tight

None

4

Quick Slant, Tight Covered, almost INT (DANGEROUS). Spiller open across middle.

23

4

9:07

36.41

INC

19

N/A

Wyder

1

Tight

None

5

TE Deep Hitch, Decent Throw. Hit Wyd in hands, should catch. CB facemask not called.

CONCLUSIONS:

1. We wondered if Mond would be consistent from game to game? The answer is no. His accuracy last week was complemented this week by shifty feet that led to underthrown balls, throwaways, and a couple of bad passes. Without a short field on the blocked punt and fumble inside the 10, we may not have scored more than 14. Mond clearly didn't have confidence and Jimbo didn't have it in Mond either.

Mond is who he is. We should have been far enough ahead to get King in the game, but we didn't get there. Disappointing.

2. OL Help? No sacks. As mentioned above, they used a lot of stunts, got a little pressure here and there on Mond, but not much. Yet Mond was still nervous with his footing. He didn't scramble at all, but hung in the pocket to make throws.

  • 6-man rush :: 1-3 success on getting heavy pressure
  • 5-man rush :: 0-9 success
  • 4-man rush :: 1-11 success
  • 3-man rush :: 0-1 success

3. WR help? I counted 4 "marginal drops" -- they weren't outright drops, but ones that could have been caught.

  • #3, Smith fell on the cut. He actually saved an INT
  • #9, Smith could have caught this. Was hit hard as the ball arrived. 50/50 drop call
  • #16, Pick-6. I don't know about this. Smith could have caught this, more below.
  • #23, Wyd had it in hands, Defender was trying to pull Wydermyer's helmet off, but should catch

4. Downfield threat? Non-existent. We're back to "bad" territory.

  • 0-2 on passes >20 yards, although we had 1 called back for holding
  • 1-10 on passes >10 yards
  • 80% of passing yardage were YAC's. Both TD's were 2 yard passes with YAC. I counted 28 yards of actual downfield completed passing (yikes). That's compared to 224 last week.

5. Receiver Selection

  • We didn't spread the ball around. Losing Chapman is a big deal. We didn't see Demas or Moose either. Kam Brown was on the field, but not targeted.
  • Only 4 receivers (including Spiller on 1 play) were targeted. Smith, Lane, Wydermyer. That's it. That's not going to get it done. Why is this a problem? (See tweet below from Arky)

6. Reads

  • I only counted 4 second-progression-reads. We were 1-3 on the second reads (not including the HOLDING penalty erasing the big play)
  • As mentioned before, Mond reads the play before, but seldom checks down during the play. I haven't studied other QB's as much to know how much they go through progressions during a play, so I may be completely unfair picking at this point.

7. Pick-6: I've watched this a number of times, and still not 100% sure what to make of it.

  • Obviously it was fluky deflection that went forward 10 yards and ricocheted back 15 directly to the CB who had blitzed on the high side. The only thing unluckier would have been if it hit the CB in stride.
  • Mond received a low snap, throwing off whatever timing he had on the read. It was a heavy blitz, so he knew he had to get rid of it.
  • He threw a bullet that could have been caught, but was slightly behind Smith. With a defender draped on his back, it was going to be a tough catch.
  • Mond didn't stop the CB. Maybe we need to teach him to tackle after all (see last week's oblivious "log").

8. As discussed last week, we took a lot of the game out of Mond's hands to win it. First TD drive (drive #3) was 8 runs only. We could have done that all day with a few PA's thrown in, but we didn't. We don't seem to use PA's in a good way. We went away from the pistol set that worked so well against FL. No 2-back sets. 1 option play only (that worked very well). The Comp/ATT by quarter below shows our distribution.

  • 1st Q - 6 / 9 (incl Holding)
  • 2nd Q - 0 / 1
  • 3rd Q - 8 / 13 (w/ Pick-6)
  • 4th Q- 0 / 1

I know we want to win out and have confidence we can. However, Saturday's performance on offense isn't going to get us undefeated the rest of the way. Let's be honest, the only reason we won was b/c Costello had no haps. We were able to plan against 1 offensive play scheme and it mostly worked. Turnovers bailed us out, b/c our offensive plan certainly didn't.

The good news? Mond can have a lackluster day, and we can still win. That's refreshing and good that Mond doesn't have to believe that he HAS to win the game himself.

Ole Miss, Arkansas, SoCar are not going to be pushovers. Here's what Arky is saying about themselves:

Arkansas Players are Prepared

Pittman gets his teams prepared. They practice well. It's how they have less talent but are able to hang around (as they did with UGA). We've got to prepare better and mix things up. Hopefully Mond will be FL Mond. Hopefully we'll see some 2-back sets, more pistol sets, more options, and even Mond keeping the ball every once in a while (please don't fumble). We need to keep defenders' eyes moving a lot of different directions so they can't key on an RB or receiver. We need to use more PA.

Yes, I have BAS. As of today, we're not a championship team. We have good enough players, but not the full package of consistency, attitude, discipline, creativity yet. I'm still deciding if Jimbo's schemes are the problem or if Mond's skills limit the availability of play selection. A lot of the creativity we saw against FL we didn't see against MSU.

Am I too critical? Maybe. We leave too little margin of error to win-out the way we played against MSU. I'm not the Aggie who says "we ran out of time". We should be winning Natties. Period. That is all.

#BTHObye

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