Passing offense under Frost
- Thread starter BigRedBuster
- Start date
PasstheDamnBallGuy
Starter
The final score of the game is pretty irrelevant.
He had 19 carries for 140 yds and 2 tds. Nothing special you are right. Not that that matters either. Do i need to post plays from Washington, Oklahoma st, or Kansas st because we won those games and he put up numbers?
huskertillIdie
Walk-on
What always made me crazy was the fact that we were constantly running 4 yard routes when we needed 6 yards for a first down.
HerbieHancock
Walk-on
Game changers at qb come up big when it counts & consistently for a majority of a season. The final score is never irrelevant.
he threw just over 50% no tds and 2 interceptions that game, let’s not forget about that. Not to mention, take away all those who yards he ran for in that video, how’d he do ?
tmac and ta have inflated stats bc they both held the job for 3 years+, and we’re the centerpiece of the offense they both ran.
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HerbieHancock
Walk-on
Swiv3D
Starter
How did those teams do when they weren't on the field (in martinez's case, the 2nd ucla game and last minnesota game shouldn't count because he was so hurt that he shouldn't have been on the field)
ScottyIce
Banned
A misguided statement on his behalf, no question.
But, to use this discussion as a jumping off point, the offensive line is without question my focal point. It usually is every season. In fact, I believe the program has had good enough quarterback play at times to win conference titles. There just wasn't good enough support around them. If you don't have an elite quarterback then you have to have the supporting cast.
Even then, a good offensive line goes a long way. Nebraska's failures in the trenches the last 15 years has played as big a role as anything, if not the biggest role.
Offensive line play analysis is interesting, though. For all the direct impact they have on the game, they have an indirect perception due to a lack of commonly tracked stats. To really track offensive line stats you have to watch the tape and do it yourself, which is what sites like pro football focus tries to do. I can't speak to their accuracy, but they tend to have a better opinion of individual linemen on this team than we do as a collective whole. A big difference is they're grading individuals, we are looking at net results.
One simple play example is sacks. It used to be assumed that all sacks were the offensive lines fault, after all, if they blocked well enough nobody would get through. But as analytics have matured, people noticed the some QBs were putting up low sack numbers, even as their offensive line personnel changed. Over time, much more credit/blame has shifted to the QBs and play callers and less directly on the individual lineman themselves.
Running plays are a good example, too. If a play gets 7 yards, you tend to not notice it much. If it gets 70, it gets a lot of praise. From the offensive line perspective, they've pretty much played their part in both cases, but the latter the RB beat the Safety whereas he didn't in that first one. It's interesting when you track the median rushing yards of backs. They don't deviate very much, even though the average (mean) rush will, which strongly suggests big gains play a big role in assessing rushing efficacy.
When I watch UCF's line, I see a pretty decent unit, but not a unit that makes me think that offense will generate that kind of production. What I do see is a unit that gets paid off in yardage when they block well. That's the biggest difference I saw when comparing UCF and Nebraska.
Probably some of both. No question Verduzco has me very excited. I've been staunchly against the common OC/QB coach dual role. I think we are going to see more teams deviate from that with the expanded staffs, and Nebraska has a big leg up here.
ScottyIce
Banned
Yeah, I'm just reporting what Frost said.
Frost called Mario/leaned on experience with him at Northern Iowa when he got the bigger gig at Oregon. Everything he taught Mariota/Adams he said he learned it from Mario.
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BigRedBuster
International Man of Mystery
Undone
All-American
Your whole post was really good brophog, +1.
One mantra we'll always hear in a football discussion is how "great offensive lines make for great offenses." Pretty much true. Now this is hard to measure and hard to prove, but I do have a theory that Frost's offense gives more bang for your offensive line buck. I think it can 'do more with less' as far as the O-line goes than Riley's offense could. I think that this is demonstrably true of UCF's offense, in my opinion, because:
1. There are just so many plays that go to the edge of the field.
2. Milton and their starting running back had the quickness when he carried the ball outside.
I think we even saw some of this in Ameer's junior season here. Our line really wasn't playing very well that year. But Beck actually had some good things going that season and our version of the zone read made up for. Also...Ameer made up for it by consistently pulling off Barry Sanders type s***.
I'm not pouring out any kool-aid for myself. But I really do expect that right out of the gate, an updated scheme will make up for so much with regards to our line.
I'm not going to say they've been great. But I think they're an easy target for several reasons. First, it's easier to call them out as a unit than to single out a specific player. A lot of people don't want to be seen as jumping on an individual but when you can speak in more generic terms it "feels" better. Second, it's easy to see something go wrong on a play and just say "the OL screwed up." Any missed blocking assignment seems like it should be the OL's fault. But unless you really go back and watch everything that's going on, that's mostly a guess on most people's part. Third, without really going back and watching, it's really hard to separate bad play from a bad call or scheme. The OL may have missed a block but if they were being asked to execute a block that they basically had no chance of making, I don't see how that's really their fault. And it's also one of those positions that gets all the blame when something goes wrong and barely any credit when things go right. They could run 10 plays perfectly and they'd just be seen as "doing their job" but they screw up once on the 11th play and people are all over them.
People have accused us of having bad OL play for a long time. And it's not that there isn't any truth to that. But starting in 2010 we had the #9, #15, #8, #19 and #19 rushing offenses in the country for those years. Plus we generated four of the Top 10 All-Time rushing yardage players in Husker history. You don't do that without getting a lot of help from your OL. The last three years has been shaky at best but I think a lot of that has to do with predictability in play-calling and questionable scheme.
So I think the OL has gotten more blame than they deserve and not as much credit. Not that they couldn't be better - everyone could. But I don't think they've been nearly as bad as a lot of people try to claim.
In almost any other situation I would agree. In this one though, I think part of that was a symptom of our disjointed offensive scheme. I've commented on it several times but still to me the biggest problem we had was that each position group seemed to be working in a separate system. Our qb seemed to be operating under a timing scheme style of passing attack, the receivers were operating in more of a spread style find spaces type of system, and the offensive line was operating in a collapsing pocket-roll the qb out type of system. I have no idea whatsoever on what the running backs were doing but it wasn't in sync with anybody. The whole thing was just an absolute hodgepodge of coaching styles and it goes back to Riley not getting his coaches on the same page. On top of that, and I'm not one to typically criticize our offensive coordinators, langsdorf was severely lacking in his attempts (or lack thereof) to set defenses up for big plays. I could always see what Callahan, Watson, and beck were trying to accomplish but I never had any level of understanding on what langs was trying to do. Riley himself alluded to as much in the last couple weeks of the season.