brophog

Unfortunately, I have to agree, and it is getting much worse. I don't know if the past season's disappointment is just getting to everyone, or if it is something else, but every time I drop in I find myself wanting to drop in less often than the time before.

Any time you think you won't lose is when you do. Much better Nebraska teams have lost to much worse Texas teams in stakes that were every bit as important.

I'll just take a win in Lincoln.

The media are chopping that thing up and misquoting the kid. Its nothing Bo Pelini doesn't say 14 times every media session.

Some of these statements about Bo being paranoid or operating in some kind of underhanded fashion to that regard really bother me. In past years, it was always something else.......the 'Blackshirts' was a big one.......everyone just got in a fit about when they were going to be given out. This year, it's QB. It's always something that gets latched onto that everyone needs to know about and blows into this great big, ground breaking issue. There are several positions we don't know who the starter will be. QB is an important position, and before it is all said and done we'll have that answer. We've seen this staff fiddle with positions throughout the season before and the QB position may just be in a such a shape this year that it can't be completely determined coming out of camp. That happens sometimes. Sometimes you come out of camp in such a hurry to name one guy that you make a mistake and feel obligated to stay with it longer than you want. When you name a guy really early, it's hard to foster competition, particularly if you name him and then proceed to treat him like that guy. Everyone begins settling into their role and you can lose the opportunity for that #2 guy to fill the potential he may have had otherwise. There are advantages and disadvantages to waiting. The reason we didn't have these issues the past few years is because there was no mystery.......there was no depth. When Bo says we're built on a foundation of competition, that's what he means. This isn't coachspeak. This should be the way it really is, and yet there are so, so many people who are name calling out of nothing more than their own greed. It's not about the program, it is about them and what they feel they are obligated to know and on what timeframe.......and that's just petty and unnecessary. None of these things Bo has done that has gotten this backlash has been for anything but the program and the welfare of these athletes. He's not obtuse, he knows these things are being said, and yet he goes up there to field questions every time standing behind the same message, with the same purpose in mind. That's not easy. It would be a whole lot easier to just name that starter and let that player field that avalanche......but he doesn't. He takes it on the chin for what he feels is the best interest of the program. He wants to sell that message to his players that it really is all about competition and every day is an evaluation. Nobody is a finished product and you can be replaced at any time. That's what he believes in, and that's how he's going to build his program. If a media member or fan can't accept that, and they want to put their interests ahead of the program, then he's got to take the steps necessary to protect the program and its athletes. That's all I'm going to say on that.

You cannot be a head coach if you just defer. If he respects his coach's opinion, and they know he respects them, he doesn't have to agree with them. His job is to run this team. As long as there exists mutual respect, that's not a problem.

It doesn't matter what it is. Like we discussed in the other thread, we're guests. We have nothing to lose in this exchange. The program and the athletes do and if Bo feels he has to tighten down for their benefit, then that's what needs to happen. He can't sit around and hope messageboards, media, bloggers.........whomever........police themselves.

People read the internet........message boards are popular. Athletes read them, parents read them, coaches read them. Lots of people read these things. And the internet can get people into trouble. We don't have to list the examples in the sports world of that. The openness of forums and social networking has had an enormous impact in that regard. I'd actually be more conservative than the average mod in the area of message boards involving collegiate athletics, especially. The actions of a message board can get athletes and programs in trouble. Coaches would just rather these boards didn't exist. It's a headache for them. What level of technology a player/parent has and what they should know shouldn't be part of your decision. They don't know everything about their kids. Sometimes guys will say things to their buddies or their coaches that they won't tell their parents and sometimes that gets leaked. Sometimes there are split family issues that occur. There are lots of situations that occur where information gets out or things are said that has a detriment on either the athlete or the program in question. These boards are for the entertainment of the fan. If that gets squelched just a tiny bit at the benefit of the athlete or program then so be it. Message board readers have nothing at stake reading these boards and it is too easy to just be selfish and let your actions as a member of a board to affect those that do have something at stake.

The title of this thread is 2010 pass/run ratio expectations. It is a good idea in such a thread to know how important that ratio is and how relevant it happens to be in the grand scheme. Please read again what I wrote. I did not simply write that the yardage from said plays can be misleading, but that the entire premise of tracking and applying value to such a ratio is misleading.

The problem there is in the coaching. Playcalling in a sequential based offense like the Option and a non-sequential based offense like the West Coast or Run N Shoot is completely different. All of that beauty you're seeing in those option/wishbone/veer offenses is predicated on a series of plays meshing together. In a non-sequential based offense we're more focused on down and distance and dictating individual matchups. It's a completely different way of playcalling and you see it on the field. You can tell when a coach was taught in a sequential based offense, even if he isn't currently coaching one, by how his plays flow. One of my biggest beefs with most playcallers isn't matching tendencies or down and distance, but in their inability to call a related sequence of plays. We're just far enough out of those sequential offenses being popular that today's coaches just weren't brought up with that knowledge. Paul Johnson does a great job, but he's an endangered species. Sequential based playcalling is a fine art and we're quickly running out of teachers to teach it. I completely and totally disagree. The option has the ability to score from any part of the field, no different than a vertical passing attack. I think the point that the option can suffer when it is behind has been lodged more heavily in Nebraska minds because a few losses to a few certain teams stick out so heavily. The option works better when you aren't limited by time constraints, but so does every other offense. It doesn't matter if you're a vertical passing attack, or one that utilizes a lot of bubble screens......as soon as the game conditions start dictating a course of action, the defense has a distinct advantage. No offense is made to come back from 2 or 3 scores down because all offenses at their core have to be balanced around certain plays, actions, and looks in order to achieve peak efficiency. An option offense may find more 8 and 9 man fronts, and a vertical passing offense may find 6 blitzers in their ear.......the course of action by the defense has may change, but the underlying premise doesn't. It doesn't matter much what offense you run, if you find yourself 2 or 3 scores down against level competition your odds of winning that game dramatically decrease. This argument will play out both for run heavy and pass heavy offenses........."load the box", "pin their ears back"......you've heard it all before. If anything, that's probably what has given so much power to the idea of a "balanced" offense, because it is seen as an offense that is somehow less restricted. But the truth is, any offense is going to struggle in that situation, regardless of pass/run ratio or primary design. If game conditions can take something away from you and start changing how much of the field I as a defense have to cover, then your offense is behind the 8 ball. College Football is a game of super-teams. The NFL is so neutral in nature that you can have teams that can't run the ball, play little defense, but have a great passing attack and still make the Super Bowl. That doesn't happen in college football. Great college teams can't have great offenses and bad defenses. Or the other way around. The talent discrepancy is just too great. To say the option needs a great defense, in my mind, is a specific case of saying all college football offenses need great defenses. Finally, time of possession: I'm sorry I don't have the time this morning to delve into this concept more, because I feel the concept is one that deserves more discussion. It is in large part because the correlation stats are misleading (teams with high offensive time of possession tend to win, but it is generally the case that they have high time of possession figures because they were winning due to the fact a team leading a game will want to decrease scoring opportunities more than one trailing). It is seen as being controlled by the offense, with the idea of defensive time of possession not entering the mainstream and the notion that a team wants to chew up the clock. Not so. You give any team the opportunity to score on one play, and they're going to take it! Sometimes teams find they need to manage the game more because they don't score as efficiently as the other team, and in that sense you can level the playing field a bit by reducing the overall number of possessions, but no team truly 'wants' to "control the clock". Even when the popular offenses involved mostly 2 back/2 Tight sets, you went out and got the biggest, fastest RB you could so that you could score more big plays than the other guy. Big plays win football games. In what form that big play takes may have changed, but that mantra never has.

Put yourself in his shoes...some of the media asks ridiculous questions, and to just keep getting asked the same one in a new way 4 times in a row would be annoying. Yes, but it's also a big part of the job that he gets paid a BOATLOAD of money to have. So I don't think it unreasonable to expect him to start getting used to it and maybe lighten up a bit. He's also human........emotions don't stop just because you get a big paycheck. Coaches are lose-lose here. Bill Belichick trains himself to be completely neutral so he doesn't blow up on those idiots, and they confuse his expressionless behavior as rudeness. Other coaches just eventually blow up. There aren't many coaches that have been around the block who haven't eventually wanted to deck a media reporter (and a few actually have). You can expect whatever you want, and rationalize it all you want, but these people are human and they can only take so much. If they try to be stoic and emotionless, they get ripped for it. If they blow their top, they get ripped for it. If they answer the question, it was the wrong move. If they don't answer the question in some situations they can get fined. If you have a good way of handling the media, I'm all ears........I'm sure we could sell a lot of books to coaches who would love to know the secret. Because I guarantee you, none of them know it currently. Bo's not where he'd like to be in addressing the media, but he's come a long way. He's handling the media better, and anticipating problem questions better. He deflects attention to himself and away from the team. He tries to stay humle. He may not be where you want him to be, but he's not far behind the curve. The media only cares about their job. They're not there in the best interest of the coach or his team. Drama sells, and they're going to ask the same stupid, pointless, unimportant questions over and over again until they either get the story or make one up.

It is also a big reason that the PAC 10 was thinking of dropping their 9 game schedule before the realignment talk began. They were hurting their chances at postseason access and making less money by not being able to schedule an extra yearly home game. A 9 game schedule means every other year you max out at 4 conference home games, with only 3 possible dates for future home games. An 8 game rotation means those that like to dine on cupcakes can have 8 home games. The price impact depends on who you are. If you have a 50,000 seat stadium, a million dollars to bring in a Sun Belt opponent is rather pricy. At 100,000......you gladly pay it. You're making more money on that home game than if you didn't have an extra home game. It comes down to supply and demand. Lower level D1A teams are the best opponents in terms of ranking implications per risk, but there aren't nearly enough for all of the upper tier schools to possibly schedule. Something has to give. Its another in a long line of consequences of having super-conferences.

Run/Pass Ratios are the single most overrated statistic in all of football. I can't exaggerate how meaningless that statistic is, nor how imprecise it is in today's college game. We track it only to abide by the rule that each play can only have 1 forward pass. It's usefulness in statistics and tendencies is very, very low. Now, if you want to track how many times Team A threw a flanker screen out of a Trips set on the short side of the field, that's meaningful. The number of times a team was credited with a forward pass is not. It doesn't tell me how to defend that team. Was it a 3 yard RB screen? A 7 step drop? A draw play? I think fans today are so much better educated about the game than they were in the past, but the media and the popular opinion on this stat is such a huge tether holding it back from going further. Especially with that word 'balance'. Blah, such a useless and generic word. It assumes that doing something in equal proportions is somehow a desired result. There is nothing special about having a 50/50 pass run ratio. In fact, from a big play potential, it is often counterproductive........and football is a game where picking up large chunks of offense at one time is a very desirable trait. Every successful offensive scheme is 'balanced'. By 'balanced' I mean the capability to present complementary looks and actions in order to derive specific results from the defense. A triple option offense is balanced via the FB dive or outside release. You're attempting to give one look to a playside DE and enticing different actions. The Zone Read is balanced via the backside DE. We don't keep mainstream stats on how often the FB Dive was ran, but we track how many times the same offense threw a forward pass. The former, which is important, doesn't enter mainstream consciousness despite the fact it is infinitely more important to the success of that offense than the latter. Of all the complementary actions, the pass-run relationship is just one of them and yet because it is an easily accessible statistic it is given an enormous priority. For general purposes, its pretty meaningless to know if your opponent passes the ball 45% or 52% of the time. Now, if we make it situationally specific, it becomes more important. You want to know how often on 3rd and 3 or less the opponent ran an ISO or threw an inside slant on a 3 step drop. That's meaningful data that tells me how to defend that down. That's what I really want to know......how do I defend it. The problem with pass/run ratios is it turns the game into a simple dichotomy: it's either pass or run with a requisite response to defeat it. Early computer games on the sport were this way. It ignores the diversity of this game and attempts to simplify it to an erroneous degree.

It's always been that way. Teams formulate offenses to defeat the popular defense at the time and then defenses attempt to adjust........kicking off the next popular defensive era. Defensive constructs have typically been more generic and more rigid, and therefore once an offense found a way to defeat one defense they could have success against the popular defensive construct of the era. The idea that an offense has to attack multiple fronts is a relatively new concept in football history. Not only do defenses run so many more fronts these days, but run a lot more games and stunts with a wide range of blitz packages off of those combinations. Defensive innovation is at the forefront, mostly be necessity. The rules have so heavily skewed the advantage to the offense that you have to be more creative than ever. Defending the passing game through physicality just leads to too many hankies......gotta outsmart them now. The side that makes the other side think the most has the advantage in today's game.

I don't, for a lot of reasons. 1) The passing game is simply more efficient from a per play standpoint. 2) The rules heavily favor the passing game. 3) The size of today's athletes favors the passing game. 4) Very, very few current coaches are trained in sequential playcalling. None of those say that the option can't work. None of those say that the option won't work. None of those say the option cannot be part of an overall offensive system. They simply say we will not see a large scale trend towards option/wishbone/veer offenses in the near future, imo. The forward pass has simply become a dominant figure in modern football and as the coaches that started in a sequence based offense continue to retire, that will only become more the case. I'm not saying the option is going to leave the game, but the multiple wide receiver offenses have replaced it as the defacto choice amongst the lesser talented institutions and that was always a huge draw for the option. The option's future I believe will exist as a complementary part of an existing offense. What we're seeing is versatility come to the forefront, even in the slow to change NFL: 40 Nickel, 33, 3-4......all of these structures have become popular because they bring more flexibility in personnel. One of the things I have a hard time explaining to people is the rise of the 3-4 in the NFL. The standard idea amongst the public is the 3-4 is a 2 gap scheme, with a 0 tech NT, and with little variance from that singular idea. It is so much more flexible than that. The same thing happens at the college level, but instead of flexing the DE/OLB we're flexing a LB/S/CB. Teams have different ways of doing it, but at the end of the day it is in response to offensive variability. Defenses need to be more versatile in their base sets. Gone are the days we put 8 in the box expecting a lead ISO on first down and only moving to a Nickel on 3rd and Intermediate or longer. It may be 5 wide now on first down and 2 back on second down! Most defenses these days run a lot of fronts, to the point even calling an NFL defense a 3-4 is a bit of a misnomer. Some "3-4" teams aren't lined up in a "3-4" by alignment more than 10-15% of the time. You really can't discuss modern football defenses without looking at them by personnel and by alignment. We just play so many fronts these days that thinking about the defense as a whole as a combination just won't work. It's not your daddy's game anymore, on either level. As these defenses become more versatile, the offenses again respond. The basic passing concepts used in most multiple receiver offenses are zone based; attempting to outnumber zonal defenders in a single part of the field. Defenses have adjusted by using more man and matchup zone philosophies. More film study is done now that helps players recognize offenses by passing concept rather than by route. More understanding on the defensive side is happening in regards to tendencies and route combinations. Bill Callahan may have failed in a lot of areas as a head coach, but he deserves a great deal of credit in upgrading our technology in these regards. When you see Asante and Amukamura change the defense at the line so seamlessly, that's a direct consequence of their detailed film study. No defensive structure is more powerful than the ability to recognize the offense's intentions, just as no offensive structure is more powerful than the ability to defeat the defense's on the fly. The response to the other team playing man is to either attempt to outnumber them in the box, with schemes like the zone read or to create open space by bringing players closer to the line with bunch formations, or utilizing more tight ends. The option is another way; teams that play a lot of man defense are more susceptible to being blocked by receivers. Bubble screens.........the list goes on and on. What we're seeing are offenses doing a little bit of all of this. They're not as specialized as they were, which you'll no doubt notice bothers many traditional college football fans who relate their team by an easily recognizable structure. I applaud Watson in that he understands this need for versatility. I was really against his hire, and made my opinion on that known publicly, but in 2008 I issued a public apology......that offense married these things together and became difficult to defend. If we keep an open mind, and improve from a technical aspect, I think we'll see this variability again. Watson is the type of coach that is willing to step out of his comfort zone a bit and bring together divergent ideas, and that's the type of offense I think we'll see in the next decade. I think we'll see teams attack versatility with versatility.

I don't think the coaches were ever going to give Adi the option. It isn't what is best for the team, and outside of just the thrill of placekicking in college it is rather irrelevant to Adi. If his preference is to play professionally, they don't really care what you did in college. Kickers are rarely drafted and even the guys that go in the 3rd or 4th round are as likely to get cut week 1 after missing a few as anyone else. Even more than any other position, kicking at the next level is a week to week occupation. If kicking professionally is his concern, Nebraska will get him an invite into camp. After that, he's on equal footing with every other kicker. That's the blessing and curse of the position at the next level. If he wants to be the full timer, he's in the same predicament as every other single player position on a team.........he's gotta win the job. Redshirting to avoid competition is very rarely going to work for anyone's benefit. There's just always someone else you have to compete against. More to the point of this thread, I'm glad to see the position given a priority in the recruiting process. Given the impact of the position on the games that really matter, it's a shame how little respect it is usually given.

I'm not exactly part of the twitter generation, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little long winded at times.......

Don't let this week make much of an impression on you. There has been a lot of chicken counting, name calling, and a general lack of intelligent thinking around here this week, mostly due to the emotional cost of all of this. It has been a pretty atypical week around here. Its best just to not put much stock in what is said until things calm down.

Trying "hard" means not catching the first flight to LA..........

I think it is actually the complete opposite. The SEC takes a hands off approach with its members, whereas the PAC10 is very much the opposite. USC may be the "superpower" of the conference, but they do not run it. No major conference is more communal in nature than the PAC10. In terms of power and control of conference affairs, Texas would be walking into a conference in the PAC10 that does things as a larger whole. There are not the power brokers in the PAC10 that there are in the other conferences. USC is not the PAC10 equivalent of "Texas". On the field, it is obviously completely different, though historically Texas has fared very well against SEC opponents.

Let's hope it is indeed a "reward". I'm seeing a whole lot of chicken counting going on..........

That's because a false dichotomy has been established whereby two sides are drawn and both fail to even consider the possibility that the flaws inherent in the core system cannot be solved by either solution. That hasn't stopped each side from trying to construct "solutions", however. In the end, it amounts to nothing more than trying to heal a gaping wound with a small band-aid: all you ever accomplish is convincing yourself that you've somehow slowed the bleeding. It has to be understood that money generation is the primary goal of the athletic corporations and efficient money generation works in opposition to efficient team filtering techniques. It, therefore, becomes very, very political in nature. When two political forces are engaged, the mere fact that they are both wrong is rather irrelevant.

You'll never get anything resembling a champion as long as you're playing with this many total FBS teams and in conferences this size, with the strong monetary desire to play a substantial portion of non-conference games outside of the overall set. There just isn't enough connections between the teams to generate adequate data to make the necessary comparisons. It is estimated that games between AP Top 25 opponents has been cut around 40% in the last 20 years, and if you go back another ten years that number goes up significantly again. People can argue playoffs vs BCS until they are blue in the face and it just doesn't matter. Neither will work in the current (or proposed) state of top division college football. Money has driven away any possibility of improving that situation. Conferences long ago ceased to operate as effective subsets and became marketing coalitions. We can't even discuss the insanity of a "champion" when only one major conference plays a round robin and we have to resort to multiple bye tournament formats. When television became the major driving force in collegiate athletics in the late 80's any hope of putting together a system to even poorly approximate a "champion" went right out the window.

Odd choice for player of the year, however, I thought for large portions of the year Crick actually played better than Suh. His ceiling isn't as high as Suh's simply because he's not nearly as athletic as Suh is, but from a production standpoint Crick performed very well. Allen, more than Steinkuhler (or another DT) is more important to Crick's play simply because Crick needs a bit of space to operate in, and the more the line has to account for an edge rusher the more of that will be allotted to him. One area where Crick will need to develop to become "the next Suh" is in understanding team defense. Suh was able to utilize his attention to help generate opportunities for others. That's one of the big, often underrated strengths of Suh's game is he had an awareness for what others were doing in the scheme and made himself available to make plays to help others. For example: We didn't blitz much last year, but when we did it was often a simple Nickel Blitz. The Nickel shows strong at the pre-snap and comes off of the edge in a wide release. The DT stunts hard to the inside, and then the LB peels off of him into the B gap. The most important player in that blitz is that DT......he has to sell his inside stunt well to force the Guard to play underneath and protect that A gap. If he does that, and if the offensive team is in a man blocking scheme they are totally outmanned........3 potential rushers (N,LB,DE) vs 2 likely block (OT,RB). The RB will often take the Nickel simply because he's the immediate threat and if the DT/LB work well the LB will be hidden at the snap.

Unless there is reason to believe that the offensive line wasn't giving adequate time or passing lanes to a QB that was already playing at a high level, then an improved offensive line isn't likely to make an impact on QB play. There are times, especially with quarterbacks that don't move around in the pocket well or whom don't throw outside the hashes well, when an offensive line giving up 2 seconds or less will have a direct impact on QB play. However, contrary to traditional thinking, many stats often attributed to lineman in that regard have a far better correlation with the QB himself. Sacks are the most common statistic in that regard. Even when QBs change teams, their sack rate tends to hold rather steady. Traditionally we place the blame on the offensive lineman for a sack, when in actuality the QB controls most of the factors that would lead to a sack. If a QB showed high aptitude when given time, then the improvement of the offensive line would allow him to showcase that more consistently. However, most of our QB issues are independent of the offensive line. Our QBs are slow in the pocket. Their drops are too slow, their reads are too slow, and they tend to hold onto the ball too long (talking specifically Cody and Zac......Martinez has his own issues). I know a lot of people have changed opinion on Zac since the injury revelation, but I'm not one of them. My notes from the Florida Atlantic game are full of things that Zac really didn't do well. His stats look good because of the level of competition. The passing windows were huge and he often had 4 receivers open. He missed the proper window more times than not, often throwing players into zones and out of bounds. It is a classic example showcasing that completion percentage does not equal passing accuracy. His completion percentage may have been high, but he was not putting the ball where it needed to be put, when it needed to be put there. That said, I'm of the opinion that despite the injuries, Zac improved as a QB as the season went on. He still has a lot of work to do, however. None of that means the offensive line doesn't need to improve, because they do in a huge way. Where we should see improvement there and indirectly help the QB is in areas like not committing fouls and in the running game. So, so often last year we were a block away in the running game. Often poor technique just killed us. For example, I can think of at least two personal foul calls last year that were a result of poor cut blocking. One was against OU (iirc) where an interior lineman was attempting to block a LB, whiffed, and his moment rolled him into a blocked defender. The other I can't recall the game at the moment, but a missed cut block caused an inadvertent leg whip on a defender. We use a lot of cut blocks in this offense, particular on backside zone blocks and our execution of those blocks really needs to improve. That's just one example, of many. The plays were often there, though, but the execution did not always follow. More experience, a deeper, healthier unit, and dare I say a potentially more talented offensive line should indeed help the offense as a whole. I expect a big turnaround in this offense this year, not the least of which being what should be an improved offensive line. There's really no reason that this offense can't get back to the 425-450 yards per game level.