Unverified Voracity Goes For Superlatives

"sophisticated spread" offense better than a less sophisticated spread offensive, other than being sophisticated sounds better?

It seems like OU and UF are just adopting and tweaking their offenses to fit their personnel (who happen to be really good). UF has Tebow and OU Bradford. Both of these QBs are great, but have different styles. Hopefully (and I believe this) Pat White, Threet, and Tate/ Denard led RR offenses would be somewhat different, with the most balanced, most winning one being the "sophisticated" offensive.

"The longer they wait, however, the farther behind they fall"

becasue we all know that the scheme is whats most important, not oh, i dont know, maybe how good the players are, or better yet how comfortable the players are with the system, or even better, how good the system is for the players...

if the football game was as much about who has the newest play calling chart we could just have coaches send in their playbooks figure out which one was the most unique and award the victory that way.

I guarentee you RR is more concerned with running his schemes right, getting his players to perform and sprinkling in a couple new twists, then he is with making sure he is considered "an inovator"

I think the most common thing i said to myself during the season was "crap he has no time" or "man was that kid wide open how did we miss that?" not very much did i say "wow we would be so much better if our freshmen recievers and our crappy qb with a terrible line in front of him ran more complex read reciever routes that require upper class thinking and execution"

....this is the best UV.....EVER!!!

I still think we should do a square game or post odds on the next defector from the program. Just sayin'

any news on him?

i normally love smart football, but he's a little off base here.

he confuses ability with opportunity. we wont know what rod is capable of in the passing game until he has players capable of executing. likewise, theres no reason to think he's falling behind just because he can't put in everything he has in his arsenal right now. he's obviously dumbed down the offense out of necessity

and, as gsimmons points out, the point is to win, not to be fancy. not that we did much of either last year.

but i do think he has a certain point that rod's passing game generally (if you look at playbooks or cut-ups) isn't quite as advanced as what some out there have put together and maybe hasn't moved forward a whole lot over the years. is that a problem? maybe, maybe not. are there bigger fish to fry wrt the offense right now. definitely

but really, writing about michigan's passing sophistication in a year where nick sheridan saw significant time is what i think brian would call "not enough data so i make big"

I'm sure that if there were some tape available of RR's offense that allowed slow-footed Shaun King to break passing records at Tulane, RR's passing routes would look a lot better, too.

And even with "only three passing plays," as it was posted, there were still plenty of open recievers that Threet-idan flat out missed. I will judge RR's offense on the successes he has had elsewhere with better personnel. RR has won with a glorified run and shoot and with a run based spread option.

RR may be resting on his laurels as the "godfather of the spread option," but I sincerely doubt it. AFAIC, we really won't know where he stands on the innovative curve until we see what he does with good personnel. Even though RR was universally lambasted as being "inflexible" last year, he has shown that he is able to fit his program to the personnel at hand.

The one positive about last season is that nobody even expects UM to win more than seven games this year. UM will be an underdog often, and this could be a much better situation for them. There won't be nearly as much pressure on Tate Forcier as there would be if he were given the keys to a team that won twelve games last year. He really isn't being asked to do much more than go over .500 by most of the fanbase and media at this time.

If Forcier can simply hit the wide-open recievers that Threet-idan missed, he can fulfill the expectations of most. I think, though, that he will do better. And he might enable RR to show off a few more "tricks" than he did last year.

I like Smart Football, but I call fail on that analysis.
First off Rod is 1 of the best coaches in football, if he felt that his offense was ineffective due to route integration you would think he would try to remedy this. He would probably talk to his closest friends in the profession or the most successful coaches to learn from them. Boy who would that be???? Oh the guys that learned the offense from him and they meet with each off season in Florida and Oklahoma and they are 1 and the same. The passing game doesn't need to be sophiticated when you run over everyone. You line up when they bring down the 8th and 9th guy you pass...just ask Tom Osborne. If you have guys that are limited passers but good runners you focus on that. If/When Tate has some experience and our offense is not clicking at a rate equal to our talent and it is because no one open then someone can ask this question until then this is silly. I don't have the coaches tape, but I don't see Florida doing anything that amazing... have Tebow fake a run and watch everyone bite then throw to wide open receiver. Other coaches with unsophisticated route work in the passing game.

Tressel, Schembechler, Osborne, Switzer, Saban, Mack Brown

passing offense? Meaning he likely doesn't care how "intelligently designed" the routes are, he just wants them to work. His stated goal was always to make the defense defend the whole field, which seems like a subtly different goal than having cleverly designed schemes for the passing game. Perhaps I'm making distinctions where there are none, not sure.

On a related point (and going a but further out on the limb) isn't it clear by now that looking at who he's recruited at QB (White, Pryor, Newsome, Beaver, Robinson, Forcier) that if RR values the running QB hat can pass a touch more than the reverse? I mean, none of the guys above (other than arguably Forcier, who was not RR's first choice as we know) were valued super highly for their passing ability, in most instances they were guys who had promise (with work and development) as passers, but were fully formed running threats. And of this is so, then doesn't it follow that he has evolved his thinking to the spread being more of a running attack that can pass, rather than a fully balanced attack with sophisticated passing schemes?

often, in baseball, southern low-rent-seeming teams are stronger than northern big-name teams. i have no idea whether jacksonville or northern florida are any good----but i bet michigan will get more credit if they win those games than for wins over mac teams, small michigan schools, etc.,

it is just really hard to get top baseball, tennis, etc., players to stay north and spent so many months working out indoors

and the hardest to defend against a spread option read team is the slant bubble. ask anyone that has ever gamplaned against a spread option team, once that slot bubbles out, your holding your breath...

but if no one is worried about your qb's ability to throw and hit open recievers, your offensive lines ability to protect, or your wr's ability to get off of a jam or ability to block downfield, then no passing attack is going to work

Brian, is there any way you could get an interview with the Smart Football blogger? Seems like he has more to say on M's offense -- would be interesting to hear.

nebraska, the 80s and 90s.
oklahoma, the 70s and 80s.
usc, the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
ohio state, the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
michigan, the 70s and 80s.

i know, old examples...but those were often-spectacular offenses that worked, not because of "sophistication" but because they had great talent and execution. there's value in outsmarting the other guy, but eventually even the most "sophisticated" offense gets figured out and it comes down to how good you are at doing it and how good your players are.