KoreAmBear said:
calumnus said:
burritos said:
It's amusing how 99% here hated Beau Baldwin and proclaimed Musgrave the 2nd coming(as usual).
1. 99% here are huge Wilcox fans. 100% want him to succeed.
2. We had the worst offense in the PAC-12 and one of the very worst in football three years in a row under Baldwin. 60% wanted Baldwin gone. 40% always support the coach and blamed the players/lack of talent. They tried to see progress and hoped for improvement in year 4.
3. With Wilcox finally replacing Baldwin with ______ everyone is going to be supportive. Those who wanted Baldwin gone are happy and those who think Wilcox walks on water still do. Everyone wants Wilcox to succeed. We are all optimistic until we can see what the actual results are. My wish was that Wilcox found the next up and coming brilliant strategist. Obviously Musgrave is not that, but he said the right things and he is clearly experienced and competent. He has been given a tough situation in 2020. My hope is that as he sees what his players can do he puts out an offense that puts them in a situation to succeed. Maybe we start a campaign to hire Killa as an offensive assistant?
I'll take Killa. All his offensive lingo has me on the bandwagon. I know a guy who can make t-shirts.
Flattered to be thought of so highly, but alas, that ship has sailed for me. Coaching @ the FBS level would've been an adventure, but that's a life path that is certainly not an easy one to tread. I've had my taste of it, but the private sector called -- and I still get to balance coaching along w/ a professional career.
In the end, you really have to appreciate the dedication and time that these guys put into the program from a coaching staff & support standpoint. Running a major college program, let alone any program, is no small feat. Not easy to make it there, and it's not easy to sustain.
Nonetheless, Football honestly is still a simple game -- some of the best coaches I've ever had the chance to interact with and learn from came from lower levels --- and most of the guys who have had huge success have that background as well.
Football is a microcosm of life -- and schematic leanings are largely philosophically driven. It's hard to be impartial and see both the trees, the forest, and everything else at the same time. But in the end, what always stood out to me is that it's not how much you know as a coach, it's how much your players can absorb, master, and then execute.
Funny you guys should mention Mouse Davis. I had a chance, over the years to spend some quality time with that dude -- there are few who know as much about the passing game as he does. But, seeing me in Cal gear @ prac, we would always chat about his time in Strawberry Canyon -- and the promise of that season marred by injury. Consensus was that if Theder stuck with it, it would have paid off -- but like you pointed out, utilizing the TE was an issue. Mouse is a principled dude, and he could simply not stomach running a *******ized scheme so quit. Mouse will still say that he kind of regrets quitting like that, but he didn't feel like he was gonna get a fair shake at showing what he could do. Kind of like needing to be in the right spot at the right time. The Air Raid guys kind of benefitted from fortune like that Mumme success @ Kentucky, Leach @ Oklahoma, parlaying that into Texas Tech. Dykes, Holgorsen, Briles, Kingsbury, McMackin, Aranda, all spin off from that staff and shape modern CFB as we now see it.
Well, back to Gale Gilbert @ Cal w/ Mouse they started off strong, then Gilbert got hurt, and that kind of was the end of the experiment that was the Run and Shoot in the Pac-8 (maybe I'm wrong on the conf name here, before my time) but this being before the days that they really mastered the whole install / teaching element of the RNS. June Jones would later improve upon it, at length factoring in west coast elements from long talks with Bill Walsh when Walsh would hang out in Hawai'i. In some ways, how the Air Raid and Run and Shoot ended up as parallels to another was due to that collaboration, which happened kind of in a vacuum. While the air raid evolved from BYU / Holmgren (a WCO branch), June also adapted Walsh WCO into a lot of the fixed route / timing pattern stuff that pervades the modern RNS. You will now see that Rolovich has incorporated a lot of the option / qb run elements that he took from Nevada and Chris Ault (Y'all remember Kaepernick, right? Or that opening game for the renovated Stadium boy that game atmosphere was nice, but the result really sucked seeing live) well Rolovich was OC for that game. Time will tell to see if that can pan out @ Wazzu, but the early indication is that yes, that's gonna be a problem for dudes.
Well, there's a unique Cal connection that all kind of ties this together, which I always found interesting. So Gale played for Mouse Davis, and Gale's son Garrett, ends up as a 5 Star QB over in Texas, who ends up playing for Mack Brown. Mack Brown decides F it, I'm gonna try run a pro-set, basically sets Gilbert up for damaged goods. Gilbert then transfers over to SMU to get rehabbed by who else but June Jones, and also Hal Mumme, of all people. There's also a Leigh Steinberg connection in there as well. Anyway, well June then went and adapted most of the air raid concepts, along with tempo into the RNS package that you saw the Houston Roughnecks run in the XFL dancing circles around everyone and smoking dudes in there while going 5-0. Pep Hamilton somehow found a way back into the NFL while sucking-ass in the XFL, which I cannot explain for the life of me. The NFL really is all about nepotism and vanilla-ness which is also why I hate most NFL schemes besides Andy Reid and Kingsbury, because they at least do different stuff. Everyone else does the same damn thing. Turn on the 2007 Patriots, and that's basically a Belicheck version of a Run and Shoot based, spread-attacking offense scheme. That's the Erdhardt Perkins adaptation I'd want to see, not whatever we are currently getting.
The study of offenses to me, is always the study of languages, because each offense is its own language. And then how that offense is installed, taught, and practiced makes all the difference. If you ever get a chance, how those guys teach it and do it is quite unique there's a marked level of detail that goes into mastering a given concept. Which is one thing that both the RNS and Air Raid have in common (have an identity), and share in opposition to a multiple approach. The premise is that you need to have an identity that you can build upon from a raw execution and rep standpoint. It also helps when you have the chalk last as an offense which is why the option (from a run standpoint), and then the leveraged reads and option routes of the run and shoot (and to a lesser degree, the Air Raid) are so effective. Instead of having 500 plays so you can dial up one at the perfect time, why not have a few plays that simply adapt to what a defense does and do those well.
Study of football schemes are really a study of football history, and coaches / philosophies / personalities. Always fun to follow the evolution of schemes and how coaches and their mindsets / viewpoints change.
Like someone mentioned earlier, CFB is marked by turnovers in personnel, so you need to really be system driven, but have that system able to adapt to the best guys you have. I'm all for playing your best dudes, and having a scheme that can adapt to that less of a fan of having 50 packages with different personnel groupings to get it done.
That's my beef with the multiple approach. Too much stuff. It's possible to pull it off see Boise State (but literally only Boise State has pulled it off). But, like I said before, this is all a philosophical debate. There is no right or wrong, because it comes down to how well you can implement your strategy as a coach. You can't hire some west coast dude and expect something else, because that's all you know.
I do think you need to play and scheme aggressively to win above your weight class Wilcox is one of the best defensive guys around, he can scheme above his talent level. The guy is unreal when it comes to teaching and game-planning on defense, really. He's up there with Aranda in terms of the dudes that I've seen do their thing on defense. I think I've gone at length in the past at how brilliant some of the things that Tony Franklin and then Spavital did with the offense in terms of scheme and personnel huge testament to their capabilities and vision as coaches. Look @ DRob and Stovall for example, both had their best years as Freshmen in that Spav offense and amounted to little else. Well, Stovall did go off @ Hawai'i for Rolo before pulling his attitude and getting kicked off the team. They had some random other dude go for 1k yards with half the talent as Stovall, but yeah that's why culture is important in the end. DRob could've been all-world Keenan level production if he played under Spav.
While Sonny needed defense to make it all pencil out, Wilcox needs an offense just as badly. I'm still a skeptic that the margin for error allowed by the present approach (although granted we are only a few games in) can get it done in the long run.
