1. That's entirely not true. A more efficient offense is good. "More chances" is irrelevant, unless you're trying to diminish the role of random chance (which we don't want to do against good teams).
That's not what I said. I said more chances for an efficient offense is good. That's unequivocally true. Dino is running practice at tempo and ganging 3x the reps Shafer did to supercharge efficiency. (The lack of talent and a running game has slowed that progress. Not to mention injuries to ED for those two seasons).
The bet we are making is "we can run our offense more efficiently that you can, longer" and "we can tire you out"
2. Once again, your more chances to score argument ignores the reality of also creating more changes to get scored on / fall behind. And you said "the system places pressure on teams to keep up," which I took as meaning from a point perspective ("track meet games"), which isn't true. However, I'll grant you that the tempo does stress the other team's defense and cause confusion (you didn't mention confusion, but I'll give you that for free). But unless the offense can string together long drives, it stresses your own defense more. Defenses get tired faster than offenses, so quick in and out offenses force *their* defenses to stay on the field for longer times, thereby tiring them out. Additionally, your comment about our two big wins coming from games where we had the lead most of the game is like saying "the team that is winning most of the game is more likely to be the team that ends up winning the game." Isn't that kind of obvious? And that has nothing to do with pace. That's just a statistical truth, which is equally applicable to "3 yards and a cloud of dust" offenses.
Hey thanks for the freebie lol. I've been making that point since his name popped up in job searches.
But point by point for you:
- Sure more chances means more chances for both you and your opponent. But our D is zone based, so we want to keep everything in front of us - making it take longer (in theory) for the opposing team to drive down and score. This forces them to dink and dunk - testing their efficiency, patience and QB play. (Again - we are making a bet that we can be more effecient, longer. Efficiency is less dependent on talent too. We're saying... "Consistently good as opposed to occasionally great" (heard that somewhere lol).
- I keep hearing you say we want long drives to keep our D off the field. That's not our goal. We want points, quickly. That's partly why we go fast. Stress the opponents D by quick strike drive, stress the opposing O by making them dink and dunk down a score. If you want your D rested you play slow on O and don't take chances (neanderball).
- I'm aware that most teams want to play with a lead. I'm saying we are at our best when we are say it again: scoring quickly and making them score slow or not at all. It's designed to play that way. "3 yards and a cloud of dust" offenses are designed to beat you into submission, physically. And yeah, they like to have a lead too
Side note: this is not at all unlike the Warriors. They get into the break, hoist 3's (score quickly) and play maddeningly good half court D.
3. "MTSU is the only upset Dino has allowed. It wasn’t due to taking unnecessary risk." MTSU wasn't Dino's only upset. It was probably his only big upset - I can't remember. And clearly the loss was driven by risk. He lost and not every play that we ran/gamble that we took worked. Also, though potentially not upsets (I cant remember who was favored), our implosion against Wake last year (and I believe the year before), and our dismantling against BC also spring to mind.
I should have said "not more risk than he usually takes" ... of course risk is um, risky. It can backfire. But if you look at the win expectancy we had a 6% chance to win based on our performance. BUT we only lost by 7. In the Miami game Eric threw 4 INT. That's bad. We had a win expectancy of 1% and lost by 8. The system takes advantage of risk and of tempo to keep us in games we have no business winning based on how we play.
MTSU was by far the biggest upset. Losing to a P5 team as a lower P5 team isn't an upset. Sorry.
4. "Hard to evaluate the theory when your effeciency drops off a cliff with our backups playing." No it's not. My theory is that efficiency matters, and that tempo is a lever. When we're more efficient, we win by more with a high tempo. When we're less efficient, we get blown out by more.
Hard to argue with this. I mean it's what I said. Clearly, when our backups are playing at QB, our efficiency sucks butt and we lose by more. This is obvious. The system works better and is thus better evaluated when it's running as intended with the best QB in place. I think - TD - will be an even better fit and the results will prove out.
5. The system isn't designed to consistently win with less talent. Risk taking creates high betas, and high tempos advantage the more talented team. That isn't opinion. It's a mathematical fact that can be seen in many other areas outside of football if you don't believe me (see below). What the system is designed to do is win with more talent and create highlights for players (see all of the offensive skill position players who have video game stats in Dino's first 2 years), and those highlights attract talented players. The following is opinion, but I don't think that many people (anyone here) will argue with me when I say that Dino is very charismatic, and players are FAR more likely to play for a charismatic coach. So, if Dino does well here (which I think he will), it's because he was able to pull in the talent needed to win with the system, and it's because he didn't make any bone-headed decisions to blow games. That's on him, not his system.
Wow. Loads to unpack here.
- This system needs talent. All systems do better with better talent. 100%.
- This thread has devolved into a take on "tempo" as if that's the only element that matters to his system. It's a internal part, but it's only a part. Recruiting to the system, how you attack the D (x and o), reps to increase efficiency, training for endurance, playing a way that requires your opponent to plan differently and play differently, confusion (thanks again!) caused by tempo AND how you attack it, going for it on 4th down a lot, etc.
- The point is it's not just: Our talent vs your talent x tempo. That would benefit the more talented team. But that's not what's happening here. At all.
Plays #'s favoring the more talented team - Flip a coin 2x. And do it a bunch of times. The odds of you getting all heads is 25%, on head is 50%, and no heads is 25%. Then flip a coin 50x a bunch of times. The odds of you getting all heads is very close to 0%. Using that exact same concept, the odds of us getting lucky on a few plays vs. a good team are MUCH higher than the odds of us getting lucky on a bunch of plays against the same team. Ironically, this concept is one of the reasons why nobody teams try to slow down the pace against us in basketball.
I've already said above that it's not "Let's go against this more talented team for more plays in the hopes we get lucky!" It's a whole system that says "we will be the more efficient offense longer, try to keep up" ... sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Don't get lost in the probability argument like the whole system is dependent on luck + tempo!
Weirdly with Shafer we spent a lot more time on long drives with no points, got down 10 and had to hope our D could produce a timely TO. Luck!
Risk creating more extreme outcomes - Look at small cap tech stocks compared to blue chips. Small caps have a MUCH higher return, but they're also MUCH more likely to go under. You are far more likely to either win big or lose your shirt by gambling than you are to by keeping money under a mattress. The same is true for football. You're more likely to get big breaks when you gamble, but you're also more likely to give up big breaks.
What if you played a system of D that is designed to mitigate the big play, force long drives, and frustrate college QBs into mistakes?
What if you were forced to play a game in a different way than you were used to? Wouldn't that favor the team that is used to it?