[Goose]

One of the other problems -- and one of the themes of pretty much every postgame presser -- has been how the offense responds to "unscouted looks." This has always been issue. Because few teams run a pro-style offense, looking at film of opposing defenses doesn't yield as much as it would for other teams. Considering what they ask the quarterback to do, this could also explain what's perceived as Costello's slow development. I'd like to think that VR would help accelerate his learning curve, but maybe it hasn't.

I think you have already said why VR isn't going to help much. You can only show looks on film or in VR that you have seen before. If somebody does something totally unexpected, you have neither film or VR scenarios of it. What surprises me a bit is that you would expect a Stanford QB to have dealt with just about all possible defenses, at least from a theoretical point of view. He may have never played against it, but he knows what it is and how to attack it. So OK, it fools him once. But after that, he should know what to do. Granted, having practiced against it is useful, but we shouldn't be helpless in the absence of such practice. For all defensive schemes against our offense, the coaches should have a plan. We may not have practiced all the possible plans, but we should have one. If the defense is running something they haven't used before, their practice time for that approach has also been limited, possibly to just for the Stanford game. That shouldn't give them an overwhelming advantage.

[Goose]

One of the other problems -- and one of the themes of pretty much every postgame presser -- has been how the offense responds to "unscouted looks." This has always been issue. Because few teams run a pro-style offense, looking at film of opposing defenses doesn't yield as much as it would for other teams. Considering what they ask the quarterback to do, this could also explain what's perceived as Costello's slow development. I'd like to think that VR would help accelerate his learning curve, but maybe it hasn't.

I think you have already said why VR isn't going to help much. You can only show looks on film or in VR that you have seen before. If somebody does something totally unexpected, you have neither film or VR scenarios of it. What surprises me a bit is that you would expect a Stanford QB to have dealt with just about all possible defenses, at least from a theoretical point of view. He may have never played against it, but he knows what it is and how to attack it. So OK, it fools him once. But after that, he should know what to do. Granted, having practiced against it is useful, but we shouldn't be helpless in the absence of such practice. For all defensive schemes against our offense, the coaches should have a plan. We may not have practiced all the possible plans, but we should have one. If the defense is running something they haven't used before, their practice time for that approach has also been limited, possibly to just for the Stanford game. That shouldn't give them an overwhelming advantage.

[BostonCard]

One of the other problems -- and one of the themes of pretty much every postgame presser -- has been how the offense responds to "unscouted looks." This has always been issue. Because few teams run a pro-style offense, looking at film of opposing defenses doesn't yield as much as it would for other teams. Considering what they ask the quarterback to do, this could also explain what's perceived as Costello's slow development. I'd like to think that VR would help accelerate his learning curve, but maybe it hasn't.

Interesting thought.  I'm not entirely sure I buy it, but it is worth consideration.

First, although we will get "unscouted looks", the opponent is also going to have to go up against something they don't see very often.  Now, they certainly can scout us, but they won't have a ton of practice running their defense against an offense like ours (especially if their own offense is very different than ours, and don't practice against it every day).  Without a chance to practice against an offense a lot, a good defensive coordinator is probably going to give the defense something fairly basic that they are able to execute, and not a complicated scheme.  So, for example, both USC, Oregon, and Utah ran a base defense against us most of the time (even when we were in 3 wide sets), and other than SDSU, nobody really ran anything particularly exotic on defense.  And we saw what Utah tried to do against UW, which, though is a similar offense to ours.

So, I am open to this possibility, but I'm not yet sold that this is it. 

BC

[BostonCard]

One of the other problems -- and one of the themes of pretty much every postgame presser -- has been how the offense responds to "unscouted looks." This has always been issue. Because few teams run a pro-style offense, looking at film of opposing defenses doesn't yield as much as it would for other teams. Considering what they ask the quarterback to do, this could also explain what's perceived as Costello's slow development. I'd like to think that VR would help accelerate his learning curve, but maybe it hasn't.

Interesting thought.  I'm not entirely sure I buy it, but it is worth consideration.

First, although we will get "unscouted looks", the opponent is also going to have to go up against something they don't see very often.  Now, they certainly can scout us, but they won't have a ton of practice running their defense against an offense like ours (especially if their own offense is very different than ours, and don't practice against it every day).  Without a chance to practice against an offense a lot, a good defensive coordinator is probably going to give the defense something fairly basic that they are able to execute, and not a complicated scheme.  So, for example, both USC, Oregon, and Utah ran a base defense against us most of the time (even when we were in 3 wide sets), and other than SDSU, nobody really ran anything particularly exotic on defense.  And we saw what Utah tried to do against UW, which, though is a similar offense to ours.

So, I am open to this possibility, but I'm not yet sold that this is it. 

BC