Something to "better defense" against our O...

[ncjacket]

Army could have 1000 weeks to prepare and we still beat them like a drum. Of course they don't have 300 lb DEs who run like gazelles.

There is no question the offense when run well against sub-pro talent is nearly impossible to beat.

Also, UGA spent two weeks, but I have inside info that Martinez blew off help with the scheme saying he would "outathlete us". He won't make that mistake again.

Also, I think there is evidence that TTech's scheme can be defended by the right scheme executed by top tier talent. Florida may be another story altogether, but can we consistently count on having Florida level talent?

You worry too much. Were you happier when we had an offense that sucked?

 

[GTCrew]

You worry too much. Were you happier when we had an offense that sucked?

:D
Not so much. That really bit didn't it, knowing down one TD with 3 minutes left you had no chance of not screwing it up.

I'm just saying that we only faced a few teams with all star talent. It was obvious that some were poorly prepared (Miami, UGA). VT will be assumed to have been prepared and LSU was well prepared. They kept us way below average in yards. 314 yards is not exactly stellar.

I do not think Miami and UGA will show up totally clueless again. I do think teams on our schedule will spend more time on our O than any other.

I hope that we execute well and minimize turnovers so that it won't make any difference how much prep they do. But if they prepare better we will have less room for error.

 

[GTLiebs]

I do not think Miami and UGA will show up totally clueless again. I do think teams on our schedule will spend more time on our O than any other.

They might focus on it a bit more than the defense, but they will still have the same one week to prepare. Not a whole lot of time will be spent preparing for us before the week preceding our game. That bit about Clemson's D coordinator won't be common. I think someone said he was viewing the film on his free time, plus they play us 5 days after a FCS team, so they might have some of the extra time to prepare than others.

As for other teams, they won't show up clueless but they can still screw up. That's what seemed to happen to Miami. They made a bunch of mistakes early on defense and once the lead grew they fell apart.

Same could be said of us against LSU.

 

[JacketDan]

I think this is the best way of summarizing CPJ's views on why he runs the 3O (even if it's about basketball) and CPJ didn't write it. It's from an email exchange between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell.

You're right. I am a bit obsessed with the full-court press at the moment. I just did a story for The New Yorker about how underdogs beat favorites, which had a lot about basketball in it. For the story, I went down to Louisville and had a long chat with Rick Pitino. He argued that the press is the best chance an underdog has of being competitive with stronger teams, and I think his record proves the case. That Providence team he took to the Final Four in 1984 has to have been just about the least talented team EVER to reach that level. (One of the forwards on that team was Dave Kipfer, who grew up just down the road from me, in the southwestern Ontario Mennonite country. He was considered slow for our high school league.) Then, of course, Pitino takes one of his first Louisville teams to the Final Four in 2005 and this season's team to the Elite Eight, and no one's going to argue that either of those teams were filled with future Hall of Famers. Given that, then, why do so few underdog teams use the press? Pitino's explanation is that it's because most coaches simply can't convince their players to work that hard. What do you think of that argument?
There are two other things here that fascinate me. After my piece ran in The New Yorker, one of the most common responses I got was people saying, well, the reason more people don't use the press is that it can be beaten with a well-coached team and a good point guard. That is (A) absolutely true and (B) beside the point. The press doesn't guarantee victory. It simply represents the underdog's best chance of victory. It raises their odds from zero to maybe 50-50. I think, in fact, that you can argue that a pressing team is always going to have real difficulty against a truly elite team. But so what? Everyone, regardless of how they play, is going to have real difficulty against truly elite teams. It's not a strategy for being the best. It's a strategy for being better. I never thought Louisville -- or, for that matter, Missouri -- had a realistic shot at winning it all in the NCAAs this year. But if neither of those teams pressed, they wouldn't have been there in the first place.

 

[stinger78]

:D
Not so much. That really bit didn't it, knowing down one TD with 3 minutes left you had no chance of not screwing it up.

I'm just saying that we only faced a few teams with all star talent. It was obvious that some were poorly prepared (Miami, UGA). VT will be assumed to have been prepared and LSU was well prepared. They kept us way below average in yards. 314 yards is not exactly stellar.

I do not think Miami and UGA will show up totally clueless again. I do think teams on our schedule will spend more time on our O than any other.

I hope that we execute well and minimize turnovers so that it won't make any difference how much prep they do. But if they prepare better we will have less room for error.

314 yards is certainly not stellar, but we threw the darn ball 25 times - most of them in the 2nd half. We'd have had far more than 314 yards had we been able to run the ball as we should.

Go watch the film of the game on ESPN360. We were running the ball quite effectively in the first half until the 3 TD avalanche buried us. They got 21 points in 8 minutes on 3 ST goof-ups (the fumbled punt, the fake punt and the line drive punt w/return to our 40).

What they did was shut off the dive. Many teams can do that to us. It just depends on their DT's and how they want to position them. Still, Roddy and Jon had some nice outside runs and we were moving the ball. We also struck with the typical 2-3 big pass plays.

My opinion, take it or not, is that game fell together for Myles just as he wanted it to. They jumped out to a lead, as we couldn't stop Scott and Jefferson early, and then we gave them more points and took ourselves out of out offense. he couldn't have asked for more, except maybe converting that fake punt.

 

[ncjacket]

:D
Not so much. That really bit didn't it, knowing down one TD with 3 minutes left you had no chance of not screwing it up.

I'm just saying that we only faced a few teams with all star talent. It was obvious that some were poorly prepared (Miami, UGA). VT will be assumed to have been prepared and LSU was well prepared. They kept us way below average in yards. 314 yards is not exactly stellar.

I do not think Miami and UGA will show up totally clueless again. I do think teams on our schedule will spend more time on our O than any other.

I hope that we execute well and minimize turnovers so that it won't make any difference how much prep they do. But if they prepare better we will have less room for error.

Just how many teams have all star talent? Spending more time on the offense just means they will be a little more familiar. But there is no secret to stopping the option...every coach in America knows what to do. Miami and ugag weren't clueless, they simply couldn't beat our players at full speed.

I swear I don't get the fascination with defensive schemes and the "blueprint". The option is not complicated, it's all about adjustments. If the offense is well run and players are skilled and experienced, it's all about who can adjust more quickly and who can do the basics...blocking, tackling, etc. Plus 314 yards in a bad game says something too.

 

[Yaller Jacket]

You can't step in the same river twice

I figured someone would make this obvious point, but since no one has...Yes, other teams might know better how to prepare for LAST YEAR'S Tech option. But we won't be running last year's option. We'll be running a quicker version with more reverses and pass plays and with better blocking. We will always be one version ahead of what they can prepare for. And the day will come when linemen recruited to block the TO will come of age.

 

[ncjacket]

Re: You can't step in the same river twice

I figured someone would make this obvious point, but since no one has...Yes, other teams might know better how to prepare for LAST YEAR'S Tech option. But we won't be running last year's option. We'll be running a quicker version with more reverses and pass plays and with better blocking. We will always be one version ahead of what they can prepare for. And the day will come when linemen recruited to block the TO will come of age.

Exactly. We didn't run all the the offense last year and the part we did we didn't run particularly well.