From mgoblog.
Seems to me the Oregon team looks a lot like Michigan is supposed to. Chip Kelly, who studied under Rodriguez, isn't even in a full year and has a team that looks cohesive and fully engaged in the spread system. I know they were a spread team before, but it still doesn't make sense that there is no comparison between the two teams.
I guess my question is, hasn't Rodriguez had enough time to recruit those fast players, even if the team is not yet complete enough to win like Oregon? Michigan has all these smaller guys but still seems as slow as it ever has. Why the glaring differences?
Chip Kelly is in his third year at Oregon. Mike Bellotti brought him in as offensive coordinator before the 2007 season after Kelly's spread 'n' shred at New Hampshire tore up I-AA defenses. Bellotti had also been an offensive coordinator elevated to head coach when Rich Brooks left Oregon in 1994. Oregon set up a smooth coach-in-waiting transition and avoided any unusual attrition in the changeover.
As far as the offense: in 2005, Oregon moved from a traditional passing attack with Joey Harrington under center to a spread 'n' shred when Bellotti hired Gary Crowton. Only redshirt seniors were recruited with a different offense in mind..Oregon is in year five of a transition period that had its ugly moments, like a 38-8 loss to BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl, and never had the sort of black hole at quarterback Michigan did. Jeremiah Masoli was a third-string sophomore JUCO transfer; Michigan's third string quarterback is Nick Sheridan.
So, yes, Chip Kelly is a first-year head coach but this was essentially an internal transition for a team already set up to run a spread 'n' shred.
7 comments:
An interesting topic, but I'm not getting your thought process on this post and don't get the conclusion as a result. So, Kelly became the offensive coordinator in 2007? That was the same season that Oregon lit up Michigan and the rest of the Pac 10 with the top offense before Dixon got hurt near the end of the year. Also, is wondering why RichRod hasn't been as successful as Chip Kelly in his first season as head coach? Because, if they are, they just aren't realizing that this has been a Chip Kelly offense for years and when moving to head coach he didn't need to change a damn thing about it.
Anyway, I am actually comforted by watching Oregon this year as it's given me some answers about why they are successful and Michigan is not. Against Boise State they couldn't get a 1st down until late in the 3rd quarter. Is this because Boise's defense is awesome? Likely not. It's partly because Masoli was in a funk but it was mostly because they had some new linemen and receivers in there and they were out of sync. Sync is everything in the spreadnshred and your blockers are 90% of where that sync happens. When Oregon played USC last week or Michigan in 2007 for that matter, I couldn't tell who had the ball most of the time. They were selling their fakes incredibly well, which is a result of the rb meeting the qb with perfect timing and at the right speed. It has me convinced that if the offense isn't firing on all cylinders it's not firing it all. Meaning two players can mess the whole thing up. I think this contrast with a traditional Lloyd Carr or USC offense where if you have a cannon armed QB and a tall WR that can rip down jump balls, out-of-sync-ness is a bit more forgiving.
More evidence of the all-or-nothing nature of the spread n shred could be seen when Masoli started rusty and much more so when Dixon went out. Without the right QB this offense can go from being the best in CFB to falling flat on it's face. Remember how Oregon couldn't score at all after Dixon went out? They went from scoring 40 per game to 7 per game.
I think that this offense without Masoli scores half as many points per game. He's that perfect for the offense. He's a bruiser of a little tailback that happens to be really smart and can zing the ball downfield a bit. But he's primarily a runner. One that gets the offense and doesn't drop the ball every five seconds and can throw it semi-competently (ahem, Shoelace) but still a runner.
By the way, Oregon's secondary was playing fast last Saturday, swatting passes repeatedly. Michigan could sure use some of those guys.
I'm suspicious that RichRod is actually more of a loyalist to a fault about his assistant staff then Lloyd Carr was. Not for new hires like Shafer, but for his long time buddies that followed him from WV. I don't have any evidence for this than their interviews, which always leave me questioning how intelligent they are, football or otherwise.
I think your intuition on protecting the neck of carpetbagger high school buddies is spot on. There is no accountability for them, and RichRod just absorbs/deflects that criticism, knowing that he is safe because of the transaction costs UM would incur getting rid of him.
Case in point: UNM has not won this year. The headcoach strangled and punched an assistant coach. Yet the entire establishment circles the wagons and dismisses the accounts of the victims and multiple witnesses in the name of "damage control". Paying yet another fired coach/president just becomes too expensive after a while.
Do coaches have a union? Or are ADs just collectively idiots?
I don't think athletic directors are stupid in general. Theres an arms race to have top coaches, so they make tons of money. You're right that ADs sometimes get painted into a corner when they commit to paying big money this but theres often little choice unless you can dig up a cheap find from out of the high school ranks, but then you're taking a big risk with your own job security.
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JGW, if you're right about the zone-read-run-spread offense being particularly susceptible to disruption that seems like a major flaw, no?
"if the offense isn't firing on all cylinders it's not firing it all"
The UM offense this season seems to indicate otherwise. It mood swings wildly but has had many moments of effectiveness. Rarely have they seemed to be firing on all cylinders. More often they're eeking out big drives with mad scrambles and high variance passing plays.
I get your post now. I didn't realize it was all from MGoBlog. I thought originally just the blockquote part was. Now I see it's just him setting an ignorant guy straight who thinks that Oregon's offensive system is in it's first year.
Yes, I think that the offense's susceptibility to disruption and thereby falling flat is a flaw. But it has the significant advantage that when it's clicking, it's really (fucking) clicking. This was the general analysis of RichRod's system before he set foot in Ann Arbor. In his last season at WVU, his offense put up huge numbers all season but fell flat against USF and Pitt. USF and Pitt didn't have especially good defenses compared to other teams they faced, it's just that 1) Pat White got hurt in both of those games. It's all about the QB and 2) the spread n shred tends to beat itself more than opposing defenses beat it. The WVU-USF game was riddled with silly turnovers while Pat White was still in the game.
I think that the whole "clicking" or "firing on all cylinders" can be mistaken for consistent and methodical. The spread n shred is anything but. Look at WVU when they were on (against Oklahoma, for example). It was all about really big long yardage plays and not many consecutive first downs. Oregon has been the same way. All or nothing. When they were racking up points in 2007, a big concern was that they were scoring too quickly and not giving their defense enough time to rest. This was due to the all or nothing, big play nature of the offense.
Anyway, it's a good point that Michigan has never fired on all cylinders and they score here and there. I guess the statement of firing on all cylinders and all-or-nothing is a big exaggerative in order to prove a point. No offense ever executes 100% and there are many intermediates other than all-or-nothing. But, I do think that this Michigan offense IS starting to get in sync and fire on it's cylinders (and other metaphorical things). The basic fundamentals of the offense have been consistent since the beginning of the year. It's just that the mistakes have been highly out of whack in the 2nd half of the season. I find myself often saying "man, if it weren't for that one huge mistake, this drive would still be going." I don't remember thinking that with any Lloyd offense although it struggled to put up points often. But this year I've seen more dropped passes that ever. I've seen more fumbles than ever the last couple years. Michigan's has lost the turnover battle 13-1 in their last 4 games. A couple of those were desperation 3rd-down throws but the majority were fumbles. Take those fumbles and the dropped passes and Michigan probably has several more touchdown drives. It all makes me think that defenses aren't beating Michigan, Michigan is beating themselves with mistake after mistake. But they've still won the line of scrimmage battle against all those teams from what I've seen.
Another thought: Does it seem like Oregon runs a ton more north and south plays than Michigan who seems to run stretch plays on 80% of their runs? That was one thing that I liked about Oregon's offense. They lined up the HB behind the QB and before the handoff they both ran toward the line of scrimmage so that either player had momentum when they had the ball. It seems like Michigan's run plays work like misdirection draw plays where after the handoff/fake either player is essentially starting from a near standstill. This lends itself to all or nothing runs and, when those runs don't work, long yardage situations.
Yes, a lot of separate non-cohesive thoughts here.
I was hoping that hypothesis about the offense was based more on the gap of talent/skills between Dixon /White and their backups than something systemic. Cincinnati (a different offense, but still) showed they could switch gears pretty quickly. Just a more mature program I think with less of a gap in overall ability and experience... I'm not convinced that its an inherent flaw of the system, but can't rule it out either.
I don't really buy the boom or bust thing. Yeah, there were a lot of big plays but there are also a lot of boring bubble screens and zone read runs that gain 4 to 6 yards. The first drive of the PSU game was very methodical like that. It seems like many of the plays are designed to leave a ball-carrier 1on1 with a defender. Most times this will yield only a decent gain, but if the guy jukes the defender out its a big play. This is different than an 8 yard out pattern obviously.
""man, if it weren't for that one huge mistake, this drive would still be going." I don't remember thinking that with any Lloyd offense although it struggled to put up points often."
I totally agree with that.
I do think there is something to scoring too quickly, but it applies to limited circumstances. The offense should be able to eat a lot of clock out of the no huddle when it needs to.
In summary, I don't think these isssues are necessarily part of something systemic, but observations based on limited sample of the spread and shred. Mgoblog has said basically the same thing by bringing up the example of the pro style offense losing competency when freshman Mallet replaced senior Henne.
The north/south running is an interesting thought. I'll get back to you on that.
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