Strategic Trends for the Next Decade

[Enhance]

Calm down, calm down. You're taking this so seriously, and all we're talking about are some schemes and some trends. Mostly I was taking the piss out of you because you assert you're a coach's son, so that gives you insight other than what the rest of us have, but we don't know you're a coach's son just like you don't know I'm a former coach - or we could both be making it up. Mostly I'm just joshing with you.

Keep my name out yo mouf, foo.

:LOLtartar

 

[John BarleyCorn]

i agree with your last line of your post. and that's why i believe the option will make a comeback. the defense has to think about keeping quarterback containment, taking care of the dive back, and keeping the pitch man and the relationship between the quarterback and the pitch man strung out horizontally. Not to mention, that element of surprise of the QB dropping back on an option pass. The wishbone is a perfect example of an offense making the defense "think" too much. The flexbone at GT under Johnson is another example of that, showing that the option can work. Now am I saying that GT could win a nat'l title with that offense? No, they simply don't have the horses. They have damn good talent on the offensive side of the football, but what they need is a combination of better defensive coaching and talent. what an option offense needs to compliment it, is a defense that can get the ball back to the them.

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.

Now the risk with being an option oriented team, is the fact that your team philosophy has to tie in with each facet of the game. An option team likes to chew clock, give the defense a rest. The defense, in turn has to shut-down the opponents attack, since the option isn't a come from behind offense. And special teams have to be top notch, most notably in the in coverage of kicks and punts to keep the opposing offense at bay, and give your offense a short field with the return game.

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.

But what happens when you don't have the home-run hitter at I back? That's when you really rely on scoring drives with a short field. 1998 Nebraska is a perfect example. No big time I back, had to rely on just grinding it out down into the redzone. And please, don't bring up the fact about the talent we lost from the year before. Losing talent is just part of the cycle in college football. Yes, the option can score from anywhere, but it was an offense that was designed to grab the lead and not relinquish the lead.

Hell, we've iterated and re-iterated the points of the option and the workings of the offensive system, that I really don't know if there is much else to say about this topic, other than it was successful and possibly one day, it could be successful again.

 

[Apathy]

I'll say this, my dad coached football for over 25 years and was pretty successful; he said at the high school or college level he thought you ALWAYS needed some form of option offense in your attack. No matter if you run it 5 or 50 times a game, it simply keeps defenses honest and disciplined. One missed assignement and it goes to the house from anywhere. Also, the more a team employs the mulitple option attack, the more mindset they have to crush people. I really like all the insight and deep philosophy talk on this thread, but let's keep it simple:

who can hit someone in the mouth harder? Who can dig deep in the 4th quarter and finish?

I think this mindset and approach eliminate a lot of the talk about clock control, stacking boxes, alignment etc..., although all of those are important and are integral parts of evaluating tape and gameplans, I'll personally take a team that can smash over one who tries, on every damn play to simply out scheme, out shift, and overthink everytime.

The last decade saw a push to more finesse and scheme, but it seemed to me the teams winning conference and national titles were just plain tougher and meaner at the end of the day (like mizzou getting blown out by OU in b12 CCG). And now i think teams that have been trying to outscheme and finesse are being marganilized by teams that have great tough defenses and hardnosed offense approaches, which will hopefully mean more multiple option attacks.

Thanks.....just wished that we saw the option more often at Nebraska

 

[skersfan]

kanpps just a pain in the bottom, you learn to deal with it after awhile. He is the guy that tore the wing (note one wing) off of flys, poured salt on the snail. He likes to see the reaction. :ahhhhhhhh

 

[huskerjack23]

I'm gonna nominate Brophog as newcomer of the year, just based on the two Offense trending threads. Guys is bringing an A game that I rarely see on message boards, and Huskerboard is really an A game of an establishment. Kudos to that guy.

 

[bshirt]

Well, I think we've seen what great results our versatile "multiple" offense has given us the last couple of years. Also, as far as a pass favored offense having the ability to comeback when behind......well, we tried that for four years with Callahan and he was 0 - 19 when behind at halftime.

I would argue that a physical running game would excel even more than it did than the TO/Switzer era as most opponent DCs are not recruiting or developing defenses to stop it. It also serves us well for recruiting as we can readily get road graders in the midwest.

Otoh, I completely agree that big plays are HUGE in winning games. That's why Bo/SW started freshman Tmart over a methodical returning senior qb.

 

[suh_fan93]

I think you will see the option (the Osborne versions) and the wishbone make a serious come. Hell, all the Wildcat is, is the old single wing shotgun offense with a few tweaks here and there.

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.

Great stuff brophog. :thumbs

 

[Blaze1up]

A-11 Offense

 

[kchusker_chris]

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.

Quoted for emphasis.

That was a very, very detailed and insightful read, brophog.

Could you delve into sequential playcalling more?

Anyone who posted in that other thread that they don't learn anything on Huskerboard needs to read above. However - in my admitedly very unfootball-educated mind, I disagree somewhat with Watson's emphasis for versatility. Not that it isn't important, but sometimes it's exactly what holds us back. For 1, he doesn't adjust well in game so while he has versatility on paper (or just a really large playbook), he doesn't utilize it or prepare correctly throughout the week to utilize it. 2, these are college kids...and our skill position players haven't been in the program for 5 years. I've come to the conclusion that Watson needs a 4th or 5th year QB to be successful with his offense, and even then it's going to be 50/50 (Zac Lee/Joe Ganz). While I think his "multiple" offense could certainly be a home run with the correct players, you win ball games hitting singles and doubles. We just don't have the personel for it, and rarely will. These kids can't put in the 40-50 hours a week over the course of 3-4 years that's required. It's difficult enough to learn a single offense, let alone 4-5 meshed into 1.

You look at Oregon, they ran that offense fine w/ a 2nd year QB. Why couldn't we even come close to executing ours? Why is there so much indecision pre-snap? Can't say they didn't have a QB that had only been in the system for 2 years. How often do we talk about Bo's defensive "philosophy"? (i wish we had a thread like this one that discussed a little more how it worked though) Once you understand the total defense, you understand your position and how you fit into that. It's not that we as fans don't want versatility, or want an easily recognizable structure - we just want a consistent offensive philosophy.

You can't take the 10 best components of your 5 favorite cars and expect them to all fit nicely together into that Austin Martin shell. If you like the Austin Martin...buy a damn Austin Martin. It's not as sleak as a ferrari, or as fast as a Bugatti. It won't be as comfortable to ride in as that Mercedes Benz, or hold as many sets of golf clubs as that Porsche SUV. But in the end you'll still have a badass car.

 

[The Maudfather]

i agree with your last line of your post. and that's why i believe the option will make a comeback. the defense has to think about keeping quarterback containment, taking care of the dive back, and keeping the pitch man and the relationship between the quarterback and the pitch man strung out horizontally. Not to mention, that element of surprise of the QB dropping back on an option pass. The wishbone is a perfect example of an offense making the defense "think" too much. The flexbone at GT under Johnson is another example of that, showing that the option can work. Now am I saying that GT could win a nat'l title with that offense? No, they simply don't have the horses. They have damn good talent on the offensive side of the football, but what they need is a combination of better defensive coaching and talent. what an option offense needs to compliment it, is a defense that can get the ball back to the them.

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.

Now the risk with being an option oriented team, is the fact that your team philosophy has to tie in with each facet of the game. An option team likes to chew clock, give the defense a rest. The defense, in turn has to shut-down the opponents attack, since the option isn't a come from behind offense. And special teams have to be top notch, most notably in the in coverage of kicks and punts to keep the opposing offense at bay, and give your offense a short field with the return game.

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.

Very good post. I love your point about sequential play calling because you're spot on.

You make some very interesting points and I wholeheartedly agree that the option has the potential to score from any part of the field. However, the same could be said for any other offensive play ranging from a simple fullback trap to a Hail Mary. It all boils down to execution. The only other thing I would nitpick from this is the fact that I agree no offense is built to come back from 3 scores. That being said, the likelihood of coming back 3 scores with 12 minutes left in the game is far greater passing the ball out of a 5 wide set because it presents a multitude of different matchups, whereas the option is focusing mainly on the matchup with reading the defensive end.

 

[bball_backer]

Versatility is not necessarily multiplicity. Think of versatility as having varied uses or serving many functions. Think of multiplicity as the number of components in a system. You can be extremely versatile as an option offense - ESPECIALLY right now when defenses aren't built to stop it. If you don't have 11 players that can grasp a 'multiple' offense, you lose all versatility (see: NU the last 4 or 5 games).

 

[bball_backer]

You can't take the 10 best components of your 5 favorite cars and expect them to all fit nicely together into that Austin Martin shell. If you like the Austin Martin...buy a damn Austin Martin. It's not as sleak as a ferrari, or as fast as a Bugatti. It won't be as comfortable to ride in as that Mercedes Benz, or hold as many sets of golf clubs as that Porsche SUV. But in the end you'll still have a badass car.

:thumbs

 

[Hercules]

I'm by no means an expert, and I can't comment on the college football offensive trends for the next 10 years. But option football has been around since the 1940's. People probably called it a "gimmick" back then, and option offenses have been called out-dated at least since the 1980's if not before then. Yet teams continue to have success over and over and over again with the option.

The option game isn't just one or two specific plays, like the "power option". It's a concept, it's about isolating one defender, forcing him to make a choice, and then exploiting that choice. It's like a 2-on-1 fast break in basketball, where if it's executed correctly, the defender can't make the right choice.

Anyways, like I said, people have called the option obsolete for decades, and that hasn't stopped teams from reaching the national championship game with it even in the past few years (in fact, as far as I can tell, more teams are playing option football now than back in the 90's during Nebraska's run). I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. It may be used more as just a part of an overall offense, like brophog says, but there is as much potential for versatility within the option concept as there is in combining different philosophies.

As far as sequential playcalling goes - I don't know anything about whether that is a dying art or what. But it is a beautiful art, and it'd be a shame if it went away. I think one of the fun things about watching an offense like Oregon's is that Chip Kelly is a very good sequential playcaller. I imagine that's also one of Watson's shortfalls as well, coming from the west coast offense and trying to implement some form of the spread option at Nebraska.

 

[JTrain]

I think you will see the option (the Osborne versions) and the wishbone make a serious come. Hell, all the Wildcat is, is the old single wing shotgun offense with a few tweaks here and there.

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.

Of course, very good post overall. But Watson's 2008 success was in part because of the Big 12 having its worst defensive year in history. Even at 450 yards/game, you'll recall us finishing 6th in the Big 12.

I don't necessarily agree that offenses are not as specialized as they once were. You have to specialize to be good at the college level because you will always have time limitations for getting the student-athletes acclimated to your system. The Tebow-Meyer offense, the Chip Kelly offense, the Paul Johnson offense, etc. I don't see these being any less specialized than say, the Osborne or Spurrier offenses of the '90s. Osborne's playbook in the '90s was actually probably thicker than Gus Malzahn's currently. Ultimately you have 20-year-old kids trying to learn and become adept at your system given only 20 hours a week. You can only be so multiple.

Of course, specialization means you'll occasionally run into an opponent whose defensive strengths perfectly match up with your offensive ones. We all saw this at times with Osborne, and there have been plenty of recent examples too. But that's a acceptable downfall compared to a JOATMON offense that looks unstoppable against inferior competition, but at times downright inept against any legit, top 20 defenses.