Watson a candidate for the Miami(OH) head coach position

[Hercules]

I don't get where people are saying that we overhauled the offense midway through fall camp. It seemed that the offense was headed in the spread option direction since the Holiday Bowl, and coaches have said it was headed in that direction even before that, but injuries prevented us from progressing. So, what's all this "we had to overhaul the offense midway through fall camp?" I understand if we limited the playbook somewhat for Taylor, but the zone read game was in place already, I don't think the basic philosophy of our offense really changed. We knew before this season that Bo wanted our QBs to run the ball, to make the defense account for all 11 players. I don't know, let me know if I missed some article where they stated they had to overhaul the offense midway through fall camp, but I've never heard anything of that nature except randomly on this board.

 

There is a difference between running the zone read, and handing off the ball out of the shotgun. The past couple of years most of our plays that looked like a zone read, were actually a designed QB or RB run. The same thing is true with Cody or Zac in the game, and the same thing was true for the most part after Taylor got injured.

 

So a lot of times when fans are saying things like he should have kept or given the ball, it actually was called that way, it wasn't the wrong read.

 

I understand the difference between the zone read and a designed handoff. I just don't follow where people (mainly zoogies, I think) are saying that our offense was overhauled in the middle of fall camp.

 

We threw out approximately 50-60% of our playbook to get Taylor up to speed once he was chosen as our starting quarterback towards the end of fall camp. This required Cotton reworking some of the line techniques and basically eliminated Mike McNeill's senior season. Do you really think they moved him to WR to catch a total of 18 balls? Remember how Trey Robinson was going to be a factor in the offense?

 

We were going to be closer to our 2008 offense, with a little more QB run mixed in. We threw the ball 433 times in 2008, 364 times in 2009 (after which we talked about the need to be more multiple), then have followed it up with 261 throws thusfar in 2010, heck we COMPLETED more passes in 2008 (295) then will be attempted this year.

 

Like I said, I understand limiting the playbook. But that shouldn't change your offensive philosophy. Everything you do should be built from that philosophy, even if it's just 20 plays. Limiting the playbook shouldn't alter your identity. If it does, then something is wrong with the system you're trying to run.

 

And I thought the plan was to move to a more ground based attack all along this year, not to become more "multiple" aka pass more than we did in 2009. At no point did I understand our offensive evolution to be moving towards our 2008 scheme. I've felt like from the middle of 2009, we've been on a pretty steady move away from that philosophy towards a spread option attack, which is what we certainly showcased in the Holiday Bowl last year (except our QB couldn't run, so we used the wildcat).

 

And why in the world would Cotton have to rework line techniques just because we limited the playbook? I think every year that Mike McNeill has been here, they've said he would get the ball more at the beginning of the season, and then that hasn't happened, so that's nothing new.

 

Anyways, still don't get it.

 

Our offensive philosophy was balance heading into fall camp, we ended up running the ball 70% of the time. Our line was spending plenty of time in pass protection, and less time learning techniques for blocking on Zone Read type plays, once the switch at QB was made, we tweaked our line splits, changed our pass protection schemes and had to work more on blocking for the zone read assignments.

 

McNeill was a weapon in 2008, he didn't catch as many balls in 2009, but he was the #2 option behind Paul in the passing scheme, this year he was literally our 4th option on most plays if even in the progressions. He was pissed this year because Taylor rarely made it to him in his progressions, and his future of a NFL career was basically pissed away because he is now labelled as too small to be a TE and too slow to be a WR.

 

McNeill was the one who wanted to make the switch to WR, and as far as I can tell the coaches did it as much to get better blocking matchups on the field as they did to have a receiving threat out there. This whole offseason we heard about our wide receivers working on their blocking as they tried to prepare for the new physical running attack, and the offensive line tweaked its splits way back in the holiday bowl and showed it again in the spring game. That was nothing new come fall camp.

[knapplc]

This whole offseason we heard about our wide receivers working on their blocking as they tried to prepare for the new physical running attack, and the offensive line tweaked its splits way back in the holiday bowl and showed it again in the spring game. That was nothing new come fall camp.

 

An interesting statement, considering several people are trying to assert that our offense took a hard right turn in the middle of fall camp.

[huskerSoldier321]

So is Watson here for another season? Is he gone? Did he get the job at another School?

[huskerscott]

Forgive if this has been mentioned before, but it's worth mentioning again amid this whole mess with Watson and what we'll see in the weeks/months to come.

 

I don't think Watson gets along at all with Martinez (when was the last time you saw communication between those two?), and I don't think Ganz has really got along with Martinez either. Their poor, near non-existent working relationship has hurt Martinez growth as a QB just as much as his injuries. That might be Watson's fault, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly Martinez' fault. And guess what, Martinez is Bo's guy.

 

My guess is that Bo sees this poor relationship between his QB and his OC as the last straw for...you guessed it, Watson. There's a reason the door is wide open for Watson to take another job, and IMO this is a huge contributing factor.

I think your on to something. When Martinez was not in the game did anybody else notice that he never had a headset on like Green and Lee do. He is never in any offensive huddle on the sidelines like Green and Lee are. He just stands their looking like he wishes the game to be over with. He never shows any emotion unless its a Mutumbo "no no" finger after scoring a TD. This bothers me somewhat. Zac Lee/Joe Ganz didnt have the athletic ability that Martinez has been able show us at times, but those guys showed a lot of emotion and were the leaders of the offense no matter how effective or ineffective they were.

 

Watson himself publicly refuted this. He said straight up that he asked Martinez to simply watch the game and observe, and said that criticism of Martinez's sideline demeanor was uncalled for.

 

I do remember Watson saying this.... But can you really see the game when standing about 4 rows of players back from the sidelines???? He needed to be up their next to Green or Lee as they are signaling in the plays and talking with QB/Offense when they get off the field. Basically supporting his team becoming a cheerleader/student of the game. you can learn alot by just watching the game, but when you look uninterseted as to what is going on, its sends the wrong message whether intended or not.

[ESPY]

Forgive if this has been mentioned before, but it's worth mentioning again amid this whole mess with Watson and what we'll see in the weeks/months to come.

 

I don't think Watson gets along at all with Martinez (when was the last time you saw communication between those two?), and I don't think Ganz has really got along with Martinez either. Their poor, near non-existent working relationship has hurt Martinez growth as a QB just as much as his injuries. That might be Watson's fault, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly Martinez' fault. And guess what, Martinez is Bo's guy.

 

My guess is that Bo sees this poor relationship between his QB and his OC as the last straw for...you guessed it, Watson. There's a reason the door is wide open for Watson to take another job, and IMO this is a huge contributing factor.

I think your on to something. When Martinez was not in the game did anybody else notice that he never had a headset on like Green and Lee do. He is never in any offensive huddle on the sidelines like Green and Lee are. He just stands their looking like he wishes the game to be over with. He never shows any emotion unless its a Mutumbo "no no" finger after scoring a TD. This bothers me somewhat. Zac Lee/Joe Ganz didnt have the athletic ability that Martinez has been able show us at times, but those guys showed a lot of emotion and were the leaders of the offense no matter how effective or ineffective they were.

 

 

Watsons response to this...."Thats just Taylor." Really????

 

That is Taylor, that's the way he acted on the sidelines in high school also, it's typical behavior from a kid who bounced from high school to high school, then to college thrust into the spotlight who plays for the approval\happiness of his father.

Is anyone else worried about this type of behavior from Martinez? Maybe it was HIS fault that he bounced from one high school to the next. Maybe the coach just couldn't work with him because maybe just maybe he's not a very teachable guy or handles criticism poorly.

 

It would be interesting to see what kind of relationship he'd have with our next OC (if Watson heads elsewhere). Something tells me he'll be difficult for any coach to handle (again, that's IF his attitude/behavior was truly the reason he bounced to 3 different high schools).

[zoogs]

This whole offseason we heard about our wide receivers working on their blocking as they tried to prepare for the new physical running attack, and the offensive line tweaked its splits way back in the holiday bowl and showed it again in the spring game. That was nothing new come fall camp.

 

An interesting statement, considering several people are trying to assert that our offense took a hard right turn in the middle of fall camp.

 

We were building off of what we saw in the Holiday bowl, when we broke out of the conservative rut we had been in for most of last year. That was what we were working towards, but that is not what we had this season at all. jliehr breaks this down specifically much better than I could. It is not like we changed every fundamental component of the offense, but it changed very appreciably. Both in scope (a lot less) and in philosophy (riding the big play over ball control/less flashy) and even just in more simple terms as pass-run split.

 

Hercules, I wonder if anyone ever says they aren't happy about a position change or didn't want it. I think that's rare. But I know nothing about this situation. I don't know. I had questions about it from the start, but it's all moot now. I suppose the idea was to get him more involved in the passing game. I guess his role, is just more often than not as a safety valve, just by the nature of his skillset, and that is something we didn't go to enough this year, on top of not passing a whole lot.

[knapplc]

We were building off of what we saw in the Holiday bowl, when we broke out of the conservative rut we had been in for most of last year. That was what we were working towards, but that is not what we had this season at all. jliehr breaks this down specifically much better than I could. It is not like we changed every fundamental component of the offense, but it changed very appreciably. Both in scope (a lot less) and in philosophy (riding the big play over ball control/less flashy) and even just in more simple terms as pass-run split.

You keep repeating the bold as if it has any validity. This team relied no more on the "big play" than any other team. Every single play from every single team is designed to score a TD. The fact that so many of ours did early in the season has a lot more to do with the superlative abilities of our QB (the "huge gamble" of the revisionist history you keep mentioning).

 

We had every single play in this offense in our playbook last year. We've run specific plays this year that are geared toward the talents of our players. Shockingly, this is actually done by most every team in America (not coached by Bill Callahan, that is).

[Hercules]

 

Watson himself publicly refuted this. He said straight up that he asked Martinez to simply watch the game and observe, and said that criticism of Martinez's sideline demeanor was uncalled for.

 

I do remember Watson saying this.... But can you really see the game when standing about 4 rows of players back from the sidelines???? He needed to be up their next to Green or Lee as they are signaling in the plays and talking with QB/Offense when they get off the field. Basically supporting his team becoming a cheerleader/student of the game. you can learn alot by just watching the game, but when you look uninterseted as to what is going on, its sends the wrong message whether intended or not.

 

Good point. If only there were some kind of giant television screen somewhere in the stadium that would give him a better view of the game then the sideline view.

[knapplc]

 

Watson himself publicly refuted this. He said straight up that he asked Martinez to simply watch the game and observe, and said that criticism of Martinez's sideline demeanor was uncalled for.

 

I do remember Watson saying this.... But can you really see the game when standing about 4 rows of players back from the sidelines???? He needed to be up their next to Green or Lee as they are signaling in the plays and talking with QB/Offense when they get off the field. Basically supporting his team becoming a cheerleader/student of the game. you can learn alot by just watching the game, but when you look uninterseted as to what is going on, its sends the wrong message whether intended or not.

 

Good point. If only there were some kind of giant television screen somewhere in the stadium that would give him a better view of the game then the sideline view.

 

Not sure if you're trying to be funny, but the fact is that Taylor was disconnected with the game when he was on the sideline.

[irafreak]

We were building off of what we saw in the Holiday bowl, when we broke out of the conservative rut we had been in for most of last year. That was what we were working towards, but that is not what we had this season at all. jliehr breaks this down specifically much better than I could. It is not like we changed every fundamental component of the offense, but it changed very appreciably. Both in scope (a lot less) and in philosophy (riding the big play over ball control/less flashy) and even just in more simple terms as pass-run split.

You keep repeating the bold as if it has any validity. This team relied no more on the "big play" than any other team. Every single play from every single team is designed to score a TD. The fact that so many of ours did early in the season has a lot more to do with the superlative abilities of our QB (the "huge gamble" of the revisionist history you keep mentioning).

 

We had every single play in this offense in our playbook last year. We've run specific plays this year that are geared toward the talents of our players. Shockingly, this is actually done by most every team in America (not coached by Bill Callahan, that is).

You can't necessarily say that. Obviously taking a knee but seriously the real point is the good teams can churn out tough drives instead of big play or bust as our offense seemed to be once Taylor got injured.

[HuskerGBR]

Watson has said that he wanted this type of offense in 2009 with Lee. The splits in the line happened way back in the spring game in case you guys forgot. So not really sure how anyone can say we switched everything in fall camp.

[Hercules]

 

Watson himself publicly refuted this. He said straight up that he asked Martinez to simply watch the game and observe, and said that criticism of Martinez's sideline demeanor was uncalled for.

 

I do remember Watson saying this.... But can you really see the game when standing about 4 rows of players back from the sidelines???? He needed to be up their next to Green or Lee as they are signaling in the plays and talking with QB/Offense when they get off the field. Basically supporting his team becoming a cheerleader/student of the game. you can learn alot by just watching the game, but when you look uninterseted as to what is going on, its sends the wrong message whether intended or not.

 

Good point. If only there were some kind of giant television screen somewhere in the stadium that would give him a better view of the game then the sideline view.

 

Not sure if you're trying to be funny, but the fact is that Taylor was disconnected with the game when he was on the sideline.

 

Every time I've seen Martinez on the sideline, he appeared exactly as he does any other time I've seen him. And probably half the time I've seen him on the sideline, he's turned to look at the big screen in Memorial Stadium. So unless he's trying to figure out which helmet the pizza is under, i'm guessing he's watching the game.

 

And anyone who continues to tell me that Taylor is disconnected with the game, just because they think he looks disconnected from watching on TV is going to get a from me. You can't see a kid on TV for a couple seconds once a week and know what's going through his head.

[suh_fan93]

So what part of the offense did we change in 2009 that led to the horrible year we had offensively??????

 

 

Here's a breakdown of the Shawn Watson excuses as to why he really is a great offensive coordinator and why it's not his fault our offense has struggled the past few years.

 

1. It's Bo's fault. (my personal favorite)

 

2. We had injuries.

 

3. We changed the offense in fall camp.

 

4. We shouldn't have went with Taylor Martinez this year. (once again apparently Bo's fault)

 

5. Taylor Martinez can't throw on the run and shouldn't be used out in space.

 

6. It's not Watson's fault but rather it's Bo Pelini, Ted Gilmore and Barney Cotton's fault for our lack of offensive production.

 

 

Have I forgot any???

[HuskerNMO]

I don't get where people are saying that we overhauled the offense midway through fall camp. It seemed that the offense was headed in the spread option direction since the Holiday Bowl, and coaches have said it was headed in that direction even before that, but injuries prevented us from progressing. So, what's all this "we had to overhaul the offense midway through fall camp?" I understand if we limited the playbook somewhat for Taylor, but the zone read game was in place already, I don't think the basic philosophy of our offense really changed. We knew before this season that Bo wanted our QBs to run the ball, to make the defense account for all 11 players. I don't know, let me know if I missed some article where they stated they had to overhaul the offense midway through fall camp, but I've never heard anything of that nature except randomly on this board.

 

There is a difference between running the zone read, and handing off the ball out of the shotgun. The past couple of years most of our plays that looked like a zone read, were actually a designed QB or RB run. The same thing is true with Cody or Zac in the game, and the same thing was true for the most part after Taylor got injured.

 

So a lot of times when fans are saying things like he should have kept or given the ball, it actually was called that way, it wasn't the wrong read.

 

I understand the difference between the zone read and a designed handoff. I just don't follow where people (mainly zoogies, I think) are saying that our offense was overhauled in the middle of fall camp.

 

We threw out approximately 50-60% of our playbook to get Taylor up to speed once he was chosen as our starting quarterback towards the end of fall camp. This required Cotton reworking some of the line techniques and basically eliminated Mike McNeill's senior season. Do you really think they moved him to WR to catch a total of 18 balls? Remember how Trey Robinson was going to be a factor in the offense?

 

We were going to be closer to our 2008 offense, with a little more QB run mixed in. We threw the ball 433 times in 2008, 364 times in 2009 (after which we talked about the need to be more multiple), then have followed it up with 261 throws thusfar in 2010, heck we COMPLETED more passes in 2008 (295) then will be attempted this year.

 

Like I said, I understand limiting the playbook. But that shouldn't change your offensive philosophy. Everything you do should be built from that philosophy, even if it's just 20 plays. Limiting the playbook shouldn't alter your identity. If it does, then something is wrong with the system you're trying to run.

 

And I thought the plan was to move to a more ground based attack all along this year, not to become more "multiple" aka pass more than we did in 2009. At no point did I understand our offensive evolution to be moving towards our 2008 scheme. I've felt like from the middle of 2009, we've been on a pretty steady move away from that philosophy towards a spread option attack, which is what we certainly showcased in the Holiday Bowl last year (except our QB couldn't run, so we used the wildcat).

 

And why in the world would Cotton have to rework line techniques just because we limited the playbook? I think every year that Mike McNeill has been here, they've said he would get the ball more at the beginning of the season, and then that hasn't happened, so that's nothing new.

 

Anyways, still don't get it.

 

Our offensive philosophy was balance heading into fall camp, we ended up running the ball 70% of the time. Our line was spending plenty of time in pass protection, and less time learning techniques for blocking on Zone Read type plays, once the switch at QB was made, we tweaked our line splits, changed our pass protection schemes and had to work more on blocking for the zone read assignments.

 

McNeill was a weapon in 2008, he didn't catch as many balls in 2009, but he was the #2 option behind Paul in the passing scheme, this year he was literally our 4th option on most plays if even in the progressions. He was pissed this year because Taylor rarely made it to him in his progressions, and his future of a NFL career was basically pissed away because he is now labelled as too small to be a TE and too slow to be a WR.

 

McNeill was the one who wanted to make the switch to WR, and as far as I can tell the coaches did it as much to get better blocking matchups on the field as they did to have a receiving threat out there. This whole offseason we heard about our wide receivers working on their blocking as they tried to prepare for the new physical running attack, and the offensive line tweaked its splits way back in the holiday bowl and showed it again in the spring game. That was nothing new come fall camp.

 

Yes, he did want to switch, because he thought we were going to throw the ball and it would highlight his best talents, which are catching the football and route running.

 

Our splits were often wider this year than even the Holiday bowl last year. As far a WR's, sure they talked about blocking, but that's been the case for a while, certainly well before this fall camp. There were also articles from the WR's unhappy about the lack of throwing, how they were beating the DB's in camp, blah blah blah.

[knapplc]

We were building off of what we saw in the Holiday bowl, when we broke out of the conservative rut we had been in for most of last year. That was what we were working towards, but that is not what we had this season at all. jliehr breaks this down specifically much better than I could. It is not like we changed every fundamental component of the offense, but it changed very appreciably. Both in scope (a lot less) and in philosophy (riding the big play over ball control/less flashy) and even just in more simple terms as pass-run split.

You keep repeating the bold as if it has any validity. This team relied no more on the "big play" than any other team. Every single play from every single team is designed to score a TD. The fact that so many of ours did early in the season has a lot more to do with the superlative abilities of our QB (the "huge gamble" of the revisionist history you keep mentioning).

 

We had every single play in this offense in our playbook last year. We've run specific plays this year that are geared toward the talents of our players. Shockingly, this is actually done by most every team in America (not coached by Bill Callahan, that is).

You can't necessarily say that. Obviously taking a knee but seriously the real point is the good teams can churn out tough drives instead of big play or bust as our offense seemed to be once Taylor got injured.

 

I figured the fourth-and-short, kickoff, punt and victory formation plays would be obviously excluded. Thanks for reminding me that everything must be spelled out.

 

The issue regarding injuries doesn't make much sense. Injured players mean little production regardless of the play.

 

"Lucky" big plays are busts in coverage, Hail Mary passes, and blown assignments. When you execute your blocking schemes to perfection and Roy Helu sprints 60 yards to the end zone, that's not "relying on big plays," that's executing your offense. Every play is schemed to put a hat on a hat, or to out-think or outrun the opponent. The fact that these plays work doesn't mean we cannot grind out long drives, they meant that we didn't need to. And that's not a bad thing - in fact, that's offense to perfection.

 

zoogies seems to be insinuating that the fact that a healthy Taylor Martinez can outrun pretty much everyone we've played all year is a bad thing. Or something along those lines - I've never figured out what the problem with scoring from 80 yards out is. Mostly it seems like a way to cast blame away from Shawn Watson and onto Bo, since he made the decision that about 99% of other head coaches would make in his shoes - you've got a guy who's routinely torching your top-ten defense in practice, so the logical move would be to play him.

 

In Bizarro Shawn Watson Is Never Wrong World, this is a "gamble," and one that was wrong to make. We know it was wrong because Taylor got injured and couldn't run anymore. Or... something like that. Like I said, I've never followed the logic.