Ever since the beginning of his time here, the opinion in this board has fluxuated wildly. From football mastermind to humbling idiot. Like most things, I'd like to point out what I feel are his strengths -of which there are many- and weaknesses -which are glaringly obvious- to reveal the truth. And the short and simple truth is that he is not a perfect football coach, no one is, but does have the potential to become great if he can fix those flaws.
So, to start, I'll go over his schemes. Tim Beck blends power and spread in several ways, and is mostly successful. However, he leans closer to the spread side of things. I'll go over the blocking schemes, WR routes, Running game, and quarterback play.
To start with, I think Coach Beck has a solid, if not excellent, grasp of O-line play. He has shown over his career that he knows the theory of and can successfully implement zone blocking, protection slides and RB blitz pickup in pass blocking, assignment blocking, trap schemes, power leads with one or more pulling linemen, and of course, the various read option and speed option blocking schemes. Our O-line play is generally good, with the relatively limited talent we have had in the past few years compared to other power 5 conferences (look at the o-line of the top SEC and PAC-12 teams, for example). However, it's not all good. We have suffered from a lack of discipline, especially in screen plays and in the number of o-line penalties. Part of this is because of poor coaching by the line coach, and partly because we are asking good o-linemen to play in a blocking scheme as complicated as most NFL teams. There will be mistakes, but with better talent and better coaching this could be a major strength for us again. A better understanding of the guys we have should allow Beck to tailor the blocking scheme to fit the abilities we have, rather than asking them to do something they aren't yet able to do with consistency. Plus, TEs should be used more in the blocking schemes, especially to pick up blitzes from the outside.
On to wide receiver routes. One of coach Beck's greatest strengths is his understanding of defensive coverages and how to spread the field to find soft spots, allowing for one or two simple reads for the qb. He has shown that he is able to set up one on one match ups reliably, and forcing a corner or safety to have to make an excellent athletic play or commit a foul to prevent a big play. He seems to subscribe more to the Air Coryell style of passing attacks than the West Coast style, and with Armstrong, he seems to be having quite a bit of success with it. Another mark in his favor is the fact that he stresses the fact that WRs need to be able to block. This, he seems to be able to implement quite well. However, he still is not perfect here either. Along with his deep passing attack, he needs to include the TEs and RBs in short out routes, middle slants, crossing routes, and wheel routes as check downs on every deep pass play. This will stretch the defense vertically and horizontally, forcing them to defend the whole field every play. Further more, he has shown almost a complete absence of screens, curls, and other quick passing attacks, especially in the face of a blitzing opponent. Against McNeece State, one or two deep routes combined with two to four quick routes could have gotten our athletes into open space against few defenders to make big gains against their heavy blitzes. Hell, two slants across the middle when they brought their LBs (which they did often) could have broken their D. This problem has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with scheme. The upside is that it can be quickly remedied.
Since this is my first post here and it's getting kinda hard to type this out on my smartphone, I'll come back later with posts on the running game and qb play. Also, as impossible as it may seem, I'd like to keep this thread calm and rational. As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm on this site, I'd like this to be an objective analysis rather than another flame thread. Thank you.
