Offensive Styles

[gtg936g]

In short yardage the gun is not as effective as our style. You would have to have a D line that can dominate the O line to stop short yardage plays consistently.

I think it would be hard to run the zone read under center from a timing perapective. I am surprised teams have abandoned a goal line set to get those tough yards. My thought is that if you are going to be in the gun on short yardage, you might as well throw it.

 

[Essobee]

With today's rules giving blocking advantages to the offense and receiving advantage to the receiver, the gun reminds me of my early youth when we would play touch ball with no rushing of the QB allowed. It simply amounted to one or more receivers running around until one got open and then a pass from the QB. Not a great deal of skill needed, either. Essentially just someone with an arm and another with hands.

All the more reason to love the 3O.

 

[Yaller Jacket]

I agree, Boomer. I have never understood how teams are all that effective with running plays out of the gun. As you say, the play develops much slower. I don't see the possibility of as many options as we have. Plus the fake or keep takes place isolated behind the line where it's out there to be seen. No, I like what we do.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I love our offense.

 

[4shotB]

And yet we audibled to a run play and picked up a long third down with Synjin against Clemson. We were able to run on third and long more often than most (if not all) other teams in the country.

I want CPJ to run his offense -- whatever it is. I think he tweaked it in prior years to make a segment of the fan base happy and it wasnt an improvement... Lets just do what we do and do it well.

/

Reread my post. I said 3rd and extremely long situations. I am fully aware that we did convert some 3rd and longs via the run. That's good. I also am not saying that CPJ needs to cater to my whims when I say I don't like seeing the QB under center when it's 3rd and 18. that's just me. hey, if he can win 11 games and beat Uga every year, I don't really care if he punts on first down every possession.

I also don't believe that CPJ does anything to cater to the whims of the fans - that would be lunacy and he doesn't strike me as a guy who is an idiot. If he did anything different last year, it was because he felt like it better served the skillset of his QB at the time and improved the teams chances of winning. if you think differently on this topic well, we will just have to disagree.

 

[midga fan]

I got to thinking after reading a comment in another thread. Is anybody else besides me exceedingly pleased that we run our offense from under center? Believe it or not, I have watched at least a portion of every single bowl game this year and probably 70% or so of the total snaps. So many of the teams playing now execute their run game out of the gun. While the read option can be hard to stop in general, it is an epic fail in short yardage situations. Time and time again I watched teams get tackled in the backfield in crucial goal to go, or 4th and short type situations. The plays are just so slow hitting that run blitzes or just a DL beating his guy will stone it. In our offense, the plays hit so fast that it renders those D tactics useless. A DL beating his guy is always good for the defense, but against us, it better be the right DL guy (meaning in the designed gap for the play) because he won't have time to get into the backfield.

We don't give defenses a 4 yard head start and hope the option numbers make up for it. What say you?

You hit the nail on the head here Boomer. My group has been saying the same thing. I get so tired of seeing seemingly every other team in college football run their offense out of the shotgun. Unless you are going to pass I just don't see the advantage. I love this offense. With the right qb which JT certainly, it is a beautiful thing !

 

[iceeater1969]

Agree with the TO especially with wide gaps that give great blocking angles for all kinds of runs lanes.
Next year get ready for more complex blocking.

We could do some cool trick plays - byerly at bb - jt goes in motion - snap to byerly - total spread passing offense with JT wide open on wheel route.

 

[mmbt0ne]

The more I've learned about football over the years, the more I've realized how counter-intuitive some things are in football. For instance, in short yardage situations, why do offenses put their jumbo packages in and crowd the LOS to gain 1-3 yards? When you do that, the defense answers by crowding the same space, and now you have more bodies defending the area you're trying to gain yardage. To make matters worse, you run a play right up the middle where there's the most density of bodies. Must be the old school, tough "mano-e-mano" my guys are going to beat your guys to prove were tougher than you philosophy still alive. Just me, I'd rather get that 1 extra yard to convert than prove who's tougher on one play.

I get what you're saying, but the offense has significant advantages over the defense in short-yardage situations because they know a) when the play is starting and b) where the play is going. While you may be bringing in more bodies, your bodies should be very well suited to win the battles they need to win.

All that said, it would be interesting to see some stats around the relative effectiveness of jumbo-sets, runs and passes in short-yardage situations.

 

[DTGT]

Is anybody else besides me exceedingly pleased that we run our offense from under center?

Yes! Running out of the gun looks like they are running in jelly. It hits super slow and has a big risk of losing 5-8 yds a pop. The RB ends up running about 15 yds to gain 2-3 yds.

Running all plays out of center is better in all cases where you have a dominant OL. Gun is for throwing when your OL is getting beaten.

 

[Techster]

I get what you're saying, but the offense has significant advantages over the defense in short-yardage situations because they know a) when the play is starting and b) where the play is going. While you may be bringing in more bodies, your bodies should be very well suited to win the battles they need to win.

All that said, it would be interesting to see some stats around the relative effectiveness of jumbo-sets, runs and passes in short-yardage situations.

I think if you do a QB sneak there's merit to your point, however, if you're handing the ball off, any "off the snap" advantage is negated.

Here's an interesting study, though it was only done on 4th and short situations in the NFL:

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/62665328/

Although the data points are far less for the spread/read formations compared to the "traditional" power formations, it does suggest that spreading the field is more advantageous than cramming the LOS and trying to beat the defense "mano-e-mano". Unfortunately they did not delineate where the QB took the snap...from the gun or UC.

Another interesting stat, though you'd have to take a larger leap in interpreting the data is this:

http://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs/current/team/699

Obviously, we're being specific about short yardage situations, but it is interesing that 3 of the 5 teams with the highest third down conversion rates are teams known for playing out of the gun. Alabama can be put in either category as they have been playing out of the pistol and spread a lot more this year.

 

[daBuzz]

I was looking up how Oregon's offense works for the game tomorrow and the site claimed that Oregon had the most negative yardage plays of any team. Though I will admit I like to see pistol on obvious passing downs, I am perfectly happy with running our rushing assault from under center.

Well, in fairness, I would imagine that Oregon probably ran 30% more plays (might be even higher) than most other teams. So you would also think that they would have more negative plays. A lot of theirs are short pass plays that are often laterals. If the DB comes up and makes a stop on those, you get negative yardage.

 

[4NatlChmps]

Yeah because we have trouble scoring in the red zone.

I think you know the one I'm referring to.

 

[takethepoints]

I agree. Running the TO from under center makes everything much more difficult for opposing Ds, especially in short yardage situations. I'm glad we do it that way.

Oth, running the TO like we do is also hellishly difficult for QBs to learn. The reads are difficult and even the best QBs will miss 10- 15% of them. I can see why a team like MSU, with a QB like Prescott, would say, "Shoot, we have a BB already at QB. Let's just run him and let the good times roll." And - here's the kicker - when they are up against average teams that works. It's when they are in games with teams of equal or better talent that it doesn't. And, paradoxically, that is when our O gets better: the options, the complexity of the reads, the blocking schemes, and the speed of the thing when it is run right all negate advantages of talent. That's what I like about it. As that Canes fan I quoted said, "Our offense is set up to let our talented players beat the defense. Theirs is designed to beat the defense." Yep. And that makes it fun to watch.

 

[ATL1]

Well Idk some teams are greatly effective running from the gun. Auburn, Oregon, Ohio St., ect.. Run of the most difficult teams for us to stop ran out the gun in GSU and a very damn effective running team. I like how we run the O I've beeo. "run" over we could bring gun plays on passing downs t

 

[Faulkner475]

There's more than one way to skin a cat. One of the more effective short yardage plays from the gun in recent years has been a variant of the H Back shovel pass Urban Meyer uses. There's some eye candy to get the second level flowing, but the OL blocks it like a run play. The H Back catches the ball closer to the line than a standard heavy I RB would get it, and there's really only two key blocks that need to be made. Play action off of a QB Power look has also been effective. There's no clear right or wrong way, it just depends on your personnel and what they're capable of executing.

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

Denver and Manning had a tough time running the gun "pro style" last night. Talk about a boring offense.

 

[techdad]

I love our offense, especially when you have a QB like Justin that can run it like he does. I still think that having offensive formations that have 3 or 4 receivers on the field will make it even harder for opposing teams to prepare for our offense. The skill level is there, we just need to use it.

 

[iceeater1969]

IMO
Unless you have a great QB The baylor, tcu etc air raid only are the only offenses that make sense hiking the ball back 7 yds. I would want a very significant chance of major gain to justify hiking the ball backwards 7 yds on every play. Interestingly, they use very wide gaps to spread you out. I find their formation to be similar to ours in that way.

 

[Eastman]

I think our offense saved our butt this year by reducing the time the defense was on the field. For example if we has 5 minutes less time of possession each game, over 12 games our defense would have needed to be on the field for an additional 60 minutes, roughly equivalent to playing 2 more games. In addition to fatigue that would be much more time for injuries to occur as well and we certainly couldn't afford more injuries on the d-line.

 

[worthco jacket]

I got to thinking after reading a comment in another thread. Is anybody else besides me exceedingly pleased that we run our offense from under center? Believe it or not, I have watched at least a portion of every single bowl game this year and probably 70% or so of the total snaps. So many of the teams playing now execute their run game out of the gun. While the read option can be hard to stop in general, it is an epic fail in short yardage situations. Time and time again I watched teams get tackled in the backfield in crucial goal to go, or 4th and short type situations. The plays are just so slow hitting that run blitzes or just a DL beating his guy will stone it. In our offense, the plays hit so fast that it renders those D tactics useless. A DL beating his guy is always good for the defense, but against us, it better be the right DL guy (meaning in the designed gap for the play) because he won't have time to get into the backfield.

We don't give defenses a 4 yard head start and hope the option numbers make up for it. What say you?

I much prefer our offense. However, I can see the attraction of the read option. It reminds me of the old single wing tailback who could fake to a halfback, run it himself or pass. The key was and is, the hesitation it produces on the part of the linebackers. I believe, without any expert knowledge on my part, that this hesitation permits better blocking angles by the offensive linemen. That said, it takes too long for option plays to develop and is counter productive inside the red zone. Like others, I am bored with tunnel screens and jet sweeps. It takes a special quarterback to make it work and a very good offensive line.