[JustAnotherFan]

Question for the community.

Last year, Ohio State had the top scoring offense among power 5 teams (45.7 pts/game), while Vandy was dead at 15.8 ppg (among P5 teams).

Here’s a thought experiment.  Take Kevin Wilson, tOSU’s offensive coordinator, and have him call plays for the Commodores.  How many ppg do you think Vandy scores?  Now, replace the entire Vandy offense with the Ohio State’s athletes, but keep Joey Lynch as play-caller (Vandy was weird in that Lynch, who was the passing game coordinator, took over playcalling duties from the now fired offensive coordinator a week into practice).  Same question.

Here’s my guess: out of the 30 point gap in offensive output between Vandy and tOSU, probably 25 of those points are due to the gap between OSU’s superior offensive players and Vandy’s, and the rest are due to the guy with the headset.

What do you guys think? Am I way off base?

BC

I agree, directionally. I think that what is missing is the culture of the program, team, offense, and position groups. This plays into each of the things you highlighted. How much effort are the players putting into training, film study, etc.? Do the guys who are calling the plays know how to leverage their advantages in advance of the games to prepare the players to have favorable matchups? We've seen teams with inferior talent outperform teams with superior talent, sometimes consistently (e.g., Utah vs Stanford). I think the problems with Stanford indeed have to do with slipping recruiting and unimpressive play calling, but it seems to me that it also has to do with a culture of complacency.

[JustAnotherFan]

Question for the community.

Last year, Ohio State had the top scoring offense among power 5 teams (45.7 pts/game), while Vandy was dead at 15.8 ppg (among P5 teams).

Here’s a thought experiment.  Take Kevin Wilson, tOSU’s offensive coordinator, and have him call plays for the Commodores.  How many ppg do you think Vandy scores?  Now, replace the entire Vandy offense with the Ohio State’s athletes, but keep Joey Lynch as play-caller (Vandy was weird in that Lynch, who was the passing game coordinator, took over playcalling duties from the now fired offensive coordinator a week into practice).  Same question.

Here’s my guess: out of the 30 point gap in offensive output between Vandy and tOSU, probably 25 of those points are due to the gap between OSU’s superior offensive players and Vandy’s, and the rest are due to the guy with the headset.

What do you guys think? Am I way off base?

BC

I agree, directionally. I think that what is missing is the culture of the program, team, offense, and position groups. This plays into each of the things you highlighted. How much effort are the players putting into training, film study, etc.? Do the guys who are calling the plays know how to leverage their advantages in advance of the games to prepare the players to have favorable matchups? We've seen teams with inferior talent outperform teams with superior talent, sometimes consistently (e.g., Utah vs Stanford). I think the problems with Stanford indeed have to do with slipping recruiting and unimpressive play calling, but it seems to me that it also has to do with a culture of complacency.