The UC offense was actually 90th in the S&P+ after the Miami game, after northwestern state the offense was in the 30's. But your general point being that the advanced numbers are not kind to the UC offense to date is well taken. Turnovers have a big part to play in that, and the Bearcats turnover rate is the highest its been since 2010. Keep in mind that the sample sizes are still small and Bill Connley who developed half of the F+ will readily admit that his numbers can be a bit wonky until late October when there is enough data in the system to get truly accurate assessments. Right now the Bearcats offense is average, but there is a huge difference in outcomes between being average on offense and being bad on offense.

This team could win out with the offense playing at current levels if the defense maintains its largely stellar play. Its not likely to happen, nor am I predicting it, but a change in the Bearcats luck which has been mostly negative to date could see it happen. I still think the offense needs to get better on first downs and start games faster.

Great stuff. You give way better words and insight than I am able to articulate.

It's this sort of insightful commentary that is so necessary.




mc

(10-11-2013 10:40 AM)Mopper Wrote:  The UC offense was actually 90th in the S&P+ after the Miami game, after northwestern state the offense was in the 30's. But your general point being that the advanced numbers are not kind to the UC offense to date is well taken. Turnovers have a big part to play in that, and the Bearcats turnover rate is the highest its been since 2010. Keep in mind that the sample sizes are still small and Bill Connley who developed half of the F+ will readily admit that his numbers can be a bit wonky until late October when there is enough data in the system to get truly accurate assessments. Right now the Bearcats offense is average, but there is a huge difference in outcomes between being average on offense and being bad on offense.

This team could win out with the offense playing at current levels if the defense maintains its largely stellar play. Its not likely to happen, nor am I predicting it, but a change in the Bearcats luck which has been mostly negative to date could see it happen.

Yes, this early the opponent adjustments are iffy and there are very real sample size issues across the board. And 79th is definitely in that "average" range for an FBS team. I guess it depends on who you are comparing UC to though, if we are supposed to be competitive with P5 teams then 79th is bad. Given our current conference it's not and we've got opportunities to turn things around but I am concerned that the injury issues at QB aren't going to get any better and I have my doubts that inserting Longo at C will fix the offensive line issues. Hopefully I'm wrong and hopefully it's obvious I'm wrong starting tonight.

Great post, Mopper. Thanks for the insight.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

Thanks Mopper! We have a lot of great posters on this board but as Q pointed out Mopper for his football knowldege and Marcus for his Cincy high school football acumen are two of the best. We also have some great posters contributing to recruiting in general. BearcatMark with NCAA tournament, the list goes on and on.

With all this being said ...... how does the Offense play out next year with a true drop back QB? With GKeil potentially running the O, does this offense suit his skill set?

(10-11-2013 07:28 AM)Mopper Wrote:  Prepare for a wall of text

Purely from a play calling perspective I think Gran is still fine. He has a better understanding of his personnel and has generally been doing an OK job getting the guys in spots where they can succeed. The early game plan against USF was his most creative yet, but it was poorly executed and blew up in his face.

Is Gran Art Briles or Scott Frost, no. But demanding that he get this offense to that level immediately is not fair, for the simple reason that UC hasn't been a consistently great offensive team for a long time.

The last time a UC offense executed at a high level from start to finish in the run game and throwing the football in the same game was back in 2010 against Rutgers. In 2011 and 2012 even when the Bearcats had good games against VT, South Florida a couple of times and North Carolina State they were never flawless performances.

At the time I don't remember anyone heaping praise on Butch and Bajakian. Now in the retelling those two have become masters compared to Gran. Which is odd because the offensive production at the moment is on par with the averages from the Jones era.

To my mind the biggest problem with the offense at the moment is brutally slow offensive starts. The Bearcats have one of the 20 worst offenses in the nation during the first quarter, and a top 40 offense the rest of the time.

The slow starts are a problem that Gran inherited. UC got off to dreadful starts throughout the month of November (temple aside) a year ago, and they started the Belk Bowl so poorly that the game almost got away from them against Duke before the Blue Devils inevitable defensive collapse allowed the Bearcats to get a foothold in the game.

The slow starts have bled into 2013. At this point starting games slowly is just what Cincinnati does on offense. It hasn't hurt them at home, yet, but its killed them on the road.

The Bearcats were an outright disaster in the opening frame last week when the first three drives ended with a blocked kick for a TD, interception and punt enroute to 13-0 hole that became 20-6 when the Bulls got another non offensive score on the Moore fumble. Against Illinois the defense completely collapsed before the offense could get any rhythm going.

One refrain that I have heard constantly is that Gran took over a 10 win offense from a year ago and has cratered it in less than a year on the job. Thats just objectively not true because the offense he is coaching today is not the one he was coaching in the Spring, let alone the one he thought he would be coaching when he took the job in January.

This offense has been decimated by injuries going back to camp. Sprague, Munchie, Tion, McClung, Chisum, Bujnoch, Lefeld and Kay have all either missed time or been limited by injury. Injuries aren't an excuse for anything, they happen to every team, but it should at least be acknowledged that Gran hasn't yet had his personnel at full strength this season.

Two of those injuries have had lasting and detrimental effects on the performance of the offense. Dan Sprauge was probably not going to be all conference, but he is missed on this offense. Deyshawn Bond did reasonably well in the first three games of the season, but he really struggled against Miami when Austin Brown dominated him and last week against USF. Physically is can hold his own, but where Sprague is missed dearly is in the pre snap.

It almost always falls on the center to communicate with the rest of the offensive line what the protections scheme will be. He needs to read the defense, figure out if a blitz is coming, if so in which gap. He needs to figure out what the defensive linemen are going to do, will there be a stunt? If so who is involved, and who is responsible for picking it up. He then has to communicate to the rest of the line what each mans responsibility is. And he has to do all of this in about five seconds. Then he has to snap the ball and deal with the 300 pound beast in front of him.

Bond is new to center, his first ever snap as a center came against Purdue, he was a tackle in high school. And he has struggled to get UC in the right schemes for the last two games against USF and Miami and their three man fronts. In the third quarter against USF Hiller moved Sam Longo to Center and it had an immediate positive effect in getting UC in the right protections, but he is not as accurate with his snaps. I suspect Longo will start at Center tonight. I just don't know if Hiller can trust Bond to go out there and go it alone as he has for the first five games. Bond will be a very good center, but he has alot of work to do on the mental aspect of the position. He just might not be ready after all

Then there is Kay who is clearly not healthy, but there is something else going on there as well. Kay doesn't play with the same confidence and swagger that he had last year. In the last two games I have seen Kay get more incompletion's by throwing bad balls than in the rest of the games he has played combined. He doesn't trust the pocket to be stable, which throws off his footwork, which kills his accuracy. He doesn't seem to trust his reads either. The sum total of this is that over the last two games he has averaged 5.7 yards per attempt, which is really really below average. And he has thrown more picks in his last 54 attempts (4) than he did in 176 that proceeded them (2).

Does Gran deserve some culpability in sticking with Bond a touch to long and putting a clearly sub 100 percent Kay in tough spots, or with not getting UC off to faster starts, sure. But the hyperbole around Gran is ridiculous.

So, long story short do I still have trust in Gran? yes. There are things that I disagree with in his play calling to be sure. I think that he needs to throw on first down more often. I think Shaq Washington and Mekale McKay need more targets and Tion Green needs more carries. But I don't think it makes any sense to call him a failure at this point because the offense isn't that bad. If you want an abysmal offense go watch TCU, Virginia Tech, or Michigan State. Those are teams with as much or more talent than UC, and they are doing much, much less.

You mean to tell me it's not bc Gran is on the golf course all day long with TT???

Fantastic analysis Mopper!

I'm not a football coach but I think I have an idea of what else besides the injury has been wrong with BK this year.

He's always seemed like a rhythm passer to me, the faster and steadier the tempo the better he seemed to perform. I started to wonder going into Friday night that maybe the whole slow down, lets go back in to the huddle and discuss things tempo gave him too much time to cool down and over-think things. But Friday night once they got in to the no-huddle speed-up offense he seemed to get right in rhythm, gained confidence, and really upped his completion percentage.

I may be way off or completely wrong, but it's just what it looked like to me.

(10-13-2013 10:45 AM)Fubar Wrote:  

(10-11-2013 07:28 AM)Mopper Wrote:  Prepare for a wall of text

Purely from a play calling perspective I think Gran is still fine. He has a better understanding of his personnel and has generally been doing an OK job getting the guys in spots where they can succeed. The early game plan against USF was his most creative yet, but it was poorly executed and blew up in his face.

Is Gran Art Briles or Scott Frost, no. But demanding that he get this offense to that level immediately is not fair, for the simple reason that UC hasn't been a consistently great offensive team for a long time.

The last time a UC offense executed at a high level from start to finish in the run game and throwing the football in the same game was back in 2010 against Rutgers. In 2011 and 2012 even when the Bearcats had good games against VT, South Florida a couple of times and North Carolina State they were never flawless performances.

At the time I don't remember anyone heaping praise on Butch and Bajakian. Now in the retelling those two have become masters compared to Gran. Which is odd because the offensive production at the moment is on par with the averages from the Jones era.

To my mind the biggest problem with the offense at the moment is brutally slow offensive starts. The Bearcats have one of the 20 worst offenses in the nation during the first quarter, and a top 40 offense the rest of the time.

The slow starts are a problem that Gran inherited. UC got off to dreadful starts throughout the month of November (temple aside) a year ago, and they started the Belk Bowl so poorly that the game almost got away from them against Duke before the Blue Devils inevitable defensive collapse allowed the Bearcats to get a foothold in the game.

The slow starts have bled into 2013. At this point starting games slowly is just what Cincinnati does on offense. It hasn't hurt them at home, yet, but its killed them on the road.

The Bearcats were an outright disaster in the opening frame last week when the first three drives ended with a blocked kick for a TD, interception and punt enroute to 13-0 hole that became 20-6 when the Bulls got another non offensive score on the Moore fumble. Against Illinois the defense completely collapsed before the offense could get any rhythm going.

One refrain that I have heard constantly is that Gran took over a 10 win offense from a year ago and has cratered it in less than a year on the job. Thats just objectively not true because the offense he is coaching today is not the one he was coaching in the Spring, let alone the one he thought he would be coaching when he took the job in January.

This offense has been decimated by injuries going back to camp. Sprague, Munchie, Tion, McClung, Chisum, Bujnoch, Lefeld and Kay have all either missed time or been limited by injury. Injuries aren't an excuse for anything, they happen to every team, but it should at least be acknowledged that Gran hasn't yet had his personnel at full strength this season.

Two of those injuries have had lasting and detrimental effects on the performance of the offense. Dan Sprauge was probably not going to be all conference, but he is missed on this offense. Deyshawn Bond did reasonably well in the first three games of the season, but he really struggled against Miami when Austin Brown dominated him and last week against USF. Physically is can hold his own, but where Sprague is missed dearly is in the pre snap.

It almost always falls on the center to communicate with the rest of the offensive line what the protections scheme will be. He needs to read the defense, figure out if a blitz is coming, if so in which gap. He needs to figure out what the defensive linemen are going to do, will there be a stunt? If so who is involved, and who is responsible for picking it up. He then has to communicate to the rest of the line what each mans responsibility is. And he has to do all of this in about five seconds. Then he has to snap the ball and deal with the 300 pound beast in front of him.

Bond is new to center, his first ever snap as a center came against Purdue, he was a tackle in high school. And he has struggled to get UC in the right schemes for the last two games against USF and Miami and their three man fronts. In the third quarter against USF Hiller moved Sam Longo to Center and it had an immediate positive effect in getting UC in the right protections, but he is not as accurate with his snaps. I suspect Longo will start at Center tonight. I just don't know if Hiller can trust Bond to go out there and go it alone as he has for the first five games. Bond will be a very good center, but he has alot of work to do on the mental aspect of the position. He just might not be ready after all

Then there is Kay who is clearly not healthy, but there is something else going on there as well. Kay doesn't play with the same confidence and swagger that he had last year. In the last two games I have seen Kay get more incompletion's by throwing bad balls than in the rest of the games he has played combined. He doesn't trust the pocket to be stable, which throws off his footwork, which kills his accuracy. He doesn't seem to trust his reads either. The sum total of this is that over the last two games he has averaged 5.7 yards per attempt, which is really really below average. And he has thrown more picks in his last 54 attempts (4) than he did in 176 that proceeded them (2).

Does Gran deserve some culpability in sticking with Bond a touch to long and putting a clearly sub 100 percent Kay in tough spots, or with not getting UC off to faster starts, sure. But the hyperbole around Gran is ridiculous.

So, long story short do I still have trust in Gran? yes. There are things that I disagree with in his play calling to be sure. I think that he needs to throw on first down more often. I think Shaq Washington and Mekale McKay need more targets and Tion Green needs more carries. But I don't think it makes any sense to call him a failure at this point because the offense isn't that bad. If you want an abysmal offense go watch TCU, Virginia Tech, or Michigan State. Those are teams with as much or more talent than UC, and they are doing much, much less.

You mean to tell me it's not bc Gran is on the golf course all day long with TT???

Ha ha, well said!!!!!!!!!!!

Watched the first quarter of the UCLA vs Cal game last night, and to my untrained eye, the offense we ran friday night looked a lot like what Noel Mazzone was doing, at least formation-wise. Almost exclusively four WR one RB sets in the shotgun or pistol with a fast tempo. Unfortunately for them, UCLA also looked just as penalty prone as we did.

(10-13-2013 12:23 PM)JackieTreehorn Wrote:  Watched the first quarter of the UCLA vs Cal game last night, and to my untrained eye, the offense we ran friday night looked a lot like what Noel Mazzone was doing, at least formation-wise. Almost exclusively four WR one RB sets in the shotgun or pistol with a fast tempo. Unfortunately for them, UCLA also looked just as penalty prone as we did.

I guess penalties are the unfortunate part of that offensive system

(10-13-2013 12:23 PM)JackieTreehorn Wrote:  Watched the first quarter of the UCLA vs Cal game last night, and to my untrained eye, the offense we ran friday night looked a lot like what Noel Mazzone was doing, at least formation-wise. Almost exclusively four WR one RB sets in the shotgun or pistol with a fast tempo. Unfortunately for them, UCLA also looked just as penalty prone as we did.

It is. Mazzone was Tuberville's OC at Ole Miss and Auburn. Gran was the RB coach then. Gran went out to UCLA earlier this year to pick up some pointers from Mazzone.

I watched UCLA play Uth last week and and their QB had two pooch punts.

(10-13-2013 01:03 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(10-13-2013 12:23 PM)JackieTreehorn Wrote:  Watched the first quarter of the UCLA vs Cal game last night, and to my untrained eye, the offense we ran friday night looked a lot like what Noel Mazzone was doing, at least formation-wise. Almost exclusively four WR one RB sets in the shotgun or pistol with a fast tempo. Unfortunately for them, UCLA also looked just as penalty prone as we did.

It is. Mazzone was Tuberville's OC at Ole Miss and Auburn. Gran was the RB coach then. Gran went out to UCLA earlier this year to pick up some pointers from Mazzone.

I watched UCLA play Uth last week and and their QB had two pooch punts.

It's just that friday was a departure for UC in that it seemed like we had the QB under center much more in prior games. I think I saw a TE only a handful of times all night.

Jackie (and to anyone else that is interested)-- here is a link to a site I found awhile back that serves as a primer for Mazzone's offensive philosophy. Reading this and you a lot of the concepts we are trying to run here. Our issue right now is that the team (and OC) are just learning it:
http://www.bruinsnation.com/2011/12/22/2...philosophy

For those not interested in reading, the tenants of the offense are bubble screens, outside screens, inside hand-offs to set up the vertical passing game.

(10-13-2013 01:27 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Jackie (and to anyone else that is interested)-- here is a link to a site I found awhile back that serves as a primer for Mazzone's offensive philosophy. Reading this and you a lot of the concepts we are trying to run here. Our issue right now is that the team (and OC) are just learning it:
http://www.bruinsnation.com/2011/12/22/2...philosophy

For those not interested in reading, the tenants of the offense are bubble screens, outside screens, inside hand-offs to set up the vertical passing game.

Thanks for the link.

That pooch punt has turned into such a great weapon if you have a QB who can execute it properly. The defense just can't risk putting someone back to field the potential punt due to the risk of being caught short handed if the offense ends up trying to pick up the 1st down. Brendon was deadly with placement on friday. Hope Kiel and Coney are practicing....

There is certainly a lot of similarities between what Mazzone has done with the Bruins and what Gran is trying to do with the Bearcats. Both are trying to bolt downhill rushing attacks onto what we have come to see as spread passing games. The difference is that the Bruins run an Air Raid based passing game. What the Bearcats do in the passing game has roots in what Joe Tiller did at Purdue. The effect is similar, but the differences at notable.

I think it also helps to have a Brett Hundley...