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OT - Taking an Air Raid (and more) seminar from Mike Leach
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Owl 69/70/75 Offline
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Post: #21
RE: OT - Taking an Air Raid (and more) seminar from Mike Leach
(05-23-2019 01:47 AM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  Bad wording on my part. I should have said an offensive scheme preferred by an already-failed coaching staff. Both the wishbone/flexbone and a run-heavy spread qualify. I don’t think the offensive formations (at this two-word summary level) were among those staffs’ biggest problems.
My point wasn’t really about the schemes.
After all this time, across multiple coaching regimes, Rice still sees possession time as an offensive goal, even though we should have learned by now that:
  1. It is an easily manipulated metric.
  2. It is not a strictly or even predominantly offensive metric. What the defense allows is equally important.
  3. It is a completely useless metric if the defense and coverage units give up big plays.
If the underlying goal is ball control, plays per drive is a better metric. Success rate is better still. And yet here is Rice Football, resolutely trying to win the time-of-possession battle that our opponents aren’t even fighting.

Would it be fair to characterize the above as, "Ball control is meaningless unless you play good defense"? That's the thing that gets lost. The teams that win with ball control generally play good defense. As Rice teams have more and more emphasized ball control, they've gotten worse defensively.

I wonder if there's not a bit more to it than that. To play "pound the rock" you need great athletes on the "O" side of the ball. To play great defense, you need great athletes on the "D" side of the ball. Where Rice has been, and likely always will be, is short of enough great athletes to be great on both sides of the ball. So what about an approach that says, "We're going to put the majority of our best athletes on defense, at least to the point that we can be strong defensively, and on offense we are going to do something that is sufficiently unique to present preparation problems for our opponents, and we are going to beat you by out-scheming and out-executing you."

Kind of an extension of Fred's, "Play sound defense, win the kicking game, and have a quarterback," or an adaptation of Ken's, "Do something better (defense), or do something different (offense)."
(This post was last modified: 05-24-2019 12:43 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
05-24-2019 11:16 AM
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OptimisticOwl Offline
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Post: #22
RE: OT - Taking an Air Raid (and more) seminar from Mike Leach
(05-24-2019 10:26 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Ball control isn't the goal. Winning games or at least making them winnable is.

Exactly.
05-24-2019 11:47 AM
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ruowls Offline
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Post: #23
RE: OT - Taking an Air Raid (and more) seminar from Mike Leach
05-24-2019 02:27 PM
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Gravy Owl Offline
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Post: #24
RE: OT - Taking an Air Raid (and more) seminar from Mike Leach
(05-24-2019 11:16 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Would it be fair to characterize the above as, "Ball control is meaningless unless you play good defense"? That's the thing that gets lost. The teams that win with ball control generally play good defense. As Rice teams have more and more emphasized ball control, they've gotten worse defensively.

I agree with that, but it’s not the point I was trying to make. I am focusing on possession time. When I said “ball control” I meant sustaining drives. There are different ways to sustain drives and different ways to measure that.

I mentioned success rate and plays per drive above. First downs per drive is another.

Instead, we have spent most of the past quarter-century fixated on time of possession. That’s the metric that rewards slow pace (neither a winner nor a loser in general AFAIK) and perversely rewards allowing big plays on defense and special teams.

It’s also one of the few metrics the 2018 Owls excelled in. Slow-paced offense + hot-butter defense = win time of possession + lose the game. We’ve witnessed that formula before, but last year’s team really exemplified it.

My hope for the 2019 season is to never hear or read Rice coaches or fans mention time of possession as if it’s a useful goal. I recognize this is wildly improbable and might get somebody fired.
05-24-2019 03:26 PM
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