Option Football

[takethepoints]

had mills done anything major after leaving tech i might believe this but this is incredibly wishful thinking. one rb does not cover up the weaknesses those teams had

Look, Mills was born to be a spread option BB. The subsequent teams - like the crack coaching staff at Nebraska - didn't know what to do with him so they tried to make into an spread RB. WRONG. He belonged 4 yards behind the QB where he could hit the hole fast. Then the difficulty with bringing him down came in. He was exactly what the O needed to take on ranked teams. And I stand by everything said in the post. As a parting note:



Mills ran for 169 yards in htis game and got better and better as the game progressed. He would have done that reliably for Tech if he hadn't been fired.

 

[UgaBlows]

Look, Mills was born to be a spread option BB. The subsequent teams - like the crack coaching staff at Nebraska - didn't know what to do with him so they tried to make into an spread RB. WRONG. He belonged 4 yards behind the QB where he could hit the hole fast. Then the difficulty with bringing him down came in. He was exactly what the O needed to take on ranked teams. And I stand by everything said in the post. As a parting note:



Mills ran for 169 yards in htis game and got better and better as the game progressed. He would have done that reliably for Tech if he hadn't been fired.

You mean f he hadn’t Fired Up? or kept firing up…

 

[RonJohn]

Look, Mills was born to be a spread option BB. The subsequent teams - like the crack coaching staff at Nebraska - didn't know what to do with him so they tried to make into an spread RB. WRONG. He belonged 4 yards behind the QB where he could hit the hole fast. Then the difficulty with bringing him down came in. He was exactly what the O needed to take on ranked teams. And I stand by everything said in the post. As a parting note:



Mills ran for 169 yards in htis game and got better and better as the game progressed. He would have done that reliably for Tech if he hadn't been fired.

I had forgotten about going for it on 4th and 1 on the GT 16 yard line. If I remember correctly, the coach said that he had intended to call time out, but that the defense didn't have anybody lined up on the guard the play was called to follow behind so he just let it play out.

 

[JacketFan137]

Look, Mills was born to be a spread option BB. The subsequent teams - like the crack coaching staff at Nebraska - didn't know what to do with him so they tried to make into an spread RB. WRONG. He belonged 4 yards behind the QB where he could hit the hole fast. Then the difficulty with bringing him down came in. He was exactly what the O needed to take on ranked teams. And I stand by everything said in the post. As a parting note:



Mills ran for 169 yards in htis game and got better and better as the game progressed. He would have done that reliably for Tech if he hadn't been fired.

i think he was a good player but b back was actually the one thing we pretty consistently had a solid replacement for as cursed as that position was for some weird reason. even when guys transferred/got kicked off the team there was always a next man up.

in 2017 the following year we had benson who was great and then 2018 benson got hurt so mason and howard came in and they were both great players.

while i do think mills was a great athlete i don’t think he was worth 2-3 additional wins over benson and the mason-howard tandem. i’m not sure our seasons are too drastically different overall

 

[JacketFan137]

It's exactly the same

forward pass vs pitch is objectively not the same. not sure what the argument is here

 

[takethepoints]

i think he was a good player but b back was actually the one thing we pretty consistently had a solid replacement for as cursed as that position was for some weird reason. even when guys transferred/got kicked off the team there was always a next man up.

in 2017 the following year we had benson who was great and then 2018 benson got hurt so mason and howard came in and they were both great players.

while i do think mills was a great athlete i don’t think he was worth 2-3 additional wins over benson and the mason-howard tandem. i’m not sure our seasons are too drastically different overall

Last word: there was a reason that Paul always wanted seasoned players on the field. Mills was an absolute beast and had experience. Bensson was a good BB, but he was not the same in short yardage situations and in the muck. I've always wondered how good Tech would have been if we had kept the succession at the position.

 

[ilovetheoption]

forward pass vs pitch is objectively not the same. not sure what the argument is here

Its exactly the same. That's like saying "pass right vs pass left is objectively not the same".
It's the same in any way that's meaningful.

 

[bke1984]

It's real simple. Mills doesn't get fired and Tech wins 9 - 10 games for the next 3 seasons. And Paul is still coach.

Does Tech have to kick two of the field goals against UT? Does Taquon not pitch the ball in the second overtime? Not with Mills on the field.

Does Tech have a hard time running the ball down field against da U in the muck? Not with Mills on the field.

Does Tech have a hard time in the second half against UVA in the muck? Not with Mills on the field.

That gets us to 9. Tech would have won one more with Mills on the field.

The record that year had nothing to do with Taquon. And with Mills on the field Tech would have won 9 - 10 in 2019 and in 2020. Imho, of course.

I agree. The guy was a bowling ball and was perfect for our offense. He probably would have set the all time rushing record at Tech if we’d been able to keep him around. Watching his career fizzle out was painful.

 

[bke1984]

For the most part, when posters here mention scheme, they're talking about taking a different strategy than other schools. I don't think anyone is calling Ole Miss a "scheme school"--their coach just coaches the same RPO that Bama runs better than most RPO OCs. We would call Mississippi State a scheme school, because while they're recruiting the best athletes they can get, they're not trying to run the same playbook as Bama better than Bama--they're running a different playbook.

For scheme, we'd get slaughtered running air raid with 230 lb linemen. The point is that something like that gives us a shot to match up high 3* and 4* linemen against 5* DTs, if we're coached well.

Exactly. Just do something different than what everyone else is doing and you already have an advantage. Dodd was revolutionary in this was and it’s in part why we were successful under Johnson.

 

[LongforDodd]

Doubtful, the people her were against him were against in in 2008 and never thawed.

Did you read my response to RonJohn above? To some who are very, very close to the school and the AA there is no doubt about.

 

[RonJohn]

Did you read my response to RonJohn above? To some who are very, very close to the school and the AA there is no doubt about.

I can believe that there were some high level donors who never liked Johnson. Leadership is about making tough decisions and following through on those decisions. If there was a split among donors when MBob started, the way to handle it is to be a leader, make a decision, and get those who disagree to follow along. If you try to force those who disagree with what you want to do into a bad position, expecting that they will then agree with your position, it will not work. What you end up with is a deeply divided organization. Does that sound familiar with what happened after 2016?

 

[CEB]

Can we all just agree that to be successful, we MUST have a combination of solid recruiting (which emphasizes good talent evaluation), good coaching to improve players once they are here, AND a quality scheme to maximize our advantages?

To argue for one to the exclusion of the others is ...rather silly, imho. Makes for message board fodder but not much else.

The big issue is how to evaluate all of that in any coaching candidate. We can all look backwards and agree (mostly) on the strengths and weaknesses or prior coaches at GT or coaches elsewhere in CFB, but projecting how they will do at GT seems to be a real crapshoot. I will freely admit I have NO idea how well Deion Sanders would do at all three of those things at GT, nor Jamie Chadwell, nor any of the others. Lots of other schools have had serious problems with the same issues, and in some cases coaches who seem to do OK at one school get fired at another one (I am thinking of Mack Brown as one example of this).

I have resigned myself to simply sitting and watching for a while to see how things develop. I will say I think one can see pretty quickly if a coach is a decent day-to-day coach because the number of stupid "beat yourself" errors goes down. Key has improved our play in that regard...mostly. But he cannot overcome talent deficiencies. Tough spot for a guy who seems much better than G**** C****** ever was, but no way to determine how good he might be at all aspects of the job based on his interim performance.

This is great... now what do we argue about?

 

[bobongo]

This is great... now what do we argue about?

We'll find something important. I know, uniforms. Anybody ever notice how we wear four shades of gold?

 

[CEB]

We'll find something important. I know, uniforms. Anybody ever notice how we wear four shades of gold?

Poke...

 

[Techster]

I can believe that there were some high level donors who never liked Johnson. Leadership is about making tough decisions and following through on those decisions. If there was a split among donors when MBob started, the way to handle it is to be a leader, make a decision, and get those who disagree to follow along. If you try to force those who disagree with what you want to do into a bad position, expecting that they will then agree with your position, it will not work. What you end up with is a deeply divided organization. Does that sound familiar with what happened after 2016?

We're not Auburn or Texas levels of donor craziness...but we're starting to get some dysfunction at the big donor levels. There's a reason Cabrera pretty much bypassed everyone in the GTAA and installed his own guy (Neville) to head the AD search before we settled on Batt.

 

[LongforDodd]

I can believe that there were some high level donors who never liked Johnson. Leadership is about making tough decisions and following through on those decisions. If there was a split among donors when MBob started, the way to handle it is to be a leader, make a decision, and get those who disagree to follow along. If you try to force those who disagree with what you want to do into a bad position, expecting that they will then agree with your position, it will not work. What you end up with is a deeply divided organization. Does that sound familiar with what happened after 2016?

Yes, I agree with your leadership assessment what appear to have been a lack of leadership where we need it most. And it does sound familiar.

 

[stigs02jrt]

Have those schools had ONLY recruiting? Or have they also paid for and had top notch coaching?

The mutts were in the top ten recruiting under Richt. They were in the discussion frequently, but they always failed at some point. Is there any chance that the reason they failed is that they didn't have discipline, and they didn't have coaches that could get them ready for a game without special uniforms? Now they have bumped their recruiting up a little bit, but the biggest thing I have noticed is that every player does what he is supposed to do. They don't have 5 star athletes running around the field trying to make Sports Center top ten. They have 5 star athletes that do what coaches instructed them to do, and they are in the correct place at the correct time for their 5 star abilities to make a real difference. Under Richt, they were making 5 star athlete tackles and beating their chest like they just won the game, when in fact they were losing by double digits to a non P5 team and the tackle was after a 20 yard first down run. As much as it bothers me, those 5 star athletes now do what they are supposed to do, and coaches instruct them what to do and prepare them very well for the games.

The last few years richt was 12, 12, 15, 6, 10 in recruiting. And even in his earlier years, he was typically 3rd in the SEC. He averaged 9.5 wins and finished top 10 in 7 of 15 years. Ya'll act like he was trash. Did he underperform his recruiting rankings? not by much.

Good question.
How about Bama pre Saban? Georgia pre Kirby? Clemson pre Dabo? A couple years ago, they were about to run harbaugh out of Ann Arbor...What explains the down years for any of these programs? Their recruiting didn’t change but their results sure did.
The Tenn example earlier in this thread was a good one too.

Their recruiting ABSOLUTELY changed when the current coaches arrived, and the performance followed. Bama pre-saban was typically recruiting outside the top 10, and as low as #30 in the early 2000s, until 2008 when they were #1 (you guessed it, Saban). Clemson was never top 10 recruiting in the early 2000s. Michigan was top 10 only 4 of 9 years from 2002 to 2010.

But if you want to point to outlier seasons or outlier teams to say that the obvious pattern doesn't exist, cool. Some folks like to play roulette in vegas too.

 

[stigs02jrt]

Tech has never signed a 5 star.

Calvin Johnson is a 5 star on 247. But you get the point.

 

[CEB]

All I'm saying is that we just need COMPETENT coaches. Finding competent coaches is easy.

Top programs are paying <$10M / year when all you need is a competent coach, which are a dime a dozen...
Especially those programs that can recruit top 10... why would they do that? Just more money than sense?
So why not go get Joe Schmo competent coach, pay him about $500k, and dump all of our resources into NIL deals?
Maybe we’ve found our angle here...

 

[leatherneckjacket]

Gailey was very good at evaluating and developing talent at every position but QB (though, that may have had to do with having Pat Nix as QB coach.)

CPJ was very good at taking undervalued / odd players and fitting them into his offensive scheme.

Neither one recruited well in terms of team player / rankings (outside of Gailey's 2007 class), but both were effective at getting guys to help them win.

In terms of who put players in the NFL, I do not think it is close. Gailey sent more players who had longer and more distinguished careers into the NFL.

Either way, they both showed that there is a path forward to winning (yes, they both won) without top 15 recruiting classes if you have a good scheme and a good eye for talent / development to fit your scheme.