(09-09-2019 09:51 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(09-09-2019 09:45 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(09-09-2019 09:28 AM)Volente Beach Owl Wrote:  

(09-07-2019 12:21 PM)nightowl24 Wrote:  Watched the game last night.

It seems our coaching staff isn't creating schemes to players but rather has a scheme and is trying to make the players fit. I'm not seeing us taking advantage of our players best attributes. Didn't see all our best athletes on the field at the same time.

Our offense is no different than the triple option. If we aren't ahead it doesn't work. We aren't scoring a lot and our defense can't hold up.

Defensively we don't bring enough pressure and when we do we don't get there. Our cbs are playing a physical style of press coverage and they aren't physical players. They got manhandled at the line repeatedly. I know ellis and what he can do. That technique will never work for him. Minimal physicality and great position is what he does best. Our angles are bad as well. Many long plays could be stopped but we take crap angles so we get out ran.

We don't push trammel down field enough. We make it easy to defend him. Our defensive and offensive schemes are highly unimaginative and we aren't trying to get good match ups.

There's a lot to improve upon. In general we aren't fast. I would like to see use blocking angles to create space and a leveled passing game to stress the defense. Hopefully we can figure out how to get our play makers the ball more in space.

Sorry, nightowl, I know you were well-intentioned... but I disagree with pretty much every thought in here. The thought of adjusting our schemes to fit our talent is truly the opposite of what we should be doing. Read Mike Leach's book, Swing Your Sword, for the reasons why. When you have lesser talent (being realistic here) than most of our opponents, you have to play faster and smarter by knowing your SYSTEM better than they know their system. It's not realistic to think that we can out-talent, out-physical, or out-speed our opponents. We should plan for the opposite, in fact.

I haven't read Mike Leach's book and I'm not really disagreeing with your point. But my take is that nightowl24 (and others) think the system should have been different from day 1 because the coaches should have recognized the relative strengths and weaknesses of the players and installed a system from Day 1 to fit the players they had. So the gripe isn't really that the coaches aren't completely revamping the system on the fly as the season progresses, but instead that the system installed clearly did not fit Rice's personnel when it was installed. So Rice's players would have been just as familiar with whatever alternative system might have been put in place.

But its entirely possible that I am misinterpreting nightowl24 (and others).

I am really confused. When do we get to the square pegs/round holes part?

Well, the center is the only square one. Everyone else is round.

(09-09-2019 09:45 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(09-09-2019 09:28 AM)Volente Beach Owl Wrote:  

(09-07-2019 12:21 PM)nightowl24 Wrote:  Watched the game last night.

It seems our coaching staff isn't creating schemes to players but rather has a scheme and is trying to make the players fit. I'm not seeing us taking advantage of our players best attributes. Didn't see all our best athletes on the field at the same time.

Our offense is no different than the triple option. If we aren't ahead it doesn't work. We aren't scoring a lot and our defense can't hold up.

Defensively we don't bring enough pressure and when we do we don't get there. Our cbs are playing a physical style of press coverage and they aren't physical players. They got manhandled at the line repeatedly. I know ellis and what he can do. That technique will never work for him. Minimal physicality and great position is what he does best. Our angles are bad as well. Many long plays could be stopped but we take crap angles so we get out ran.

We don't push trammel down field enough. We make it easy to defend him. Our defensive and offensive schemes are highly unimaginative and we aren't trying to get good match ups.

There's a lot to improve upon. In general we aren't fast. I would like to see use blocking angles to create space and a leveled passing game to stress the defense. Hopefully we can figure out how to get our play makers the ball more in space.

Sorry, nightowl, I know you were well-intentioned... but I disagree with pretty much every thought in here. The thought of adjusting our schemes to fit our talent is truly the opposite of what we should be doing. Read Mike Leach's book, Swing Your Sword, for the reasons why. When you have lesser talent (being realistic here) than most of our opponents, you have to play faster and smarter by knowing your SYSTEM better than they know their system. It's not realistic to think that we can out-talent, out-physical, or out-speed our opponents. We should plan for the opposite, in fact.

I haven't read Mike Leach's book and I'm not really disagreeing with your point. But my take is that nightowl24 (and others) think the system should have been different from day 1 because the coaches should have recognized the relative strengths and weaknesses of the players and installed a system from Day 1 to fit the players they had. So the gripe isn't really that the coaches aren't completely revamping the system on the fly as the season progresses, but instead that the system installed clearly did not fit Rice's personnel when it was installed. So Rice's players would have been just as familiar with whatever alternative system might have been put in place.

But its entirely possible that I am misinterpreting nightowl24 (and others).

But that is assuming your SYSTEM isn't FLAWED. What Leach is saying is that if you are less talented, and if you apply a design advantage quicker than your opponent, their athleticism advantage is mitigated. It is what I have been saying. But, to gain the advantage, there has to be a schematic advantage. And what I and I believe nightowl are saying is that the current scheme has some flaws. I don't care what system is run. It just can't have obvious inherent design flaws. I don't care how well you know your system and how quickly you run it if it is flawed. It won't succeed. I go back to the 4th down play against Army because it is a great example of what we are saying. That play is classic for the "pound the rock" system. So why did it fail? Was Army that much better athletically? I am not buying it. Did Army know their system better than we knew ours? Nope, still not buying it. The players did their jobs as assigned in this system. If you grade it out based on doing their job they all will score high. The problems started with the DT that bled through. And the play as designed differed from the play that 2009 Stanford ran specifically in this spot and in the flaw in the route run by the secondary flat receiver. It is as simple as that. This play actually had a design flaw that the players were unable to overcome, as would be expected. Leach's premise is that his system doesn't have such inherent flaws so his players running his system faster would mitigate the athleticism disparity. Now add in more plays that have these design flaws and it is easy to see why Rice is 0-2. It isn't the system as much as the design of the system that doesn't create more advantageous opportunities. And it has nothing to do with the system or selection of players or immaturity of the players or what ever else reason you can think of. It has to do with the lack of understanding the theory of the game. The game is more nuanced than just running a system faster than your opponent.

It's essentially where Bum's 'take his'n and beat your'n then take your'n and beat his'n' comes from.

He doesn't make the players think or run any faster, he simply makes what they are capable of doing 'more effective'.

Ruowls always does a better job of explaining offensive premises than I do lol. Maybe its the defensive player in me lol

But yes what he's saying is true. Our design is flawed from the beginning. I will never feel that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. What do need to do is look at what we have and take advantage of what each player does really well and highlight it. What we ate saying is "you played still do this and be better than the other team" even if we can't do that. That needs hopelessness and distrust within your team. I remember when Hatfield took two 5'5" scat back players and tried to make them down hill blockers. that's when we started having trouble. Making players do things they just aren't good at. Would you make randy moss run precision routes or would you have him popping the top of the defense going up being better than than the db? Would you take wes Welker and have him running 45yd fades trying to out athlete a db? No you wouldn't in either case. essentially in my opinion that's what we're doing on offense.

Defense is sound scheme and effort. Offense is execution. We can't out athlete people on defense, hell we can't just make up for a busted play. We have to get more speed if we're going to survive. I can deal with less speed on offense if, like ruowls said, they understand the game. Know where to be, what we're trying to do and attack the angles properly.

Out of curiosity.. To the football minds, why is it that to my untrained eye, that it seems like most college coaches have a 'system'? Y'all make great points about why this top-bottom approach leaves too much of your best talent on the bench, but I'm wondering about the feasibility of your approach.

In essence, I'm asking if there is a single college team out there that's actually been effective in a bottom-up approach of putting its best athletes/players on the field and making a system to fit them? Based on the other comments so far on this thread, we've already cited the current staff, Bailiff's staff, and (if I understood correctly) Mike Leach's staff as all being top-bottom people.

Because if there is not a single bottom-up system in the college ranks, perhaps we're being too conventional. However, of course, if the examples exist, the follow-up question becomes, 'Are these examples being paid more than our budget?'

what were saying is don't completely abandon your system. But a good oc takes their system and formations and creates plays that suit his players. That is how the great offenses in the ncaa work. They also recruit guys that fit their system or like the big schools recruit the best athlete cause system doesn't matter(to an extent).

We are in a very special situation we're don't get the pick of the bunch slo we can just plug and play and we also sometimes having a hard time getting the exact puddin we need to make or system run. Therefore we have to be able to do both philosophies. Get the best athletes we can and put them into a system that easily adjustable to said athletes talents. currently it seems we have a system that is pretty static and requires a certain skill set. We aren't getting the cream of the crop with that skill so our output is reflecting that. Now I'm not knocking our players, I'm not saying they aren't any good. I'm simply saying we could make better use of their talents with better offensive scheming.

Quite frankly I see the same with the defense. I'm seeing cbs playing techniques that don't suit their skill set. Add a coach you have to be able to take and mold your scheme to fit your players as much as making your players fit your scheme. Honestly that's what makes saban so good. His offenses and defenses have changed year RIP year based on players abilities. They have a general philosophy but they make sure they are taking full advantage of each players given abilities within their overall scheme. This is where I see us lacking. from my standpoint it doesn't seem that out would be very hard. Just a few tweaks here and there and I think the output would be a little different.

(09-10-2019 12:12 AM)MartelOwl_08 Wrote:  Out of curiosity.. To the football minds, why is it that to my untrained eye, that it seems like most college coaches have a 'system'? Y'all make great points about why this top-bottom approach leaves too much of your best talent on the bench, but I'm wondering about the feasibility of your approach.

In essence, I'm asking if there is a single college team out there that's actually been effective in a bottom-up approach of putting its best athletes/players on the field and making a system to fit them? Based on the other comments so far on this thread, we've already cited the current staff, Bailiff's staff, and (if I understood correctly) Mike Leach's staff as all being top-bottom people.

Because if there is not a single bottom-up system in the college ranks, perhaps we're being too conventional. However, of course, if the examples exist, the follow-up question becomes, 'Are these examples being paid more than our budget?'

I am not advocating to let the inmates run the asylum. I will try to be a little more clear because obviously you have to have organizational structure from the top down.
There is a difference between “best athlete” and “best player”. The ultimate system is the rules of the game. Each player has a skill set. Each team has a variety of tasks. The trick is to maximize productivity by matching skills with tasks across the board. The more athletic a player is, the greater the skill or the broader the skill set he has versus the opposition. Therefore, he is likely to be more productive than his opponent. It is possible to mitigate this advantage by altering the task so that the skills of your player more closely approximates the skill of the opponent. As such, this makes the outcome of the encounter a 50-50 proposition.
To achieve this, a coach can do several things. He can get different players with skill sets that more closely approximate those of the opponent. Or, the coach can find the skills his players have and create tasks across the board that can exploit an encounter to a more favorable outcome.
As an example, a statement was made to get a receiver more targets. That isn’t good enough. If the targets create a negative skill set disparity, then all you have is just more unsuccessful encounters. You want more successful encounters than unsuccessful ones.

(09-10-2019 12:12 AM)MartelOwl_08 Wrote:  Out of curiosity.. To the football minds, why is it that to my untrained eye, that it seems like most college coaches have a 'system'? Y'all make great points about why this top-bottom approach leaves too much of your best talent on the bench, but I'm wondering about the feasibility of your approach.

In essence, I'm asking if there is a single college team out there that's actually been effective in a bottom-up approach of putting its best athletes/players on the field and making a system to fit them? Based on the other comments so far on this thread, we've already cited the current staff, Bailiff's staff, and (if I understood correctly) Mike Leach's staff as all being top-bottom people.

Because if there is not a single bottom-up system in the college ranks, perhaps we're being too conventional. However, of course, if the examples exist, the follow-up question becomes, 'Are these examples being paid more than our budget?'

You've gotten great answers from a great (and fast) DB and a great (and slow) WR. Now you'll get the 2 cents from the guy who watched them.

There are two parts to your question. 1 is 'are these guys (coaches) looking to advance their careers'? If they are, they're going to want to coach the systems that the top teams use. The top teams get the most NFL caliber talent and you do that by getting them their multi-million dollar NFL contracts. An NFL caliber lineman or WR isn't going to play for a wishbone team because that would hurt his chances to get paid. A lineman who never run blocks isn't going to have questions that a lineman who did both won't. This is a little less important for a WR

2 is 'what do you mean by system'? There are some obvious ones like the wishbone vs air raid vs pro-style, but those aren't really systems in my mind. The SYSTEM is (to me) whether you follow the same book as your opponent in which case it now becomes about execution and talent... or whether you read from a different book.

An example of the former is where there is a play and 'formation' called on both sides. The defense can try and disguise their formation and the offense can shift and use motion, but they still have a formation. That formation creates a series of match-ups, adjustments and points of vulnerability. For me, it's most often characterized by a conversation that is along these lines.... If you call this play and they show cover 2, what is the adjustment?

An example of the latter was when Hatfield dropped his nose guard into coverage against the run and shoot. When we ran unbalanced early in the game against A&M a few years ago with some success.

Adapting a scheme to fit players doesn't have to be a wholesale shift. It can be as simple as running your standard offense but flexing your TE by a yard or two to change the angles to help the blocking.

Remember when we played Baylor in the old SWC and they had guys in the EZ spotting the line gaps? That's all that was.