[old spanish trail]

Thanks for the clarification.  I disagree on it being difficult to place the “blame”. When backs are consistently getting hit at or behind the line due to penetration from the d-line, there  isn’t a whole lot they can do.  And perhaps my recall is suspect- but I remember a ton of times when the back would get the handoff take one step and get plastered. Defensive line penetration destroys a running game.

Agree. This did happen a lot, your recall is spot on. However, that one step can matter. It can mean that if you juke that guy the place he came from is wide open and you can run through it a very long way. Love did that a lot. He also got tackled a lot when he couldn't avoid the penetrating lineman. Asking a lot, I know, but that's why you are there. It happened in 2020 too (perhaps not as often), but that year it seemed to me Jones was better at making the first guy miss, and in 2021 he basically never did avoid the first man. Again, you shouldn't have to do so, but that was Stanford football at the time.

Agree totally re Jones and found it most puzzling.

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It may not be up to the RB coach to determine how often an RB gets a pass out of the backfield (see: offensive coordinator...sigh).

And the OC may have to keep the back in to pass block so the QB doesn't get killed. I hope next year that will be needed less often, but I also hope our backs can pass block. 

Gould gets a pass from me due to massive OL underperformance (compared to their recruiting hype).  I think we need to see massive performance improvement at QB coach and OC (for the last few years!).

What has been lacking in our QB performance and how can those problems be fixed? IMHO QB is a spot from which we have received a pretty good performance. Mills certainly did very well. I liked what we saw from McKee last year, although after he got hurt he perhaps was a bit less effective. Anything there you see and don't like? I know the QB coach is also the OC, but here I am asking about the QB hat.

One thing Jones did well was block in pass pro. Maybe he didn't want that to be his main function any more.

[old spanish trail]

Thanks for the clarification.  I disagree on it being difficult to place the “blame”. When backs are consistently getting hit at or behind the line due to penetration from the d-line, there  isn’t a whole lot they can do.  And perhaps my recall is suspect- but I remember a ton of times when the back would get the handoff take one step and get plastered. Defensive line penetration destroys a running game.

Agree. This did happen a lot, your recall is spot on. However, that one step can matter. It can mean that if you juke that guy the place he came from is wide open and you can run through it a very long way. Love did that a lot. He also got tackled a lot when he couldn't avoid the penetrating lineman. Asking a lot, I know, but that's why you are there. It happened in 2020 too (perhaps not as often), but that year it seemed to me Jones was better at making the first guy miss, and in 2021 he basically never did avoid the first man. Again, you shouldn't have to do so, but that was Stanford football at the time.

Agree totally re Jones and found it most puzzling.

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It may not be up to the RB coach to determine how often an RB gets a pass out of the backfield (see: offensive coordinator...sigh).

And the OC may have to keep the back in to pass block so the QB doesn't get killed. I hope next year that will be needed less often, but I also hope our backs can pass block. 

Gould gets a pass from me due to massive OL underperformance (compared to their recruiting hype).  I think we need to see massive performance improvement at QB coach and OC (for the last few years!).

What has been lacking in our QB performance and how can those problems be fixed? IMHO QB is a spot from which we have received a pretty good performance. Mills certainly did very well. I liked what we saw from McKee last year, although after he got hurt he perhaps was a bit less effective. Anything there you see and don't like? I know the QB coach is also the OC, but here I am asking about the QB hat.

One thing Jones did well was block in pass pro. Maybe he didn't want that to be his main function any more.