I see the perspective of the other side of the coin. I understand that. But we passed efficiently for the first 7 attempts, and that aided the running game because Wisconsin didn't know what we were going to throw at them so there was a lot of confusion on their end.
Fast forward a couple of plays when Taylor makes a horrible decision and throws it RIGHT AT Wisconsin's LB. He makes a better decision to not throw the ball or dump it to Burkhead or even throw it away, and that the game plan Beck had continues without an issue. Yeah, after that first INT we maybe should have settled down and ran it with Burkhead for a couple of plays, and if Wisconsin wanted to stack the box and stuff us, then let them and then air it out with Taylor. But Beck didn't do that. He decided to keep throwing the ball and then Taylor made ANOTHER BAD DECISION by throwing it into triple coverage instead of looking to the right and dumping it off to Burkhead, throwing it out of bounds, or running with the ball. He does anyone of those three, and the game plan Beck has continues.
The only thing I fault Beck for is coming out throwing to start the second half. At that point of time we needed to settle down and try to pound the ball at Wisconsin's D. But Beck didn't want that, he wanted to come out throwing maybe thinking that Wisconsin would anticipate a run; and then Taylor made ANOTHER BAD DECISION by throwing the ball on the run into a tight window instead of dumping the ball of to Burkhead who was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. Those three turnovers and the subsequent lack of a secondary caused us to be put into a massive hole where solely running the football wasn't going to do jack sh#t for us. It altered Beck's game plan.
Towards the end of the game there was something to come away with and something that hopefully Beck and Co picked up on. Burkhead and the RB corps, along with the offensive line, makes it possible for us to run on just about anybody. Hopefully next week we can come out and run the ball 75% of the time and throw it 25% of the time. Limit the passes, limit Taylor's ability to make a bad decision. Those three turnovers are what cost us the game, and 2 if not all were all on Taylor
Well thought out post.
I'm not denying Martinez made bad decisions. Technically speaking every single one of those interceptions was Martinez' fault. But trying to get a quarterback to throw the ball 20+ times a game, when he has only shown once in his career that he can do this well (against a terrible OSU pass defense), is just begging for interception after interception after interception.
You wouldn't ask any running quarterback to throw the ball 12 out of 15 times in a non-hurry up situation, so why did we do it? That's why I put it on Beck and Beck alone. His inability to adjust the playcalling after bad decisions created a snowball affect that destroyed the game for us. I don't think there is a "maybe we should have ran it with Burkhead for a couple of plays" - I think there is a we DEFINITELY should have run it with Burkhead for more than a couple of plays. Seven carries in one half is idiotic for a guy like Burkhead.
But I'm not calling for Beck's head by any means. My hope is that he does now what Watson rarely if ever did - learn from his mistakes and call the games the right way.
We saw flashes of really, really good playcalling from Beck during the noncon. Like during the Washington game how he set up the bootleg by Taylor by running that same off tackle play over and over again, and eventually having Taylor keep it and score, ala Wilson schooling our D on Saturday night. I think Beck definitely already has a leg up on Wats and think he'll be a really good one eventually. I never saw flashes of brilliance from Wats. Ever. Period. I saw a lot of that damn zone read and a running game that just didn't work when we needed it to.
I think Beck just suffered through the first big, pressure game of his career as an OC. He entered that pressure cooker that is Camp Randall like everyone else Saturday night, probably nervous and a bit unsure how things would go. He did quite well that first quarter. Stuck to the gameplan and it worked just like it was drawn up. It kept us in the game.
Then the adversity came, after Taylor threw his first pick, and Beck choked. He made a rookie mistake, and deviated from the gameplan. He strikes me as an intelligent coordinator with a good head on his shoulders, and I'm hoping this truly was just inexperience and is not going to become a trend. It kills me, and I'm sure the rest of you, when that kind of crap-- mistakes, sloppy play, and deviation from what we think will work-- becomes a trend. The reason we fired Watson is because he kept doing that crap over, and over, and over again. Until we were beating our heads into the wall. :bang
The pick to 2nd half ticked me off a bit more than the other two. At that point, I guess I was thinking Beck really just out-thought himself. I agree with the above poster, I think he was guessing they'd anticipate a run. He wanted to look brilliant and beat them with a pass. Problem was, we hadn't sufficiently established the run game to the point where they'd anticipate it, and accordingly, they weren't looking for a run at all. They were totally keyed in to the pass.
Again, I really hope this was just a rookie mistake from Beck, and one he learns from. Sometimes, the best OC's don't get caught up trying to look brilliant and get stuck in chess match with the defense. They don't need to cook up something elaborate that perfectly exploits the D and their tendencies. They just do what works and do it well. They do what they need to do to win the game.
I will say this: I think Beck needs to continue to work to clean up the little things... Namely, fumbles. This has been a plague for this offense, and it is mostly due to Taylor. Hell, go Coach Boon on the kid and make him run a mile every time he puts it on the turf. They will ABSOLUTELY kill our style of winning games. Funnily enough, one of the keys everyone had for Saturday was to not fumble, which we really did not do. We still got rocked :steam . But honestly, I think if he cleans that up, we could still be damn good offensively.
