One Annoyance

[engie]

I’m not going to get into the sweeping, big picture, emotional analysis of the program as a whole. It’s counterproductive. So let’s just focus on one simple fix. I HATE looking to the sideline every time the defense tips their hand on the coverage and blitz. While it does allow us to get into the correct play for what the defense just showed, it also gives the defense time to look to their sideline to adjust to the “new” play that they already know we’re going to call based on the look they initially gave us. How we do this makes us exceedingly predictable and essentially let’s the opposing defensive coordinator call our game for us. Rather than just a quick qb audible to the line and the WRs/QBs being on the same page with their roles and how they change in a given look.

I think a lot of this issue comes down to a lack of trust both ways. Moorhead not trusting Fitz to get us right, Fitz not trusting Moorhead for not trusting him. And it manifests itself in the quality of play. That’s something that needs to be worked out immediately in this offseason. Can’t have another offensive performance like this season next year.

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

I’m not going to get into the sweeping, big picture, emotional analysis of the program as a whole. It’s counterproductive. So let’s just focus on one simple fix. I HATE looking to the sideline every time the defense tips their hand on the coverage and blitz. While it does allow us to get into the correct play for what the defense just showed, it also gives the defense time to look to their sideline to adjust to the “new” play that they already know we’re going to call based on the look they initially gave us. How we do this makes us exceedingly predictable and essentially let’s the opposing defensive coordinator call our game for us. Rather than just a quick qb audible to the line and the WRs/QBs being on the same page with their roles and how they change in a given look.

I think a lot of this issue comes down to a lack of trust both ways. Moorhead not trusting Fitz to get us right, Fitz not trusting Moorhead for not trusting him. And it manifests itself in the quality of play. That’s something that needs to be worked out immediately in this offseason. Can’t have another offensive performance like this season next year.

The major disconnect is that Moorhead's scheme requires a quarterback to make a pre-snap read of the defensive coverage and move through the progression based on that, but Moorhead is adjusting the play during the pre-snap phase and not giving Fitz time to read the defense. Fitz has not shown himself to be the best at making the reads whether they are pre or post snap, but much of this could be that he's given so little time. Meanwhile, our offensive line gets into their stance a good 15 seconds before the snap while the play is being changed. I watched the videos of Penn State in 2017 and they weren't doing any of this crap.

I don't have a lot of time on my hands, but I reckon that if you were to go back to every offensive play on the season and put them into buckets for "no pre-snap change from the sidelines" and "pre-snap change from the sidelines", you'd find better offensive performance when we weren't changing the plays.

 

[sandwolf.sixpack]

This was easily the most frustrating part of our offense for me. I'd love to see a comparison of how many times we snapped the ball with less than 5 seconds on the play clock versus other teams. If it weren't for our bad *** defense holding teams to 3 and out all the time we probably would have averaged under 50 plays per game.