Good, Bad, and Ugly from JMU 31 – W&M 24
The JMU Dukes defeated the W&M Tribe by the score of 31-24 in a rain soaked Bridgeforth Stadium on Saturday. The victory moved the Dukes to a perfect 3-0 in CAA play and 5-1 overall. William & Mary on the other hand, dropped to 0-3 in the CAA and 2-4 overall. In some ways it was a rather ugly game. The Dukes were able to move the ball, but struggled to convert all the yardage into points in the first half. And the Defense was unable to put the clams on Kendall Anderson and his Tribe teammates, allowing them to hang in there and make a game out of it. Taylor Reynolds came up huge, picking up a Steve Clulely pass in the endzone with under 2 minutes left and the Tribe driving to tie the ball game. Then Khalid Abdullah broke off a 74 yard TD to seal the game. Here’s the good, bad, and ugly from the game.
Good
Abdullah and Cardon Johnson went beast mode again. Johnson had 90 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries. Abdullah ran for a career best 194 yards and three touchdowns. The duo might not be unstoppable, but they’re pretty damn close. And on a wet day in dogfight against a bitter rival, they both elevated their games and helped lead the team to a win.
The O-line. Johnson and Abdullah have rightly been getting a ton of credit for their outstanding play, and justifiably so. But the dangerous pair couldn’t do it without the big guys up front opening up holes for them to run through. They did just that on Saturday. And they also protected QB Bryan Schor giving him time to pass and preventing the Tribe from sacking him.
Taylor Reynolds. The pick in the endzone was obviously pretty clutch, but Taylor made other big plays on Saturday. He came off the edge to make a tackle for a loss near the goal line and hold W&M to a FG. It’s pretty amazing to think about how far he’s come in his time at JMU.
Gage Steele. Steele’s production dropped last season. That was partially due to him battling injuries and partially due to the overall weakness of the JMU defensive scheme. Games like Saturday’s though highlighted Steele’s ability to swarm all over the field and make stops.
Gunnar Kane. As a punter for JMU, Gunnar doesn’t even break a sweat some games. He’s answering the bell when called upon though and was great on Saturday. He booted a career best 66 yard blast to pin the Tribe on its 9 yard line.
The Crowd. We weren’t able to make in Saturday, but we’ve sat through plenty of rainy of games in the past. The fans in Bridgeforth probably weren’t comfortable, but they were loud and supported the Dukes during a tough rivalry game. That’s rootin.
Bad
Another missed chip shot. Tyler Gray has a big leg and has been huge on kickoffs all season. He missed what should have been a gimme on Saturday though. It happens and he’s too good not to bounce back though.
The rushing D? This one’s tough to judge. It wasn’t a shut down performance worthy of the good section, but it definitely doesn’t deserve to be labeled bad either. Others might disagree based on the fact that W&M ran for 205 yards. The reality is that the JMU defense pretty much held W&M in line. The Tribe averaged 4.7 yards per rush. They average 4.8 yards per rush on the season. So on a day where everyone in the world knew that W&M was going to try to pound the rock and keep the Dukes offense on the sidelines, JMU basically limited them to a standard performance.
Ugly
The win. This was an ugly win over a bitter rival. And yes, this is a total cop out and my way of turning the ugly section into a compliment. Todd and discussed in Saturday night though and we simply can’t pick nits and look for things to be upset about after JMU took care of business against the Tribe and probably eliminated them from the postseason as well. Style points don’t count in the win column. Coach Houston and the Dukes beat a desperate Tribe team in the rain and are 3-0. Life is good.
Re: Missed FG
If you go back an watch the set-up by kicker and holder, it seems that the holder changes the spot after kicker turns back to line-up. I noticed it when the game was live…. Thought to myself, “why did he move the spot?”. Not an excuse for chip shot FG, but they need to look at it as a special teams film review.
Re: Defense
It will be bad against better offensive teams if we don’t get more pressure on QBs. We have played poor offense teams so far, and played “ok” overall defense. We have 4 of 5 next games against top CAA teams, so now is the time to start some blitzing…. it is hard for DBs to maintain coverage on good WRs for over 4 seconds! Help them out. It is clear the the base 4 rush isn’t doing the job.
Re: Offense
RBs are doing great job with great line blocking. Keep it up! Good spreading ball around to WRs. I would like to see a few “pop passes” to TEs after linebackers start over committing to dominant run game OR middle screen passes when they start blitzing often.
That’s my Monday Morning QB review. Proud of the team; Go Dukes!
Giving up 4.7 yards per carry means that the other team could just run the ball on 1st and 2nd down with a 3rd and short on every series. The chances of getting a 1st down on 3rd & short are about 70%, assuming you aren’t going to go for it on 4th.
Conclusion: Giving up 4.7 YPC is not acceptable.
My point wasn’t that the rush D was great. It wasn’t. My point was that they basically held the Tribe in-line with expectations on a day when everyone knew the game plan was to run, run, and run some more. And while I absolutely agree that leaving the offense in 3rd and short situations consistently is a recipe for danger, that’s not how it played out. JMU held W&M to only 5 of 12 on 3rd down.
I was going to do an entire post about this, but the topic of 3rd down conversions is an interesting one for JMU. It’s an area where the defense has shown real improvement. The per play averages are unfortunately about the same as they were last year. The D has been much, much better preventing opponents from converting 3rd downs though. Teams have only converted 33% of 3rd downs against JMU this year. That’s second best in the CAA to Villanova. Last season, JMU let opponents convert 46%, the worst mark in the league.
On the other side of the ball, last year’s prolific offense converted a gaudy, and league best, 54% of 3rd downs! That not only lead the CAA last year, it was the highest conversion rate in league history. I even checked the A10 stats that predated the CAA and couldn’t find a 3rd down conversion rate equal to that going all the way back to 2003. I can’t find stats earlier than that, but you get the point.
This year’s JMU offense is converting 55% of third downs by the way.