This may shock you, but the 2017 and 2018 teams were ranked higher in offensive efficiency than the 2008 and 2016 teams. Overall four different QBs lead top 20 offenses for CPJ. It wasn't just two who had success. Tevin Washington was the only QB in the CPJ era to lead two top 15 offenses. The offense was consistently effective with whatever personnel was plugged in. Either CPJ really knew what he was doing or the system gave us an advantage, or some mixture of both. As for the defense, CPJ isn't a defensive coach and apparently wasn't very good at hiring them either. Although somewhat in his defense he tried to hire one and we just flat out refused to pay for it.
But back to the question at hand, which is what we need to do going forward. Maybe there is a pro style coach who is a good enough play caller that will come here and have similar results. I just really doubt it when the better teams on our schedule will be facing the same offense in practice with better talent, along with playing many other teams running the same scheme. Talent will win out if you decide to do the same thing everyone else does.
for one i think everybody is showing their lack of understanding of the situation the second they paint everything as either option or pro style when there’s a lot in between. what they did at oregon with chip kelly vs baylor vs stanford vs iowa is all very different things. ideally we evaluate what you have on the roster then design the offense on those strengths. the transition should have been more gradual in hindsight but again, i think we had to look committed and show we were running an offense that wasn’t the option for proof of concept for recruits, and it did end up helping us in that regard.
another thing is we have to get good athletes in. as much as people want to live in this fantasy land where recruiting doesn’t matter it’s absolutely a core tenant of football at this point. you also have to develop that talent and use it well, but the hit rate on 4* recruits is so much higher than 3*. that being said, uga, clemson and bama have found lower rated recruits and turned them into stars. something we have been kinda bad at for the last decade regardless of staff. yes, if we run the same thing as everyone else talent will win, but right now talent and athleticism are king anyway. there’s no “equalizer” against teams like uga, clemson, etc anymore. the option is not something that will make us competitive with teams that big and physical. it’s also such a hindrance on the defensive side of recruiting (that and paul’s lack of effort on that front so maybe a different coach would be different results)
ultimately the key thing teams that see success in lesser situations do is create an identity that focuses on a strength while maintaining some sort of balance on offense. you cannot be successful consistently only running the ball or only throwing the ball. if that means turning your team into a track team with spread hurry up (baylor, ucf, oregon, etc) or bulking up the line, TEs and full backs like stanford and iowa, you can lean into that strength and build around it. that is also where you get to recruit a little more based on system and with that you aren’t pigeon holing yourself into mediocre talent on both sides of the ball. chip long actually seems to have much more of a plan and desire to establish an identity (hurry up 12 personnel, RPO with emphasis on zone blocking) so that is a step in the right direction
you also have to develop players and have a good s&c program. i think coach lew is pretty good at the s&c part but i think our player development on both offense and defense is poor. we have replaced a lot of those staff members so maybe that will change but still up in the air
