(12-12-2017 10:41 AM)cr11owl Wrote: Besides QB I think the most impact will be made with some solid offensive and defensive line editions. Since Bloomgren is an offensive line guy I’m not too worried about that. I’ll be interested to see who we can bring in on Dline. Probably one of the toughest positions for us to recruit and it has a major impact on the game.
I've said it before, one advantage of the option is that the kind of linemen you recruit for offense, generally smaller and quicker, are the kind that you need on defense, and you can move linemen back and forth to some extent, as needed. If you're in a spread, you need a bunch of 300+ pound pass protectors who can't play defense. And you need a drop-back quarterback who can't play anywhere else, whereas option quarterbacks tend to be athletes first who can play safety (or even linebacker).
I'm not arguing for the option. I'm just stating why I think it works well for the academies. I think you have to throw the ball more than option teams do in order to be able to win. I like something like what Paul Johnson did with Erk Russell at Georgia Southern and Bob Wagner at Hawaii, where they combined the option and the run-and-shoot. Still love watching videos of the likes of Tracy Ham in the 1-AA playoffs or Garret Gabriel and Ivin Jasper lighting up teams like BYU and Notre Dame. I still think it would be an appropriate use of our guys' intellectual capabilities to combine the option (11 plays, all running, inside veer, outside veer, inside reverse, outside reverse, trap, trap option, counter option, midline, midline option, jet sweep, double option), the run-and-shoot (6 plays, all passes, choice, go, slide, smash, streak, switch) and the Air Raid (6 plays, all passes, verticals, mesh, shallow cross, sail, wheel, cross) with a few screens and draws. I think that is a sufficiently limited playbook that we could execute all of it well, and that puts defenses in a terrible quandary. In particular, it puts Ruowls's guy to stress under incredible stress.
The West Coast passing game plus power running is what Holmgren knows. It's not exactly what I prefer, but it's close enough. He's going to need some physical linemen on both sides of the ball to make that approach work. I'm not sure Rice can get as many of those as Stanford can in a P5 league. Then again, I'm not sure we need as many as Stanford gets to win against CUSA competition.
As old New England offensive coordinator Ron Erhart liked to say, "Throw to score and run to win."
