depth chart vs ND - Printable Version

depth chart vs ND - Printable Version

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depth chart vs ND - 82lsju - 11-26-2019

- Mills at QB with West as his backup
- Fisk back
- no Wedington
- we list three WR two deeps
- no Antoine
- no Adebo

https://gostanford.com/documents/2019/11/26//2019_Stanford_Football_Notes_12_Notre_Dame_dragged_.pdf?id=18656

RE: depth chart vs ND - JJJ - 11-26-2019

So we may have seen the last of KJ in action in the Cardinal and White unis. Thanks for the memories.

RE: depth chart vs ND - Phogge - 11-26-2019

Fisk played a lot against Cal. I would move him to fullback next year. Stanford has lacked an effective blocking back since Marx departure. Run more out of the "T" and get the mojo back.

Wonder where KJ goes in the draft. If drafted.

RE: depth chart vs ND - SamuelMcF - 11-26-2019

Not that there are a lot of healthy bodies in the first place, but Nicolas Toomer at CB4 over Donjae Logan (who might be injured). I thought Toomer was working at S.

I also didn't think Mangum-Farrar's injury was a rest-of-the-season kind of injury...

RE: depth chart vs ND - fullmetal - 11-26-2019

Phogge, with the Duo blocking scheme, I would expect to see a fullback much less unless they start letting the fullback decide which hole to hit and have the RB follow...possible though not consistent philosophically.

RE: depth chart vs ND - Phogge - 11-26-2019

Worked for years. How many times are we going to see a shotgun handoff with three opponents in the backfield already?

RE: depth chart vs ND - BostonCard - 11-26-2019

(11-26-2019, 05:35 PM)Phogge Wrote: Worked for years. How many times are we going to see a shotgun handoff with three opponents in the backfield already?

It worked until it stopped working ca 2016/2017. Defenses figured out that the weakside defensive end could come in off the edge unblocked (because of the pulling guard) and there were way more tackles of Bryce Love in the backfield than any of us would have wanted.

BC

RE: depth chart vs ND - cardcrimson - 11-26-2019

(11-26-2019, 05:45 PM)BostonCard Wrote:
(11-26-2019, 05:35 PM)Phogge Wrote: Worked for years. How many times are we going to see a shotgun handoff with three opponents in the backfield already?

It worked until it stopped working ca 2016/2017. Defenses figured out that the weakside defensive end could come in off the edge unblocked (because of the pulling guard) and there were way more tackles of Bryce Love in the backfield than any of us would have wanted.

BC

I have to ask then, why did we keep running that type of play? Keep trying until we get it right? It's all a matter of execution?

RE: depth chart vs ND - BostonCard - 11-26-2019

(11-26-2019, 06:27 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: I have to ask then, why did we keep running that type of play? Keep trying until we get it right? It's all a matter of execution?

1) Mostly because Love was so good that when it did work, it resulted in a 40 yard touchdown.

2) You can't look at it as a binary process. It's not like the play worked 100% of the time when Gerhart was running behind Maricec and a pulling DeCastro (it just seemed like it). So maybe one opponent (I remember WSU most prominently) stops you most of the time. You wouldn't want to just give up, would you? You would want to determine if that was a particuliarity of the defense you just faced that is hard to replicate, or that once other defensive coordinators have film they will immediately be able to adopt. You would analyze the film and figure out if you could scheme around that. You'll remember around that time we tried several things, including having the QB turn around and try to block the backside DE. Or maybe you see if you can exploit an overaggressive DE, which Love was able to do. Coordinators are constantly playing a cat and mouse game, and a defensive coordinator will figure out a way to stop a play that was previously working, and then the offensive coordinator will tweak the play to overcome that weakness, and back and forth it goes. This doesn't just happen to us, by the way. Remember when Oregon scored 53 points against Stanford in 2011. The very next year, we held them to 14.

3) You can't just abandon a play; you have to replace it with something. That something was Duo, but it didn't just materialize out of thin air. We brought in a new offensive line coach who could install it, and teach the OL how to run it. The OL had to practice it. It takes time.

I think it is weird to expect that at the first sniff that an offense has had trouble that the first thought is that the offense should be chucked. That year, when we held Oregon to 14 points and seemed to have solved Kelly's offense, they went 12 - 1 and averaged almost 50 points per game. To me, it's like any other sort of troubleshooting; first you have to determine if it is a reproducible problem. Then you have to figure if there is a way to fix it. And only if the answer is no do you chuck it and buy something new.

BC

RE: depth chart vs ND - Phogge - 11-27-2019

Offset the fullback, hook the end. The current blocking scheme in shotgun takes too long to develop. I hate the shotgun when you don’t have a QB who is a running threat. I understand that you need to use it when your guy has a bad thumb but in Stanford’s use the run game is agonizingly slow.

RE: depth chart vs ND - BostonCard - 11-27-2019

Yeah, every time I watch us do an inside handoff from the shotgun, I have nightmares of the Buddy Teevens shotgun draw.

I agree that our run game is slow to develop. I'm not sure if that is by design, to give the running back a chance to read the hole or if it is just that our linemen are not as adept at creating the hole in the first place.

BC

RE: depth chart vs ND - qwerty49 - 11-27-2019

(11-27-2019, 08:52 AM)BostonCard Wrote: I agree that our run game is slow to develop. I'm not sure if that is by design, to give the running back a chance to read the hole or if it is just that our linemen are not as adept at creating the hole in the first place.

I think it's both, there's been a lot of dancing waiting for a hole that didn't really develop. Plus we've never adjusted to block the edge defender(s). The past couple of years, opponents have also sent a guy from the strongside.

RE: depth chart vs ND - Goose - 11-27-2019

(11-27-2019, 08:52 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Yeah, every time I watch us do an inside handoff from the shotgun, I have nightmares of the Buddy Teevens shotgun draw.

I agree that our run game is slow to develop. I'm not sure if that is by design, to give the running back a chance to read the hole or if it is just that our linemen are not as adept at creating the hole in the first place.

BC

Another issue is that we switched from man blocking to zone blocking quite a few years ago. This change has also taken place across most of football, and is (at least partially) caused by defenses presenting different fronts (and then shifting or slanting) to make man blocking difficult. This makes an exact "point of attack" difficult to define and almost requires that the back read the play and choose a hole, as opposed to just running to a spot. This read will inevitably slow down the play.

As to the ability of our OL to make a hole at least someplace in the defense, it does seem to have generally declined. Currently, on some significant percentage of our running plays, you see a lineman blocking nobody. This is clearly some kind of misread or the defense has created a numerical advantage by guessing right/reading the play. It used to be that the defense had a pretty good idea that they would see lots of "power" but still couldn't stop it. I think the staff decided that the defenses had evolved to the point that they could stop it, and we switched blocking schemes.

That worked for a while, but then we also had two backs (CMAC and BL) who were very good but would be wasted running power all the time. They were both "patient" runners who could change direction on a dime. That led to changes in the offense that resulted in a running game that became progressively less effective. For a while, we had a "feast or famine" game that relied on just creating a crease for BL occasionally. When he got hurt, that quit working and we became a "pass and pray the receiver can out-fight the DB for the ball" team. At the end of this year, we became a "pass only" team.

Right now, running game wise, we don't know what our "bread and butter" is, if we have any. Next year, we have two backs that, while possibly good runners, are not very big. So far, they haven't shown me anything that inspires confidence. Granted, we have been using several freshmen OL. However, most of them have played the better part of a year, so you would expect our running game should be improving. No sign of that. It used to be conventional wisdom that teaching run blocking was easier than teaching pass blocking, because in run blocking the OL was attacking and knew what to do without "thinking" while pass blocking required reacting to what the defense did. That may no longer be the case. Anybody know? We also have a tackle who is a junior and was supposed to be one of the best in America. Yet we can't make one yard running right against Cal.

IMHO, this collective lack of a running game is the most serious, by far, question for the offense. This needs to get fixed, or else the offense will be in serious trouble next year. We don't have the personnel or intention of running an Air Raid. We absolutely need to be at least balanced, if not run-heavy. That is Shaw's stated goal in the past. This is an area where the coaching staff does need to "do something" to fix the problem.