MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Observations from Hell
The definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Our political parties have this problem, our schools have this problem and well Americans have this problem. So do I. I started writing this blog two years ago expecting to inject a bit of common sense into the debate surrounding college football and other sports. After two seasons of futility in that regard, I have come to the conclusion that stupid on me, not you the reader.
Part of the reason is that people don’t populate reader boards of any type to read about rational displays of intelligence. They populate message boards to participate in a train wreck of human behavior., Rationalize, marginalize, and explain away the actions of others that their simple minds can figure out. I normally don’t go out of my way to call out posters, but today may very well be that day to a degree. There is a high level of angst out there, and I can’t take the stupidity exhibited by people anymore.
There are just way too many things that I have to climb to the top of the mountain and scream about. So welcome to my version of when in Rome…
1. Just because you want press coverage doesn’t mean you are going to get it. This has become the third rail of the message board. I would try to use common sense and intelligence to explain my point of view but obviously people don’t want to know why a lot of cover 2 teams don’t run it. What many want is another reason to lament the moving of Mike Breske. Here is an analogy that people might get:
If you are lined up at a stop light next to a Porshe and you are driving an early 2000’s Ford Taurus: How are you going to win?
A. Drag them off the line. Nope.
B. Rubbing is racing? Hope to slow them down? Nope.
C. Get ahead start? Yep.
Trying to use football language to explain this has gone awry. Mostly because I think people don’t want someone who sounds smarter than they are about the game of football. Some are more than willing to accept an explanation that sounds intelligent just as so long it comes from the right source.
We know simply that A isn’t a smart choice, and B well unless you get a good bump you are still going to lose the drag race. Only way, is to get a head start. That is what a cushion is for. The reason the most schools don’t use press coverage in the complexity of reads to a person who can’t see the inside or slot receivers in press coverage. When you are using a safety to cover a deep half, or even protect on outside on a deep corner by #2 and a #1 deep out, you can’t identify the route in press coverage. Sort of like trying to bump a car off of the line of the starting block. If you miss, you miss. Even if you make contact, you still probably won’t win.
I guess the frustration comes from the misconception that because you do one thing that it would guarantee another. Talk to any pro corner or DB coach who employs a cover 2 technique, most will tell you it would take most corners year to be able to get up in someones grill and press and be successful in reading cover 2 correctly. But that is a detail that I guess is irrelevant in this conversation. Soft coverage 5-9 yards off the line of scrimmage has two implicit advantages:
a. Makes the reads for the corner and safety easier. Most teams run later developing routes to beat cover 2 these days. Most notably the deep square in by #1, along with the deep post by number #2 gives two shell teams fits. If you are in press, and see a vertical release by #1 you have a hard time seeing the vertical release by #2. So if a vertical release occurs by number and number 2, the safety and corner to that side are essentially manned up. But in press you can’t see that.
b. Forces the QB away from deep vertical routes on the edges. Most two shell coverage requires the safety to cover a vertical route by the number 1 receiver. By in large if a qb sees soft coverage by the corner he can’t throw a pre read go. Very few QB’s in the college have the time to release a vertical route (5 to 6 seconds) to allow the time for a WR to break the coverage of a CB in soft coverage. Makes the routes a bit more predictable as to what the corners and safeties will see.
2. SPREAD IS NOT A SPECIFIC OFFENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I about threw my lap top across the room 10 times on Saturday night because of this. I don’t know how to explain to people that spread is a philosophy, not a scheme. No matter the amount of argument I could make is obviously going to change that. There are maybe seven to ten different spread schemes out there and not a one exactly the same but they are all under the gigantic spread umbrella.
a. There is the Oregon Spread.
b. There is the Run and Shoot Spread.
c. There is the Louisiana Tech (tony franklin spread).
d. There is the Nevada Spread.
e. There is the Georgia Tech/ Cal Poly/ Army Spread.
f. There is the West Coast Spread.
In each of the above mentioned, a coach has a choice to take what elements they want from one or from all and piece them together into a spread scheme. What I am so frustrated with is that people seem to think that Shay Smithwick Hann is ill conceived at running the spread. NO HE ISN’T. He is not the best player to run zone read, which isn’t a spread concept but rather a specific run play. People were immediately anointing Gustafson to be the next quarterback and saying the Rosenbach was or would have to move out of the spread.
Bull crap. There are no pre requisites for any position on the field for the spread in a generic sense. Because the offense can do whatever you want it to do. Spread is a choice of an offensive coordinator on how to deploy his resources. He can recruit to fill those needs. The UofM would be good to readdress what elements of the spread they would choose to run with SSH in there. But for petes sake, it isn’t the damn spread that is the problem here. The UofM had two very inexperienced quarterbacks running an offensive scheme that is not easy to run. But if you think that everything comes natively to quarterbacks, then I have some ocean front property in Arizona for you.
3. Mick Delaney. Maybe more than any of the things that people have been going on since the middle of the season is that Mick Delaney was in over his head. My favorite is the coin flip thing at Northern Colorado as an example of his lack of head coaching skills. My other is the two seasons he coached a crap hole NAIA schools, who incidentally has been terrible for all but two seasons, twenty years ago. Maybe generically we still seem obsessed with pedigree and experience. Those people in the coaching profession around Montana know Delaney’s chops and by proxy Lubick’s chops.
The reason the Griz went 5-6 this year has so little to do with Delaney. In general, Griz fans are either obsessed with continuing a pedigree or there is some larger conspiracy theory going on. For f#%* sake, get a clue. As much as people either want to get on their knees to bow and pray to the altar of Grizzly football or want to burn it down, there is a simple philosophy here: while the responsibilities of winning and losing all fall on the shoulder of one guy, there is way too much going on to simplify this down to one thing or another.
He (Delaney) was brought in to coach the program. The University made the decision, when so few other options were available, but to demonize the decision in hindsight takes little balls or spine in which to do. Really, if you want to boil down how the Griz lost their six games this year…there is nothing that was or is consistent.
App State: missed extra point
NAU: Turnovers
EWU: see above
SUU: Offensive inefficiency
UND: Pass Defense
MSU: Missed field goals/Off ineffiency
Plus to boil down those losses to one or two things is a bit disingenuous anyway. The point however is simple, the Griz were undone not by incompetence but rather dings and dents that happen in the course of the season. You can’t heap that onto one man as the reason it happened.
I guess it is easy to find scapegoats. So very easy. Doesn’t take much thinking either. Moreover, I think it is so very easy to hold onto things that aren’t important to coaches, players or those close to athletic programs. Streaks are a good one.
Moreover, the ‘decline’ of the Grizzly program is greatly exaggerated anyway. This isn’t because there is a continual slobbing of the nob of Grizzly lineage of coaches. It isn’t because one coach brought in more thugs than anyone else. There wasn’t one reason why the Roman empire rose or fell.
4. Stop pining. What is most frustrating about how this year played out is there is a constant pining for something else. We should have recruited this guy, but we got this guy. Johnson was unfairly framed. Pflugrad and O’day were the victims of a larger philosophy. In reality we are as fans already doing it for next season. We are going to be pissed as a fan base if….
a. Johnson isn’t acquitted of his crimes.
b. Don’t fire Delaney and bring in a name head coach.
c. Don’t recruit two JC lock down corners, a drop down QB, and a stud powerful WR.
d. Rosenbach and the staff to switch the offense.
I guess when I started coaching, I learned two things very quickly.
a. You cant coach hope.
b. There are never any absolutes.
The frustration of having expectations is that those expectations simplify the difficulty of executing the task. We can over simplify or pine for a set of variables to play out. There simple fact is there are 120 men and women within the football program that are in charge over the next eight to nine months that will attempt within the best of their ability to put out a product that allow them the best chance win 9 to 10 ball clubs per year. Those decisions over the past 30 years have resulted in that occurring.
There are so little as fans that we know is actually going on. Even if we did have connections to the program and knew the inner workings of how things out, what would it matter any way?
I guess what makes no sense as a coach or as a fan, what is to be expected for a program that goes through three coaches in four years or even four in five or three in three? I simply ask that question in a rhetorical way, not that I am going to spend my time answering it, but I do know the answer to in from the eyes of a coach. Shouldn’t take a lot to answer the question and I don’t feel like spoon feeding it to you if you can’t come to the conclusion.
Which brings me to the next point, what would be different next year than this year, if Delaney is meant to be only a place holder? The problem really is some perverse pining by boosters and fans who haven’t the slightest clue what appropriate and more important realistic expectations of a college program are. As much as we would like to believe the goal is to win a national championship. There is no physical effort put into it by the fans, but we expect when things go awry from our perceived record that there has to be a simplistic answer to it. Which is why we go into a dither over transfers, coaching changes and philosohpies on offense and defense, not saying you can’t, but for the love that all is holy understand the only real thing you can impact is the Universities pocket book by not showing up to the game. Our relationship as fans, is that we take what the University is selling. You can choose to show up or not.
If you don’t show up, then the University will have to make a choice about how much the value that dollar amount they receive from game revenues. To that end, complain, but recognize that pining consistently over factors you can’t control will only result in increased blood pressure. All you can do is hope and there are no expectations as to what you hope. Just ask Republicans.
5. Lastly, to quote a band with local Montana connections The Decemberists:
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so
The difficulty with having expectations about anything, is that as you are used to getting your way either by force or by grace, is the product of getting what you want is that others will eventually want what you want.
Since 1995, the UofM has gotten what it wanted. Unparalleled success. The program bullied its way through the Big Sky Conference. Programs either made a choice to continue to get their ass kicked by the UofM or find ways to guarantee it doesn’t happen. Those models that used to be copyrighted by the UofM are now being distributed freely amongst the BSC. Montana’s rise wasn’t easy or quick. So many programs have tried quick and less than viable ways to create a competitive team. The model the UofM used, recruit a quality of player that was ideal fit for the program and most importantly do so in such quantity to continue that success. Montana has become a continual model. Even in 6 losses this year, there is an understanding that the cupboard isn’t bare. That in those 6 losses, there was an understanding that programs were still just not quite there. Better than they were, but still not there.
Now, for Montana to remain Montana a lot of what happened over the past two years had to happen. There is a recognition within the program that people needed to say no. That people had forgotten why Montana where it got. By not cutting corners, ignoring foibles by players and always expecting of itself a higher level quality that everyone else could only hope to acquire.
No one yet, has supplanted the Grizzlies as the class of the conference. Just that there are more rivals for the crown that the Griz hold. Either the program identifies whether there is a right or wrong way to do it. Most of us as fans by this point recognize there are so many right ways to do it. Yet, there are some of us that would rather take the easy way out. We can just say it is so anymore. There are too many people who can fight us for what we as fans rightly believe we own.
There is a right way, and there is a wrong way. The program had to reset how to impose its will on the BSC. The model is there. We as fans saw it on Saturday. There is a right way and the Griz are back on that track because of doing the right things.
In the end, we as fans are all heavily invested in the outcome of the Montana Grizzly program. There is nothing like a bit of humble pie every once in a while. We love our Grizzlies. Thanks again for the continued support of my blog.
I'll try to hammer out some more football stuff for the playoffs. Then I might shift my focus to a few other things. Thanks again for reading.
