12-13-2019, 01:27 AM
That’s an odd statement to make, given that under Shaw, we have had the third best (2011) and fourth best (2015) offense in the country. While there is always room for improvement, if there is really a gap between recruiting and offensive output, it didn’t show. I could buy an argument that the “Shaw offense” only works effectively under certain hard to reproduce circumstances, but the fact that he was able to do it twice, four years apart, with no lineup overlap means that it is not impossible to reproduce.
It’s clear that Shaw’s offense is also capable of crap seasons like this year. But your supposed basis for comparison (the Willingham/Didrich) offenses at the turn of the Millenium also put together a crap season in 2000, and you still haven’t explained why. If it really is all about the X’s and O’s, and the coaching didn’t change, then what the hell happened that year.
I would posit that any scheme can succeed if it has the right players running it, whether it was Husain in 1999, Luck in 2011, or a senior year Hogan with McCaffrey in the backfield in 2015, and that the same scheme is doomed to fail if your offensive line is starting three freshmen, at one point I; time you are on your third string QB, and your running back is the college equivalent of a journeyman.
But that’s why in my opinion, the defense doesn’t get a pass. Shaw knows that for the team to be successful, it needs impact players. And he needs to find and recruit those players. And he has fallen flat in that regard. The defenses from the early 2010’s had something like 9 players who would go on to be drafted or play in the NFL. I’m struggling to identify more than two on this year’s team. Now maybe we just lucked out in 2012-2014 and had the right combination of lucky recruiting, finding diamonds in the rough, having position changes pay off, etc., and I wouldn’t count on always having that many future NfLers on the team. But at least some of the woe is self-inflicted, starting with having back-to-back classes with zero inside linebackers (and going back, really struggling to consistently bring in enough defensive linemen).
On offense, we haven’t had an above average line since Garnett, Peat, and Murphy were on it together, and it is really hard to do what we want to do without one. i hope you are right about the line next year; the portal entries are non-trivial, and I won’t rest easy about Little until Jan 20th has passed. The other wildcard is Mills’ knee. I still think the offense is very susceptible to injury disruption because the lack of depth at key positions (exacerbated by the portalees).
BC
It’s clear that Shaw’s offense is also capable of crap seasons like this year. But your supposed basis for comparison (the Willingham/Didrich) offenses at the turn of the Millenium also put together a crap season in 2000, and you still haven’t explained why. If it really is all about the X’s and O’s, and the coaching didn’t change, then what the hell happened that year.
I would posit that any scheme can succeed if it has the right players running it, whether it was Husain in 1999, Luck in 2011, or a senior year Hogan with McCaffrey in the backfield in 2015, and that the same scheme is doomed to fail if your offensive line is starting three freshmen, at one point I; time you are on your third string QB, and your running back is the college equivalent of a journeyman.
But that’s why in my opinion, the defense doesn’t get a pass. Shaw knows that for the team to be successful, it needs impact players. And he needs to find and recruit those players. And he has fallen flat in that regard. The defenses from the early 2010’s had something like 9 players who would go on to be drafted or play in the NFL. I’m struggling to identify more than two on this year’s team. Now maybe we just lucked out in 2012-2014 and had the right combination of lucky recruiting, finding diamonds in the rough, having position changes pay off, etc., and I wouldn’t count on always having that many future NfLers on the team. But at least some of the woe is self-inflicted, starting with having back-to-back classes with zero inside linebackers (and going back, really struggling to consistently bring in enough defensive linemen).
On offense, we haven’t had an above average line since Garnett, Peat, and Murphy were on it together, and it is really hard to do what we want to do without one. i hope you are right about the line next year; the portal entries are non-trivial, and I won’t rest easy about Little until Jan 20th has passed. The other wildcard is Mills’ knee. I still think the offense is very susceptible to injury disruption because the lack of depth at key positions (exacerbated by the portalees).
BC