[washingtonismoney]

Perhaps the reason for that is because Stanford always runs on first down and usually gets stuffed for little to no gain, putting them into immediate passing situation.

I think hulk crunched the data on this a couple weeks back and found that this isn't the case. That is: yes, there are some first-down runs getting blown up. But there are first-down passes going nowhere too.

People tend to focus on playcalling because it's very visible and (partially because of stuff like Madden) very easy to backseat drive/armchair QB. In this case critcizing the playcalling isn't *wrong,* per se -- certainly it was very bad in the fourth quarter last night, to take the really easy example.

But the real problem is simply that players aren't performing terribly well. You've got lots of dumb penalties. Costello underthrowing St. Brown by a lot. Some other stuff. It's a mistake-filled offense in the sense that a lot of plays are perfectly fine conceptually but aren't being executed. I won't leave the conclusion there, though: if you have players you think are good who make lots of dumb mistakes, on some level this is a coaching problem. But what? Are the players not practicing well? At a conceptual (rather than playcalling) level is the offense not executable? Something else? I have no idea! Something, however, has gone very deeply wrong because this offense is a talented one. And that's a coaching problem, and it's more than just "I wish there was a play-action or jet sweep here and there." (Which, to be clear, probably would help.)

[washingtonismoney]

Perhaps the reason for that is because Stanford always runs on first down and usually gets stuffed for little to no gain, putting them into immediate passing situation.

I think hulk crunched the data on this a couple weeks back and found that this isn't the case. That is: yes, there are some first-down runs getting blown up. But there are first-down passes going nowhere too.

People tend to focus on playcalling because it's very visible and (partially because of stuff like Madden) very easy to backseat drive/armchair QB. In this case critcizing the playcalling isn't *wrong,* per se -- certainly it was very bad in the fourth quarter last night, to take the really easy example.

But the real problem is simply that players aren't performing terribly well. You've got lots of dumb penalties. Costello underthrowing St. Brown by a lot. Some other stuff. It's a mistake-filled offense in the sense that a lot of plays are perfectly fine conceptually but aren't being executed. I won't leave the conclusion there, though: if you have players you think are good who make lots of dumb mistakes, on some level this is a coaching problem. But what? Are the players not practicing well? At a conceptual (rather than playcalling) level is the offense not executable? Something else? I have no idea! Something, however, has gone very deeply wrong because this offense is a talented one. And that's a coaching problem, and it's more than just "I wish there was a play-action or jet sweep here and there." (Which, to be clear, probably would help.)