Scouting Report: Liberty

Liberty
Liberty quarterback Malik Willis is a very good athlete. (Photo by Joel Coleman)

The Flames are undefeated, but they’ve only played bad teams; as AISHokie05 noted in his PFF briefing on the sub board, that makes an apples-to-apples comparison pretty darn tough. And that’s just on the surface. Among those bad teams, Southern Miss was down its starting QB and dealing with a bout of COVID trouble, FIU had QB uncertainty as they opened the season against a Liberty team that had already played a game, North Alabama lost their starting QB in the first quarter, and ULM’s punt units gave up three touchdowns on a dropped punt, a blocked punt and a punt return…and then gave up a long return for a bonus.

You can’t even treat Syracuse as a P5 outlier, because it always looked like the Orange had a rough year ahead, and against Liberty they were down their starting QB and a good safety, had linebackers playing through what looked like nasty injuries from the prior game, and had upended their lineups since opening week. If Tech played the Orange, you might see the Hokies pick up 400 yards on the ground.

But there’s more than the players to consider. Liberty completely outcoached Syracuse. Time and time again, Liberty’s offense made the Orange defense align itself into weak positions, and the defense seemed to know some plays before the ball was snapped, often blitzing themselves into perfect spots. That’s worrisome in any scenario, but especially considering Liberty is coming off a bye-week. You never know if players will come back refreshed or sloppy from time off, but it’s almost always an advantage for the coaching staff when it comes to scouting and self-scouting, and for installing new plays.

The good news is that as good as Liberty’s staff was, Syracuse’s was bad. The offense was the worst of it. Lemme put it his way: their QB, Rex Culpepper, was a senior, but he’s been moved back and forth between QB and TE at Syracuse and had his playing continuity interrupted by freakin’ cancer, and was making his first start since his freshman year; while the starting tailback was a true freshman, he was averaging 4.7 yards a carry, and was behind a P5 line. So, what’d Syracuse do? They threw 40 times and ran the back 21. And that’s not because Culpepper played well—he was bad. And it wasn’t late-game, trying-to-come-from-behind stat-skewing, or the result of Liberty running a base WT-6. Syracuse was pass-happy to open things up, and as you’d imagine, Culpepper wandered into sacks and made a lot of bad throws.

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