Official Option maggots vs No-option maggots Battleground Thread

I may be wrong here as i am not an X’s&O’s guy but it seems to me like the Josh Heupel /Central Florida version of the hurry-up shotgun spread attack might be one of the best ways to somewhat equalize the field against fb factories, IF you can get it going and not kill your own defense. I’d love to see Chadwick get a P5 job somewhere besides the ACC, Vanderbilt would be an interesting experiment for that system.
 
daBuzz said:
No, it's not THE one with a history of success here. We have won 4 national championships at GT. None of them were running the triple option. We won in 1990 running an offense that was part pro-set, part option. The difference was recruiting and coaching then and now.

And I know you guys want it to be so but there is literally no example anywhere of a P5 conference running the TO and recruiting at a high level. Regardless of my opinion of the offense or yours, the perception of it with high school recruits seems to be that it doesn't not enhance their chances to play in the NFL.
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If we’re going back as far as 1990, I’ll cite Nebraska as an example that you can absolutely recruit and win consistently by running the option.

But the landscape has changed since then. Do you see a way for us to win another national championship with our current model? I don’t. With the emergence of NIL, we’re falling even further behind in terms of talent recruitment. We can’t pay players OR coaches like the factories can. The next Lincoln Riley isn’t coming to GT because every school out there wants him. To a certain degree, we’re going to have to have a coach that other schools don’t want. If the choice is between an unqualified coach or one who is successful running an unpopular offense, I know which one I’m choosing every time.

And speaking of Lincoln Riley and unpopular offenses, the Air Raid was also considered a college-only gimmick when eccentric Mike Leach was the face of it. Similar to CPJ, Leach put up big offensive numbers despite relying largely on players who were not highly recruited and did not fit the NFL mold. The “perception” has obviously changed since then.
 
johncu said:
If we’re going back as far as 1990, I’ll cite Nebraska as an example that you can absolutely recruit and win consistently by running the option.

But the landscape has changed since then. Do you see a way for us to win another national championship with our current model? I don’t. With the emergence of NIL, we’re falling even further behind in terms of talent recruitment. We can’t pay players OR coaches like the factories can. The next Lincoln Riley isn’t coming to GT because every school out there wants him. To a certain degree, we’re going to have to have a coach that other schools don’t want. If the choice is between an unqualified coach or one who is successful running an unpopular offense, I know which one I’m choosing every time.

And speaking of Lincoln Riley and unpopular offenses, the Air Raid was also considered a college-only gimmick when eccentric Mike Leach was the face of it. Similar to CPJ, Leach put up big offensive numbers despite relying largely on players who were not highly recruited and did not fit the NFL mold. The “perception” has obviously changed since then.
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So have the rules, which 100% favor passing and catching the football over chop blocking and QB keepers. Teams are smart to try to find players to take advantage of that rather than banging their heads against the obvious rules progression of football.
 
johncu said:
If we’re going back as far as 1990, I’ll cite Nebraska as an example that you can absolutely recruit and win consistently by running the option.

But the landscape has changed since then. Do you see a way for us to win another national championship with our current model? I don’t. With the emergence of NIL, we’re falling even further behind in terms of talent recruitment. We can’t pay players OR coaches like the factories can. The next Lincoln Riley isn’t coming to GT because every school out there wants him. To a certain degree, we’re going to have to have a coach that other schools don’t want. If the choice is between an unqualified coach or one who is successful running an unpopular offense, I know which one I’m choosing every time.

And speaking of Lincoln Riley and unpopular offenses, the Air Raid was also considered a college-only gimmick when eccentric Mike Leach was the face of it. Similar to CPJ, Leach put up big offensive numbers despite relying largely on players who were not highly recruited and did not fit the NFL mold. The “perception” has obviously changed since then.
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Forget about the top factories because the option was no longer competing with them, either. Things were getting worse in that regard. What is our best path to winning the Coastal should be the first question, and CGC has already proven we can probably out-recruit everyone in the division save Miami and UNC (and when Mack Brown retires again, we might beat them too). We'll see what happens with NIL, but the talent gap has actually shrunk significantly so far and we're still getting good players even with a horrible record.

I am not opposed to an unconventional offense to try and get an edge, but we don't have to pick the absolute most despised one. By all means, gimme a disciple of Malzahn or June Jones or Mike Leach. I am even open to something with the word option in it, as long as you throw 20-25 times a game like Coastal Carolina does. CPJ's offense isn't going the way of the Air Raid in our lifetimes.
 
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smokey_wasp said:
Forget about the top factories because the option was no longer competing with them, either. Things were getting worse in that regard. What is our best path to winning the Coastal should be the first question, and CGC has already proven we can probably out-recruit everyone in the division save Miami and UNC (and when Mack Brown retires again, we might beat them too). We'll see what happens with NIL, but the talent gap has actually shrunk significantly so far and we're still getting good players even with a horrible record.

I am not opposed to an unconventional offense to try and get an edge, but we don't have to pick the absolute most despised one. By all means, gimme a disciple of Malzahn or June Jones or Mike Leach. I am even open to something with the word option in it, as long as you throw 20-25 times a game like Coastal Carolina does. CPJ's offense isn't going the way of the Air Raid in our lifetimes.
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Our best path to winning the Coastal is absolutely not what we are doing currently. We were in the Coastal race on virtually a yearly basis under CPJ, despite the aforementioned flaws. Hell, even in disappointing 2018 we were one play from winning the division. That seems so far away right now.

That being said, I think we mostly agree in the grand scheme of things. Some semblance of balance is beneficial, both strategically and in terms of fan/recruit perception. Not surprisingly, we did see more balance in 2009 and 2014 when we had guys that could throw and guys that could catch, so I have to wonder how much more passing we would’ve seen had we found more JT5s and less TQMs.

But I digress… I’ve watched a lot of Coastal games recently, because they’re the in-state Cinderella team and are really fun to watch. Chadwell’s “option” is completely different from CPJ’s, but I still think it would be a great fit for GT.
 
One thing to consider in favor of running option:

Thinking back over the last 25 or so years of GT football, our most successful teams had one thing in common: a nontraditional QB who was a fantastic player. Hamilton, Nesbitt, and Thomas were all a huge part of the reason those teams won big. In between those star QBs, we’ve mostly been pretty mediocre.

I’m too young to remember Hamilton’s recruiting, but I know that both Nesbitt and Thomas only came to GT because we offered the opportunity to play QB when nobody else would. Yes, I’m aware that Nesbitt was recruited as a wildcat QB hybrid, but it still holds true.

I think that running a “different” offense that features a shorter, mobile QB is a functional advantage in recruiting. There are lots of great athletes who are natural leaders, but just don’t have the measurables to play QB for a P5 school. Most of them end up playing DB or WR at factories, but we could (and have) stolen them away by promising a shot at QB. Even when it doesn’t work out at QB, they often end up being significant contributors elsewhere on the field. Guys like Jamal Golden, AJ Gray, Demond Smith, David Sims, etc. were not elite athletes, but all came to GT to play QB and all ended up starting or even excelling elsewhere. I think that is a meaningful advantage for a team that can’t currently compete head-to-head for players with the teams in the echelon that we want to be in.
 
johncu said:
Thinking back over the last 25 or so years of GT football, our most successful teams had one thing in common: a nontraditional QB who was a fantastic player. Hamilton, Nesbitt, and Thomas were all a huge part of the reason those teams won big. In between those star QBs, we’ve mostly been pretty mediocre.
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You left off Goose.
 
My sense of why we suck right now is we hired a recruiter/culture builder and surrounded him with one of the cheapest staffs in P5. I am not ready to pull the plug on the current plan until we see what a few professionals can do. Let's hope Chip Long is the dude.
 
johncu said:
If we’re going back as far as 1990, I’ll cite Nebraska as an example that you can absolutely recruit and win consistently by running the option.

But the landscape has changed since then. Do you see a way for us to win another national championship with our current model? I don’t. With the emergence of NIL, we’re falling even further behind in terms of talent recruitment. We can’t pay players OR coaches like the factories can. The next Lincoln Riley isn’t coming to GT because every school out there wants him. To a certain degree, we’re going to have to have a coach that other schools don’t want. If the choice is between an unqualified coach or one who is successful running an unpopular offense, I know which one I’m choosing every time.

And speaking of Lincoln Riley and unpopular offenses, the Air Raid was also considered a college-only gimmick when eccentric Mike Leach was the face of it. Similar to CPJ, Leach put up big offensive numbers despite relying largely on players who were not highly recruited and did not fit the NFL mold. The “perception” has obviously changed since then.
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No, I don't agree with this. I do NOT think Tech has to rely on a gimmick offense or "coaches other teams don't want" to win.
 
smokey_wasp said:
My sense of why we suck right now is we hired a recruiter/culture builder and surrounded him with one of the cheapest staffs in P5. I am not ready to pull the plug on the current plan until we see what a few professionals can do. Let's hope Chip Long is the dude.
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This is my take. We are what we are. Had CPJ duplicated 2016 in 2015, he wouldn’t have been coaching here in 2017 imho. Somebody with bigger money would have taken him. Someone like Arkansas. Someone who doesn’t have great access to great talent.

Our only real chance is the one we are currently perusing. Let’s call it the Gene Chizik model. We need to rotate through coordinators the way other schools rotate HC. Maybe we find the random HS coach running a new offense and we get him for 3 years. If he flames out, we aren’t broke. We need the HC to work recruits and donors. Up until this year, CGC did a good job at this. The wreckage of the 2021 season showed CGC might not be able to work the donors when things perform under expectations.

I would have preferred we picked up an OC from a school burning up some G5 conference. There are a lot of times a school elevates tge HC from one of these teams only to find out it was the coordinator with the secret sauce.
 
daBuzz said:
No, I don't agree with this. I do NOT think Tech has to rely on a gimmick offense or "coaches other teams don't want" to win.
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Gimmick is a pejorative that doesn’t really make sense anyway, so I’ll focus on the second part of your statement.

To be clear, I’d be thrilled if we could hire Nick Saban, but so would everyone else. Until our own Phil Knight steps up, we’re not getting a coach with a proven track record of P5 success, and even the high-end G5 guys are likely to have better options.

So if the choice is between:

1) A guy who is inexperienced and unqualified

2) A guy who has experience but mediocre results

3) A guy with a proven track record of success with a non-traditional system


The choice is obvious for me. You might call it “relying on a gimmick” but I prefer to think of it as finding a way to win despite the disadvantages.
 
johncu said:
Gimmick is a pejorative that doesn’t really make sense anyway, so I’ll focus on the second part of your statement.

To be clear, I’d be thrilled if we could hire Nick Saban, but so would everyone else. Until our own Phil Knight steps up, we’re not getting a coach with a proven track record of P5 success, and even the high-end G5 guys are likely to have better options.

So if the choice is between:

1) A guy who is inexperienced and unqualified

2) A guy who has experience but mediocre results

3) A guy with a proven track record of success with a non-traditional system


The choice is obvious for me. You might call it “relying on a gimmick” but I prefer to think of it as finding a way to win despite the disadvantages.
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Umm...you were the one who used the word gimmick in your analogy of CPJ's offense when you compared it to Lincoln Riley's. I was just picking up on your use of that word.

And, holy hell...do some of you guys have an inferiority complex or something? Those are NOT the only 3 choices a school like GT has and we are not forced to make a decision accordingly. I swear, I imagine some of you married the first girl who smiled at you because you were worried if you didn't, you might never get another chance.

And speaking of Lincoln Riley and unpopular offenses, the Air Raid was also considered a college-only gimmick when eccentric Mike Leach was the face of it. Similar to CPJ, Leach put up big offensive numbers despite relying largely on players who were not highly recruited and did not fit the NFL mold. The “perception” has obviously changed since then.
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daBuzz said:
Umm...you were the one who used the word gimmick in your analogy of CPJ's offense when you compared it to Lincoln Riley's. I was just picking up on your use of that word.

And, holy hell...do some of you guys have an inferiority complex or something? Those are NOT the only 3 choices a school like GT has and we are not forced to make a decision accordingly. I swear, I imagine some of you married the first girl who smiled at you because you were worried if you didn't, you might never get another chance.
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Not sure why you would call it an inferiority complex when I said the goal is to win. We just have different ideas about the best way to do that.

Honest question: Think about our coaching searches in the two major sports since the turn of the century…. How many candidates did we hire that didn’t fit into one of those three categories? How many did we even interview?
 
johncu said:
Not sure why you would call it an inferiority complex when I said the goal is to win. We just have different ideas about the best way to do that.

Honest question: Think about our coaching searches in the two major sports since the turn of the century…. How many candidates did we hire that didn’t fit into one of those three categories? How many did we even interview?
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Bobby Ross.
Chan Gailey.
Paul Johnson.
Ross had won multiple conference titles at Maryland before he came to Tech. And although I'm not nor was I then a huge Gailey fan, the fact remains that he took the Cowboys to the playoffs in multiple years there.
Obviously Paul Johnson had success at prior stops with Georgia Southern and Navy.

Or do you mean since the turn of the 21st century? If so, that's an abnormally short time frame to consider since Johnson was our coach for over 1/2 that timeframe alone.
 
daBuzz said:
Bobby Ross.
Chan Gailey.
Paul Johnson.
Ross had won multiple conference titles at Maryland before he came to Tech. And although I'm not nor was I then a huge Gailey fan, the fact remains that he took the Cowboys to the playoffs in multiple years there.
Obviously Paul Johnson had success at prior stops with Georgia Southern and Navy.

Or do you mean since the turn of the 21st century? If so, that's an abnormally short time frame to consider since Johnson was our coach for over 1/2 that timeframe alone.
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I do mean the 21st Century, because a lot has changed since then. Ross is a good example, and he’s the last one I could think of they doesn’t fit one of the aforementioned descriptions.

Gailey’s career record is mostly mediocre, so he falls under #2. We got exactly what you’d expect out of him, given his track record.

Johnson is nontraditional, and fits #3 perfectly.

Collins is #1, although you could make an argument for #2 if you think 2 mediocre years at Temple count as “experienced.”

Even in basketball, our last two coaching searches have resulted in other schools saying “good riddance” after we hired their coach away.
 
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