Nine years of the CPJ offense, how has it evolved?

TampaBayJacket

TampaBayJacket

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I was just thinking about this. In our first couple of years with some serious NFL talent on offense plus a beast at QB, we had an unbelievable dive play and QB keeper, but it seemed like we were either three and out or a 1 or 2 play TD drive. Then came Tevin and it just didnt seem to click like before but at least we could sustain drives without a huge amount of big plays like before. Then the Vad Lee experiment seemed to get us away from our base offense and it didnt work out too well. Finally, Justin Thomas was the dynamic playmaker we thought would thrive in this offense but his best year seemed to be his first year (year three wasn't too bad either). However, the point is the offense was both explosive and sustained drives while third and long no longer seemed utterly impossible.

The offense is clearly different but I cant put my finger on it. Help?
 
Is it the offense that's different, or how defenses are defending us that's different? That's what I think, ACC coaches have spent much more time on how to defend us and have come up with different/better scheme to combat our spread option attack.
 
With Thomas, you saw our passing game about as good as it's going to get. Having to find throwing lanes with his height and WR talent were issues at times. His third year was better than his first when you account for talent and experience around him. He seemed to make a lot of misreads in the running game and aspects of our offense were less effective without a QB who could consistently get three yards if a block was missed. As far as some things that have changed; AB motion is later in the snap count to counter defenses, AB pitch relationship seemed to be decreased with Thomas, amount of drive blocking due to BB strengths/weaknesses, arc blocking with rules changes, WR blocking and route running/body positioning.
 
I think you saw more death marches under Tevin because neither he nor Sims had the speed to tear off a big run. He made good reads, but a window for JT to go 50 just wasn't available to Tevin. It's not a slam, just fact. Tevin was great at making reads.
 
WracerX said:
I think you saw more death marches under Tevin because neither he nor Sims had the speed to tear off a big run. He made good reads, but a window for JT to go 50 just wasn't available to Tevin. It's not a slam, just fact. Tevin was great at making reads.
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I tend to remember tevin having more long td runs. Defenses left him some WIDE lanes.
 
Nothing has changed. Only the ability to execute has varied. Paul Johnson runs a cave man offense. If you have enough cave men to run it, it is unstoppable. We just need a few more cavemen to win the Natty!

Go Jackets!
 
Only thing that changes is the players running it. And then that changes how PJ calls the plays.
 
It would help if we could recruit a B-Back who decides to stay. Everything is predicated on the fear of the mack truck, and we've yet to recruit a serious replacement for Dwyer and Ant (who CPJ inherited). Laskey and Days did well in splitting the duties to keep each other fresh, but they were both seniors running behind Shaq Mason on every play. And in the earlier years we also had Omoregie Uzzi.

If our success appears to be pinned on any positions other than QB, I would say it's BB and OG. We've had some great players at OG. But we can't convince BBs to play for more than 1.5 years, and that's always been a head-scratcher to me because it's the featured position of the offense. Here's hoping Dedrick lives up to the hype, but I'm not holding my breath that he plays as a senior. Every year it feels like we have to swap out positions to move a warm body to BB.
 
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The biggest change is pass pro. It's great not having our QB running for their lives. We seem to have some semblance of pocket presence and time in the pocket.

Also the change in the S&C. CPJ teams will usually have more stamina than its opponent but not be as fine tuned in other areas such power, short area quickness, &explosion. I think we are at point now where we focus and enhance those traits
 
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TampaBayJacket said:
I was just thinking about this. In our first couple of years with some serious NFL talent on offense plus a beast at QB, we had an unbelievable dive play and QB keeper, but it seemed like we were either three and out or a 1 or 2 play TD drive. Then came Tevin and it just didnt seem to click like before but at least we could sustain drives without a huge amount of big plays like before. Then the Vad Lee experiment seemed to get us away from our base offense and it didnt work out too well. Finally, Justin Thomas was the dynamic playmaker we thought would thrive in this offense but his best year seemed to be his first year (year three wasn't too bad either). However, the point is the offense was both explosive and sustained drives while third and long no longer seemed utterly impossible.

The offense is clearly different but I cant put my finger on it. Help?
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If you think Tevin didn't click, you clearly weren't paying attention.

The offense varied based on QB.

Nesbitt, everything keyed off the midline. We ran the triple, but how the linebackers set up for the midline was what we based our adjustments off of, because the midline was a guaranteed 4 yards, and a shitpile on cutbacks. The 08 offense was midline, triple, B Back speed option as our staples. The midline evolution by the 09 ACCCG included firing an A back into the midline gap, something I've never seen Navy do.

With Tevin, we ran less midline unless there was an obvious need, and CPJ got a little more timid with 4th down conversions. Tevin ran the reads of the triple better than any other QB we've had, and our offense looked the most like Navy that I've seen us run. Tevin was also wicked good at QB draws.

Vad couldn't make the line reads to run the triple with velocity. We evolved our offense around rocket-toss, rocket-action-pass. Wait, what was that? I think we just scored on UNC again.

JT14 we started truly exploiting rollouts, designed QB keepers, and run pass options, purely to capitalize on JT's speed. Then we'd pair that with zone dives into the boundary behind Shaq. In some ways, that's a lot like what NFL teams do, or Big 10 teams do. We kept the rocket to force them to scheme the rocket, and then once they were lined up to stop the rocket we'd zone dive them to catch the firing CB out of position. That's like the entire story of the 14 wins over UGA and Miss St.

JT15 nothing worked because our perimeter blockers would pick clovers and stick their fingers up their butts at the snap.

JT16 was similar in some ways to JT14, but with less talent at WR and no Shaq.

If we go with Matthew Jordan next year, expect a shift back to midline as the base play. He better work on his passing, though, or it'll be a long year.
 
It doesn't appear the scheme has changed hardly any. Success comes when you have a QB who can throw well enough to complete 55% of their passes and receivers who can catch the ball. This simple ability makes all the difference in the world. If they put 8 in the box and stunt they can disrupt the run game. If you keep the LB and DBs on their heals with a passing game it opens up the run. I'd like to see us pass 20-25% of the time as a general rule. That's just playcalling.
 
I think we need our OL to be in sync, but one of them has to be really good, skill players that can block, a quarterback that can throw, and at least one to two good receivers. So basically, a good OL, QB, WR and other skill players and we'll be ok. You're welcome.
 
I don't know that the offense has evolved per se. What definitely changes is the play calling. Play calling staples of one team can all but disappear with another.

Defenses have definitely gotten better (the rocket seems to always be well defended nowadays). I think we've reached a point where you can consider there to be established schemes for defending GT's option attack. The question for the opposing DC's is are they able to determine which scheme best fits their team and does the DC understand the scheme well enough to make adjustments.
 
bravejason said:
I don't know that the offense has evolved per se. What definitely changes is the play calling. Play calling staples of one team can all but disappear with another.

Defenses have definitely gotten better (the rocket seems to always be well defended nowadays). I think we've reached a point where you can consider there to be established schemes for defending GT's option attack. The question for the opposing DC's is are they able to determine which scheme best fits their team and does the DC understand the scheme well enough to make adjustments.
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What was interesting was how different the play calling was against VT with our backup QB. It was almost all QB keeper or dive play.
 
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