Today's Thunder and Lightning left a pretty interesting easter egg

[Dawg_4_lifes]

Has Coach34 been asked to come in and install the Jet Sweep?

 

[Go Budaw]

We'll see. But scoring 24 against Mississippi's defense, 10 against Auburn's and 21 against Tulsa's isn't really impressing me. Scoring 51 on Missouri was good, but take it with a grain of salt, they gave up 148 in its last 3 games and didn't want to be playing in December. Not saying it can't work, especially if he's adding some run elements to the offense, but I didn't see much last year to say it is working yet.

How about scoring 28 on Mississippi, 10 on Auburn, 3 on UGA, and 20 on UMass? Any better?

Because that’s what Mullen did…..in Year 17ing NINE.

The problems MSU has offensively that will always limit our ceiling will be talent based, not scheme based. We have never landed enough elite players on that side of the ball to be serious contenders. I don’t know that Leach will be any better at getting it done against the elite teams, but his type of system is about the only one that ever will if the talent is inferior.

 

[archdog]

It’s great to hear people say the air raid has been “figured out.” Then you go back and read game stories from 2012 WSU games and see they went through the same drop eight in zone coverage issues we had in 2020.

It’s hard to say DCs have a scheme figured out when Leach’s two best offenses at WSU came right before he got here- in years 7-8 of playing in the Pac 12.

How many times did he beat Washington and Stanford, who played him dropping 8 every time.... not to many times.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

How about scoring 28 on Mississippi, 10 on Auburn, 3 on UGA, and 20 on UMass? Any better?

Because that’s what Mullen did…..in Year 17ing NINE.

The problems MSU has offensively that will always limit our ceiling will be talent based, not scheme based. We have never landed enough elite players on that side of the ball to be serious contenders. I don’t know that Leach will be any better at getting it done against the elite teams, but his type of system is about the only one that ever will if the talent is inferior.

I love what Mullen did here. He was easily our best offensive coach ever and probably our best coach overall in program history.

But people look back on aspects of his tenure with rose colored glasses. We all the time hear “I just don’t know how Leach’s offense is going to perform against an elite defense like Bama or UGA.” Newsflash- did y’all watch any of Mullen’s teams play Bama or UGA? And better yet, what offensive system is there that would allow us to score more consistently against teams with that big of a talent gap?

Mullen averaged less than 10 PPG against Bama and only scored 20+ two times. I don’t know if Leach’s offense will be any better than Mullen’s was against elite teams, but us struggling to score against top defenses is nothing new.

 

[johnson86-1]

How about scoring 28 on Mississippi, 10 on Auburn, 3 on UGA, and 20 on UMass? Any better?

Because that’s what Mullen did…..in Year 17ing NINE.

The problems MSU has offensively that will always limit our ceiling will be talent based, not scheme based. Except for 2014, We have never landed enough elite players on that side of the ball to be serious contenders. I don’t know that Leach will be any better at getting it done against the elite teams, but his type of system is about the only one that ever will if the talent is inferior.

FTFY. But yes, generally what we're looking for is a system that let's us overachieve compared to our talent some. Mulllen's offense was able to do that because it was a perfect fit for the type of athletes we recruit and he was good at coaching QB's up and Hevesy was really good at getting the most out of the talent he got after he ensured that we were at a talent disadvantage on the offensive line and often had a glaring hole. If Mullen could have held on to one coach that could recruit WRs consistently, our offense would have looked a lot better in 2017. The lack of an SEC quality wide receiver killed us that year.

 

[johnson86-1]

How many times did he beat Washington and Stanford, who played him dropping 8 every time.... not to many times.

Once the talent gap is big enough, it's hard to out scheme it. Give me two lock down corners and a first round talent pass rusher at defensive end and solid talent elsewhere, and I could probably look like a hell of a defensive coordinator. Well, probably not me. But today's version of Joe Lee Dunn or Bo Pellini could.

 

[Go Budaw]

FTFY. But yes, generally what we're looking for is a system that let's us overachieve compared to our talent some. Mulllen's offense was able to do that because it was a perfect fit for the type of athletes we recruit and he was good at coaching QB's up and Hevesy was really good at getting the most out of the talent he got after he ensured that we were at a talent disadvantage on the offensive line and often had a glaring hole. If Mullen could have held on to one coach that could recruit WRs consistently, our offense would have looked a lot better in 2017. The lack of an SEC quality wide receiver killed us that year.

We didn’t have enough offensive talent in 2014 either, and it showed in the only two conference games we played against elite defenses.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

How many times did he beat Washington and Stanford, who played him dropping 8 every time.... not to many times.

Stanford- Leach went 4-4 overall against them, while having about a 40 spot talent deficit in the recruiting rankings. WSU won the last four meetings and dropped 40+ points on Stanford in three of those games. After getting his roster together, Leach dominated Stanford. You could not have possibly picked a worse example.

Washington- Couldn’t score on Washington because UW was able to pressure the QB with only 3-4 pass rushers and covered WSU receivers well by mixing both man and zone coverage. This confused the WSU QB and, along with UW pressure, forced a lot of turnovers and negative plays.

Which is exactly why OL play is going to make or break the Mike Leach tenure here. Is he going to have to turn the OL room over through recruiting? Will he need to make adjustments like tighten the splits and get more creative in the run game? Or is it just an issue of repping the offense and getting the players more familiar with the system? I don’t know. He’s a great offensive coach and will figure it out, IMO.

I do think that the biggest problem our OL faced for most of last year is the DEs were able to pin their ears back and not respect the run. Hopefully our willingness to hand the ball off a little more often in our last two games is a sign of things to come.

 

[johnson86-1]

We didn’t have enough offensive talent in 2014 either, and it showed in the only two conference games we played against elite defenses.

We arguably didn't have enough depth, but we had enough talent.

We choked away some points on the road and still scored 20 against Bama. Outside of Auburn and OSU, nobody really did better. Ole Miss and west Virginia scored 23 at Oxford and Atlanta. UF scored 21 at Bryant Denny. UT Scored 20 on them in Knoxville.

We definitely did poorly on offense against Ole Miss, but we also scored the same number of points as a team that made it to the semifinals.

I think what really bit our offense both times was the same thing, which was Josh Robinson trying to bounce runs against them the same way he did against Kentucky and finding out you can't do that against good defenses. Ashton Shumpert averaged 6.8 yds a run on 10 carries against Ole Miss just by staying vertical, even though he wasn't nearly as talented. Robinson kept trying to bounce everything and wasn't fast enough to do it against Ole Miss and got 3.7 yds per carry.

ETA: Bama lost to OSU in the semifinals, not the championship game.