(04-11-2022, 09:07 AM)teejers1 Wrote: (04-08-2022, 08:21 PM)CompSci87 Wrote: We all know teejers would do it so much better.
Way back in the day, the authors of the Bruin fan zone (Bruinzone?) put forth a transcript of an apocryphal meeting amongst Pac 10 coaches. The meeting, led by Lute and Monty, was called to identify who would throw games to ensure Lavin was retained at UCLA. It was hilarious.
That transcription immediately came to mind when I read about the D coaches who praised Shaw's offensive game-calling prowess.
This is too cynical. Was the same motivation at play for the coaches ranking Chip Kelly and Andy Ludwig? Sorry, too cynical and too much assumption of 3D chess as opposed to Occam's Razor: half of the teams in the conference have new play callers and Shaw being ranked second among the remaining five (UCLA, Utah, Oregon State, Arizona, Cal) is a combination of genuine esteem (which may lead to bias and not be all that insightful), name recognition, and the one eyed man being king in the land of the blind. Mileage can vary on how significant this ranking is, but coaches did not do it so that John Canzano's blog's obscure ranking of the top four playcallers among six options would venerate Shaw in a way more likely for him to keep his job. Come on, that's some kind of bank shot.
The interesting thing is that the ordinal ranking of coaches was the same in the poll of coaches and the Matrix Analytical ranking based on 25,000 data points from 2010-2021. Literally the exact same order of the top four other than Lincoln Riley (who the Matrix Analytical ranking included but the coaches did not). That's something to sit with and ponder. Those criticizing play calling should have some self-awareness that outside Lincoln Riley/Chip Kelly kind of coaches fans ALWAYS gripe at play calling and that doesn't necessarily mean a play caller is bad in the comparative sense of being worse than the competition.
Based on this evidence, I am inclined to believe that Shaw has a number of problems that rise above play calling. These two rankings, taken together, are suggestive that some other combination of factors (defense, player development, recruiting, etc.) are more salient than play calling as an explanation for Shaw's recent failures. I will acknowledge two caveats to that provisional observation. First, I don't know what Matrix Analytical is based on and can't comment on its quality as a metric. Second, the data set is supposedly over the 2010-2021 period, which arguably could make it more or less reliable as a metric (e.g., it's an extensive data set less likely to have sample size problems with somebody like Shaw, but it's also including a lot of data points that were based on an era of his coaching and the players he had to work with that are much less relevant to what he has and who he is in 2022).
