Next DC

[Cam]

23rd in the magical geek stat of FEI. Yay!!!!! 70th in scoring. You don't have to be a stat geek to understand the bottom line. Your company can have tremendous magical efficiency stats, but if you look in the bank account and you're losing money, you aint doing well. Forget the defense. Roof is gone. We'll see if we can do better there.

We have far fewer drives than most teams due to the nature of our offense. We eat clock. Stats are useless unless they are normalized. Therefore, total Scoring is useless to use as a metric.

 

[tech_wreck47]

23rd in the magical geek stat of FEI. Yay!!!!! 70th in scoring. You don't have to be a stat geek to understand the bottom line. Your company can have tremendous magical efficiency stats, but if you look in the bank account and you're losing money, you aint doing well. Forget the defense. Roof is gone. We'll see if we can do better there.

70th in scoring and probably 100th in amount of possessions lol.

 

[tech_wreck47]

LOL. In fact, I am a musician. Please, please, please, please, please don't give me the "It's because the option eats up the clock" crap. Yes, that's why really effective option teams like the old Nebraska and Oklahoma used to beat people 10-7. WRONG! The option, when it's humming, can just as easily be a quick strike offense. It's just not a "two minute" drill offense. Virginia Tech game? One missed assignment by the defense, and it's to the house. If you stat geeks can explain to me how FEI takes into the account how we ran up a monster yardage number against UT, but fumbled it after a 30 yard gain late with a chance to put it away, and didn't execute an offensive play the last play of the game, or dropped a catchable pass that would have put the Miami game away, I'll shut up. The offense was mistake prone this year. We didn't have the 3rd down passing we had with JT. Stats can deceive as well as eyes.

Can you explain to me how the offense put us in field goal range in 1:22 and over 50 yards but what should be a easy field goal was missed? Or how about when they went down the field on UVA and took about 4 or 5 minutes off the clock to go ahead just to have the D give up a TD in barley over 1 minute? All other stuff didn’t matter at that point, the offense stepped up when needed and did their job when it needed to be done the most. I will agree they didn’t do what was needed against Miami, but the UT and UVA game are bad examples.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Can you explain to me how the offense put us in field goal range in 1:22 and over 50 yards but what should be a easy field goal was missed? Or how about when they went down the field on UVA and took about 4 or 5 minutes off the clock to go ahead just to have the D give up a TD in barley over 1 minute? All other stuff didn’t matter at that point, the offense stepped up when needed and did their job when it needed to be done the most. I will agree they didn’t do what was needed against Miami, but the UT and UVA game are bad examples.

UT is debatable, but the UVA game is almost all on the O.

 

[ilovetheoption]

LOL. In fact, I am a musician. Please, please, please, please, please don't give me the "It's because the option eats up the clock" crap. Yes, that's why really effective option teams like the old Nebraska and Oklahoma used to beat people 10-7. WRONG! The option, when it's humming, can just as easily be a quick strike offense. It's just not a "two minute" drill offense. Virginia Tech game? One missed assignment by the defense, and it's to the house. If you stat geeks can explain to me how FEI takes into the account how we ran up a monster yardage number against UT, but fumbled it after a 30 yard gain late with a chance to put it away, and didn't execute an offensive play the last play of the game, or dropped a catchable pass that would have put the Miami game away, I'll shut up. The offense was mistake prone this year. We didn't have the 3rd down passing we had with JT. Stats can deceive as well as eyes.

That's actually EXACTLY the argument I'm going to use, and I'm going to back it up with facts.

Georgia Tech had the 25th fewest possessions of any team in the country. Georgia Tech had the 58th fewest touchdowns of any team in the country.

Now, you may not want to believe that the option eats up the clock, and you may have anecdotal instances where it did not, but over the course of the year it did in fact result in fewer possessions for Georgia Tech than almost any other team in the country.

The fact that Georgia Tech's offense had more touchdowns then would be predicted based upon their number of possessions indicates the team had a pretty good offense.

I have a hard time believing that Georgia Tech people don't grasp this. You guys are supposed to be engineers.

**Edit**: It should be noted that in an effort to be as fair as possible to you, sorted touchdowns by absolute, and possessions on a per-game basis ,because GT played one fewer game than anybody else. If you don't do that, the results are even worse for your line of thinking.

 

[ilovetheoption]

It should be further noted that if you just go on a totals basis, ,the "top 10" teams in terms of fewest possessions include Army, Navy, Air Force, and Georgia Tech. That seems pretty clear evidence that the offense does, in fact, chew up the clock over the course of the season.

 

[tech_wreck47]

UT is debatable, but the UVA game is almost all on the O.

Disagree, they still scored when needed to take the lead. At that point they were clutch and that’s all that mattered. If we are talking about over the whole game I would say the special teams was one of the biggest reasons.

 

[lv20gt]

1. The reason why it is irrelevant is in all likelihood whether the next dc is considered great will be dependant on how he does here. If it is the case where Johnson's offense and recruiting would mean even a great dc won't succeed here then that will only be proven of a proven great dc cones hete. Otherwise of a guy fails it'll be just Johnson's 4th bad dc. That's why the "we don't know what would happen if we had an elite dc" argument is irrelevant is because our situation only lends itself to one outcome. Either the guy succeeds and is elite or he fails and isn't. There's no way our situation could possibl6 show an elite dc failing because we aren't going to get a guy who is proven to be elite before hand.

2. Despite what people believe stats can be biased. More accurately most stats try to either tell only part of a story, think line drove rate in baseball, or try to be reasonably accurate for most situations. Most stats aren't catchall and don't handle the extremes very well. Look at qbr and then play around and see what happens when a qb does something like throw nothing but tds or ints. Our offensive S&P ranking was 61 this year. I'm sorry but does anyone actually believe we were top 25 on offense this year?

3. Johnson should be on the hot seat and if we fail to make a bowl next year he should be fired, new dc or otherwise. I don't give a damn about potential with our offense. What matters is what is put on the field. Reaching our potential is entirely reliant on Johnson not being too stubborn to adapt. We haven't won the acc since his second year with players that he didn't recruit. At best we got 2014 where an injury forced the best bback to play and an injury to a baseball player brought us our best wr. Even then we didnt win the Acc. You say IF we can find a way to have an above average defense as if that isn't somehow tied to the head coach.

 

[ilovetheoption]

I actually agree with a lot of the above.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

That's actually EXACTLY the argument I'm going to use, and I'm going to back it up with facts.

Georgia Tech had the 25th fewest possessions of any team in the country. Georgia Tech had the 58th fewest touchdowns of any team in the country.

Now, you may not want to believe that the option eats up the clock, and you may have anecdotal instances where it did not, but over the course of the year it did in fact result in fewer possessions for Georgia Tech than almost any other team in the country.

The fact that Georgia Tech's offense had more touchdowns then would be predicted based upon their number of possessions indicates the team had a pretty good offense.

I have a hard time believing that Georgia Tech people don't grasp this. You guys are supposed to be engineers.

Sometimes, though, even that stat can be misleading. Below are the scores/possessions for fg and TD. In the games we approached/exceeded 50%, I think it can be argued that our O did pretty good. The UT game was mostly a special teams debacle with a few O/D miscues. JSU was never really in doubt, and Pitt, UNC, and WF were similar. We made it close in Miami primarily because the D held ground throughout the game in spite of the stalled O in the 2nd half. At that point we were 4-2, and should have been 6-0. We knew Clemson would be tough, and it was jarringly so. It's the UVA game that's really the most indicative of our Offensive woes this season. We were wildly inconsistent and unable to sustain drives. We had similar fates against Duke and uga. The VT game is an outlier. We were as successful as against Miami, but this time we got the D play at the end of the game. It's not that our O was bad, it was just not really that good. We broke some big plays, and against most of the teams we should have beaten, we sustained some drives. We were just wildly inconsistent this year, and that is what I have been pointing out most of the season. I was worried somewhat on some fall off due to a new QB, but I wasn't expecting quite this much. I think our ranking in OFEI is as much a testament to the option we run as you can get. Even in a pretty poor year offensively, we'll be in the upper quartile of FBS football. But make no mistake, our offense was terribly below par this year, and we suffered for it.

UT 6/13
JSU 7/10
Pitt 5/11
UNC 6/11
UM 4/11
WF 7/11
CU 2/13
UVA 4/17
VT 4/11
Duke 3/9
uga 1/8

 

[SidewalkJacket]

1. The reason why it is irrelevant is in all likelihood whether the next dc is considered great will be dependant on how he does here. If it is the case where Johnson's offense and recruiting would mean even a great dc won't succeed here then that will only be proven of a proven great dc cones hete. Otherwise of a guy fails it'll be just Johnson's 4th bad dc. That's why the "we don't know what would happen if we had an elite dc" argument is irrelevant is because our situation only lends itself to one outcome. Either the guy succeeds and is elite or he fails and isn't. There's no way our situation could possibl6 show an elite dc failing because we aren't going to get a guy who is proven to be elite before hand.

2. Despite what people believe stats can be biased. More accurately most stats try to either tell only part of a story, think line drove rate in baseball, or try to be reasonably accurate for most situations. Most stats aren't catchall and don't handle the extremes very well. Look at qbr and then play around and see what happens when a qb does something like throw nothing but tds or ints. Our offensive S&P ranking was 61 this year. I'm sorry but does anyone actually believe we were top 25 on offense this year?

3. Johnson should be on the hot seat and if we fail to make a bowl next year he should be fired, new dc or otherwise. I don't give a damn about potential with our offense. What matters is what is put on the field. Reaching our potential is entirely reliant on Johnson not being too stubborn to adapt. We haven't won the acc since his second year with players that he didn't recruit. At best we got 2014 where an injury forced the best bback to play and an injury to a baseball player brought us our best wr. Even then we didnt win the Acc. You say IF we can find a way to have an above average defense as if that isn't somehow tied to the head coach.

Admittedly, I've only read about half of the back-and-forth between you guys, but I have to ask: does it get exhausting constantly trying to prove that our team and coach suck? Maybe try the alternative for a couple days... or go fishing.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Disagree, they still scored when needed to take the lead. At that point they were clutch and that’s all that mattered. If we are talking about over the whole game I would say the special teams was one of the biggest reasons.

I am not sure what you're referring to here. We went up 28-14 with 13:08 left in the 4th QTR. The final three drives were punt-fumble-missed FG. I agree that ST was the primary cause of the loss, but I can't in any way call the O "clutch" in the UT game.

 

[Milwaukee]

Admittedly, I've only read about half of the back-and-forth between you guys, but I have to ask: does it get exhausting constantly trying to prove that our team and coach suck? Maybe try the alternative for a couple days... or go fishing.

 

[ilovetheoption]

Sometimes, though, even that stat can be misleading. Below are the scores/possessions for fg and TD. In the games we approached/exceeded 50%, I think it can be argued that our O did pretty good. The UT game was mostly a special teams debacle with a few O/D miscues. JSU was never really in doubt, and Pitt, UNC, and WF were similar. We made it close in Miami primarily because the D held ground throughout the game in spite of the stalled O in the 2nd half. At that point we were 4-2, and should have been 6-0. We knew Clemson would be tough, and it was jarringly so. It's the UVA game that's really the most indicative of our Offensive woes this season. We were wildly inconsistent and unable to sustain drives. We had similar fates against Duke and uga. The VT game is an outlier. We were as successful as against Miami, but this time we got the D play at the end of the game. It's not that our O was bad, it was just not really that good. We broke some big plays, and against most of the teams we should have beaten, we sustained some drives. We were just wildly inconsistent this year, and that is what I have been pointing out most of the season. I was worried somewhat on some fall off due to a new QB, but I wasn't expecting quite this much. I think our ranking in OFEI is as much a testament to the option we run as you can get. Even in a pretty poor year offensively, we'll be in the upper quartile of FBS football. But make no mistake, our offense was terribly below par this year, and we suffered for it.

UT 6/13
JSU 7/10
Pitt 5/11
UNC 6/11
UM 4/11
WF 7/11
CU 2/13
UVA 4/17
VT 4/11
Duke 3/9
uga 1/8

Based on what do you judge what is "par"

Do you know that literally three teams in the country scored touchdowns on 50% of its possessions? So, that's your level of "pretty good"? If "anything else except for a top 3 offense sucks" is your level of expectations, well then I guess you get disappointed a lot in life.

GT was number 43 in TD/Possessions. Thats a top 1/3 offense.

Do you have some definition of "par" that is higher for an option offense than for any other?

 

[dressedcheeseside]

LOL. In fact, I am a musician. Please, please, please, please, please don't give me the "It's because the option eats up the clock" crap. Yes, that's why really effective option teams like the old Nebraska and Oklahoma used to beat people 10-7. WRONG! The option, when it's humming, can just as easily be a quick strike offense. It's just not a "two minute" drill offense. Virginia Tech game? One missed assignment by the defense, and it's to the house. If you stat geeks can explain to me how FEI takes into the account how we ran up a monster yardage number against UT, but fumbled it after a 30 yard gain late with a chance to put it away, and didn't execute an offensive play the last play of the game, or dropped a catchable pass that would have put the Miami game away, I'll shut up. The offense was mistake prone this year. We didn't have the 3rd down passing we had with JT. Stats can deceive as well as eyes.

Games are shorter the more you run the ball because the clock stops less frequently.

 

[GTJackets]

So about that next DC, is there any hope for an announcement today @BigDaddyBuzz?

 

[Foxyg]

In three games we lost this year we had a two possession lead in the second half. That shouldn't happen regardless of how our defense plays if our offense was up to snuff. With that said, for everyone saying that changing defensive coordinators is a fool's errand, my response is that if you see an area that needs improving, why would you not try to improve it? Our defense has been pretty crappy under Roof by any metric you want to use. Even in 2014, we relied mostly on a historic offense and turnovers in the second half of the year to get us to the promised land. Turnovers can't be planned and represent luck for the most part unless you're getting huge amounts of pressure on the quarterback (which we weren't). Further, given the past track record, are you really willing to bet that CPJ won't get the offense back on track?

To CPJ's credit, he knew the offense was going to take a step back this year given the change at center, quarterback and b-back, and said as much prior to the season. He had hoped that the defense would improve to the point that it would make up for the step back that the offense was obviously going to take. What I don't think he counted on was 1) how bad the offensive line would be (injuries and attrition played some part in that); and 2) how truly bad special teams would be. The defense improved marginally I guess, but I defy anyone to say that it was the strength of our team in any year that Roof's been the coach. The special teams deal is the most easily fixable issue we have. Fix that and you win the Tennessee game all by itself. Offensive line coaching and recruiting is a topic for it's own thread, but my money is that we'll be better on offense next year and probably won't lose so many games where we were up by two scores in the second half merely because the offense will be better able to sustain drives.

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

I thought the offense and defense stunk it up this year.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Based on what do you judge what is "par"

Do you know that literally three teams in the country scored touchdowns on 50% of its possessions? So, that's your level of "pretty good"? If "anything else except for a top 3 offense sucks" is your level of expectations, well then I guess you get disappointed a lot in life.

GT was number 43 in TD/Possessions. Thats a top 1/3 offense.

Do you have some definition of "par" that is higher for an option offense than for any other?

You are focusing on one particular stat. I don't think you'd have much success getting the rest of the world to call us a "top 3 offense" this year. Ifigure were a top 25 offense, and that's where the efficiency stats show us. It'b be similar to saying that GT is a top 15 defense because we were 11th in 3rd down conversion %. Or that we were a good defense because we were 33rd in total D. Those stats are true, but don't paint the whole picture.

I really come down to sustaining drives. Even ultimately unsuccessful drives. In years past, we were able to sustain some of our drives and at least give the D rest. This year, specifically in the second half of the season, we were unable to sustain drives against some opponents that we should have been able to. (UVA, Duke) Now, I am as big a fan of option football as you, so I don't blame the woes on scheme. I think a lot of our problems offensively stemmed from a QB who missed reads and struggled mightily in the passing game late in the season. That's why I am not labeling the O as horrible, but just not as efficient as we are used to seeing. I also think that the gaudy stats from our our easier opponents normalize the horrible stats from some of our worst games. While that is true, in some extent, of every season, I really just see the UVA game as a game where O/ST really did fairly poorly, 2 of our TDs came on short fields, but yet also a game that gave me hope for next season. The D did well most of the game in spite of the ST/O handing them short fields, and that last TD drive by our O was as good as it gets.

So yes, our O wasn't bad this year, but it was wildly inconsistent, and that is what I think hurt us late in the season. Until Duke, at which point the D went into hibernation.

But I think you and I agree on far more than we disagree.

 

[Madison Grant]

Games are shorter the more you run the ball because the clock stops less frequently.

I know, but it's not that simple. If all you do is run the 'death march' offense, you're only taking advantage of half the option's potential. The point of the 10 yards in 4 downs part is to force the defense out of position for the big play. So while the run game eats up the clock, the old Tom Osborne teams were still famous for hanging 60 on people. I'm not going to look up the stat because I'm fairly confident that over the years the Navy option teams going all the way back to CPJ have put big scoring totals up on opponents. 23rd in the Billy Bean FEI stat, but 70th in scoring is not all because we're holding the ball, fewer possessions, blah, blah, blah. Good option offenses score big too.