havgrizfan said:
mtgrizrule...I have always enjoyed reading your posts on both here and the hoops side. You are an excellent poster. But I'm going to pose a simple question. Why does this bother you and what difference does it make"
"Unfortunately, some of our fans/egrizzers are brick walls and don't understand the importance of making these adjustments"
Even if every single poster on Egriz agreed that the Griz have the absolute worst offense known to man kind, even if every single poster signed up for this board, have a whiteboard in their house, making adjustments on offense while watching the Griz on TV, what difference does it make for the ACTUAL GRIZ FOOTBALL TEAM?
You are right, nothing we post makes a difference to to the actual team. I very much enjoy posting my observations and opinions of the teams. I enjoy evaluating teams. I enjoy learning from others that can expand my knowledge of subjects that interest me. Like a few others I took an interest in sports even before I started school. Growing up, I learned early to pay attention to details in things that interest me. I was the kid who teacher's got frustrated with because all I cared about reading and learning were sports related. I was and always will be a sports nerd. Over the years, I've studied a lot of basketball, football, and baseball. I've attended coaching clinics. I've dedicated many hours voluntarily coaching kids (mainly baseball and basketball). I've studied sports management, just never have completed my degree. I am pretty confident in my observations when it comes to teams, rather it be football, baseball, basketball, or even a business.
As for football, I admit, it is the most difficult sport to coach and build a championship caliber team. It takes a lot of eyes to evaluate the strengths and weakness of any football team, because of how big the field is, and how many working parts there are to a team. It takes more coaches and more players to get on the same page, even if it means sacrificing personal believes and preferences for the sake of the team. It takes a very open mind, honesty, and willingness to accept things you'd wish you did not. It takes checking every ego at the door for every practice and game. I wish I could take in every practice to get a truer grasp of this staff. I can only go by what I have witnessed on game days and opinions of others I trust, since Mick's time here.
As for the offense, Robin Pflugrad and many other offensive minded coaches have said something that really hit home to me, and since hearing it, I've paid a lot more attention to it. He mentioned a big key to consistent successful offensive football is utilizing the whole field sideline to sideline, and to have defenses know your offense can utilize every yard of the field. Since then, I've paid more attention to offense. Consistent offenses do mix things up well, regardless of style. I encourage people to watch good offenses in college and the NFL, then maybe you can get a better idea of how mixing things up benefits an offense. EWU is a dynamic offense and has been for awhile now. They mix up the run and pass terrific, and when they pass they throw the ball all over to many targets. Yet they are smart enough to know who their bread and butter is. Oregon is always a great offense to watch. Wazzu's offense mainly passing,and their talent needs to improve, but they spread the ball around nicely. Clemson, Fl St, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, LSU, AL, etc all have different offensive styles, paces, etc, but they do a great job of utilizing the whole field sideline to sideline.
I encourage GRIZ fans to pay more attention to other teams at different levels and determine yourself how important utilizing the whole field, and player utilization is for successful offenses. You too will see many offenses consistently keep defenses off guard with these things. Meanwhile, our staff does not "consistently" do these things. Our staff passes the ball 1 to 15 yards to the middle 3rd of the field less than 5x's per game. As for quick short passes (not including screens), those are few and far between as well. Seriously, our passing game consists of mainly 15 yard plus passes to the outside, screens, and a very occasional quick pass, with very few passes to the middle 3rd of the field. Also watch when we do run WR screen, it is usually from 4 and 5 WR sets. When we run 4 and 5 WR packages defenses know, more often than not our 2 main options are a WR screen or deep post or fly. Defenses know to look for those 2 things 1st and foremost.
I guarantee this, if the GRIZ can continue to take care of the ball, and utilize more passing variety to their scheme, then we will see a lot more efficient consistent offense. I am not saying we need to pass more or change the formations, just spread the ball out more to different areas of the field. It will make a world of difference against playoff caliber teams.
On a positive note, I'm happy we have our defense this year and not EWU's or MSU's. I do feel MSU has a better defense than EWU though. MSU's defense needs about as much improvement as our offense. EWU, any defensive improvement would be of help. :thumb:
