SB Nation - Jordin Lindsey

Post-Spring Preview: NC State, Cont.

Gamecock Man — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:11:42 -0000

This column continues my recent comparison of the two teams' offenses. I would say that our offenses look fairly similar--both have potential but have some questions to answer. On defense, though, I'd say we have a distinct advantage that should play to our favor in the game.

Defensive Line

State's defense was overall pretty regrettable last year, but they were OK against the run (although that's possibly because teams liked to throw against them) and had a solid pass rush. Part of the credit goes to a solid defensive line, most of which they return. The leader is sacks specialist Willie Young.

Carolina loses fifth-year senior and consummate party animal Jordin Lindsey but returns the rest of its line, which includes standouts Ladi Ajiboye, Nate Peppers, and Cliff Matthews. I would expect that Clifton Geathers, who received plenty of PT and made some big plays last year, will replace Lindsey in the starting lineup. It's worth nothing that Ajiboye will be suspended for at least one game due to his academic and legal troubles; whether Spurrier will opt to suspend him for this game or wait until we play a cupcake remains to be seen. All in all, this is a stellar unit in comparison to that of State. While it wasn't our forte last year, the defensive line was serviceable and could be great this year with more experience. Depth will be an issue as always, especialy considering the frequency with which defensive linemen get hurt. However, the same goes for State. Moreover, while our line wasn't our strength last year, it was still one of the better in the SEC, and while State's was their defense's strength, it was still one of the worst in the ACC. I'm going with Carolina on this one, although not by much.

Verdict: Slight Advantage South Carolina

Linebackers

This is where things begin to get a little more uncertain for State. The 'Pack do return a couple of linebackers with significant experience in Nate Irving and Rey Michel, but they often got crossed up and gave up significant yardage through the air, and reports are that that continued during spring practice. This should be a team that we can carve up in the short passing game if we can muster any semblance of an offense.

Carolina, of course, loses a star linebacker in Jasper Brinkley and a solid backup in Marvin Sapp. However, we return one of the nation's best linebackers in Eric Norwood. Flanking Norwood will probably be a rotating duo of Shaq Wilson and Rodney Paulk. Both have some experience in mop-up duty but will have to learn to be more serviceable quickly. If we end up playing more 4-3 fronts than we did last year, which the coachs have hinted is a possibility, you may see Josh Dickerson or Tony Straugher get some playing time as well. While we have some questions in the linebacking corp, the presence of Norwood as a leader and State's relatively mediocre unit give us a decided advantage here.

Verdict: Strong Advantage South Carolina

Secondary

State returns safety Justin Byers and corner back DeAndre Morgan. The secondary was another problem area for State last year, so losing a couple of guys probably won't hurt much. The returners along with the new guys will have to play better in coverage than they did last year for State to avoid giving up a lot of yards through the air.

Carolina also loses some key players in this area, among them Emanuel Cook, Captain Munnerlyn, Carlos Thomas, and Stoney Woodsen. We do return Darian Stewart and Chris Culliver as starting safeties. Although Carolina has some talented players that have shown potential at times, such as Addison Williams and Akeem Auguste, and some talented incoming freshman, particulalry uber-recruit Stephon Gilmore, looking to solidify starting roles this fall, the losses in the secondary make this area, usually one of our strengths, a question mark for the defense. I think we're better than State at this position in terms of sheer talent. However, I do worry that if we suffer any injuries that we're going to be in a tough spot in terms of depth.

Verdict: Slight Advantage South Carolina

Special Teams

State returns their placekicker, which gives them something to say on top of us. Josh Czajkowski was a very solid kicker for State last year, going 16/19. Although most of his kicks were from short range, 16/19 is not shabby. Given that reports out of spring practice are that we will miss Ryan Succop this year, State gets the advantage here.

In the return game, State returns a solid player in T. J. Graham, who was effective handling both punts and kickoffs, including one kickoff taken back for 100 yards. Carolina loses Captain Munnerlyn but brings back solid kickoff return man Chris Culliver, who I'm assuming will take over on punts this year as well. I'd say State has a slight advantage here as well, which overall gives them a fairly sizeable advantage in special teams. It's also worth noting that we lost a very good special teams coach in Ray Rychleski.

Verdict: Strong Advantage NC State

Head Coaches

NC State's Tom O'Brien has gone 11-13 in his two years at State. Before coming to Raleigh, he coached several moderately successful years at Boston College; while O'Brien never won more than nine in Boston, he won less than eight only three times in a decade. State fans hope that O'Brien can bring the consistency he produced at BC to Raleigh. South Carolina's Steve Spurrier is 28-22 after four years at South Carolina after a stint with the Washington Redskins and a long, successful tenure at Florida, his alma mater. Similarly to O'Brien's relationship to NC State, USC fans are still waiting for Spurrier to bring sustained success to Columbia. With their achievements at their current schools roughly equal, a slight advantage here goes to Spurrier due to his past achievements.

Verdict: Slight Advantage South Carolina

Final Verdict

NC State won't be easy this year, especially as we have to play them in Raleigh. However, our defense looks to be significantly better than theirs, so I think that we should be able to win this one unless the offense comes out completely flat and gives up lots of turnovers. I really don't want to think about what happens if we lose this game. The early stretch my be just as difficult as the late-season Orange Crush this year, and if we're going to have any chance at getting to the magical eight-win mark, we need to get out of the first four with at most one loss.

Prediction: Close game most of the way but Carolina pulls away at the ends and wins by 1-2 TDs

Rating the DL Class

Gamecock Man — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:47:27 -0000

Defensive line wasn't a huge area of need for us. We return three of four starters on the defensive line, losing only Jordin Lindsay. Moreover, we have some depth at the position. Tackle was something of an area for concern; although we lost Lindsay at end, we don't have quite the depth at tackle that you'd like to, considering that it's rare to go through a season without suffering some injuries at the position. End wasn't quite as much of a concern, although adding depth is always a good thing.

Unfortunately, we didn't pick up any tackles in this class. We did, however, pick up a talented group of ends: we signed Ronald Byrd (four stars), Duane Chisholm (four), Aldrick Fordham (three), Leon Mackey (four), and Chaz Sutton (four). This class insures that we will be set at end for the foreseeable future, and we can enjoy the gratification of beating out Clemson for Chisholm and Mackey.

I'm giving this part of our class a B. There's a lot of talent in this group, but I would have liked to see us pick up at least one tackle. We're a little low on depth at the position going into next year, and most of our ends are too small to play in the middle. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed and hope Ladi Ajiboye and Nate Pepper stay healthy.

Poll

Rate the DL class.

A

1 votes

B

4 votes

C

4 votes

D

0 votes

F

1 votes

10 votes | Poll has closed

Comparing South Carolina and Iowa: The DL

Gamecock Man — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:52:07 -0000

Contestants: Mitch King, Matt Kroul, Adrian Clayborn, Christian Ballard (Iowa); Ladi Ajiboye, Nathan Pepper, Jordin Lindsey, Cliff Matthews (South Carolina)

Iowa

The Hawkeyes boast the nation's tenth-best rushing defense, thanks in large part to a stout defensive line. Mitch King and Matt Kroul, Iowa's defensive tackles, are great run stuffers. Considering that we come into this game with one of the nation's worst rushing offenses, we likely won't be able to run between the tackles against Iowa. King will be especially difficult to contain; while a bit undersized, he's had a good enough year to make a unanimous selection for first-team All-Big 10.

Iowa doesn't like to blitz, so they also rely on their line to generate a pass rush. They haven't always generated a lot of pressure this year, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them have some success against our suspect offensive line.

South Carolina

South Carolina's defensive line, much maligned in 2007 after contributing to one of the country's worst rushing defenses, showed marked improvement this year. Our rushing defense ranks 37th at 128 ypg. Whereas we've continued to have trouble with teams like Florida that run the spread (our national ranking was much higher before we played that Gators and Clemson), we've been generally effective stopping teams that utilize traditional rushing attacks.

Our group also generates a potent pass rush and contributes to the occasional big play, such as Nate Pepper's fumble return for a TD against Ole Miss or Jordin Lindsey's INT return against Arkansas.

Final Thoughts

While I wouldn't call it a large advantage, Iowa is a little better than us here. We have a very good defensive line, but the fact is that Iowa has one of the best around.

When it comes to line play in this game, a lot of variables come into play. Can our offensive line play well enough to keep Iowa from generating a pass rush? Can we at least run well enough to move the chains in short yardage situations? Those are big ifs considering how our offensive line matches up against Iowa's defensive line. As far as our defense goes, I think we're capable of slowing down Shonn Greene early in the game, but what worries me is that if our offense falters and can't sustain drives, our defense will wear down by the second half. If that happens, we're probably toast unless we've built up a big lead by then.

Advantage: Iowa

Reviewing Arkansas / Why We Won

Gamecock Man — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:39:57 -0000

One of the imperatives in this game was to make the Hogs pay for last year, and we did that. The final margin was only two scores, but Arkansas made it look closer than it really was by scoring a late garbage TD and this game was never in doubt other than briefly in the third quarter after the Hogs closed the gap to 20-14. This was a solid, convincing victory.

That said, we looked far from perfect. While they got the job done, our offense was only inconsistently effective. A lot of the blame goes to Stephen Garcia and Chris Smelley. On the surface, their combined 219 passing yards and 2 passing TDs along with the TD Garcia scored on the ground does not look too bad. However, neither was particularly accurate. Garcia supporters will remember the perfect fade Garcia threw to Kenny McKinley in the fourth quarter to more or less put the game our of reach for the Hogs, but Garcia was 4/11 with an interception and threw numerous shaky passes when he had receivers open. Smelley's numbers were a little better, but he is lucky to escape the game without an interception, also threw bad passes when he had open receivers (Smelley must be the only person on the planet who can overthrow 6'5 Jared Cook), and cost us a couple of touchdowns when did not see open receivers and threw it to guys in coverage.

Should we blame our quarterbacks' pedestrian performances on Spurrier's decision to alternate them almost every other play? Perhaps. I can only imagine that it is difficult for Chris or Stephen to find a rhythm when they know they are not going to stay in the game long. On the other hand, lots of Spurrier's ploys worked yesterday. We did have open receivers all over the field, which indicates that Spurrier beat Arkansas's defense from an Xs and Os standpoint. Part of that scheme success probably owes to the confusion the QB alternations caused Arkansas. If our quarterbacks could have made a few more of their throws, we might have scored 50 on these guys. So it may not have been such a bad idea to alternate Garcia and Smelley, even if it did not work as well as it might have. Part of the problem also owes to our receivers dropping ball. Jason Barnes looked like the next Sidney Rice a few weeks ago, but now he looks more like the Troy Williamson of Vikings fame. On a side note, I thought the wide-tackle formations were generally effective and can only wonder why we did not use this formation against LSU in the second half.

We also finally saw a solid performance out of our running game. Both Eric Baker and Mike Davis played well in the second half, particularly during our final TD drive. If I remember correctly, we did not throw the ball once during that possession. Who would have thought we could drive the length of the field on the legs of our tailbacks? I do not want to make too much of running success against an Arkansas team that has a terrible defense and was likely worn out at the end of the game, but seeing that we can run the ball to some degree was promising.

Our defense played well for most of the game, although Arkansas did mount
a couple of decent drives. Casey Dick passed the ball well against us other than his three interceptions. My general impression is that the only thing keeping our defense from being truly great is that we do not generate much of a pass rush when we do not blitz. Casey Dick (and his brother Nathan on the final drive) often had a lot of time to throw the ball, and I doubt that any defense is going to have much success against a Petrino-coach team without getting in the quarterback's face. Luckily, we took advantage of the inevitable bad throws Dick always tends to make. Jordin Lindsey's interception was a great play and helped us put the game away.

One thing to be happy about is our performance defending the run. Michael Smith came into this game as one of the country's most productive tailbacks, and we held him to 25 yards on seven carries. With Florida and Clemson coming up, we will need to continue to defend the run well.

Special teams play was so-so. We did well in the return game, but Chris Culliver's inability to keep his head at the end of the game will cost us his services in the first half against the Gators (Culliver's suspension will also be felt on defense). Captain Munnerlyn fumbled a punt, but luckily we got it back. One day we are going to lose one of those. Finally, Succop continues to perplex. He made a great 54 yard kick that might have been good from a couple more yards out, but missed a gimme chip shot later in the game. Succop's struggles have yet to cause us a game, but they might against better competition.

All in all, this was a good but not great performance. I am happy with the victory, especially considering that we likely wrapped up an Outback or Peach Bowl bid. However, neither Arkansas or Tennessee (who lost to Wyoming yesterday) are good teams, so we should not overestimate the value of beating them. I saw little to indicate that we have what it takes to hang with the Gators. Unless we get perfect play from our quarterbacks, we will not be able to score enough points to beat Florida. What we saw yesterday from Garcia and Smelley simply will not cut it. We will also need better play to beat Clemson. The Tigers are not a good team and have a very shaky defense, but they are better than Arkansas and will play their best game of the year when we come to town.