Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Vandenburg Notes: Tennessee Tech

The Good:
JVB's best throw of the day was his corner route to McNutt. He did an excellent job with his footwork on this throw and he put that ball where McNutt could catch it in stride and make play after the catch.  As it turns out McNutt tore off for an 88 yard TD. Another good throw JVB had out there was his completion to Herman for 15 on a PA bootleg. He did a solid job selling the fake and then got his shoulders squared up on the roll out and hit Herman right on the numbers in stride.

The Bad:
I didn't like the two fades he threw to Keenan Davis in this one. Both times the ball was thrown too far inside and really had no chance for a completion. Both times KD was forced to become a defender and although they got a lucky tip completion on the second one it was still an ill advised throw. As with most in-experienced QB's it takes time to get the necessary touch and placement on these kinds of throws. He also had some throws that were behind his receivers, but I'm not overly worried about these as they're likely a combination of first game jitters and the rain.

Numbers:
_ Left Middle Right Sub-total
Short 3/5 17y 2/2 19y 6/9 57y 1TD 11/16 93y 1TD
Medium 1/2 15y 0/1 0/0 0y 1/3 15y
Deep 0/0 0y 0/0 0y 2/2 111y 2/2 111y
Sub-total 4/7 32y 2/3 19y 8/11 168y 2TD
Overall: 13/21(62%) 219y 2TD 0INT 
Not a whole lot to look at here as the vast majority of the throws were short range targets. I'd expect to see more targets in the middle of the field as the season goes on as well.

Looking Ahead
JVB looks to have corrected his issue with having too much velocity with some of the shorter throws as he did against OSU in '09, but he definitely still has the ability to fire a bullet down the field when he wants to. He has the arm strength to put the ball in places Stanzi couldn't last year and that should give them the ability to attack up the field more often. I'd expect Iowa to step up the medium and deep passing game in the coming weeks. ISU has an experienced secondary and they are a quality unit. JVB will need to be sharp to avoid turnovers in the road rivalry game. If Iowa can establish the running game early against ISU and they could  set the table for big success in the play action game.

Summary:
This was a pretty tough game to grade due to the inclement weather, vanilla play call and only having 2.5 quarters to work with but this was a solid start to the season for JVB. The plays Iowa ran were very basic and only 5 of his 21 pass attempts were beyond 10 yards. JVB was fairly accurate most of the time, 62% on the day, and there were 3 drops I saw as well. All in all not a bad start to the year.


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