The head coach might be more upbeat after week one than you’d think.
Video is available here. A summary is below:
—Saw a lot of good things on the video, most notably the play of Lamar. He did a great job of getting the protection set and throwing the ball away to save yardage and avoid sacks. He made every type of throw we needed him to make and he was fantastic when the game was on the line. Really impressed with Lamar.
—Thought we did a great job on special teams starting with the kickoff cover. We kept them inside the 25 on five occasions, and that really helped us. Also had two really good returns from Seth Dawkins and Reggie Bonnafon.
—It was great to see Trevon Young out there flying around. He graded out really high. On Stacy Thomas’ touchdown it was his pressure that forced the bad throw. I can’t tell you how happy I am for him. It’s been a two year process for him to get to this point and I’ve seen how hard he’s worked.
—The rest of the defense I thought played well. We didn’t stop the all the time, but we came up huge when the game was on the line in the 4th quarter.
—We got a lot of young guys in the game and that was good to see too. Tresean Smith made a huge play on the interception in the endzone.
—We certainly have some things to clean up, most notably the penalties and the turnovers in the redzone. We’ve got to get that fixed.
—North Carolina looks really good on film. They have a lot of talent on defense, and we’re going to have to prepare for two quarterbacks again.
—A lot of people say you make your biggest improvement from week one to week two. I don’t know how that’s ever been measured, but I do hope it works that way for us this week.
—We watched the video of the game at 6:30 this morning because the guys didn’t have school. We gave them the day off on Sunday.
—Lamar’s accuracy allowed us to not just make catches but to get yards after the catch. He can fit the ball into really small windows. I was proud of the other things he did as far as recognizing coverages and making checks. His knowledge and his confidence to do that were really encouraging. Sometimes as a young quarterback he would see things but didn’t have enough confidence to act on them. Now he has that confidence.
—Really liked how Dorean Etheridge played. He made a couple mistakes, but he played really fast and made those mistakes going full speed. TraSean played really well. Mekhi Becton was good but we have to get him better at blocking in the run game. Corey Reed was really good on special teams. As he learns the system better he’ll get more reps with the offense.
—We knew the false starts could be an issue because we’ve had two weeks of headaches with that in practice. The issue was Robbie Bell was calling out protections while Lamar was making his claps, and so the offensive line wasn’t hearing the claps. It was an experience thing.
—No further update on Jaire. We’ll see how the week goes.
—I would much rather have a game like this one than a blowout like last year to start the season. I think we learned more about ourselves in this game than the opener a year ago. It’s going to benefit us in the long run.
—Lukayus McNeil showed great leadership on offense, which was really great to see.
—The run game was not what we needed it to be. Sometimes running the ball is about want and attitude. We made some nice runs in the second half, but not enough. That needs to improve.
—Dez Fitzpatrick did a great job both catching and blocking. He and Lamar were perfectly on the same page, which was great to see.
—You can’t reach the ball over the goalline, and we’ve told our guys that. They see it on TV and they want to do it, but you just can’t. Fumbling it out of the endzone is a touchback so you have to be even more careful with the ball near the goalline.
—Jaylen Smith’s fumble was a great play by their linebacker, but he’s got to tuck that away.
—The defense did a really good job communicating against a complicated offense. There was a little lull early in the third quarter, but when the game was on the line our guys were at their best.
—Jaire trying to pick up that blocked field goal was a mistake. It was a great block by Drew Bailey, but our guys are taught that if a blocked kick crosses the line of scrimmage they’re supposed to get away from it. We try and scoop and score if a blocked kick goes backwards.
—I was a little bit nervous with Peter Sirmon calling plays from the box and not being on the sidelines, but it worked. It’s easier to call things from the box just because you can see everything.
—Might throw the glasses away. We used to score more from the one-yard line when I wasn’t wearing them.
You can also catch the Monday press sessions with Lamar Jackson and Trevon Young.
