To make your bones in the SEC it's going to come down to how you do on 3rd-and-3-or-less. Barn and Florida had very big QBs used in short yardage. Without the big back they both went to hell-in-a-hand-basket in a hurry.
I'm an aTm aggie: Our up tempo no huddle throw it around offense...
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Cam and Tebow were both obviously great players, but I think too much credit is being given to them and not enough to the Pouncey kids and the veteran offensive line Auburn had.
THAT's where I think the spread succeeds or fails. Heck, I guess you could say that about all offenses in general. But I think especially the spread, because it relies on your o-linemen blocking one on one, even the centers and guards. There's not usually a HB to chip a DE and the like...
THAT's where I think the spread succeeds or fails. Heck, I guess you could say that about all offenses in general. But I think especially the spread, because it relies on your o-linemen blocking one on one, even the centers and guards. There's not usually a HB to chip a DE and the like...
People make too much out of formation and lose sight of philosophy. Meyer wanted teams that could control the middle of the field just like Alabama, but they'd do more things to get athletes on the field with 3+ WR sets. In fact, his ideal slot receiver was a combination of receiver and the old flexbone wingback. Their favorite play with Percy Harvin as a runner is the Joe Gibbs special, the country trey. Nothing is finesse about the country trey. The way they disguised things with spread formations and motions make people lose sight of the things they really want to accomplish.
A championship offense still needs an OL that can get tough yards but they need the backs to fight for those tough yards too. The spread is probably a harder offense to be a championship level team by implementing it but an easier offense to create an overachieving team in regards to talent. It's kind of a paradox.
A championship offense still needs an OL that can get tough yards but they need the backs to fight for those tough yards too. The spread is probably a harder offense to be a championship level team by implementing it but an easier offense to create an overachieving team in regards to talent. It's kind of a paradox.
Yeah, but he went undefeated in the SEC in B2B years in 1995 and 1996. His 1995 team ran into the Nebraska juggernaut that many consider the best of all time and the 1996 lost a tough one on the road to a great FSU team that they beat in a rematch.
Saban and his ground-and-pound system has only produced one undefeated season and if it hadn't been for Cody's big paw he would have lost to a mediocre UT team that year. I think the difference there is a couple of lucky bounces of the ball instead one system being better than another.
As for the original question, any system will work if it meets four criteria: 1) it is mostly balanced and unpredictable, 2) it has schematic answers to anything a defense can throw at it, 3) it has a coach who is a good teacher and play caller, and 4) it has quality players.
There is no genius to what Bama's done the last few years offensively. We line up with bigger, stronger players and run over people. Try that with inferior talent and see where it gets you. Everyone needs the horses, even Saban and Co.
LOL . Try more like 6 ... unless you actually believe the SEC can be won while relying on sophomores and RS freshmen . It would take signing a Manning type QB this year in order to become any sort of remote threat in year 3 . Relationships with HS coaches won't blossom , to any degree , overnight either .
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Re: Sumlin's Run/Pass Mix
Considering Sumin's offense, we need to be careful here with defining "Run/Pass".
Does a swing pass play to a RB count as a run? Nope. How about a jet sweep to a RB lined up in the slot, QB in shot gun, where the QB pitches the ball forward to the RB, but the RB receives the ball behind the LOS? Nope. That's a forward pass. But these plays are staples in Sumlin/Kingsbury's Offense, and the end effect is a RB with the ball in his hands behind the LOS, looking to turn up and gain some yardage downfield, much like a run play.
A private Aggie message board ran the Run/Pass numbers from U o fH and, when one accounts for Sumlin's "Designed Plays to a RB behind the LOS", the mix actually is something like 55% "Run-ish" ... again, it's not a pure RB hand off or a toss, but that's the breakdown of plays to RBs in the offense. I stand by my statement that Sumlin's not going to recruit all these RBs we have in our stable just to have them sipping Gatorade and watching the Air Raid Show. We just won't be running out of a 2 TE JUMBO package.
And A&M's not realistically worried about trying to line up and out-muscle y'all or LSU for for the SEC West this year. Our strategy is more reasonable -- do what we can to dig ourselves in the middle of the SEC West and try to claw our way up to #3 eventually--through recruiting SEC-worthy defenders, and THEN we worry about y'all
Considering Sumin's offense, we need to be careful here with defining "Run/Pass".
Does a swing pass play to a RB count as a run? Nope. How about a jet sweep to a RB lined up in the slot, QB in shot gun, where the QB pitches the ball forward to the RB, but the RB receives the ball behind the LOS? Nope. That's a forward pass. But these plays are staples in Sumlin/Kingsbury's Offense, and the end effect is a RB with the ball in his hands behind the LOS, looking to turn up and gain some yardage downfield, much like a run play.
A private Aggie message board ran the Run/Pass numbers from U o fH and, when one accounts for Sumlin's "Designed Plays to a RB behind the LOS", the mix actually is something like 55% "Run-ish" ... again, it's not a pure RB hand off or a toss, but that's the breakdown of plays to RBs in the offense. I stand by my statement that Sumlin's not going to recruit all these RBs we have in our stable just to have them sipping Gatorade and watching the Air Raid Show. We just won't be running out of a 2 TE JUMBO package.
And A&M's not realistically worried about trying to line up and out-muscle y'all or LSU for for the SEC West this year. Our strategy is more reasonable -- do what we can to dig ourselves in the middle of the SEC West and try to claw our way up to #3 eventually--through recruiting SEC-worthy defenders, and THEN we worry about y'all
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You might want to actually look at some numbers before comparing Spurrier's '95 and '96 teams, schematically, to what Sumlin has run.
I know a lot of people hear Spurrier and "Fun-n-Gun" and immediately think about a radical, fast, high-flying offense. A lot of people will try to compare current "spread" teams to what Spurrier ran.
It's so wrong it's laughable.
Spurrier's offense wasn't up-tempo and it wasn't "high-flying", at least not in terms of being overly dependent upon the pass like Sumlin's offenses at Houston or Leach's offenses at Texas Tech or even Mumme's offenses at Kentucky.
Spurrier's "Fun-n-Gun" wasn't revolutionary or different because it relied extremely heavily on the passing game but rather because of how it utilized the passing game. It wasn't how much he passed the ball as it was when and how he passed the ball. I posted these numbers earlier but you may have overlooked them so I'll reference them again, specifically in regards to Spurrier's offense at Florida.
Basically, for the past several decades, the average offense in any given year runs between 60 to 70 plays per game. It has moved, for various reasons including rules changes, from right around 60 plays per game back in the 70's and 80's to close to 70 plays per game for about the past decade. The teams that run up-tempo offenses tend to average 5 to 10 more snaps per game than the overall average, so that's usually at least 70 to 75 plays per game in any given year. Last year, for example, the average plays per game across the country was about 69 plays per game. The 15 or so most "up-tempo" offenses averaged over 75 plays per game and included Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Houston, Baylor, and Oklahoma State. Those type of offenses are, apparently, what you think Spurrier ran at Florida.
If Spurrier's "Fun-n-Gun" offense at Florida was up-tempo and pass-heavy - anything at all similar to Sumlin's offense at Houston - then you would expect, especially in Spurrier's best year, for Spurrier's offense to throw the ball more often than they ran it and to average at least 70 to 75 plays per game.
So, here are the basic tempo and offensive balance numbers (plays per game and pass/run ratio) for two of those up-tempo teams from last year in Texas A&M and Houston, Alabama from last year, and Florida from 1996:
Texas A&M 2011
Balance: 51/49
Tempo: 80 plays per game
Houston 2011
Balance: 62/38
Tempo: 79 plays per game
Alabama 2011
Balance: 42/58
Tempo: 67 plays per game
Florida 1996
Balance: 48/52
Tempo: 66 plays per game
The year that Spurrier won his National Championship at Florida his offense ran the ball more often than they threw it!!! Not only that, they were no more up-tempo than Alabama's offense was last year. In fact, Spurrier's offense at Florida in 1996 was closer to Alabama's offense last year than it was to Baylor's last year.
That's interesting. How did they arrive at those numbers? Did someone watch all the Houston games and plot the plays to get the number of "run-ish" passes?
That's probably a fairly realistic and feasible strategy. Just don't expect to be competing for the SEC West crown every year starting in year 2 or 3.And A&M's not realistically worried about trying to line up and out-muscle y'all or LSU for for the SEC West this year. Our strategy is more reasonable -- do what we can to dig ourselves in the middle of the SEC West and try to claw our way up to #3 eventually--through recruiting SEC-worthy defenders, and THEN we worry about y'all
The thing that concerns me about Texas A&M trying to run an offense similar to what Sumlin ran at Houston is three-fold:
1) While it can help you win a couple extra game against mid-to-low-tier teams it will usually lose out against upper echelon teams and will often cause you to lose a game or two that you should win if the offense has even a little bit of an off-day.
2) It hangs your defense out to dry which, when playing against SEC teams all season, will wear your defense out both physically and mentally as the season rolls along as well as making your defense look worse than it actually is, statistically at least.
3) It makes it extremely difficult for your defense to prepare for the offenses it will actually see in the SEC week in and week out.
This not only strongly affects your win-loss record but it could very well affect your recruiting. It's easy to recruit blue-chip offensive players to play for an exciting offense. It's a lot harder to recruit blue-chip defensive players to come play for a defense that averages giving up 30 points per game when they can look inside your division and see a couple of teams whose defenses give up less than half of that.
Of all the concerns you've listed, I am most worried about the preparation one: how do you prepare for smash-mouth football unless you're practicing it?
As for recruiting, remember where the majority of our defensive recruits come from: Texas, with a little bit of LA and a very few Mississippi JUCO DL/DB/LBs. Our main competition for most of our defensive recruiting is the "Big XII" ... and their defensive numbers aren't anything to write home about, or so I've heard
Yes, but now those guys will be able to play for LSU and/or Alabama and still be on TV in Texas. While being in the SEC opens up roads into LSU, Arkansas, and Mississippi for you guys it also opens up roads into Texas for us, making it easier for us to come in and steal away some of Texas' best defensive players for ourselves.Of all the concerns you've listed, I am most worried about the preparation one: how do you prepare for smash-mouth football unless you're practicing it?
As for recruiting, remember where the majority of our defensive recruits come from: Texas, with a little bit of LA and a very few Mississippi JUCO DL/DB/LBs. Our main competition for most of our defensive recruiting is the "Big XII" ... and their defensive numbers aren't anything to write home about, or so I've heard
I'm having trouble thinking of an up tempo team which has a decent defense. I've always thought it came down to preparation. Your #1 defenders have to practice against your #1 offense running the spread. OTOH, most of the teams you'll meet on your new schedule will be power run-oriented teams. There's not a good solution, but the one that's tried most often is to have the scout team try to imitate the defenses you'll face. So, in the end, I agree. Preparation is the worst problem in having a spread team with a good defense. OTOH, most teams you face won't have faced a true spread passing-type defense. That cost us a bowl game against Utah. Since then, Saban devoted himself to seeing that it never happened again and we've played pretty well against the spread. His system is quite adaptable - probably the most adaptable in college football...Of all the concerns you've listed, I am most worried about the preparation one: how do you prepare for smash-mouth football unless you're practicing it?
As for recruiting, remember where the majority of our defensive recruits come from: Texas, with a little bit of LA and a very few Mississippi JUCO DL/DB/LBs. Our main competition for most of our defensive recruiting is the "Big XII" ... and their defensive numbers aren't anything to write home about, or so I've heard
I realize this is asking too much to go through an entire season, but I think a better measure would be first half play splits. Because when a team is icing away a blowout in the fourth quarter, outside of extreme Air Raid/Run and Shoot, you're running the ball. When you compare average teams to teams that are national champions which likely include a number of blowouts, of course it looks like the team that won the championship relies on running the ball. But let's take a look at the game when it was competitive:
Admittedly small sample size, but I chose the Arkansas game from last year because A: It's a game that was high profile so it should be getting a standard game plan (we're not putting backups for experience, etc) B: It illustrates my point very well.
For the Purposes of this, I'm going to call runs by McCarron running plays. I don't think we had very many designed runs by AJ, and I think these were more likely pass play calls, but I don't have the tape in front of me. I will put McCarron's run totals by each quarter so you can classify it however you like. I do call sacks passing plays, although the box score counts them as running plays.
Bama's play breakdown
First Quarter: 8 Rush, 6 pass (2 QB rushes) score: 7-7
Second Quarter: 9 Rush, 8 pass (1 QB rush) score: 17-7 Bama
Third Quarter: 7 Rush, 7 pass (No QB rush) score: 38-14 Bama
Fourth Quarter: 13 Rush, 1 Pass
When you add them up, you get 37 rushes and 22 passes, or a 62% rushing rate. But take out the fourth quarter and you get 24/21, or a 53% lean towards rushing plays. If you count the 3 QB runs as passes, it leans towards passing. This is a huge difference from what the initial stat of 62% rushing leads you believe.
Other 4th Quarter totals:
vs. Florida: 14 rush, 1 pass
vs. Vandy: 12 rush, 5 pass (worth noting that Phillip Sims was brought in to the game so we probably passed more than we otherwise would)
vs. Ole Miss: 12 rush, 1 pass
I am not saying that a team doesn't have to run the ball to win. What I am saying is that pulling stats from entire games/over the course of a season from dominant teams are going to have distorted results based on games like these.
Admittedly small sample size, but I chose the Arkansas game from last year because A: It's a game that was high profile so it should be getting a standard game plan (we're not putting backups for experience, etc) B: It illustrates my point very well.
For the Purposes of this, I'm going to call runs by McCarron running plays. I don't think we had very many designed runs by AJ, and I think these were more likely pass play calls, but I don't have the tape in front of me. I will put McCarron's run totals by each quarter so you can classify it however you like. I do call sacks passing plays, although the box score counts them as running plays.
Bama's play breakdown
First Quarter: 8 Rush, 6 pass (2 QB rushes) score: 7-7
Second Quarter: 9 Rush, 8 pass (1 QB rush) score: 17-7 Bama
Third Quarter: 7 Rush, 7 pass (No QB rush) score: 38-14 Bama
Fourth Quarter: 13 Rush, 1 Pass
When you add them up, you get 37 rushes and 22 passes, or a 62% rushing rate. But take out the fourth quarter and you get 24/21, or a 53% lean towards rushing plays. If you count the 3 QB runs as passes, it leans towards passing. This is a huge difference from what the initial stat of 62% rushing leads you believe.
Other 4th Quarter totals:
vs. Florida: 14 rush, 1 pass
vs. Vandy: 12 rush, 5 pass (worth noting that Phillip Sims was brought in to the game so we probably passed more than we otherwise would)
vs. Ole Miss: 12 rush, 1 pass
I am not saying that a team doesn't have to run the ball to win. What I am saying is that pulling stats from entire games/over the course of a season from dominant teams are going to have distorted results based on games like these.
Not only that, it distorts AJ's stats and, maybe even more importantly, the perception of AJ even by our fans. As one poster on another site put it - if you're tall, moderately athletic and can throw the ball north-south with good velocity into small windows, you get drafted - high. If your passes are swing passes to the RB and other dinks, and you don't have the other attributes, you don't get drafted. This draft proved that, if nothing else...
Take your third fastest defensive lineman, teach him blitz pickup and how to carry the ball. REGARDLESS OF THE OUTCOME HE MUST CARRY THE BALL 12-15 TIMES PER GAME, PREFERABLY OFF CENTER, EITHER DIRECTION. What makes the spread it around offense successful is a big bruiser who is a legitimate threat to pound the center of the defense. Tebow and Cam both hammered the center of the defenses when the pass play didn't pan out. They were also big enough to take the punishment (something few qbs can say). Never get away from the inside run, it punishes defenses for spreading too far out and can lead to big plays if you break the line. Offensive "geniuses" tend to shy away from the run, which is often fatal in big games.
Houston doesn't have the talent that we have at A&M. They never will. Houston, tech, baylor, etc. etc., typically gets their recruits after texas, A&M, ou, osu and lsu have taken all the players they want. Sumlin did NOT have the weapons to have a significant running game. This is not the case at A&M. Our current RBs are Christian Michael Sr. 5star, Brandon Williams So. 5star(transferring from ou and may have to sit this year, but will have 3 years eligibility), Trey Williams Fr. 5star, Ben Malena So. 4star (had a great spring) and the texas kid tranferring in from Oregon. Arguably, Sumlin has never had a stable of rbs like this. Our OL is much better than many of you think. We will run the ball as Sumlin has stated.Coaches, whether they be position coaches or coordinators or even head coaches, typically have a primary basic philosophy that they prefer and, if possible, work off of in their coaching. This philosophy is almost always either offensive or defensive. Coaches also typically have specialties, i.e. certain tactics or positions within that unit that they are very particular about. Head coaches will typically be heavily involved in, if not completely controlling, the coordination of the offense or defense, depending on their philosophy. Head coaches will often directly coach the position(s) that are a part of their specialty(ies), with and/or without an additional position coach. When it comes to the counterpart unit, e.g., the offense for a defensive minded coach, the head coaches' approach will usually fall somewhere between a janitor role and a general manager role. The janitor role means that he doesn't really do anything regarding the design and administration of the unit but will lend a hand when needed and clean up any messes left behind. The general manager role means that he dictates the overall philosophy(ies), goals, individual responsibilities, etc. for the units coaches but leaves the details up to the coaches. Very rarely will a head coach perform "coordinator" responsibilities for both the offensive and the defensive units. For example, Coach Saban is a defensive coach who plays the general manager role when it comes to the offense; he calls the plays for the defense while allowing the OC to call plays for the offense while reserving the right to overrule the OC if he desires. Mike Leach played more of the janitor role when it came to defense; he called the plays for the offense while leaving virtually all play-calling duties to the DC, often paying seemingly little to no attention to what was happening on the field with his defense.
Coach Saban is primarily a defensive minded coach. His primary basic philosophy revolves around defensive pressure. His specialty is in the defensive backfield, particularly coverage and blitz schemes. He dictates that his offense will follow a certain philosophy with certain goals in order to complement his defense.
So, in this vein, where does Sumlin fall? He's definitely an offensive minded coach. It seems that his primary basic philosophy revolves around the passing game. His specialty seems to be working with the receivers. Short of whatever Sumlin himself has publicly revealed about his coaching philosophies we really don't have much to go on. He's only been fully in control of an offense for four years now, all with Houston. Before that he was a Co-Offensive Coordinator and Receivers Coach at Oklahoma for a couple years but he wasn't the one primarily devising the game plans nor the one calling the plays. For the three years before that, at Oklahoma, he was coaching the Special Teams and Tight Ends. Prior to that he was the OC at Texas A&M for R.C. Slocum's final two years. Of course, we all know that R.C. wasn't anywhere close to giving Sumlin free reign of the offense. Up until that point he had only been a Receivers and/or Quarterback coach at a few other schools.
For that reason, again aside from anything Sumlin himself has said, all we have to go on regarding what Sumlin wants to do offensively is the last four years at Houston.
Looking at the last four years at Houston it seems that Sumlin's desired run to pass ratio is anything but balanced, leaning heavily towards the passing game, while his preference for an up-tempo pace seems to very consistent. I've posted a table below with the individual numbers and averages for those four years. There is an oddity in there, though, in the form of the 2010 season. While his offensive pace was still very much up-tempo it was slightly less so than the other three years. The Pass/Run Balance, however, is where the real disparity lies as it leaned much, much heavier to the rushing side than the other three years. The reason for this disparity? I'd say the fact that he lost his top two quarterbacks for the season in only the third game of the year had something to do with that.
I'd say that you're dead-on with the 80 plays a game target as that falls perfectly in line with what he did at Houston. However, I'm really puzzled by the notion that the pass/run balance will be close to 50/50 given the numbers from his time at Houston which was, again, the only time he was ever in full control of an offense.
I know that he'll have some pretty good running backs at A&M and will want to utilize them. However, I think he wants to use them a lot more as receivers and a lot less between the tackles than most other offensive coaches. Heck, even in the year where he had to play his 3rd and 4th string quarterbacks for nine and a half games he was still leaning heavily to the pass in his play-calling. In the years that he seemingly able to do what he wanted he threw the ball over 60% of the time. It's a pretty major paradigm shift to go from an offensive philosophy that tries to throw the ball almost two-thirds of the time to one that tries to maintain and even balance between passing and rushing.
What exactly makes you think that he'll more or less completely change his offensive philosophy?
EDIT: Spring Game Info...
After having finished this post initially I decided to take a look at the numbers from the Texas A&M Spring game. Now I know the starting RB was out for the game (just like ours, btw) and so that could affect the numbers a little bit. It is also a spring scrimmage and so the play-calling is likely to not be exactly as it would be in a real game in the fall. However, you would expect the overall philosophy and general tempo and play-calling tendencies to be pretty close. The Aggie spring game seems a little odd in that the White Team outscored the Maroon Team 48 to 44 but the White Team is listed as the offense and the Maroon Team is listed as the defense. (By the way, I'd like to watch the game but couldn't find it last night on ESPN3. Do any of you know where I can watch it online?) Since all of the offensive stats are lumped together I thought that I would look at it as cumulative stats from two games and divide the numbers in half to get an "average". However, those numbers didn't seem right. I got these numbers from the aggieathletics website but there's something very odd going on. For example, the article accompanying the stats says that the offenses combined ran a total of 105 plays in the first half. However, the numbers at the bottom only total 107 plays. How were they counting plays? Were there only two plays run in the second half? I'm also curious as to whether there was extensive situational work such as two-minute or red-zone offense. Anyway, here are the numbers I found:
Texas A&M Spring Game
Rushes:
37.0
Passes:
70.0
Pass/Run Ratio:
65.4% / 34.6%
Total Plays:
107.0
Granted these numbers may be a little off given that A) it's a spring game and B) this spring game seems to be very oddly run. However, it still should generally follow the offensive philosophy that Sumlin wants to run. If so, this seems to fall perfectly in line with what Sumlin ran at Houston, i.e., a very up-tempo offense that leans very heavily on the pass - throwing it almost two-thirds of the time.
?
As far as the Spring Game, we need to find a starting QB. The best way to find who will start is to throw the ball in the Spring Game. I wouldn't use spring game stats to determine what we will do once the season starts. We also need to find the starting WRs.
This topic has been a huge discussion point on A&M board, Sumlin has addressed it, we will have a balanced attack.
This is an excellent post. Very well written and researched.
Spurrier essentially ran your basic multiple pro-set offense in the 1990s, but what really set Florida apart back then was the innovation with the passing game. Spurrier was really, really good at diagramming route combinations and coaching his quarterbacks to throw to certain "zones". He used a lot of spread-type route combinations long before the concept was popularized and defenses had a hard time preparing for it. And while his offense wasn't the Air Raid or the 'Shoot, the 1996 figure of roughly 34 pass attempts per game was a robust number in that era. Especially when you got the kind of mileage out of your passing game that Spurrier did. I remember watching those Spurrier teams at Florida and it seemed like they threw the ball every down, scored 60 points per game and routinely rolled up 800 yards. Perspective counts for a lot and the 1990s were somewhat of a dark era for offensive football.
His crossing routes were a thing of beauty. In fact, there are those who say that he built his career on designing pick plays that didn't get called...
Spurrier basically took Mouse Davis' Run-&-Shoot and made it more balanced. Spurrier's offenses at Florida were always more balanced than people think. I remember him gashing us with that delayed draw play in the '92 SEC championship game.
Coach Sumlin is going to have to make the adjustment up front with his offensive line in order to be successful running the ball in the SEC. He can't do it with his offensive line playing from a 2-point stance like he did at Houston.
The fact that he's an Air-Raid coach and installing essentially a "Nascar" version of the up-tempo offense tells me they're going to be playing from a 2-point stance.
Coach Sumlin is going to have to make the adjustment up front with his offensive line in order to be successful running the ball in the SEC. He can't do it with his offensive line playing from a 2-point stance like he did at Houston.
The fact that he's an Air-Raid coach and installing essentially a "Nascar" version of the up-tempo offense tells me they're going to be playing from a 2-point stance.
http://www.presnapread.com/texas-ams-enviable-running-back-depth/
To back up some prior discussion in this thread, here's an article talking about A&M's running back depth over the next couple of years. In Sumlin's offense, it'll all be about "touches" by the RBs, not necessarily "carries" ...
To back up some prior discussion in this thread, here's an article talking about A&M's running back depth over the next couple of years. In Sumlin's offense, it'll all be about "touches" by the RBs, not necessarily "carries" ...
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