You can be "multiple" without being a jack of every trade under the sun
You simply do not have enough practice time to get good at everything we try to do
You can be very average with a bunch of incompatible stuff or be very good at a few
That DOESNT mean Im suggesting we should be only a Power Running Team- that is how the 500 page playbook fans twist it
You can be a descent Power Running Team and excel in a couple of other facets of the game
The problem is, Beck admitted he watches opponent film, or even recruit filmes, he watches a lot of games on TV and when he sees something he likes, the mad scientist in his mind goes off and he bolts it onto our offense
Well after awhile that car we are driving ends up looking like something that a 15 year old built out of a very large junkyard, when a well running Volvo with a few engine adjustments and special tires would have allowed us to efficiently get from point a to point b. Nothing meshes, nothing works quite right and it ends up being an Edsel with lots of Chevy, Ford, Nissan, Honda and Mercedes parts hanging off of it. It has front a rear spoilers, curb feelers, front scoop, fender extenders, a CB radio, 8 track and DVD player, TV and a full low rider package. You see flashes of brilliance coupled with stretches where nothing goes right, the Jekyl and Hyde thing we have been very accustomed to seeing. Turnovers- a natural with that approach.
We are: a power running team, a speed option team, a zone read option team, an inside/outside zone running team, a West Coast Offense team, a Spread team, a Tony Franklin Mesh/shallow team, a Constraint play action team and some other home grown stuff like the zone read/pass read option or even triple option handoff to the TB thing we did last year
Remember that TO never even ran the Triple Option- because it took too much time to perfect
That doesnt just go for running team- read Mike Leachs book
His prolific passing teams at TTEch with average talent- they had just a handful of plays he had written down on a 1/4 piece of paper
The TT QBs wrist band only had about 20-25 plays on it. They could install their entire offense in 1 week (BTW Im not a big fan of Leach, but have run some of his stuff)
They could run a play with a tag which meant it was run out of a different formation, BUT his kids practiced just a handful of concepts and got GREAT at them, just like NU did with what they did in the 90s. They ran all curl, shallow, mesh, smash, snag, all shakes, stick and thats about it. It was all about execution and perfecting a few concepts. Did it look complex? Maybe, but it wasnt at all. Heck in practice his receivers didnt even warm up, they did "dynamic" warmups by running short slow routes or they even would run plays slowly- IE they didnt waste practice time.
Well to get good at that kind of stuff, which we run a little of and good at everything else we try to run, there is very little chance we get REALLY good at any of it. Hence Beck talking about whitiling the playbook down and doing more of what DR Tom did- which was every week going into a specific game knowing 90% of what you run was a grouping of 12-18 plays. That grouping of plays MAY vary a bit from week to week depending on who you are playing, but that week you are repping that specific grouping like crazy WHILE MAKING SURE you have plenty of time to continue developing fundamentals- like ball security, blocking, throwing, catching etc etc When you spend the majority of your practice time repping and installing plays- not a lot of time left for developing basic skills.
