(09-26-2016 01:12 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(09-26-2016 08:44 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  If Rice were to have a run-based offense, using one similar to Stanford's would be more practical.

If we had Stanford's athletes, which we don't--and won't for the foreseeable future. How would we run Stanford's offense with our players? How successful do you think it would be? Why?

What scheme can we run effectively with the quality of athletes that we can recruit? On both sides of the ball?

Having an offense that can score quickly in the 4th quarter is of little use if the same defense that got you 3 scores behind through 3 quarters is somehow going to have to hold them scoreless in the 4th while you score enough to catch up.

And here's the problem with that high powered passing offense. You go 3 and out a few times in the first half and you are going to be so far behind by halftime that you can't catch up no matter what you do offensively.

You want to beat a better team? Get good enough defensively to hold it to one score in the 4th quarter, and then worry about your offense. Or maybe get a big play in the kicking game.

But wait-wouldn't that be "boring" football that many have said has been the problem with attendance? But sounds a lot like the "successful" Conover years (I suspect those teams would clobber our recent teams) and also Fred Goldsmith. Sign me up!!!!

For that matter, I thought the boring wishbone we ran in 96 and 97 with Chad Nelson, Michael Perry and Benji Wood some of the most exciting we've ever had. Running the option on 4th and 5 and making it!

few things more exciting than making 4th downs.... but winning by 50 is also good.

(09-26-2016 01:12 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(09-26-2016 08:44 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  If Rice were to have a run-based offense, using one similar to Stanford's would be more practical.

If we had Stanford's athletes, which we don't--and won't for the foreseeable future. How would we run Stanford's offense with our players? How successful do you think it would be? Why?

What scheme can we run effectively with the quality of athletes that we can recruit? On both sides of the ball?

Having an offense that can score quickly in the 4th quarter is of little use if the same defense that got you 3 scores behind through 3 quarters is somehow going to have to hold them scoreless in the 4th while you score enough to catch up.

And here's the problem with that high powered passing offense. You go 3 and out a few times in the first half and you are going to be so far behind by halftime that you can't catch up no matter what you do offensively.

You want to beat a better team? Get good enough defensively to hold it to one score in the 4th quarter, and then worry about your offense. Or maybe get a big play in the kicking game.

I think it would be successful here--or at least a lot more successful than what we currently run (a watered down version of the spread offense everyone runs). We have a huge (for C-USA) line, good RBs, a history of developing TEs, and prototypical pro style QBs in Granato and Tyner. Stanford's offense seems to be built from the same pieces. Moreover, everybody else in C-USA runs a spread, and defenses are built in an attempt to stop that offense. So we'd show them something different.

Obviously this would depend on us hiring competent offensive coaches (which we currently don't have), who could implement a tough, physical, and disciplined version of that offense.

Odd, but Stanford plays more 'smash mouth' than most other Pac schools.

They also have somewhat more success than most spread teams with QBs in the NFL.

(09-26-2016 06:22 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Odd, but Stanford plays more 'smash mouth' than most other Pac schools.

They also have somewhat more success than most spread teams with QBs in the NFL.

This! Who knows, it could be a recruiting advantage for us. Plus, it could keep the other offenses off the field thus helping our defensive efforts.

One game I remember was ODU in 2014. We fell down huge early, then stormed back with our spread offense, only to lose it when the defense couldn't get a stop on the last drive.

(09-26-2016 05:58 PM)RiceFootball2K5 Wrote:  I think it would be successful here--or at least a lot more successful than what we currently run (a watered down version of the spread offense everyone runs). We have a huge (for C-USA) line, good RBs, a history of developing TEs, and prototypical pro style QBs in Granato and Tyner. Stanford's offense seems to be built from the same pieces. Moreover, everybody else in C-USA runs a spread, and defenses are built in an attempt to stop that offense. So we'd show them something different.
Obviously this would depend on us hiring competent offensive coaches (which we currently don't have), who could implement a tough, physical, and disciplined version of that offense.

I think it might work against CUSA opponents, but step outside the conference and I think we would struggle. Our huge (for CUSA) line isn't that huge compared to a P-5 opponent. Our good by CUSA standards personnel won't impress so much against better opposition. But it is clear to me that we need some kind of scheme change. We definitely need a tough, physical, disciplined version of something.

(09-26-2016 10:08 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(09-26-2016 05:58 PM)RiceFootball2K5 Wrote:  I think it would be successful here--or at least a lot more successful than what we currently run (a watered down version of the spread offense everyone runs). We have a huge (for C-USA) line, good RBs, a history of developing TEs, and prototypical pro style QBs in Granato and Tyner. Stanford's offense seems to be built from the same pieces. Moreover, everybody else in C-USA runs a spread, and defenses are built in an attempt to stop that offense. So we'd show them something different.
Obviously this would depend on us hiring competent offensive coaches (which we currently don't have), who could implement a tough, physical, and disciplined version of that offense.

I think it might work against CUSA opponents, but step outside the conference and I think we would struggle. Our huge (for CUSA) line isn't that huge compared to a P-5 opponent. Our good by CUSA standards personnel won't impress so much against better opposition. But it is clear to me that we need some kind of scheme change. We definitely need a tough, physical, disciplined version of something.

It would work.

It's not so much the scheme you run as it is matching resources to create leverage. Most elements of a successful passing game are essentially the same leverages of the triple option. Make a defender choose between one of two players while having to defend against the interior run. The option gives you an extra blocker but so does throwing the ball by removing a player from the box. Plus, throwing decompresses the defense by stretching the defender's choice vertically down the field.

Teach dynamics and not "schemes". Elements of leverage instead of plays. It is more about the person and less so about the system in which they trained. Independent thinkers instead of rote behavior.

(09-26-2016 07:09 PM)MemOwl Wrote:  One game I remember was ODU in 2014. We fell down huge early, then stormed back with our spread offense, only to lose it when the defense couldn't get a stop on the last drive.

But here's the thing. That spread offense could not have stormed back if the defense had not been getting stops at the same time. If you're down three scores you must not only score three times, but also stop the opponents from scoring, in order to come back. If you're down 35-14, you can come back by scoring 21, if you hold them scoreless at the same time. But if you let them score 21 while you are scoring 21, now you're behind 56-35, which may look better in some quarters, but you are no closer to winning than you were before. You can ask two questions. One, was the stop that we didn't make at the end simply a question of having to make one more stop than the defense had in them? Two, if we could stop them in the fourth quarter to allow us to get back into the game, how and why did we ever get so far behind in the first place? The best answer to the question of how do you come from three scores down in the fourth quarter is never to get three scores down in the fourth quarter.

(09-26-2016 11:10 PM)ruowls Wrote:  It would work.
It's not so much the scheme you run as it is matching resources to create leverage. Most elements of a successful passing game are essentially the same leverages of the triple option. Make a defender choose between one of two players while having to defend against the interior run. The option gives you an extra blocker but so does throwing the ball by removing a player from the box. Plus, throwing decompresses the defense by stretching the defender's choice vertically down the field.
Teach dynamics and not "schemes". Elements of leverage instead of plays. It is more about the person and less so about the system in which they trained. Independent thinkers instead of rote behavior.

You think like an offensive coordinator. Of course it will work. You can make it work. You can make anything work. Not mocking or attacking in any way. That's the way an OC needs to think to be any good. I'm not sure ours do, although I'm not sure whether it's at the OC level or the HC level that we don't think that way.

I'm just not sure that a system based on power is the best way for us to go. I think we do better getting our leverages from outsmarting people than from blowing them off the football. Of course, one might think the same of Stanford, but they've made their approach work. But just because our o-line may be big by CUSA standards is no indication that we can make a living blowing people off the ball. Big or not, they haven't really played that way in the past.

As for the rest, you're pretty much making the Barry Switzer/Mike Leach argument (in Leach's book) that Switzer's wishbone and Leach's air raid are basically the same offense. Same concepts, just applied and executed differently. That's why I'd like to see us marry the two. If you can stress linebackers by forcing them to choose between flowing to the option or dropping into pass coverage, then you have something. How effective would Hatfield's offense have been if defenses had to pull one or two people out of the box to deal with pass coverage? How effective would a passing offense be if defenses were limited in pass coverages by the need to keep enough people in the box to stop the option?

The reason coaches don't try that is because they fear it will be too hard to teach both. But one, I think that Rice players are smart enough to learn both, and therefore use our smarts to offset some disadvantages elsewhere. And two, when you teach it your way, as stressing defenders to create leverages, you convey a conceptual understanding that facilitates execution. And three, you don't really need a lot of plays or formations or personnel groups, so you can have a skinny playbook and focus on execution, execution, execution. You can have a complete option running game that threatens every hole two or three different ways in 10 plays. The run and shoot passing offense is 6 plays, the Air Raid basically 8, and a pretty complete quick passing game is about 6. Throw in 2 or 3 each of draws and screens, and you have a complete offense in about 35 plays. You passing guys always like a lot of formations so you can get the receiver matchups that you want, but I would stick to the Bill Walsh concept that you limit your formations by requiring that you don't get into any formation from which you can't run every play in your playbook.

And four, Paul Johnson has already done it, not once but twice, with Tracy Ham (who went on to a legendary career in Canada) at Georgia Southern and with Garrett Gabriel at Hawaii. Running the flexbone, Gabriel twice threw for over 2000 yards in a season, and Ham did it once plus twice more over 1500 yards. I used to love saying up way late on Saturday nights to watch the Hawaii game on TV just to see Gabriel run that offense. They scored 56 and 59 against BYU in consecutive seasons. Seeing Hawaii hang 42 on a Notre Dame team that was a year or two away from winning a national championship was also pretty special. They did that entirely with scheme and execution, because the talent gap was pretty wide. Gabriel had graduated by then, and the quarterbacks that night were Michael Carter and Ivin Jasper. Unfortunately for Hawaii, their defense let in 48. Which gets back to my idea about the importance of defense. Even so, if we could hang with ND for 60 minutes, I think our fans would be pretty happy. And that would definitely be serious progress from where we are now.

Okay, now you're going to tell me why this won't work, but I still think it would.

So why isn't Paul Johnson doing it now if he has done it before, twice?

You don't have to blow people of the ball. You just create seams to run through (leverage). That is essentially the option running game.

Formations do more than create mismatches. They force the defensive front to adjust which creates leverage in blocking.

You don't want to create specific plays with specific formations. That is what Walsh is saying. This just gives the defense keys to recognize what you are doing (think Wild Owl). Theoretically, you should be able to call most passing plays or running plays from any formation.

I get you like what you like. Too bad you have never seen me work. It might change your mind. Just saying.

I don't dispute your choices. I just think you are still a little too focused on labeling things.

I have more thinking skills than just OC.

A buddy of mine is a UNT fan, and was listening to the UNT broadcast during the game. He told me that coming out of halftime, while resetting the game to that point, the UNT announcer noted that Rice's scheme went "conservative" in the second quarter, and its offensive tempo slowed down, allowing UNT to catch its breath, make adjustments, and get back into the game. If it was that obvious to UNT's play-by-play guy, it had to be obvious to their coaches as well.

The hardest thing about grasping RU's concepts is that it is simply a different way of thinking about football. For most of us, it is foreign to our experience. My experience in soccer is the best way I can relate to his concepts... because while you certainly sometimes have 'plays', the defense is often less predictable in soccer so the offense has to be more flexible on the fly.

I'd note that Hatfield and Fred ran effectively against the SWC using smaller linemen than they had. Not really smash-mouth per se, but it certainly was lining up and running it down their throat. I honestly think you could do that at Rice, and STILL have an effective passing game. That is essentially the Stanford model, just now that they're more established, it isn't as hard for them to recruit prototypical linemen.

Numbers, formations don't just create match-ups... they also create angles... both offensively and defensively. Remember how wide Hatfield's line could get? That was to create blocking angles. Same with passing. If they're playing zone and you spread them out 5 yards wider, the passing lane they want to drop into is also changed. Now when you run the slant behind them, the 'open spot' is bigger because they have to run 5 yards further to get to it. These sorts of things/adjustments are difficult for teams to work on in a week because their muscle memory has them on a different angle and they simply can't get faster to make up the distance... especially when only SOMETIMES are you 5 yards wider. You might be narrower or even 10 yards wider. Now if it's more of a post than a slant, the angle is changed once again... merely by pushing slightly deeper. That's a simple difference, but I think you follow. It just depends on where you want to attack and who is responsible for that area. Move the area slightly to a place where he can't cover it.

One of the 'hot things' in defense now is linemen who are all standing and moving at the snap... hard to pre-determine blocking assignments... and players have to decide in a heartbeat whom to block.... and then you combine it with a 'hidden' blitz coming behind them. Offense can't do that pre-snap, but they CAN do it AT the snap.

(09-25-2016 07:35 AM)Ranger Wrote:  

(09-25-2016 03:12 AM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(09-24-2016 11:48 PM)texowl2 Wrote:  I agree that Walt is being harsh.

I don't (and it's rare for me to defend Walt).
I don't really care whether anybody calls Bailiff a "great man." I don't know one way or the other.
But the suggestion to give him a tenured position might be the kookiest idea ever written on this board.

I'm with Walt as well. While for the most part performing at a substandard level, DB has made over these last ten years far more money than most college educated people will earn in a lifetime. It has been the biggest "get over" ever.
WI is spot on. Only at Rice would he have gone this long without being fired.
If I heard of a school that retained him so long with his performance level, I would assume the school was either trying to kill the football team or simply did not care about it.
Gravy is also on point. A tenured position. Incredible.
I wonder what our professors think. Many of them are outstanding in their fields (and probably held to high standards.) Yet they make significantly less money I would think than someone who is not only at the top of his field, but not even average. And it is tolerated.
We need to send a message to the world that we are serious about excellence in everything we do, on and off the field. And that includes football. Good enough is not good enough, and below average is certainly not good enough.
Incidentally, not long ago, Rice football could have creamed Duke. Yesterday Duke beat Notre Dame on the road.

I've commented before on the position of Athletic Director in college athletics moving away from the active/retired coach's position to those with business and marketing backgrounds. I wonder if part of the problem at Rice isn't that the University Presidents have little business experience and have generally been those with academic backgrounds. The use of "tenured" may have been a misstatement, but it brings to light the fact that it seems the University Administration is not accustomed to firing anyone. I suspect that the hiring/firing process for coaches more closely resembles that of hiring a professor than it does hiring a C-Level executive.

Holding steady at #2 in ESPN's Bottom 10.

http://www.espn.com/college-football/sto...yes-crying

(09-27-2016 02:17 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Holding steady at #2 in ESPN's Bottom 10.

http://www.espn.com/college-football/sto...yes-crying

I'm impressed, we lose and move up a spot.

Granted, F_U and Charlotte are likely worse than we are.

(09-27-2016 02:21 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(09-27-2016 02:17 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Holding steady at #2 in ESPN's Bottom 10.

http://www.espn.com/college-football/sto...yes-crying

I'm impressed, we lose and move up a spot.

Granted, F_U and Charlotte are likely worse than we are.

That remains to be seen. Some were saying that about North Texas....
And I still thing PA&M could go either way.

(09-27-2016 09:38 AM)ruowls Wrote:  So why isn't Paul Johnson doing it now if he has done it before, twice?

I don't know. I think that's a question for Paul Johnson, not me. He's had a couple of QBs at Ga Tech that appear to throw as well as Tracy Ham and Garrett Gabriel did. Both Ham and Gabriel were just over 50% passers in the system, although Ham achieved higher completion rates in Canada. As an aside, when Ken Hatfield first came to Rice, he said a couple of things that suggested to me that he was going to do the whole Georgia Southern/Hawaii offense. David Lee also kind of suggested that a couple of times. Needless to say, I was disappointed when he didn't. There are videos of Hawaii hanging 56 and 59 on BYU and 42 on ND on youtube. If you have never seen them, take a look. An option play, a R&S play, an option play, a R&S play, over and over.

Quote:You don't have to blow people of the ball. You just create seams to run through (leverage). That is essentially the option running game.
Formations do more than create mismatches. They force the defensive front to adjust which creates leverage in blocking.
You don't want to create specific plays with specific formations. That is what Walsh is saying. This just gives the defense keys to recognize what you are doing (think Wild Owl). Theoretically, you should be able to call most passing plays or running plays from any formation.
I get you like what you like. Too bad you have never seen me work. It might change your mind. Just saying.
I don't dispute your choices. I just think you are still a little too focused on labeling things.

I don't think we are far apart. I think at times you have overemphasized our differences. I've kind of gotten the impression in the past that you favored drop back passing and a power running game, which is pretty much the Stanford way. I lean more toward option/finesse running, and a quarterback who can throw on the move. I like your ideas about beating coverages.

I agree that we can do the blocking that you need to establish the option, and I think we can pass protect, against even a pretty good team. It's our ability to force a power running game, where we do in fact have to blow people off the ball, that I question.

Quote:I have more thinking skills than just OC.

Of that I have no doubt.

(09-27-2016 09:38 AM)ruowls Wrote:  So why isn't Paul Johnson doing it now if he has done it before, twice?

You don't have to blow people of the ball. You just create seams to run through (leverage). That is essentially the option running game.

Formations do more than create mismatches. They force the defensive front to adjust which creates leverage in blocking.

You don't want to create specific plays with specific formations. That is what Walsh is saying. This just gives the defense keys to recognize what you are doing (think Wild Owl). Theoretically, you should be able to call most passing plays or running plays from any formation.

I get you like what you like. Too bad you have never seen me work. It might change your mind. Just saying.

I don't dispute your choices. I just think you are still a little too focused on labeling things.

I have more thinking skills than just OC.

What do you think about packaged plays?

(09-27-2016 09:38 AM)ruowls Wrote:  So why isn't Paul Johnson doing it now if he has done it before, twice?

You don't have to blow people of the ball. You just create seams to run through (leverage). That is essentially the option running game.

Formations do more than create mismatches. They force the defensive front to adjust which creates leverage in blocking.

You don't want to create specific plays with specific formations. That is what Walsh is saying. This just gives the defense keys to recognize what you are doing (think Wild Owl). Theoretically, you should be able to call most passing plays or running plays from any formation.

I get you like what you like. Too bad you have never seen me work. It might change your mind. Just saying.

I don't dispute your choices. I just think you are still a little too focused on labeling things.

I have more thinking skills than just OC.

RUOwls,
I bought a new book a few days ago titled "The Perfect Pass" by S. C. Gwynne, the author of "Empire of the Summer Moon", and have just started reading it. If you get a chance to read it, I would appreciate your thoughts on it. It is a fascinating discussion of the evolution of the modern passing game, and looks like it focuses primarily on Hal Mumme's experiences with the passing game and with coaches like LaVell Edwards, Bill Walsh and others. What's fascinating to me is how those coaches used the concepts of space, angles, etc., to enable less athletically talented teams to win, and how just a few basic alignments can be the starting points for what looks like so many different passing plays. It seems to me that what the book is talking about is what you have been trying to tell the rest of us.