McDonald/Hunt adj yards per attempt compared to prior years

[SUFan44]

No offense, but that is absurd. There most assuredly is NOT evidence that the guy isn't very bright, because in actuality he's a very intelligent, articulate man. I challenge you to go speak to the man, or even watch video of one of his videos, an then decide for yourself.

You might not like his coaching philosophy, or how he uses twitter. Those things don't equate to "the guy isn't very bright."

Sorry, but they don't.

He may not be stupid, but he does stupid things. And at 37 years old - to quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does."

 

[Millhouse]

No offense, but that is absurd. There most assuredly is NOT evidence that the guy isn't very bright, because in actuality he's a very intelligent, articulate man. I challenge you to go speak to the man, or even watch video of one of his videos, an then decide for yourself.

You might not like his coaching philosophy, or how he uses twitter. Those things don't equate to "the guy isn't very bright."

Sorry, but they don't. And it is borderine ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

the guy went in the shotgun at the 3 yardline with 20 seconds left in the first half against CMU

 

[RF2044]

He may not be stupid, but he does stupid things. And at 37 years old - to quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Just stop. I can't believe we're even having this discussion, and that people are defending calling him stupid.

 

[upperdeck]

Tex AM has tons of yards and almost 40% of their throws have been completed behind the line of scrimmage. its not the plays its the players. you only get 3-4 shots a game to get the big play and we havent hit one in 4 games. estimes over throw was 5 yards in the open, but if we see that offense this week the numbers keep getting better i think.

We dont have anyone who seems to be able to get deep but at least when we complete it we get some yards. in many ways it would be better to go 3 and out with 3 long throws than 3 and out with 3 2 yd completions.. Hunt is missing a bunch or reads and I dont think enough of the offensive issues are being blamed on him. he is the one changing to bubble screens much of the time. . Lester even commented last week on how many reads he missed against Maryland.

 

[RF2044]

the guy went in the shotgun at the 3 yardline with 20 seconds left in the first half against CMU

Oh... well I guess that proves what an idiot he is then. I take it back, your comments on his intelligence are completely justified. Oh Lord

 

[Millhouse]

Oh... well I guess that proves what an idiot he is then. I take it back, your comments on his intelligence are completely justified. Oh Lord

it really does though

 

[RF2044]

it really does though

Wow.

This whole unsavory topic is a new low for the board.

 

[Millhouse]

Wow.

A new low for the board.

oh come on i've gone much lower than that

 

[RF2044]

I'm just defending Millhouse's viewpoint from those who disagree with him. I've kept this hypothesis to myself in all these threads over the past two seasons; I don't think there's any need to bring this kind of personal assessment into this discussion.

I've never spoken to George. I don't know how intelligent he is and don't care to impugn him.

Based on his Twitter conduct and quotes to Post-Standard reporters, I don't have a favorable impression of him as a thinker. That's all. My take doesn't carry any weight and really isn't relevant. But I can see where Millhouse might be coming from.

(Don't care to argue this, RF, because I do think this sort of thing should be off-limits to all of us, but of course a certain number of malaprops or poorly-written tweets can be evidence of someone's intellectual capacity, though it isn't dispositive.)

This is going to be my last post in this thread Otto, because like you I don't want to get argumentative over this. You can certainly draw inferences from grammar. But to base it on quotes in the newspaper or twitter, with its character limitations... well, let's just say that formulating conclusions from that is pretty weak as far as evidence goes. There are lots of highly intelligent people who can't spell, or aren't the most eloquent writers. I can point to numerous examples of people I've directly worked with at the executive level of fortune 500 businesses who can't write or spell worth a damn [nor does it matter, because they delegate most of those tasks out to subordinates anyway]. It doesn't make them any less intelligent or succesful. Several of these people were making 7 figure incomes, btw. They weren't dumb by any means--they just didn't happen to write particularly well. Punctuating "it's" incorrectly is unfortuantely quite common as useage errors go. If everybody who does that wrong is an idiot, then the world is full of idiots.

McDonald is a public figure who gets interviewed daily, so there's bound to be examples of him not perfectly constructing a sentence, or a tweet where he uses the wrong punctuation. But to base an opinion of someone's intelligence and defend labeling them an idiot based upon some twitter misspellings and him not calling a formation you'd prefer is, at best, questonable. And at worst, in really bad taste.

 

[SWC75]

Posts about what happened or what we want to see happen = Good

Posts about what we are going to call people = Bad.

 

[eddie in nc]

If you're not scoring points its ultimately on you, the offensive coordinator, to figure it out. I'm not sure that we don't have the talent. We obviously have the talent to accumulate almost 500 yards of offense against MD and ND. The OC's job is to put the ball in the end zone. Or at least put your kids in a position to put it in the end zone. I'm not sure I see the offensive imagination and creativity needed to manufacture points with said inferior talent. Notice I said points and not yards. Hopefully, McD will grow into it but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[RF2044]

If you're not scoring points its ultimately on you, the offensive coordinator, to figure it out. I'm not sure that we don't have the talent. We obviously have the talent to accumulate almost 500 yards of offense against MD and ND. The OC's job is to put the ball in the end zone. Or at least put your kids in a position to put it in the end zone. I'm not sure I see the offensive imagination and creativity needed to manufacture points with said inferior talent. Notice I said points and not yards. Hopefully, McD will grow into it but we'll have to wait and see.

I'm sure.

 

[supp]

This is going to be my last post in this thread Otto, because like you I don't want to get argumentative over this. You can certainly draw inferences from grammar. But to base it on quotes in the newspaper or twitter, with its character limitations... well, let's just say that formulating conclusions from that is pretty weak as far as evidence goes. There are lots of highly intelligent people who can't spell, or aren't the most eloquent writers. I can point to numerous examples of people I've directly worked with at the executive level of fortune 500 businesses who can't write or spell worth a damn [nor does it matter, because they delegate most of those tasks out to subordinates anyway]. It doesn't make them any less intelligent or succesful. Several of these people were making 7 figure incomes, btw. They weren't dumb by any means--they just didn't happen to write particularly well. Punctuating "it's" incorrectly is unfortuantely quite common as useage errors go. If everybody who does that wrong is an idiot, then the world is full of idiots.

McDonald is a public figure who gets interviewed daily, so there's bound to be examples of him not perfectly constructing a sentence, or a tweet where he uses the wrong punctuation. But to base an opinion of someone's intelligence and defend labeling them an idiot based upon some twitter misspellings and him not calling a formation you'd prefer is, at best, questonable. And at worst, in really bad taste.

The good news that you and Millhouse seem to be in agreement now over how terrible McDonald is at his job. The difference is you think this is the result of inexperience which may well right itself in time (How many years has he been coaching? Too many to be this brain-dead. Is this actually his first go-around as OC? Contrary to popular belief, no) and Millhouse thinks it's better to cut bait now because he's too stupid to get it. I tend to agree with Millhouse.

 

[cuseincincy]

I don't think you'd say that if you'd ever had the opportunity to meet George McDonald. You might disagree with his offensive philosophy--and clearly you do--but this was truly a dumb comment on your part.

Millhouse may have exaggerated a bit but McDonald has proven himself so far to be a poor play caller. The offense is fine. The right plays are there in the playbook. I harken back to when Brian Kelly took over at Cincinnati from Mark Dantonio and everyone asked him if there would be dramatic changes in the offense and how long he thought it would take the players to learn the new offense. His response was "They already know the offense. I don't really have any plays in my playbook that Mark didn't. I's just a matter of what plays you call when. The plays we run the most often may be plays that Mark rarely ran, but they were there and the players know them." Most people would think that Brian Kelly and Mark Dantonio are polar opposites as far as offensive philosophy...but they pretty much have the same playbook. Mac just needs to start calling the right plays. Talent be damned SU could have beat Notre Dame.

 

[RF2044]

The good news that you and Millhouse seem to be in agreement now over how terrible McDonald is at his job. The difference is you think this is the result of inexperience which may well right itself in time (How many years has he been coaching? Too many to be this brain-dead. Is this actually his first go-around as OC? Contrary to popular belief, no) and Millhouse thinks it's better to cut bait now because he's too stupid to get it. I tend to agree with Millhouse.

Completely false. I think that McDonald has installed his offensive system, and not tailored it to personnel in the belief that this will pay off long-term. I believe that the offensive production isn't as bad as some of you would like to pretend, scoring is the issue--and that we can get that straightened out with better execution. I believe that the offensive production will improve once we have more athletic playmakers, that the team currently lacks, and that it will be difficult for the offensive system to thrive without such athletes capable of making plays in space. I believe that McDonald's reputation as a bulldog recruiter is accurate and well-deserved, and I think his presence will provide us with a much needed shot in the arm on the recruiting trail that we've lacked in, well--forever. I believe that it is quite possible that McDonald might be the best recruiting AC that the program has ever had. I also believe that it will take time to prove that.

I think that debating over whether its better to completely tailor the system to the talent on hand or install the system first, take lumps, and then hope it improves with better talent / players being immersed in the system for a few years is a chicken v. egg argument with no right answer. I also think that neither approach has to be all or nothing, and that there can be some middle ground.

I think that McDonald is far from perfect, that the results leave something to be desired, and that we need to improve our ability to score. I don't think he's terrible at his job, and I don't think that the offensive performance is irreversibly poor this season, and that if we iron a few things out, we'll be highly competitive for the second half of the season. He was an OC for one year, at a mid major, so I also believe that he's entitled to some growing pains while he learns on the job.

I also think that most posters don't have a !#$% clue what it takes to be a football coach, in terms of acumen. Some fail to even recognize that being a coach is more than just what happens on game day, but just about everybody has a dopey opinion about what they'd do differently and how they'd do better, and that the vast majority of those opinions are unqualified / misinformed.

I also think that SU has never been, and never will be, a school that pays top dollars for assistant coaches. Last year, when we played Clemson, they discussed on TV how they were paying their offensive coordinator over $1M. That's nearly as much as our head coach is making. So absent making a big move to get some high powered OC innovator, chances are we're going to take guys like Hackett, like McDonald who have upside but need seasoning. There's no use cyring about it, that's the way it is.

And if McDonald doesn't pan out, doesn't recruit the athletes needed for the system to pop, or the offensive stagnates and never shows year-over-year improvement, then he deserves to go. I don't believe that we're anywhere close to that point, and think that calling for his head at this point is completely agenda-driven.

Lastly, I think that calling people stupid because you don't like their offensive system is in actuality pretty stupid in and of itself.

 

[RF2044]

Millhouse may have exaggerated a bit but McDonald has proven himself so far to be a poor play caller. The offense is fine. The right plays are there in the playbook.

I certainly don't discount that this above may be true. But we could go back to 2010, and people would be saying the exact same things about Hackett being a poor play caller, because of the outcome of plays, with limited weapons in the arsenal to make plays. Play. Stop. Rewind.

I'm not even defending McDonald in that regard, because I question some of the play calling at times, too. I'm just saying that it gets easy to start tuning out some of these criticisms, because they happen no matter who the coach is, every year, from a vocal portion of our fanbase on these forums.

 

[SUFan44]

Completely false. I think that McDonald has installed his offensive system, and not tailored it to personnel in the belief that this will pay off long-term.

That's what bad coaches say they're doing.

Good coaches find a way to win with whatever they're given and aren't set in their one way philosophy.

Don't buy it for one minute.

 

[RF2044]

That's what bad coaches say they're doing.

Good coaches find a way to win with whatever they're given and aren't set in their one way philosophy.

Don't buy it for one minute.

Then I suggest you go read CIL's informative post from yesterday, which included an assessment from a front office executive / friend he sat with who indicated that he thought that the offensive coaching was fine, and that it came down to talent hampering the offensive production more so than poor schemes, bad game planning or play calling.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I put a helluva lot more stock in an NFL executive's informed opinion / CIL as a former college football coach's opinion over random people on the internet, most of whom do not understand the game beyond a layman, conceptual level. :noidea:

 

[OttoMets]

Then I suggest you go read CIL's informative post from yesterday, which included an assessment from a front office executive / friend he sat with who indicated that he thought that the offensive coaching was fine, and that it came down to talent hampering the offensive production more so than poor schemes, bad game planning or play calling.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I put a helluva lot more stock in an NFL executive's informed opinion / CIL as a former college football coach's opinion over random people on the internet, most of whom do not understand the game beyond a layman, conceptual level. :noidea:

CIL's post was great (as nearly all of them are). But I think he said that his friend's opinion of the offensive coaching was that it was difficult to make an assessment of such a physically overwhelmed group. I also think that one game isn't a sample size sufficient to judge the offensive coaching.

No doubt CIL and his friend have opinions that should carry a lot more weight than most of ours. (I think, despite some posters' preference for this board over the basketball side, that Xs and Os aren't analyzed or even understood nearly as well on our football board as they are on the basketball board. More complicated game, perhaps? Northeastern ignorance? Who knows.) But it would be great to see one of the few football minds on here pass judgment based on analysis of the offensive coaching based on a larger number of games.

 

[TheCusian]

The truth is this: had we scored a TD on 80% of our trips in the red zone and field goals 15% of the time, we wouldn't be talking about this offense the same way. Averaging 450yds and 10-20 more points a game and we'd be 3-1.

Millhouse might still be screaming about the relative intelligence of our OC, but it would have far less validity.

 

[RF2044]

CIL's post was great (as nearly all of them are). But I think he said that his friend's opinion of the offensive coaching was that it was difficult to make an assessment of such a physically overwhelmed group. I also think that one game isn't a sample size sufficient to judge the offensive coaching.

No doubt CIL and his friend have opinions that should carry a lot more weight than most of ours. (I think, despite some posters' preference for this board over the basketball side, that Xs and Os aren't analyzed or even understood nearly as well on our football board as they are on the basketball board. More complicated game, perhaps? Northeastern ignorance? Who knows.) But it would be great to see one of the few football minds on here pass judgment based on analysis of the offensive coaching based on a larger number of games.

Good post. But I don't believe that jibes with the interpretation of what his friend's opinion was. But I'll leave that to him to describe, if he would like to do so. I feel as though he explained this repeatedly since Saturday's game, but those responses might have been spread out across multiple threads, and not in the original one that you and I are talking about.

In any event, I'll leave it to CIL to chime in at his leisure.

 

[SUFan44]

Then I suggest you go read CIL's informative post from yesterday, which included an assessment from a front office executive / friend he sat with who indicated that he thought that the offensive coaching was fine, and that it came down to talent hampering the offensive production more so than poor schemes, bad game planning or play calling.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I put a helluva lot more stock in an NFL executive's informed opinion / CIL as a former college football coach's opinion over random people on the internet, most of whom do not understand the game beyond a layman, conceptual level. :noidea:

I suggest you re-read the post.

I respect the hell out of CIL and his information. But never in his post did he or his friend say anything about scheme, game planning or play calling.

He said the team was outmatched physically. I agree with that assessment, I think anyone watching us for the first time would come up with the same.

We, as die-hard fans, see a lot more of our team and its tendencies than even an NFL front office person -- who by the way probably doesn't pay as much attention to play design & play calling in comparison to personnel & talent level.

Have him watch the Villanova and Maryland games and focus specifically on game plan and schemes. I would be curious to find out his take.

 

[RF2044]

I suggest you re-read the post.

I respect the hell out of CIL and his information. But never in his post did he or his friend say anything about scheme, game planning or play calling.

He said the team was outmatched physically. I agree with that assessment, I think anyone watching us for the first time would come up with the same.

We, as die-hard fans, see a lot more of our team and its tendencies than even an NFL front office person -- who by the way probably doesn't pay as much attention to play design & play calling in comparison to personnel & talent level.

Have him watch the Villanova and Maryland games and focus specifically on game plan and schemes. I would be curious to find out his take.

CIL addressed this topic REPEATEDLY yesterday. He did, in fact weigh in with his friend's impressions on our coaching / offensive concept. If it wasn't in that main thread, then my bad--it may have been in another, as he was very adamant about making that point. Per my response to OttoMets above, I'd love to see CIL weigh in to debunk this notion about poor coaching.

 

[OttoMets]

This is the one I remembered:
"tipphill said: ↑
did he comment on the coaching at all???? i have no confidence in mcd at all.
He did. He liked Bullough's scheme and though we did a pretty good job there. It's not Bullough's fault Whigham couldn't keep up with ND. He said offensively it was really tough to tell because their front did a really good job disrupting our run game. Clearly ND did not respect our WR's as they played a ton of man press with a single high a ton. Hunt's deep throws were really, really, good. Except for the overthrow to Estime, our guys clearly had difficulty separating from their defenders. The pick he threw was kind of a bad throw, but he did point out that the safety held Estime coming out of his break and it wasn't called.

His specific comment to me was "it's really tough to tell when your guys can't beat the other guys. Sometimes it's as simple as there Joes are just better than your Joes." It's a pretty simple way to say that coaching can only do so much. We'd all like to think that if a the right staff came along we'd be top 25 overnight. We just don't have those guys yet.

In the last 10 years of our program, we have had 1 QB, 1 RB, and 2 WR's drafted. None higher than the 4th round. LSU had 1 QB, 2 RB's, and 3WR's DRAFTED LAST YEAR! That needs to change if we want to make the next leap."
http://syracusefan.com/threads/some...o-like-hearing-this.80598/page-2#post-1144692

I'd also be happy to see CIL chime in here; if he could do a little debunking, perhaps I could be persuaded that I'm not watching an offensive coordinator without a feel for the game or his personnel.

 

[Millhouse]

This is the one I remembered:
"tipphill said: ↑
did he comment on the coaching at all???? i have no confidence in mcd at all.
He did. He liked Bullough's scheme and though we did a pretty good job there. It's not Bullough's fault Whigham couldn't keep up with ND. He said offensively it was really tough to tell because their front did a really good job disrupting our run game. Clearly ND did not respect our WR's as they played a ton of man press with a single high a ton. Hunt's deep throws were really, really, good. Except for the overthrow to Estime, our guys clearly had difficulty separating from their defenders. The pick he threw was kind of a bad throw, but he did point out that the safety held Estime coming out of his break and it wasn't called.

His specific comment to me was "it's really tough to tell when your guys can't beat the other guys. Sometimes it's as simple as there Joes are just better than your Joes." It's a pretty simple way to say that coaching can only do so much. We'd all like to think that if a the right staff came along we'd be top 25 overnight. We just don't have those guys yet.

In the last 10 years of our program, we have had 1 QB, 1 RB, and 2 WR's drafted. None higher than the 4th round. LSU had 1 QB, 2 RB's, and 3WR's DRAFTED LAST YEAR! That needs to change if we want to make the next leap."
http://syracusefan.com/threads/some...o-like-hearing-this.80598/page-2#post-1144692

I'd also be happy to see CIL chime in here; if he could do a little debunking, perhaps I could be persuaded that I'm not watching an offensive coordinator without a feel for the game or his personnel.

i trust the opinion of people who know less football but watch more games. there have been enough simple, glaring, and obvious errors this year that wouldn't be apparent to even chip kelly watching just the ND game. repeatedly throwing the bubble screen when there is simply no chance. putting your QB in the end zone on purpose with 20 seconds left. things like that.