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Message: [QUOTE="DomeHolmes, post: 5227884, member: 10113"] I would respectfully disagree a little bit with this take. Take a look at Florida State/ USC/ Auburn etc. There are plenty of teams with lots of talent that underachieve because of bad coaching. Look how Marrone succeed with the (supposedly poor) talent he inherited. He succeeded with good coaching/execution/play calling. As long as there’s not a huge difference in talent, talent is probably the third most important thing. Ohio State, Georgia, Texas are teams with excellent talent that are well coached, Florida State is a team with excellent talent that is poorly coached. I would bet anything if Lane Kiffin or Rhett Lashley were the offensive coordinator for Florida State, (calling the plays), they would not be 1-7. In my opinion, no matter what offense you run, no matter the skill (athleticism) of the players, and no matter who your offensive coordinator is, execution is usually the most important thing. The service academies who excel at this are a great example. On paper, they are the LEAST talented teams, but great execution and discipline are equalizers. Very rarely on a play do you actually get 11 players doing everything they can do to make the play succeed. They get that effort more than most teams. Look at the play that started this discussion. We had four blockers with 10 yards of open field in front of them, maybe the greatest “convoy” we ever had, and NOT ONE of them made a block. at least Gadsden “tried”. If Reed and Villari actually blocked the guys that made the tackle, Laquint probably scores. We destroyed a good Georgia Tech team because we executed that day, we lost to a bad Stanford team because we did not execute that day. The talent on our team was the same both days. Right behind execution, (because it’s the foundation for everything) ,would be playcalling. Being an offensive coordinator/play caller is the single hardest coaching job in any sport at any level. understanding different defensive formations, and their weaknesses, at game speed, and dialing up plays quickly and effectively is HARD. With our team and our talent, what do you think our record would be if our offensive coordinator/play caller was George McDonald? but if the disparity in talent is too great, then that is the most important thing. [/QUOTE]

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