Official Option maggots vs No-option maggots Battleground Thread

BS. solid Ds almost always shut us down. I don't understand your "Iowa was just straight-up more talented than us in '09" statement though. Wasn't the TO supposed to be the Mighty Difference Maker? The Equalizer of Talent Differential? Let's be honest - the '09 Iowa team Defense wasn't better than some of the later Clemson and mutt teams we faced....and the '09 Jackets were more talented than all but one of the later PJ-coached GT teams....yet that cornfed Iowa defense just put the clamps on the 2nd-best-but-probably-most-talented GT team PJ had on the Flats.

If the TO was Divine Perfection as you claim, most teams would run it. There's no perfect scheme. A D with the right scheme/personnel can and will stop all schemes and the TO is no different. It was nice for us at times and at other times it was hideous.

Like every single scheme in football.
You know, there are stats that account for stuff like that, and they’ve been posted here numerous times. You keep citing a few outliers from the CPJ tenure as if they are representative of the whole, but that just isn’t true. For every Iowa debacle, there was a game where we rushed for 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU, or somebody else with a lot more talent than us. Don’t take my word for it - the stats back me up.

The reality is that we consistently put up Top 25 offenses without anything close to Top 25 talent. In good years, we were unstoppable (ranked 2nd nationally in offensive efficiency in both 2009 and 2014). How many teams in the entire country had that type of consistency in a unit without having elite-level resources and talent? I’d wager only a handful.
 
Link didn’t work for me.

But like I said, I think Gailey was a good coach. He just had an obvious ceiling. We were never going to get a better team than 2006 with a great defense, a star RB, and a generational talent at WR, and he utterly failed when it counted that season.

CCG >>>> CGC, but I don’t think any of us would be excited about 7-5 every year with little hope of doing any better. At least CPJ showed that he could win big games when he had the players.
 

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You know, there are stats that account for stuff like that, and they’ve been posted here numerous times. You keep citing a few outliers from the CPJ tenure as if they are representative of the whole, but that just isn’t true. For every Iowa debacle, there was a game where we rushed for 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU, or somebody else with a lot more talent than us. Don’t take my word for it - the stats back me up.

The reality is that we consistently put up Top 25 offenses without anything close to Top 25 talent. In good years, we were unstoppable (ranked 2nd nationally in offensive efficiency in both 2009 and 2014). How many teams in the entire country had that type of consistency in a unit without having elite-level resources and talent? I’d wager only a handful.
And we also lost to MTSU and struggled to beat Duke, etc. We were very mediocre throughout the CPJ era.
 
You know, there are stats that account for stuff like that, and they’ve been posted here numerous times. You keep citing a few outliers from the CPJ tenure as if they are representative of the whole, but that just isn’t true. For every Iowa debacle, there was a game where we rushed for 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU, or somebody else with a lot more talent than us. Don’t take my word for it - the stats back me up.

Really? 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU? I can think of 1-2 times we did that against some crappy VPI teams late in the PJ Era & 2014 mutts is probably close too but the others? 400+? Care to post those?

The reality is that we consistently put up Top 25 offenses without anything close to Top 25 talent. In good years, we were unstoppable (ranked 2nd nationally in offensive efficiency in both 2009 and 2014). How many teams in the entire country had that type of consistency in a unit without having elite-level resources and talent? I’d wager only a handful.

Statistically true but those were more top-25 Rushing Offenses than total team offenses, like 09 & 14. And when you commit to running it 50+ times/game, yes, it makes sense that you'd better be pretty decent at it.

And yet at the end of things, his winning % wasn't noticeably different from Gailey's. All those rushing yards didn't translate to more victories and it wasn't always the fault of a porous Defense.

I don't disagree that it was a nice run with some great rushing stats. But it's not an Unbeatable Scheme nor did it translate to More Wins for us....and we are in agreement on both of those.
 
Oh really? How many times did we get shut out with PJ? How many times did we struggle on offense? Not too many.

Most teams don’t run it 1) because it’s a very hard system for a coach to learn or 2) it doesn’t reception great, which I don’t disagree with.

Plus it's extremely difficult to recruit to because kids don't want to play in it. Plus it's dismal once it gets down 7 pts. Death Marching in the 4th qtr down 2+ scores was the worst coaching I've ever seen until Collin's Clown Show in Notre Dame this year.

It's not the Perfect System you believe it to be. It's beatable, like all schemes, else everyone would be running it.
 
Plus it's extremely difficult to recruit to because kids don't want to play in it. Plus it's dismal once it gets down 7 pts. Death Marching in the 4th qtr down 2+ scores was the worst coaching I've ever seen until Collin's Clown Show in Notre Dame this year.

It's not the Perfect System you believe it to be. It's beatable, like all schemes, else everyone would be running it.
Then how come Bohannon is one of the best recruiters in the FCS? How come Bohannon went 11-0 in the FCS regular season last year? I’ve always said that TO coaches are too stubborn. They don’t pass the ball enough, so if they don’t pass the defense can stack the box. That’s what screwed us. But anytime we needed a 2 minute drive in our offense, we had some success. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. Georgia twice, FSU in 2015. FSU in the ACC championship (but out leaky roof defense screwed us over there), etc.
 
Then how come Bohannon is one of the best recruiters in the FCS? How come Bohannon went 11-0 in the FCS regular season last year? I’ve always said that TO coaches are too stubborn. They don’t pass the ball enough, so if they don’t pass the defense can stack the box. That’s what screwed us. But anytime we needed a 2 minute drive in our offense, we had some success. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. Georgia twice, FSU in 2015. FSU in the ACC championship (but out leaky roof defense screwed us over there), etc.
Patenaude was a good coordinator at the FCS level. Maybe that's not the best measuring stick.
 
Then how come Bohannon is one of the best recruiters in the FCS? How come Bohannon went 11-0 in the FCS regular season last year? I’ve always said that TO coaches are too stubborn. They don’t pass the ball enough, so if they don’t pass the defense can stack the box. That’s what screwed us. But anytime we needed a 2 minute drive in our offense, we had some success. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. Georgia twice, FSU in 2015. FSU in the ACC championship (but out leaky roof defense screwed us over there), etc.

If you want to pull for an FCS team, Kennesaw is just north of Atlanta. Else, I couldn't give a rat's öööö about the place nor its coaches.

And we seldom had success with the 2-minute drive, mostly because QB Keepers don't work well in that situation nor do Sideline Bombs, which was what passed (no pun) as a 2-minute offense under PJ.
 
Really? 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU? I can think of 1-2 times we did that against some crappy VPI teams late in the PJ Era & 2014 mutts is probably close too but the others? 400+? Care to post those.

You have CPJ amnesia.

‘08
FSU
Miami
UGA

‘09
FSU
VT (added cause it was Top 5 win in BDS for first time in like 50 years)

There’s 4 (*5) within the first 1.5 years of his time here.
 
If you want to pull for an FCS team, Kennesaw is just north of Atlanta. Else, I couldn't give a rat's öööö about the place nor its coaches.

And we seldom had success with the 2-minute drive, mostly because QB Keepers don't work well in that situation nor do Sideline Bombs, which was what passed (no pun) as a 2-minute offense under PJ.
Again, we had a ton of success in 2 minute drives... I don't know what you're remembering, but it ain't right.
 
Really? 400+ against UGA, Clemson, Miami, VT, FSU? I can think of 1-2 times we did that against some crappy VPI teams late in the PJ Era & 2014 mutts is probably close too but the others? 400+? Care to post those?



Statistically true but those were more top-25 Rushing Offenses than total team offenses, like 09 & 14. And when you commit to running it 50+ times/game, yes, it makes sense that you'd better be pretty decent at it.

And yet at the end of things, his winning % wasn't noticeably different from Gailey's. All those rushing yards didn't translate to more victories and it wasn't always the fault of a porous Defense.

I don't disagree that it was a nice run with some great rushing stats. But it's not an Unbeatable Scheme nor did it translate to More Wins for us....and we are in agreement on both of those.
I’m not going back to look them all up, but just off the top of my head I know we put up 400 at least 3 times against UGA. How many other times do you think they have given up 400 rushing yards in the last 10 years?

If you want to argue that CPJ was a bad recruiter or couldn’t coach defense, you might have a case. “The offense wasn’t that good” just seems dumb, when it was consistently over performing.
 
I’m not going back to look them all up, but just off the top of my head I know we put up 400 at least 3 times against UGA. How many other times do you think they have given up 400 rushing yards in the last 10 years?

If you want to argue that CPJ was a bad recruiter or couldn’t coach defense, you might have a case. “The offense wasn’t that good” just seems dumb, when it was consistently over performing.

re: UGA. Only 2 I could find were 2008 and 2014 (399 but I'll round up lol).

I'm not arguing that PJ wasn't a good rushing-offense coach.
 
I agree that we were mediocre. We had a horrible defense and recruited poorly.

But we’re specifically talking about the (option) offense, and it was pretty damn good.
We averaged 28th in offensive FEI. Maybe we should try one of the 27 better schemes or, you know, go back and read my first post in the thread to understand my point that the good offense wasn't because of triple option itself, but instead that our coach was a savant at offense.
 
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