Demise of Tresselball
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Deconstruct…
Fantastic article by Chris Brown, author of smartfootball.com
He breaks down the poor offensive gameplan that Tressel put together; he then explains how Rich Rod made adjustments to counter the "scrape", in which we witnessed in Tate's beautiful 4th quarter run for a TD. Brown is absolutely correct that you must build your offense around your QB's talents; making Pryor a pro-style QB when he's clearly a spread QB is asking for trouble.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:55 PM ^
On the other hand, the forgotten bootleg fake on hand offs and the fact that they only run one play from the "rollout formation" both tend to indicate a poorly conceived offensive game plan, iyam.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:25 PM ^
It's irrelevant to Brown's analysis. An argument from authority isn't particularly compelling here.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:38 PM ^
A lot of things go into being a good football coach. You can't argue that Jim Tressel is a bad coach, he's dominated the Big Ten for too long to reasonably make that claim. Chris Brown's argument is more specific: that Tressel is a bad strategist.
Deferring to an authority on the basis of nothing more than their authority is not like you, Chitown.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:31 PM ^
The problem lies with the fact that, in Chris Brown's self admittedly sterile and scientific view, strategy is the only thing that matters in football. Which is simply not true. It isn't baseball. Strategy is a means to an end, and Tressel gets to that end using his strategies nine times out of ten.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:36 PM ^
That's not his view. In fact, in this article he argued that games against teams of equal or superior talent are essentially the only ones in which coaching strategy matters. And, as he noted, those are the games that Tressel is no longer winning.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:41 PM ^
Exactly. That is one of the absolutely key points to take away from this article that is dead on accurate.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:21 PM ^
To rip from Firejoemorgan:
"Here's a stat: Wins as manager: Dusty Baker, 1,162; Bill James, 0." Number of World Series rings in Bill James' safe deposit box: 2 Number of World Series Rings in Dusty Baker's: 1
September 14th, 2009 at 3:57 PM ^
from the opening pic of jdressel exasperated to the last sentence:
"And if I was the multi-talented Terrelle Pryor, stuck in the straitjacket of the OSU offense, I'd be thinking long and hard about where I might transfer to."
I thought the same thing about pryor being handcuffed in dressel's offense and thinking transfer. Pryor may get benched his senior yr a la boeman (sp?) or moved to wr b/c of his speed. But what would pryor do with his bucknut tattoo on his forearm? I don't think dressel will lose his job, no way. The athletes he has will continue to win games and mask his playcalling shortcomings.
As for the b10, the conference is down, don't think otherwise. RR is applying his offensive defibrillator to the b10, which should be welcomed by the internal and external naysayers, but is it enough? Currently, in the AP top 25, there are barely 3 b10 teams and 3 MAC teams (byu, utah, & tcu) and a WAC and C-USA there. The b10 is ripe for RR's style to "takeover" in 2 yrs when his things are in place.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:06 PM ^
i didn't see the osu/usc game, but based on this article, i'm shocked pryor ran just 9 times. why wouldn't tressel turn pryor loose like texas did with vince young against usc (or vick against FSU). even on pass downs, VY would just look for a place to run. and i don't think this usc D is as talented as that one.
i can see trying to conserve pryor against lesser opponents; since their back-up may be "death". but isn't this one of the few games you let him run wild? let your best athlete make some plays for you.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:39 PM ^
My suspicion is that it's because Pryor's speed doesn't translate on the field like Vince Young's did. Here is just a simple comparison that speaks volumes (at least to me): 89.9 to 48.5. That's the average rushing yards for Young versus Pryor in their first year as a starter. I really think that people wanted to force the Pryor is Vince Young comparison, and it isn't really apt. His 40 time is proof that he is fast, but it just doesn't seem like that speed translates on the football field. Either that or he doesn't know how to make it translate on the football field, which could be because he never had to make it translate before he got to college. Probably because he's competition before college was absolute crap.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:21 AM ^
First off, that SC defense Pryor faced was light-years better than the one Young faced in the Rose Bowl. That D was riddled by injuries (SEE the Ting brothers on the field) and got shelled repeatedly that season (Fresno St. put up over 40 on them and ND had little trouble moving the ball against them, scoring in the 30's). The 2005 Trojans easily could have lost a couple of games if they hadn't had basically the best offense in college football history. By contrast, this year's SC defense is EXTREMELY talented.
Also, Young was a redshirt junior at that time whereas Pryor is a true sophomore playing in the second game of the season. It took a while for Young to develop and I think Pryor may actually be ahead of Vince's curve (in that he is actually starting for his team).
I agree that TP should run more but I won't complain if they continue to keep trying to mold him into a pocket passer. VY exploded when Brown finally simplified the offense and gave Vince a "one read and take off if it ain't open" directive. Tressel probably needs to do the same thing for TP, but I'm hoping he doesn't catch on.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:53 PM ^
Damn, that was pretty scathing.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:07 PM ^
..so maybe I did miss something. It's Monday and that happens to me alot.
But I just don't see signs that Tressel's way of coaching/recruiting/play calling is going to change or head OSU downward, particularly with that infuriating winning percentage he's been sporting. It's like a plaid sweatervest. Sort of difficult to ignore, and painful to look at.
There was a time when people were looking at Bo Schembechler the same way (national media). Like after he lost 7 straight bowl games, even though Bo had done a great job of recruiting both Ohio and Michigan and the rest of the country, and even though he had thoroughly dominated the Big Ten competition. His great rushing and defensive teams couldn't seem to seal the deal versus quality opponents (like USC and Oklahoma) and that sometimes lost games to teams they should have shellacked (Purdon't 1976, Minny 1977, Washington 1978, MSU 1978).
I don't mean to say that Tressel is Schembechler or vice versa. I'm just saying that there might be some interesting parallels in the conservatism category and in results in big games. Bo was like 18-11-1 vs. the PAC10 and 2-1 vs. the SEC, so he was different from Tressel to some extent.
I haven't researched this yet, but I believe comparing Carr to Tressel is a mistake because I believe Lloyd had quite a good record overall against ranked opponents over his career at UM regardless of in conference or out of conference.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:50 PM ^
didn't read the article. Chris was very careful in his points. athletes are going to win out, but in contests between equal athletes, coaching wins. he doesn't see the domination of the Big Ten stopping anytime soon since the recruits are going to be there.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:19 PM ^
posting than reading. Please stop bringing up recruiting.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:53 PM ^
There is a reason Tressel was 1. Passed over by MSU in favor of Bobby Williams (!) and 2. Was OSU's third choice to replace Cooper. A recruiter: YES. A game planner and game day coach: ah, not so much. Sure he has won a bunch in Columbus but really, who has his Big Ten competition been? A somnolent JoPa? Lloyd in his sunset? Kirk Ferentz for heavens sake? The Zookster? I think RichRod and, if he can recruit, Fitzgerald at Northwestern, are the coaching future of the league.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:18 PM ^
Let's just discount his entire career before he came to Ohio State... that wasn't impressive at all.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:44 PM ^
Waters was pretty successful at a lower level, too, just like Tressel was, and look at how well that turned out for them. I'm sure that if Michigan State passed on Tressel, that was a big factor in their reasoning.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:05 PM ^
Two separate streaks of 19 consecutive wins. There's no way to discount that by cutting down the competition, my friend, that's impressive.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:39 PM ^
Rodriguez was Michigan's third choice too
September 14th, 2009 at 11:14 PM ^
That brings up the point: What the hell has happened to Les Miles and LSU?
September 15th, 2009 at 2:28 AM ^
Nick Saban's recruits are gone.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:17 PM ^
On another forum, we have been discussing "Tresselball" for years. One of the OSU posters warned us years ago that Tressel would be saving up stuff for the Michigan game. In 2002, 2004, and 2006, he definitely did, and it paid off big time.
Jim Tressel is in tune with the obsession that Buckeye fans have with beating Michigan. Which makes me think that Tressel doesn't fail to understand Xs and Os or strategy. He just saves up his best stuff for Michigan. The article in the OP points out stuff that Ohio State did to make their playcalling obvious and it wonders why the Buckeyes don't take advantage of the defense selling out on it. I'll bet money that he will do this for the Michigan game. He knows that Greg Robinson will be watching the films and seeing these tendencies too. Some of that crazy stuff that takes advantage of Pryor's mobility will be on display in Ann Arbor in November. Bank on it.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:29 PM ^
If that's what he's doing I think he's over-estimated his ability to read his fanbase. These losses are really taking their toll on even the most die hard Ohio State fans that I know, to the point that they have openly initiated the discussion of how much Tressel sucks.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:06 AM ^
This is a vicious (but accurate) article on Tresselball. He is a good coach, but not as good as we have made him look over the past several years. And I think RR is totally capable of exposing Tressel's flaws. Maybe not this year, but you never know -- they looked awful offensively the other night.