[washingtonismoney]

  Best of all, Shaw opened up his offense, keeping the ASU defense guessing. 

This is why I rarely take play-calling complaints/praise seriously, because it seems to me people are really always just praising success rather than one of its underlying components. The game plan and calling wasn't too much different than in previous games. Stanford ran 44 times out of 62 plays -- 70% of the time. On average last season, Stanford ran 65% of the time.* Was there a bunch of creative/offbeat runs? I remember....some reverses and fly sweeps. But we saw those anyway over the course of the season.

Hogan threw deep a ton in that game -- but, stop me if you've heard this before, but Hogan threw the ball deep a ton over the course of the season.

So what element is present in that game, playcalling-wise, that wasn't in other games? I can't think of it. I think the team just had a good matchup and executed really well. I think that's the case more often than people popularly admit.

At least judging by popular perceptions, I think people have little-to-no ability to identify successful playcalling; I'm skeptical playcalling skill exists at all. We see perception of great playcalling veer wildly from year to year -- I recall Lane Kiffin's playcalling being feted all of 2011 until the beginning of the 2012 season, at which point the nation discovered Lane Kiffin was actually a crummy playcaller. But that seems unlikely to me; it seems more likely that people are just unconsciously thinking, "SC's playing great. Kiffin's a genius!" Playcalling is the most visible of the coaching arts, and so it seems easier to praise playcalling than to examine recruiting, development, preparation, etc.

The biggest tipoff that playcalling isn't actually that important is Chip Kelly's offense. People praise Kelly as a great playcaller, but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kelly's offense is trying to do: it's trying to minimize the role of playcalling to as small a role as possible. The goal of a playcaller is to call a play the opponent cannot match up with. Kelly's offense builds options for the quarterback so that the defense is always wrong, meaning that Kelly's in-game preferences mean as little as possible. Which makes all the sense in the world. Who has more information: Chip Kelly 30 seconds before the play starts, or the quarterback two seconds in?

tl;dr: I'm really skeptical of playcalling as a coaching attribute and think the virtues I've seen ascribed to it are inconsistent and unquantifiable.

*(of course, that's deceptive. Stanford ran so much because it was up. It's a classic correlation/causation problem.)

[washingtonismoney]

  Best of all, Shaw opened up his offense, keeping the ASU defense guessing. 

This is why I rarely take play-calling complaints/praise seriously, because it seems to me people are really always just praising success rather than one of its underlying components. The game plan and calling wasn't too much different than in previous games. Stanford ran 44 times out of 62 plays -- 70% of the time. On average last season, Stanford ran 65% of the time.* Was there a bunch of creative/offbeat runs? I remember....some reverses and fly sweeps. But we saw those anyway over the course of the season.

Hogan threw deep a ton in that game -- but, stop me if you've heard this before, but Hogan threw the ball deep a ton over the course of the season.

So what element is present in that game, playcalling-wise, that wasn't in other games? I can't think of it. I think the team just had a good matchup and executed really well. I think that's the case more often than people popularly admit.

At least judging by popular perceptions, I think people have little-to-no ability to identify successful playcalling; I'm skeptical playcalling skill exists at all. We see perception of great playcalling veer wildly from year to year -- I recall Lane Kiffin's playcalling being feted all of 2011 until the beginning of the 2012 season, at which point the nation discovered Lane Kiffin was actually a crummy playcaller. But that seems unlikely to me; it seems more likely that people are just unconsciously thinking, "SC's playing great. Kiffin's a genius!" Playcalling is the most visible of the coaching arts, and so it seems easier to praise playcalling than to examine recruiting, development, preparation, etc.

The biggest tipoff that playcalling isn't actually that important is Chip Kelly's offense. People praise Kelly as a great playcaller, but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kelly's offense is trying to do: it's trying to minimize the role of playcalling to as small a role as possible. The goal of a playcaller is to call a play the opponent cannot match up with. Kelly's offense builds options for the quarterback so that the defense is always wrong, meaning that Kelly's in-game preferences mean as little as possible. Which makes all the sense in the world. Who has more information: Chip Kelly 30 seconds before the play starts, or the quarterback two seconds in?

tl;dr: I'm really skeptical of playcalling as a coaching attribute and think the virtues I've seen ascribed to it are inconsistent and unquantifiable.

*(of course, that's deceptive. Stanford ran so much because it was up. It's a classic correlation/causation problem.)