Let's talk about football for a minute

[lakecityhog]

Guys, there has been so much typed about the offense that we need and the type of coach and how it will take an "exotic" offense to be successful and so much of that is just plain wrong!

Football is a pretty simple game on offense, find or create miss-matches and exploit them. That is exactly what BP did and what other teams do to us. When we lineup in the I with 2 TE's tight to the tackles everyone in America knows that we are going to run between the tackles and the defense reacts by cramming 7 or 8 guys in there and NO RUNNING ROOM!!! How hard is that to understand??? Who remembers a 3rd and 1 at Georgia and we lined up the exact same way? We play actioned Knile up the middle and Mallett hit Gragg so all alone that he could have walked to the goal line!

What happens when you have a 1 back set and 1 TE and 3 wides or just 4 wides spread out? The defense HAS to spread across the field to cover the area where the wide-outs will run their routes. Wouldn't that by sheer numbers give you a MUCH better opportunity to run the football??? Especially when the receivers run routes away from the middle of the field. An added plus is IF the RB breaks loose the middle of the field is way more open.

Isn't that exactly what teams do to us??? You know why??? Because IT WORKS!!! Guys, offense isn't some magic requiring a genius to develop, it is pretty much the same thing that you learned in junior high! You simply have to be smart enough to either see what the opposing D is doing or brave enough to force them to do what you want them to do. And, right now we are neither!

Defense is really similar but in an opposite way. Figure out 1 thing that if you stop will make the opposing offense more predictable and maybe a bit 1 dimensional and then game plan to take that away. Try to make their offense uncomfortable. I haven't seen much of that either.

We simply need a coach that can and will do these things on a regular basis. The problem is that there are a ton of coaches just like BB, married to a system and too stiff to change. It is the guys that can adapt that are the truly great ones.
Who would have ever thought that Saban would go to a QB like Hurts and the RPO??? He is smart enough to see that the rules greatly benefit that type of offense so he adapted and takes advantage!

[porkrindjimmy]

We need a unique offense. Plain and simple. We will never be able to recruit year in and year out to be able to run what Bret wants to run. You can recruit to a system...and build around the system.

The only chance we have of being in the hunt every 3 or 4 years.

PRJ

[Wildhog]

If you can't put a semi-competent OL on the field, it doesn't matter what offense you run.

[lakecityhog]

What do you call unique? People have been running the spread for 30 years, run and shoot etc.
Triple option is 40 years old, the read option is nothing more than the old veer.

Remember there is nothing new under the sun!

[Arkansas Fan]

What's a "unique" offense? I see many on here say that Petrino's offense was something special, when even he ran out of the I-formation with a fullback, and also ran the pistol and shotgun. Enos/Bielema have been running the same thing.

It doesn't matter what offense, it's getting the players to run it with competent coaching.

[TuskFexas]

Last time we were competitive in the SEC we had elite skill players on offense.  We got those players because we had a coach that ran an exciting type of offense that kids wanted to play in.

That may not be the ONLY possible recipe for success here, but if it worked once it should work again.

[lakecityhog]

Fexas, we had some really good players. But, what we really had was a coach that saw and maximized the abilities of each one of those players. We had a coach that for the most part could see the defense and react in such a way as to stress the defense.

The problem was that Bama had Saban who was just as good with better players and LSU had a DC that was himself elite with very good players. We had some great games but came up short. We dii beat LSU a fair share of the time. Bama not only had great players and a great coach they got the benefit of every call/no call that ever came up in a game! (still do)

[ronmahony]

I don't know what the answer is. I do know it would be nice to see an O.C. come out and run something beside a delayed handoff almost every single down. He did surprise me a bit to start the second half, he passed the first down, then ran the delayed handoff the second down. Don't you know how taxing a game like playing us is on someone like Saban?

[12247]

It mostly boils down to coach smarts and the energy to go make it happen.  You cannot do 3 or 4 or even 5 walkthroughs on a play set and everybody's got it and its ready to use.  It isn't.  Unless you have superior talent you cannot just decide an offense or defense and then just go use it successfully.  Offense is mostly find the Ds weak spot and go hit it with what you got.  Get your few bluechippers on their few 3 stars.  It is your only real chance unless you are so bad the bluechippers are mailing it in, not fearing you at all.  D is exactly the opposite.  You are trying to place you best in the way of their best. It isn't easy and mostly, we don't even try.