[stupac2]

I want to apologize for my tone, but can't and won't.  I don't believe I understand more than 15% of football strategy and tactics.  The tone of some posters, whose other posts make it clear they don't either, yet agitate--some of them yearly--for some approach our coaches and teams regularly fail to employ.

There's the anti-Jumbo and anti-Wildcat coalitions; the total yards matter faction; the roll out option in the red zone splinter group; the hands up in pass rushing faction.  Oddly, too, given the reverence for Lance Anderson, there's the new "bend don't break sucks" group, who should at least consider that on Saturdday, we were without four of last year's starting DBs and two of this year's starting corners, and don't have an effective pass rushing defensive line--and have faced too consecutive teams that don't throw well in congested space, particularly when the back of the end zone provides a 12th defender against them.

I agree that deploying arrogance to combat arrogance isn't an optimal strategy, either.  But like more than one poster here, I really have grown tired of so many of these arguments, and promise to ignore them from now on.  It simply seems to me, once more, that this football games really are like church--many attend but few understand--and that there are people here who look under every rock to find an example of Shaw's failures, and they find one--whether it is there or not.

Who is saying these things? I am starting to really dislike these "people say blah blah blah" without actually calling out the people who say it. This board, for all the smart people on it, has some really bad issues with straw men, and I can't help feeling like your entire first paragraph is one of them.

Most of what I've seen have been people acknowledging that BDB, while frustrating to watch, is our only realistic option for defense this year, given our personnel. I haven't seen very many wildcat complaints (which I do think were odd even in previous years). I don't even know what you mean by "total yards matter" or "roll out in the red zone", maybe those came up in home game threads (which I don't read because I'm at the game and they get very long). The main criticisms I've seen, at least from this game, are:

1) The TO use probably wasn't optimal but it wasn't a large difference and it worked out anyway.
2) We should've been passing more in the 4th quarter.

Apparently you disagree pretty strongly with #1, though I honestly don't get why since it's so mild, but do you disagree with 2?

But even if all those things really are on here and really are frustrating to you, holy hell, you should look at other fan boards. Even the stuff I see leak onto /r/cfb is pretty toxic from the big fan bases. We are nothing like that, even with the wildly disappointing season last year. People really are calling for Les Miles's head after a season only marginally more disappointing than ours this year, a lot of people! Some of them very influential. That hasn't been the case here, and I hope we never lose perspective so thoroughly that a 9-3 season is seen as an abysmal failure.




Anyway, in general I don't think criticizing coaches is beyond the pale, but part of that is I think in-game decisionmaking by the coach is the most interesting part of football strategy (that I can understand, anyway, the specifics of playcalling against different defenses would be interesting but understanding it takes a lot of work). A couple years ago Bill Barnwell did a column called "Thank you for not coaching" that criticized wildly wrong coaching decisions in the NFL and it was something I looked forward to every week. Time outs (times out?) and challenges are the two most approachable things to look at here (as well as punting/kicking a FG vs going for it on 4th, but that didn't come up here), so it's reasonable to talk about it. Why that raises any dander is beyond me.

[stupac2]

I want to apologize for my tone, but can't and won't.  I don't believe I understand more than 15% of football strategy and tactics.  The tone of some posters, whose other posts make it clear they don't either, yet agitate--some of them yearly--for some approach our coaches and teams regularly fail to employ.

There's the anti-Jumbo and anti-Wildcat coalitions; the total yards matter faction; the roll out option in the red zone splinter group; the hands up in pass rushing faction.  Oddly, too, given the reverence for Lance Anderson, there's the new "bend don't break sucks" group, who should at least consider that on Saturdday, we were without four of last year's starting DBs and two of this year's starting corners, and don't have an effective pass rushing defensive line--and have faced too consecutive teams that don't throw well in congested space, particularly when the back of the end zone provides a 12th defender against them.

I agree that deploying arrogance to combat arrogance isn't an optimal strategy, either.  But like more than one poster here, I really have grown tired of so many of these arguments, and promise to ignore them from now on.  It simply seems to me, once more, that this football games really are like church--many attend but few understand--and that there are people here who look under every rock to find an example of Shaw's failures, and they find one--whether it is there or not.

Who is saying these things? I am starting to really dislike these "people say blah blah blah" without actually calling out the people who say it. This board, for all the smart people on it, has some really bad issues with straw men, and I can't help feeling like your entire first paragraph is one of them.

Most of what I've seen have been people acknowledging that BDB, while frustrating to watch, is our only realistic option for defense this year, given our personnel. I haven't seen very many wildcat complaints (which I do think were odd even in previous years). I don't even know what you mean by "total yards matter" or "roll out in the red zone", maybe those came up in home game threads (which I don't read because I'm at the game and they get very long). The main criticisms I've seen, at least from this game, are:

1) The TO use probably wasn't optimal but it wasn't a large difference and it worked out anyway.
2) We should've been passing more in the 4th quarter.

Apparently you disagree pretty strongly with #1, though I honestly don't get why since it's so mild, but do you disagree with 2?

But even if all those things really are on here and really are frustrating to you, holy hell, you should look at other fan boards. Even the stuff I see leak onto /r/cfb is pretty toxic from the big fan bases. We are nothing like that, even with the wildly disappointing season last year. People really are calling for Les Miles's head after a season only marginally more disappointing than ours this year, a lot of people! Some of them very influential. That hasn't been the case here, and I hope we never lose perspective so thoroughly that a 9-3 season is seen as an abysmal failure.




Anyway, in general I don't think criticizing coaches is beyond the pale, but part of that is I think in-game decisionmaking by the coach is the most interesting part of football strategy (that I can understand, anyway, the specifics of playcalling against different defenses would be interesting but understanding it takes a lot of work). A couple years ago Bill Barnwell did a column called "Thank you for not coaching" that criticized wildly wrong coaching decisions in the NFL and it was something I looked forward to every week. Time outs (times out?) and challenges are the two most approachable things to look at here (as well as punting/kicking a FG vs going for it on 4th, but that didn't come up here), so it's reasonable to talk about it. Why that raises any dander is beyond me.