Everytime I come here I am more shocked and horrified at the level of football illiteracy on this board. This may have taken the cake.
Enough with the Oregon hurry up playbook
- Thread starter HuskerMB
- Start date
I'll play devil's advocate here. Talking specifically about total offense yards, relative to the rest of FBS, this offense (14th nationally) is worse than the 2007 offense (9th nationally) while averaging more yards.
2007 Total Offense by Game
Nevada (W) 615
Wake Forest (W) 373
USC (L) 420
Ball State (W) 552
Iowa State (W) 369
Missouri (L) 297
Oklahoma State (L) 335
Texas A&M (L) 405
Texas (L) 447
Kansas (L) 484
Kansas State (W) 702
Colorado (L) 610
5609 total offense yards (12 games)
467 yards/game
9th nationally
2018 Total Offense by Game
Colorado (L) 565
Troy (L) 364
Michigan (L) 132
Purdue (L) 582
Wisconsin (L) 518
Northwestern (L) 482
Minnesota (W) 659
Bethune-Cookman (W) 468
Ohio State (L) 450
Illinois (W) 606
4826 total offense yards (10 games)
483 yards/game
14th nationally
I'm excited for the direction of the program, don't get me wrong, but putting up gaudy offensive stats doesn't necessarily mean an offense is good. Especially if that offense turns the ball over, has untimely penalties, and is generally poor at punching it in the end zone.
It's an interesting point to think about. My gut feeling is that was in the track meet Big 12, so not an apples-to-apples comparison. But stats are stats and you're right; big numbers don't tell the entire story. But from an eyeballs standpoint I like our offense. I think it's good.
I think the averages would go up
How much that would equalize nationally would be imperfect unless you removed every team's lowest total offense game. I'd think you would also take out the season high as well.
For sure, I was probably stating the obvious. That mich game was a significant variance from all the others.I think the averages would go up
How much that would equalize nationally would be imperfect unless you removed every team's lowest total offense game. I'd think you would also take out the season high as well.
i Hear you, but I would counter with we are trending in the right direction... penalties are down, turnovers are down... points and yards are up. We are punching it in much better the last 5 games than we did the first 5.
It remains to be seen how good this offense can be, but for a first year in this offensive system to be doing this vs a 4th year in the system that the team had in 2007, I like the direction our offense is heading.
Let's remember that in 2007, we were putting up a lot of yards because our defense was atrocious and we were constantly slinging the ball all over the field in an attempt to come back. It's important things like that which make it ridiculous to compare two years without any other context. The stats above comparing the two years are quite frankly useless, baseless and a waste of time, especially in a lame attempt to play "devils advocate".
That was my point of posting them as it was in response to the school record for consecutive 450-yard games specifically, not the trajectory of the team in general.
Look at the Joe Ganz effect in 2007. Played the last 2.5 games, I believe?
Yep, last 3+. Keller broke his collarbone late in the Texas game.
I think your point is wrong however about putting up gaudy offensive stats doesn't mean an offense is good. The stats don't lie-the 2007 offense was really good-it got even better with Joe Ganz running it the last few games. But it doesn't tell the whole story-we put up a lot of those yards because we had to compensate for an awful defense. Yes, we know this year's defense isn't very good, but other than the Michigan game, which was also our worst offensive output of the season, we haven't been having to try to come back from huge deficits. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Do you mean to criticize this year's offense as not being as good as the stats show? If that's your point-then explain why you think that's the case and don't use a meaningless comparison to an offense from 11 years ago. If that's not your point and as you say you are just playing "devil's advocate", why waste the time making meaningless comparisons between two seasons that are quite different?
I guess I was just wasting time then. My main point was that stats don't tell the whole story; I believe we agree on that.
I think everyone will agree that the way yards have been accumulated are different from that season (when there was a lot of playing catch up and garbage time) to this season (when we're generally keeping pace or leading, some catch up).
The 2007 offense was definitely great when Ganz was in. I would be hard pressed to even call it "good" when Keller was playing, particularly looking at Wake Forest, USC (most of those yards started piling up after we were down by 30+), Iowa State, Missouri, and Oklahoma State.
Yes, I think it would similar if not the same. I actually had the opportunity to ask TO that very question recently, and he didn’t even hesitate saying ‘yes, I would’.
I see your point, but 2007 was not like 2018. Outside of Michigan, Nebraska was never playing the game of blowout, which is where many of those yards in those games were reached.
USC
Kansas
OSU
A&M
I guess if you want to include Wisconsin this year that’s fair, but the offense this season, outside of the games Martinez was hurt, have been very consistent.
USC
Kansas
OSU
A&M
I guess if you want to include Wisconsin this year that’s fair, but the offense this season, outside of the games Martinez was hurt, have been very consistent.
I agree with that.
My point wasn't that this offense sucks, perhaps using the term "devil's advocate" was a mistake on my part when trying to counter the consecutive 450+ yards streak). My point was that stats can be misleading and that raw numbers aren't a true barometer for offensive potency. I didn't think this would be a controversial statement.
The issue this season is while we've put up yards (Michigan notwithstanding), we've been plagued with turnovers, turnovers on downs, penalties until recently (not to mention poor field position leading to more yards able to gain).
Hard to admit now that we were blown out by Kansas. But we were.
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That was an orange bowl winning, one loss Kansas team.
But to your point, yes, hard to believe we were blown out by Kansas.
UGH! We have the 14th best offense in the nation with a TRUE freshman qb and a group of guys recruited for a pro-system. The 2007 offense was a group of seniors recruited FOR the pro-system, with two experienced qbs running it. That shows the weakness of that system...a coach had to spend considerably recruiting points to make the offense work, while Frosty can get his offense to work with inferior, inexperienced parts...which bodes well for the future as they can cut some corners in offensive recruiting to bolster the defense. You want to know why we sucked on offense in 2009? Because we spent all of resources on recruiting defense...then in 2010 we had to rely on a safety to play qb...and then a rb to play qb in tommy armstrong. This system is perfect for what we need because you can get away with non-nfl talent...and for those that WANT the option...this system effectively works the same way...it just spreads the option to the sidelines instead inside the hashes.
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