takethepoints
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 6,096
I'll come right out and say I wanted Monken but I wasn't either blown away or discouraged by our choice of Coach. He's a good candidate and I hope he does well. But there are things I'll miss about Paul's offense:
• I'll miss hearing our opponents bellyaching about how Tech was their most physical game of the year. I'm an old school OL and it was nice to hear them complaining about actually being hit for once. And facing complex blocking schemes that can change literally from play to play.
• I'll miss watching an offense that was designed to produce success instead of depending on having great players at the skill positions who can out-athlete the defenders. I particularly enj0yed a Pitt player's response when he was asked pre-season if he feared anyone in particular in Tech's lineup. Quoth he (I'm paraphrasing), "No. Everyone they run onto the field is as good as the last guy you had to face. They just keep coming at you."
• I'll miss watching an offensive that was actually deceptive and required an investment of time to learn to watch. Watching our games was an analytical as well as an emotional experience. The way people around here would complain about what a play on film actually was and the analysis provided by Longest, in particular, made watching Tech play really engaging. (Btw, I think this is 0ne reason some around here didn't like the TO. Most fanbases can simply gloat about how good or lament about how bad their players are without having to think about it much. The much anticipated "sidewalk fans" are like this, of course.)
• I'll miss seeing a team with regularly lower recruiting rankings whip supposedly superior teams because the players fit a system that was both hard to figure out and optimized their talents.
• I'll miss things like the last 6 minutes of the UVA game this year. Where we got ahead, held on to the ball, and watched the other side slowly come to terms with the fact that they would never get the ball again.
As to the D and special teams … well, I won't miss that all that much.
As to what I hope to see:
• I hope we actually do see an uptick in recruiting and in the basis of it: more money for the football program. I'm not sure there is actually a big pool of high ranking recruits waiting to play football for Tech that was held back by the TO. Could be, however, and if we put the money into it we might see an uptick in our recruiting, despite the greater level of competition for those players. As a recent analysis here has shown, better attendance and higher donations could get us past our present barriers. Then it is up to Coach.
• More consistent and better Ds. Coach is a D maven and should be able to insure higher levels of play and more consistency from year to year. This is what I'm looking for first from the new regime.
• An offense that will utilize the players we still have so the disruption in the roster will be minimized. Something like UVA runs would do the trick, I thin; we have several Perkins clones on roster. We can start fooling around with other schemes as the recruiting matures. (An example of what I mean: Let Owens play both ways. He was a crusher at TE in high school and two TE sets a la Stanford with him and (probably) Camp occasionally would be quite interesting to watch.)
• OL play that turns to drive blocking and doesn't "push and dance" to get the job done. Keep hitting them hard, in other words.
Well, that should be enough to sustain present levels of success. Then we can build off of that, provided that we all pony up. Now.
• I'll miss hearing our opponents bellyaching about how Tech was their most physical game of the year. I'm an old school OL and it was nice to hear them complaining about actually being hit for once. And facing complex blocking schemes that can change literally from play to play.
• I'll miss watching an offense that was designed to produce success instead of depending on having great players at the skill positions who can out-athlete the defenders. I particularly enj0yed a Pitt player's response when he was asked pre-season if he feared anyone in particular in Tech's lineup. Quoth he (I'm paraphrasing), "No. Everyone they run onto the field is as good as the last guy you had to face. They just keep coming at you."
• I'll miss watching an offensive that was actually deceptive and required an investment of time to learn to watch. Watching our games was an analytical as well as an emotional experience. The way people around here would complain about what a play on film actually was and the analysis provided by Longest, in particular, made watching Tech play really engaging. (Btw, I think this is 0ne reason some around here didn't like the TO. Most fanbases can simply gloat about how good or lament about how bad their players are without having to think about it much. The much anticipated "sidewalk fans" are like this, of course.)
• I'll miss seeing a team with regularly lower recruiting rankings whip supposedly superior teams because the players fit a system that was both hard to figure out and optimized their talents.
• I'll miss things like the last 6 minutes of the UVA game this year. Where we got ahead, held on to the ball, and watched the other side slowly come to terms with the fact that they would never get the ball again.
As to the D and special teams … well, I won't miss that all that much.
As to what I hope to see:
• I hope we actually do see an uptick in recruiting and in the basis of it: more money for the football program. I'm not sure there is actually a big pool of high ranking recruits waiting to play football for Tech that was held back by the TO. Could be, however, and if we put the money into it we might see an uptick in our recruiting, despite the greater level of competition for those players. As a recent analysis here has shown, better attendance and higher donations could get us past our present barriers. Then it is up to Coach.
• More consistent and better Ds. Coach is a D maven and should be able to insure higher levels of play and more consistency from year to year. This is what I'm looking for first from the new regime.
• An offense that will utilize the players we still have so the disruption in the roster will be minimized. Something like UVA runs would do the trick, I thin; we have several Perkins clones on roster. We can start fooling around with other schemes as the recruiting matures. (An example of what I mean: Let Owens play both ways. He was a crusher at TE in high school and two TE sets a la Stanford with him and (probably) Camp occasionally would be quite interesting to watch.)
• OL play that turns to drive blocking and doesn't "push and dance" to get the job done. Keep hitting them hard, in other words.
Well, that should be enough to sustain present levels of success. Then we can build off of that, provided that we all pony up. Now.
