Offense nugget from recruit

[orangejunkie]

Not a football guy here and certainly am fine with all the speculation and debate about such things, but I trust Lester and staff to implement changes next year that reflect the strengths of the players.

 

[Millhouse]

Sometimes it just might be semantics regarding what you can a WR or TE. If I have a choice between to guys and one is 6' and runs a 4.6 and a 6' 5" that does the same or a 4.7...I'll take the big guy unless that 6' guy has some wiggle to him. Add the extra weight and now you have a better blocker (in theory) as well. The WR's/TE's and even RB's HAVE to run better routes and recognize coverages along with being on page with the qb. I couldn't care less what an offense is called or used as long as it adds up the yards, gets more snaps and scores more TD's. So again, they can line up all over the place as the recruit said...just are going to be bigger.

That said, I hope that Hunt has this playbook in his hands and has been studying his butt off reading it. Practice his progressions/reads. My hope is that SU gets some tech kids to design a 3dish program that can help train the qb's to read and react to defenses because I'd have a huge screen in the IPF that did so. Practice that footwork...the reads and progressions. It's a huge business this college football is so let's do it right.

i like that choice too. i just don't think it's a choice you get presented with very much.

 

[SmilinBob]

This is what seems to me is the conundrum regarding this. Can the qb and wr's recognize coverage and adapt? Will Hunt have a "go to" guy when he needs that X amount of yards that he has a chemistry with? Is it possible (this is what I want) that Hunt will be on the same page with at least 3 guys so he knows when they zag Hunt zags as well?

 

[PhatOrange]

That's true but those teams have more red zone attempts

I took 1st quarter rushes in 2014 (I don't want to look at the whole game because great teams run out the clock with big leads) and correlated it to red zone appearances and red zone td %.

The more you want to run off the bat, the less red zone chances you get but once you're there you convert better. The negative correlation between 1q rush attempts and red zone appearances is stronger than the correlation between 1q rushes and red zone td %

people get too hung up on a couple possessions that go awry. yards are strongly correlated with points. if you start worrying too much about RZ TD% you might end up with some offense that's really good at pounding it in from the 1 but can't get the ball to the 1

Milly - I love all of your statistical analytics. You should send Joe Girardi your resume.

 

[CIL]

That's true but those teams have more red zone attempts

I took 1st quarter rushes in 2014 (I don't want to look at the whole game because great teams run out the clock with big leads) and correlated it to red zone appearances and red zone td %.

The more you want to run off the bat, the less red zone chances you get but once you're there you convert better. The negative correlation between 1q rush attempts and red zone appearances is stronger than the correlation between 1q rushes and red zone td %

people get too hung up on a couple possessions that go awry. yards are strongly correlated with points. if you start worrying too much about RZ TD% you might end up with some offense that's really good at pounding it in from the 1 but can't get the ball to the 1.

smarter 4th downs wouldn't have closed the whole gap in 2012 but it would've closed part of it

I agree with the yards = more points. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, I think your philosophy as to WHY teams rack up more yards is flawed. 4 WR, wide splits don't always mean more yards. Ga Tech and Ga Southern run the veer out of the flexbone and are top 20. Alabama and Wisconsin run an old school 22 and are top 20. Michigan State and Boise State are "multiple" and are top 20.

It can work the opposite way too. Oklahoma State and La Monroe are two historical air raid schools and they were abysmal this year. Even Clemson's vaunted offense struggled this year.

At the end of the day, offensive production comes down to talent a coaching. Chad Morris didn't get dumber overnight. Clemson struggled because ether lost a ton of talent on the offensive side of the ball. Baylor has a great scheme, but they also have a boatload of talent to go with it.

Our offenses have struggled lately because our talent level is marginal at best. When was the last time we had a skill player drafted in the first 2 rounds? It's been since McNabb!

As for your analysis up above, help me understand a few things. Why would you only look at 1st Q rushes? Why not 2nd Q and 3rd Q? Are you talking Syracuse football 2014 or every NCAA football team 2014? Your sample size may be really, really small there.

How negative a correlation are you talking there, -.01, -.8? It could just be noise, right? Did you look at the correlation between passing as well? I'm really not trying to be combative here, I'm just trying to understand the math.

As for 2012, how many "bad" punting decisions did we make? What defines a "bad" decision vs the peer group? How many points is a good decision worth in the long run?

 

[Millhouse]

I agree with the yards = more points. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, I think your philosophy as to WHY teams rack up more yards is flawed. 4 WR, wide splits don't always mean more yards. Ga Tech and Ga Southern run the veer out of the flexbone and are top 20. Alabama and Wisconsin run an old school 22 and are top 20. Michigan State and Boise State are "multiple" and are top 20.

It can work the opposite way too. Oklahoma State and La Monroe are two historical air raid schools and they were abysmal this year. Even Clemson's vaunted offense struggled this year.

At the end of the day, offensive production comes down to talent a coaching. Chad Morris didn't get dumber overnight. Clemson struggled because ether lost a ton of talent on the offensive side of the ball. Baylor has a great scheme, but they also have a boatload of talent to go with it.

Our offenses have struggled lately because our talent level is marginal at best. When was the last time we had a skill player drafted in the first 2 rounds? It's been since McNabb!

As for your analysis up above, help me understand a few things. Why would you only look at 1st Q rushes? Why not 2nd Q and 3rd Q? Are you talking Syracuse football 2014 or every NCAA football team 2014? Your sample size may be really, really small there.

How negative a correlation are you talking there, -.01, -.8? It could just be noise, right? Did you look at the correlation between passing as well? I'm really not trying to be combative here, I'm just trying to understand the math.

As for 2012, how many "bad" punting decisions did we make? What defines a "bad" decision vs the peer group? How many points is a good decision worth in the long run?

There are million teams in college football. There is more than one way to skin a cat, I know this

I think we should try skinning cats the way lots of people skin cats. We try everything but the way that the rest of college football is going. Mcf***it buys the nzone book, butchers the bubble screen chapter, doesn't know what we're doing, and we're done with it forever.

Oklahoma State has done much better on offense than we have. Yeah I know Pickens but you brought them up

we have one good year in fifteen that's an exception and you focus on ok state and clemson's one bad year.

I explained why i looked at 1st quarter rushes. Score effects. Teams up by a hundred run a lot. Looking at the first quarter when games start out close tells you more about what a team wants to do.

the correlations were .3 (plus and minus give or take) not that strong but not insignificant either. i wouldn't expect it to be super strong

 

[Finwad32]

There are million teams in college football. There is more than one way to skin a cat, I know this

I think we should try skinning cats the way lots of people skin cats. We try everything but the way that the rest of college football is going. Mcf***it buys the nzone book, butchers the bubble screen chapter, doesn't know what we're doing, and we're done with it forever.

Oklahoma State has done much better on offense than we have. Yeah I know Pickens but you brought them up

we have one good year in fifteen that's an exception and you focus on ok state and clemson's one bad year.

I explained why i looked at 1st quarter rushes. Score effects. Teams up by a hundred run a lot. Looking at the first quarter when games start out close tells you more about what a team wants to do.

Completely random fun fact/question. George McDonald had a bet with Terrell Hunt last season (2013) that he could run the same play 5 consecutive times without the defense creating a - (negative) on it to start the game. It was out of spread and every receiver did a 5-7 yd. hitch. Scrambles for positive yardage counted as a completion.

The rules were that Terrell had to get at least 2 first downs and throw no incompletions or get sacked/TFL. Terrell had 2 or 3 completions and 1 or 2 positive scrambles as well as two first downs before he had an incompletion on the 5th play of the game.

What game was it?

 

[Millhouse]

Completely random fun fact/question. George McDonald had a bet with Terrell Hunt last season that he could run the same play 5 consecutive times without the defense creating a - (negative) on it to start the game. It was out of spread and every receiver did a 5-7 yd. hitch. Scrambles for positive yardage counted as a completion.

The rules were that Terrell had to get at least 2 first downs and throw no incompletions or get sacked/TFL. Terrell had 2 or 3 completions and 1 or 2 positive scrambles as well as two first downs before he had an incompletion on the 5th play of the game.

What game was it?

Another fun fact. Jim Kelly did that before. It worked. But players suspected he had suffered a brain injury so they called a time out

Hopefully in the future our offensive coordinators don't call games like they're concussed.

 

[Finwad32]

Another fun fact. Jim Kelly did that before. It worked. But players suspected he had suffered a brain injury so they called a time out

Hopefully in the future our offensive coordinators don't call games like they're concussed.

LOL, I just thought it fit in there well. I won't say anything about the philosophy and whether or not I agree.

 

[Full_Rebar]

One common denominator for the successful offenses is that they have an identity and they stick with it. Usually that identity involves getting as the most talent on the field at the same time. Multiple TE sets worked at Stanford because they had NFL talents Fleener and Ertz. It works in NE or NO when one of the TE's is named Gronk or Graham.

Syracuse's offensive identity is what exactly? No offense to Lester and his scheme (whatever it looks like), but does it fit the 2015 roster? That to me is the most important off-season issue because Syracuse can't afford to keep trying to stick square pegs in round holes.

 

[Millhouse]

Completely random fun fact/question. George McDonald had a bet with Terrell Hunt last season (2013) that he could run the same play 5 consecutive times without the defense creating a - (negative) on it to start the game. It was out of spread and every receiver did a 5-7 yd. hitch. Scrambles for positive yardage counted as a completion.

The rules were that Terrell had to get at least 2 first downs and throw no incompletions or get sacked/TFL. Terrell had 2 or 3 completions and 1 or 2 positive scrambles as well as two first downs before he had an incompletion on the 5th play of the game.

What game was it?

was it nc state? after that horrible start i can see them going incredibly simple

 

[Finwad32]

was it nc state? after that horrible start i can see them going incredibly simple

BC - and I was wrong, there was only 1 1st down after further review.

 

[CIL]

There are million teams in college football. There is more than one way to skin a cat, I know this

I think we should try skinning cats the way lots of people skin cats. We try everything but the way that the rest of college football is going. Mcf***it buys the nzone book, butchers the bubble screen chapter, doesn't know what we're doing, and we're done with it forever.

Oklahoma State has done much better on offense than we have. Yeah I know Pickens but you brought them up

we have one good year in fifteen that's an exception and you focus on ok state and clemson's one bad year.

I explained why i looked at 1st quarter rushes. Score effects. Teams up by a hundred run a lot. Looking at the first quarter when games start out close tells you more about what a team wants to do.

the correlations were .3 (plus and minus give or take) not that strong but not insignificant either. i wouldn't expect it to be super strong

We have sucked for 15 years because our talent level has sucked. This is off the top of my head, but we have had Nassib, Carter, and Williams drafted as skill guys in the last 10 years. None higher than the 4th round. That is abysmal.

The reason I used Clemson and Okie St is that those are two historically very good offensive teams suffering from poor QB play and talent drain.

As for your study, I still don't undertand your study. Is it just Syracuse and their opponents, or just Syracuse? My guess is we sucked run or pass. Why not open the study to 10 teams with different offenses. Are games that out of hand after the first quarter that teams are killing the clock come 15 minutes left in q2?

 

[Millhouse]

We have sucked for 15 years because our talent level has sucked. This is off the top of my head, but we have had Nassib, Carter, and Williams drafted as skill guys in the last 10 years. None higher than the 4th round. That is abysmal.

The reason I used Clemson and Okie St is that those are two historically very good offensive teams suffering from poor QB play and talent drain.

As for your study, I still don't undertand your study. Is it just Syracuse and their opponents, or just Syracuse? My guess is we sucked run or pass. Why not open the study to 10 teams with different offenses. Are games that out of hand after the first quarter that teams are killing the clock come 15 minutes left in q2?

i looked at every teams first quarter rushes, cfb stats has that filter choice.

i don't know what you're complaining about. the first quarter isn't enough to tell what an offense wants to do? score effects will increase as the game goes on, so the best way to ignore score effects with only so much data to work with is to look at the early part of games.

I didn't want to use data from plays where the game was close because crappy teams are only close against other crappy teams. their numbers would look better than they actually are.

i think you're just being fussy here. you can tell what teams like to do in the first quarter

 

[NineOneSeven]

All I know is that 3* guys coming to Syracuse are so hyped up by people here before they arrive, that you would think they'd be a future first round NFL draft pick

 

[CIL]

i looked at every teams first quarter rushes, cfb stats has that filter choice.

i don't know what you're complaining about. the first quarter isn't enough to tell what an offense wants to do? score effects will increase as the game goes on, so the best way to ignore score effects with only so much data to work with is to look at the early part of games.

I didn't want to use data from plays where the game was close because crappy teams are only close against other crappy teams. their numbers would look better than they actually are.

i think you're just being fussy here. you can tell what teams like to do in the first quarter

I'm being fussy???? I just don't think your "study" is a very good one to use.

You're getting this close to "all work and no play makes Milly a dull boy" territory.

 

[Millhouse]

I'm being fussy???? I just don't think your "study" is a very good one to use.

You're getting this close to "all work and no play makes Milly a dull boy" territory.

yes you're being fussy for thinking that the first quarter is insufficient to identify what a team wants to do in a game.

you're the only one calling it a study, i don't know why you're putting quotes around it.

i'm spending way more time explaining the obvious fact to you that scores tend to be closer at the start of games than later than it did to do a little cutting and pasting in excel

 

[Crusty]

This sounds to me like the same stuff we were supposedly going to have Broyld and Estime run from the mythical H-back position.

Which, we all know, is actually a slot receiver.

So, we're putting a bigger guy in the slot.

Now, now you're getting snarky. No spread for you.

 

[baggerbob]

The last offensive guys to stick around for anytime were McNabb, Konrad, and K Johnson, all left in 1998, that shows how bad our offensive people have been.

 

[Chris02M]

I'm drawing a blank who do we have ?

nobody yet but were after spencer tears the most. Donavan Hale is athlete type who could move to wr

 

[Rocco]

there are different schools of thought on this, it's not just me making this stuff up

good quote from tony franklin
"My whole deal with tight ends, I'd love to have a good tight end. But the key word is 'good.' I don't need a body just to be on the field to occupy the space. They need to be able to run. If I'm going to put somebody in the box to bring another defender in the box, they need to be able to block. If they can't block, why did I bring them into the box to bring another defender to have the guy get his butt whipped."

That can be said about every position on the field. They need to be "good" at their jobs.

 

[Cuseregular]

I'm being fussy???? I just don't think your "study" is a very good one to use.

You're getting this close to "all work and no play makes Milly a dull boy" territory.

Look to your left to see Pat after enduring 6 seasons of Marrone leading his teams....

 

[Millhouse]

That can be said about every position on the field. They need to be "good" at their jobs.

no matter how bad a WR is you still have to cover him. line him up out at the sideline and it's one less defender your running QB needs to deal with

seems easier than bringing in tight end and hoping he's good enough to block the guy he brought in the box

just seems easier for bad players to line up far away from the ball vs putting them near it and hoping they can block

(i'm not saying everyone's bad - just pretending for the sake of argument here)

franklin's point was about bringing people in the box. you don't want to bring a defender in the box unless you can flatten him

 

[GoSU96]

Look to your left to see Pat after enduring 6 seasons of Marrone leading his teams...

He has MDS.

 

[Millhouse]

He has MDS.

i'm looking forward when you go back to not caring about the bills.