A Week In The Life of Al Borges (part 2)
[In part 1, Michigan offensive coordinator Al Borges describes a typical game week and talks about the process of game preparation. In part 2, Borges talks about game day, calling plays, the infamous Ohio State game, and bubble screens. There is no part 3. =( ]
Okay it’s game day. I’m guessing the first thing you do is meet with all the coaches.
“Yeah. What we do is we’ll -- we don’t actually meet. We’ve already got that pretty much out of our system, although I’ve been at places where we did. I’ve been at places where the head coach wanted to meet on game day and talk about everything. But we’ve already hashed all that out. There’s no reason to bother with that at that point.
“But you know, we get up and have a little walk-through usually down at the church -- by the church across the street from the Campus Inn.”
I think I’ve seen you guys.
“Yeah. We’ll have a little walk-through, which is great. It gets the guys thinking about football. We started doing that about the middle of our first year. And then there’s a pre-game [meeting], depending on when the game is.
“Something that’s worthy of mention is that we go through a call-sheet rehearsal with all the interns and everybody that puts that together. You have to understand that I’m a bit of a technological moron. I don’t do --
[Borges gestures to his computer]
“-- All this stuff. I’m too old. I’m not real computer savvy and all that. I mean I can open a computer and find stuff for the most part if you want anything … I let the GAs kind of do that. But what we do is we go through sometimes as many as two or three games with those guys, and one with the quarterbacks where we’ll put a game on, and I’ll call the game practicing off -- say we’re playing Notre Dame and Notre Dame played USC. I’ll put the USC game on, put my call sheet in front of me, and whatever SC did, if they gained three yards [to get to] a second and seven, I will practice the call in that area that I would call in that situation. And maybe Notre Dame played Purdue, SC, and whoever. With those three games I’ll go through a whole call sheet of three games just practicing calling the plays. And we’ll do that on Friday so that, just like the players, I’ve rehearsed what I’m going to call and what I’m going to do. That Friday the quarterbacks will come in and I’ll do it with the quarterbacks.”
So they know what you’re thinking.
“See, what you’re trying to do with a game plan is you’re trying to present as few surprises as possible to them. The more surprises you get, the more likely you’ll have an error.”
I see. So you do the walk-through, pre-game stuff, and you’re super prepared. A couple hours before the game, you make it down to the Stadium and go up to the box. Then what?
“I watch the band.”
Sorry?
“I watch the band!”
Oh okay …
“I’m done! There’s nothing else to do. There’s no build-up to a crescendo. I just watch the band. Put the call sheet in front of me. Get everything in order. Have a little note sheet. My intern up there, he will pass me errors as the game progresses -- Stephen Weins. He’ll write things down, and every series he’ll give them to me, and then I’ll get Devin or whoever the quarterback is on the phone and go over the errors so that everything’s being addressed as it’s screwed up.”
Ah. I’m kind of interested in how communication works between the box and the field.
“That’s it.”
You’re on the phone with --
“I’m on the phone with Steno (?), who sends the play and everybody can hear the play. The group guy can hear the play so he can send the correct personnel in the game. And we document as we go.”
So you send the call down to the field and the offense lines up. But then the defense comes out in their formation. What if they show you something you weren’t expecting?
“Well, you have built-in … Certain plays you run and you don’t really care. You run and you don’t worry about what the defense is doing because they can handle pretty much anything. Other plays are what we call ‘must-audible’ situations, where the play is not conducive to what you’re seeing and your likelihood for success is not good. So the quarterback should get you out of the play. And then we have what we call ‘advantage’ audibles where the defense maybe lined up giving you something you didn’t anticipate and the quarterback will get you into an advantage situation. And then you have ‘check’ plays where you’ll have two plays called in the huddle: one versus a certain look, another versus another look.
"You know, you’ve got so many ways [to call] a play -- the game’s become very sophisticated that way where you can use a lot of on-the-line-of-scrimmage plays. We’re not a team that peeks to the sideline to get a lot of plays and stuff. The pro quarterback is programmed to do -- if he sees this, do that, and if he sees this, do that, and so on.”
How is Devin doing in that respect?
“Oh he’s good. Yeah. But he’s been in the system for a few years. Plus he played wide receiver, which didn’t hurt any. He’s seen it from both perspectives, which you don’t really have with most quarterbacks. They don’t really understand. So he does pretty good. The more the quarterback plays, the more he’s afforded the lattitude of changing the plays and doing whatever. The newer the quarterback, the less you get into a chess game on the line of scrimmage.”
Gotcha. I want to ask you about something you’ve said in the past, about how the success of your offense later in the game is often dependent on your success earlier in the game --
“Right -- turns."
What?
"Your issues with play-calling are what I call ‘turns.’ How many turns do you get? How many chances do you get? How many first downs do you get so that you can call more plays? And this is where you become a victim of execution to a degree.
“There’s a lot of criticism, I know, from the Ohio State game, which the plan was very similar [to the Iowa game] and there was a lot of the lauding or praises for the Iowa game. A lot of the [Ohio State] plan was in the Iowa game. There was a lot of the same stuff. There was a little more nuance that we actually ended up running in the bowl game -- I’m telling you something I haven’t told anyone before -- but the second half of the Ohio State game we didn’t get to a lot of those calls because we failed on third-down-and-short situations several times. We failed, we turned the ball over a couple times. A lot of those calls don’t get out of your mouth. You see what I mean?
“I told you guys this in the press conference, and I remember saying this: everybody’s going to complain about the play-calling and who’s touching the ball, you know? Getting carries? If you’re not getting first downs, you’re not getting calls out. You don’t get that turn. You lost that turn, because something went wrong and you didn’t move the chains. You turn the ball over. And now everybody’s going to think you screwed it up, which, at the end of the day, maybe you did. It’s not all the players; it’s the coaches, too, now. We don’t always make the perfect call. But the bottom line is at the end of the day, if you don’t get a lot of chances to call plays, you’ll always be short. You won’t rush the ball very well. Nobody will rush for 100 yards. You won’t have a receiver catching over 100 yards. Your quarterback won’t have good numbers. You have to keep the chains moving so the play-caller can get more calls off. You’re in a constant situation where you’re trying to set plays up, but if you don’t get to those plays, you never get to the counterpunch.”
I see. So for your offense to be successful, you need the opportunity to run plays so you can set up other plays.
“Mmhmm.”
There were plays that you ran in the bowl game that you didn’t run against Ohio State because you weren’t able to set them up?
“Exactly.”
What would happen if -- let’s say there’s a run play that has pass component as the counter punch. If the run wasn’t successful, could you still call the pass?
“Doesn’t work that way. Because you have to understand the residual effect of football plays. This is very difficult for fans to understand. And I’m not being condescending, because it would be for me if I were [a fan].
"People sometimes don’t understand the value of a failed play. Sometimes the defense overdefends a play and gives you another play by doing so. So you may run a run in there and it doesn’t gain anything, and obviously people say, ‘Quit running the ball up the middle!’ How many times do you hear that? ‘Don’t run the ball up the middle!’ Well sometimes running up the ball up the middle will afford you the opportunity to pull the ball out and throw the ball down the field, because people are so aggressive with playing that play up the middle. I call it the residual effect of football plays. What’s the leftover effect of what we just did?
"If both plays don’t work, then you probably have a problem. Either the plan wasn’t good or your execution’s off. There’s only two ways plays fail. The plan isn’t good or your execution is lousy. Overdefended, underexecuted. That’s why plays fail. But you have to understand that a play, just because it fails, doesn’t mean it’s a bad play. It may give you something down the line. For example, if you ran the ball into the line of scrimmage and gained a half a yard. But the play-action pass off that play gained 35 yards. What’s the average of the two plays?”
… 17.75?
“Would you take that?”
I’d take that.
“Not a man in the world wouldn’t. And that’s why you have to understand, that’s how it works sometimes. It costs something at times to get to that 35-yard gain.”
How does having a head coach like Brady Hoke who goes for fourth downs and hates settling for field goals change the way you call plays?
“You just have to be prepared for those situations, you know? When he says, ‘I’m going for it on fourth-and-one,’ just make sure you have a play ready. Sometimes he’ll ask, ‘How do you feel about it?’ and he’ll get on the headset.
“Now the one thing that people don’t understand -- they think that because he doesn’t wear a headset he’s not communicative. That’s insane. You have to be on my end of it. Any time something’s crucial, he does have a headset on and he is communicative. Two-minute drills, fourth-and-one. He makes sure that all that stuff’s in. I’ve never been up there not knowing what to do based on his decision right away.”
Do you like his aggressiveness?
“Oh yeah. Hell yes. Sends a great message to everybody. The offense, the defense, to the whole team. We’re not playing this thing to tie to game. We’re playing this thing to win the game, which means … sometimes Babe Ruth struck out, right? A lot. More than anybody I think, for a while. You’re going to swing and miss at times, but if you don’t swing hard, you ain’t gonna hit a home run. You have to go out there and you have to play.”
And it probably helps knowing that on third down, you have two chances to convert.
“Yeah, and he’ll keep you informed when he’s going to do that generally. He’ll say, ‘You have two to do that.’ Again, he does a great job of communicating. He’ll say, ‘Al, you have two plays to make this first down.’ Unless something blows up, he’ll stick to that. Like if you get sacked for a seven-yard loss, he’ll say, ‘All bets are off. We’re kicking a field goal now.’
“He’s awesome because coach Hoke never loses his composure. While other coaches are screaming in skulls or yelling at the officials or yelling at their own team or they’re doing whatever, he’s always composed. He’s doing whatever gives you a chance -- we’ve come back in a lot of games since I’ve been here. Several games we’ve been behind. And [the fact that we win] is generally the head coach. The head coach sends that message more than anybody. He doesn’t lose it, so nobody loses it.”
What do you do at halftime?
“Just go down and look at what they’ve done defensively, you know? Take all the data that I’ve been given from in the box and from the guys downstairs and then put together a new script of plays. Maybe it’s not 15-17 plays. Maybe eight or nine plays. But put together a new script of plays that we think were overdefended or underdefended and start the second half and put some plays in that maybe we didn’t run in the first half, maybe we didn’t get a chance to call it.”
Okay. Time is almost up, so let’s talk some philosophy. What do you think is the most efficient way to move the ball?
“Oh. Through balance. It’s the ability to run and pass with balance. Because that’s what the defense doesn’t want to see. Most of the time, why we fail offensively is our inability to do one or the other. Run or a pass. When you’re the most effective in playcalling … I can go like this, Heiko.”
[Borges pulls out the Ohio State call sheet. Without looking, he points to a random play.]
“Read 64 --”
(I am not sure what this means.)
“-- And it works. You want to know why? Because we threw a pass out of read 64 and now they have to defend [the pass] and pray you [pass]. It doesn’t make any difference. When they’re forced to defend both dimensions, the safeties have to play softer, which allows you to run. You understand?”
Yup.
“If they’re playing too aggressively on the run, the outside becomes more vulnerable. It’s hard to defend everything unless you’re imposing.”
So you call the formation and the play, but the quarterback ultimately decides run or pass?
“Right, but not with every play. It just depends on the play. Certain times, yes, exactly. And the decision within the passing game, too. Once you’ve called a pass play, the decision-making’s huge. It’s not forcing the ball into coverage knowing that certain times they take certain throws away. And you have to have a contingency plan for every single play. I learned this from Bill Walsh. This is the first thing I learned in pass offense. When everything’s not perfect, what’s your contingency plan? Who’s the next guy? And then who’s the next guy after that? And then if nobody’s open, what’s the quarterback do? You have to have a plan after that that’s not helter-skelter. You can’t go out there willy-nilly and say ‘This didn’t work, let’s turn this into backyard football.’ There has to be structure within your improv.”
Speaking of Bill Walsh, what’s the endpoint in the evolution of the Michigan offense?
“What do you mean?”
Well, you and Brady have talked about changing the look of the offense for the last three years. Obviously you’re not there yet, but is there an endpoint to the evolution, and what does that offense look like?
“Oh, it won’t stop evolving. We can’t stop evolving. If you look at the way college football changes over the years -- I mean, what it looks like now doesn’t look the like it did in 1986. Players are getting faster and stronger … What defenses are doing with their coverages and zone blitzing is a lot more sophisticated. If you look at what Michigan was doing back in 1940 with [Tom] Harmon carrying the ball, even the uniforms weren’t the same. You can’t stop evolving. That’s why we do so much time studying what other people are doing. Now, we may not use all of it, but we have to keep up.”
Do you see Michigan as having a niche in college football as far as offense goes?
“Hmm. I don’t know about that … What I can tell you is that we are always going to be balanced. We are going to run and pass with balance, and we’re going to do it in a way that helps our defense, even if that’s not the direction a lot of teams are going.”
What do you mean exactly?
“Well, I’m not going to get into that discussion too much, but so many guys want to run 80 plays a game these days and then they wonder, ‘Gee, why isn’t the defense playing well?’ If I thought we would be more successful going 100 miles an hour all the time, I’d do it.”
Could you do it if you wanted to?
“Oh definitely. We have what we call Nascar, and we could run it all day if I thought it would give us the best chance of winning. But it doesn’t. Over the last three years I’ve done a lot of research, and it shows that you play better as a team when you play to all three phases of the game. Offense, defense, and special teams. It’s a team sport. I’d be more than happy if the offense doesn’t put up a ton of points as long as at the end of the day, we win, because I hate -- I HATE being in that meeting room after a loss. It’s the worst feeling.”
All right. Well thanks so much for your time. Do you mind if I take a photo of you?
“No, go right ahead.”
How about next to your white board. Okay, act like I just asked you about bubble screens.
“Heh. You had to turn this into a [farfergnugen] circus, didn’t you.”
Sorry ... What is your deal with bubble screens anyway?
“I don’t have a problem with them! I just don’t like calling them as much as -- what most people don’t understand is that the bubble screen is an [alternative] to a run play. Here, let me show you.”
[Borges begins scribbling madly on his white board. He has the offense in I-formation and the defense with the defensive back over the slot rolled up in the box as a run defender.]
“The bubble screen is a play designed to take advantage of the fact that this guy --”
[Borges points to the defensive back.]
“Has moved up and inside to defend the run. When you see this, most guys want to throw a weak-[butt] bubble screen and run around it. I would rather --”
[Borges draws an emphatic arrow from the running back to the defensive back.]
“Run right into it and knock the [poop] out of this guy.”
I see.
“So it’s not that I’m against calling a bubble screen. I just wouldn’t want to do it and sacrifice five running plays a game. Once or twice? maybe.”
For the record, I don’t actually count the number of bubble screens you call.
“You can do whatever the [heck] you want.”
I was extremely upset and disappointed with Borges during that Ohio State game but clearly he's a hard guy to dislike for long. I really like his "team" philosophy with thinking about the defense and special teams. It's nice to hear an offensive coordinator talk about the three phases.
Great read, great writing. Pieces like this on mgoblog are written better and way more informative than any of the pieces I've read on the subscription sites.
farfergnugen... no one knows what it means but it's provocative and gets the people going.
I’ll join in on the “dat a boy” parade because Heiko, you nailed this one sir.
Props to Al for his candor too but I disagree that 1 yard gains up that gut cause safeties to creep. If anything it should tell them that the D-line has this I can hang back and play ball hawk.
I take issue with your statement that no one knows what it means.
"Fahr" from the verb fahren which means 'to drive'
"vergnügen" is the word for 'joy' or 'pleasure.' A Vergnügungspark is an amusement park (think Cedar Point). I also had a German teacher tell me that "vergnügen" can be used euphamistically for 'orgasm.' Thus, "fahrvergnügen" translates approximately as "the orgasmic joy of driving." One can see why Volkswagen (note German spelling of "wagen") chose that as a marketing slogan.
Full disclosure, I am in no way a football guru. I love the game but many of the intricacies are lost on me. From what I do understand though, the explanation AB gave about constraint plays really didn't apply a great deal to what went on the OSU game.
Now I have moved past that at this point and hope (and want to believe) that was just a little blip on AB's tenure here at UM, but that explanation just brought questions for me rather than answers.
If I am a defensive coach and I have an offense that is running the ball up the middle and not getting anything from those runs and the tackles are taking place at or near the line of scrimmage by one of the front seven...Is that going to tell me to bring extra men into the box or leave my safeties deep? I don't know how to go back and look, but I would think it would tell the defensive coach to leave the safeties deep because the front seven could handle it.
If that's the case (and as I said, I'm not sure that it is, but if it is) is it really a constraint play you are calling, or just a failed play from the onset? I guess what I am saying is it can only really be considered a contraint play if it has the desired effect (which in this case would be to draw extra defenders into the box) and if that effect isn't achieved what has been accomplished other than a wasted play?
Thinking about it now, I guess AB's thought process could have been "I've called this play a couple of times and got nothing out of it. I haven't even gotten them to commit an extra guy to the box. If I could just get one good run up the middle that should change that. They'll pull that extra defender into the box and then BAM...I can hit them over the top."
Again, I'm not the football mastermind, but that at least makes a little sense. It also begs the question of how many times do you try to run a constraint play that isn't working before you move on to something else?
When it usually plays out in shades of gray. Or levels.
And there's a lot more than just 3 or 4, but to not get too wordy:
#1 you run the football for a big chunk, over and over. They put the extra guy in the box, then you go over the top to great effect.
#2 You run the ball to modest or little effect. They don't commit the extra guy to run defense, but they still have to respect the run and defend it, so you still have a fair chance of passing, if not an actual mismatch.
#3 You say "we can run on them worth a damn," stop, and just pass the ball. They adjust the other way, and instead of putting an extra guy in the box, they put out an extra pass defender, and/or blitz and kill your QB, because they know they not only don't have to worry about getting killed by the run, but you're not even trying. So they can just tee off on the QB and run extra zone guys.
Depending on how effective a team is, and the idea that defenses don't run the same play every time no matter how the offense they're facing is doing, it changes where you fall in or inbetween those categories. If you can kill them on the ground, you can kill them in the air, and you're rolling in any regard. But if they don't have to at least respect the balance (or the idea that if they go all pass defense even your run game that hasn't had much success will start ripping off yards on you) then not only do you not have them trying to catch up, you're not even going to get a fair shake.
It ties into what Seth was writing earlier in the week, bringing up Purdue. After Brees we didn't have much trouble with their passing spread because we knew they couldn't run on us. It was too one dimensional.
This is probably the best thing that has ever been posted on the blog, content-wise.
Also, it goes to show that the average football fan has no idea what goes into a gameplan. It is easy to criticize coaches on game day, but they know what they are doing. A good coach never blames the players, but if things don't go well, it's because of exection about 80% of the time.
Borges has forgotten more about football than anyone on this blog knows.
So what I'm hearing is that Derrick Green is going to be the dude to "knock the [poop] out of this guy."
I'm loving the open ended questions, Heiko. Med schools sounds like it is paying dividends.
Open Note To Coach Borgess
Dear Coach Borges.
Thank you. Thank you for doing this interview with Heiko and MGoBlog. Thank you letting us peek behind the curtain. Thank you for not dismissing this blog out of hand. Thank you for not letting past criticism of you on this blog dissuade you from doing this interview.
Everyone here is a passionate UM football fan, but most of us are just that...fans. Very few have ever seen or understood the inner workings of the program. Thus your candid responses are much appreciated.
10,000 MGoPoints to you sir.
Go Blue. Beat Ohio.
but one thing just popped in my head - somewhere 1/2way down the interview it occurred to me that Borges reads this blog.
Great read. Al isn't able to effectively "set the table" because there are some things that his personnel just can't do very well - like run anything up the middle. A "failed" play works to set up another if the defense has to sell out a bit to make that stop. Then you can you can run a play to take advantage of said sell out. If defenses routinely beat you man to man, there really is no set up to take advantage of. I like his thinking and when we have the personnel to force defenses to "cheat" to stop Al's set-up plays, we will see big pay offs.
Yessir. Al laid out his philosophy quite nicely, and frankly that part of the interview is some of the meatiest and honest sports commentary I've seen. Al really put himself out there for this interview, even revealing some wrinkles in his decision-making; specifically I'm thinking of the bit in Part 1 where he talked about the tremendous anxiety he used to feel leading up to games. How a man deals with this --and it seems Al has done so admirably-- is a big part of the game, and may have some influence on his management of "turns." But now we're getting speculative....
Anyway, football --any sport really, but especially football-- is a complex system. As much as I enjoy the quantitative analyses featured on this blog and elsewhere, the temptation --really a cognitive imperfection in our "design"-- tends toward a linear concept of causality. One of many aspects of the Self to be overcome.
So finally we know the term for what Brian Kelly does.
partially blew my mind. Not totally sure I agree with him though, it's easier to run through air than another defensive back and mixing it up between running and bubble screening seems to leave the DB in a bind to the point that one time you're going to get air instead of him because he guesses wrong.
Still convinced that Borges is going to run a bubble screen in garbage time one game and actually say in the post game presser that he did it for Heiko
Heiko really tremendous job with this interview. Thank you for showing us some great insight into Michigan football. Bravo sir
I've ever read here. I heart Al Borges.
"Best thing I've ever read[.]"
I'm not impressed. I can get the same kind of information on M-Live.
/s. Enormous motherfucking /S.
One general comment about tempo, there are two things to keep in mind when deciding if up tempo is right for your team.
First you better be scoring most of the time. 6 plays and punt or 3 and out is just going to boost the morale of the other team. If you score on a quick strike, even if you didn't take time off the clock, at least the defense has something to be excited about. One of the things I disliked like about RR's playcalling was how quickly he could go 3 and out. At least kill some time so the defense can finish their gatorade.
Secondly, what do you risk awakening if you go hurry up and score a lot? I'll point to that stat about how near the end of Carr's career we were more likely to win if we trailed entering the 4th, because it meant Carr unleashed RoboHenne. Whereas if you're facing Greg Davis or Andrew Maxwell, screw it, force them to try to keep pace and let your defense exploit the fact the offense is outside of its comfort zone. Faster tempo teams do get murdered by slower tempo teams when the slower tempo team can just put the cruise control on at 35 mph and spend a 9 minute drive destroying the defense's will to live.
I can't say enough about how highly this speaks of Heiko, for earning Borges' trust, and Borges for actually doing this. How many blogs could land an in-depth interview with a coordinator? (A: one that I know of.) And how many coordinators would do it? (A: same.) Some still may disagree with the playcalling at times. But regardless, you really get the feeling this program is in the hands of very high-quality people, from Hoke on down.
I understand the differing philosophies about tempo. Both can work. But what I'd like to see is something like a play Tressel ran against Michigan in 2006. On a third and short (I think it was), the offense rushed to line up in a formation that looked like a QB sneak. Instead Troy Smith threw it over the top to a wide open Ted Ginn for the TD. The defense was completely fooled. That's the sort of situational changeup that seems a waste not to take advantage of.
Thank you for writing this.
And thanks to Coach Borges for agreeing to the interview.
Can we just use that picture of Borges as the new banner please?
Also - this was awesome. I'd love to see it with another coach or two if it would ever be possible.
This made mlive via Meinke, so woot!(?) And of course the commenters are complete dolts.
"Spoke a lot of words, said not a damn thing." I'd like to see what that person considers good content, then. Sorry his football analysis went flying over your head.
A minute spent on MLive is a minute you spend destroying brain cells.
as long as you completely avoid the comment sections.
Thanks for the piece! Great work, Heiko. My only reservation, which is no fault of Heiko, is that the interview is inviting overanalyzation by readers. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing. However, it is really difficult to understand anyone from just one interview. I.e. Nuances don't always come through in just one interview.
Regardless, I loved reading the interview, and it is the kind of content that I would be willing to support with more than my mouse clicks.
Thank you very much, sir!
Heiko, could you please try to explain what Borges is trying to get across when he talks about bubble screens at the end? It makes no sense and really scares me that this is what our philosophy is. I'm assuming it came out wrong or I'm misinterpreting but this is how I view what he said.
If he would rather run a play at an unblocked defender instead of passing to a player with a blocker in front of him, than that is a poor design. I don't even really see a defense to that statment. It's simple math.
Maybe what he means is that he expects that his RB should be able to consistently have more success one on one against an undersized CB than the bubble screen would? This is dependant on a RB that is either big enough to just bowl him over, or agile enough to make him miss... Lets hope Green is both.
I agree with your interpretation of the comments but it's just plain wrong to think that way. For Borges philosophy to have a greater expected value than the bubble screen you would need Barry Sanders vs the freshmen version of William Avery as 1 match up and the bubble would have to be thrown to me with Sam Mcguffie blocking Ronnie Lott.
It's just stupid.
Thanks so much, Heiko and Al.
This gave me so much joy to read at work. Getting to the Bubble Screen stuff was priceless.
Borges layin' down the law. Love it.
REAL RECOGNIZE REAL
this was amazing. heiko needs a raise.
well done sir. and thanks to borges for being so open.
I just got finished reading the comment thread of the MLive article that linked to this interview. Never again will I read a freeper comment section.
I am looking forward to an actual running game this year and to see how that affects the play calling.
A good running game will create alot of good play action passes down field. I think we'll see alot of field stretching this year.
anymore than I already did. I was wrong. Great stuff and beyond insightful. While Heiko obviously deserves a lot of credit, what other coach\coordinator would have agreed to such an interview?
can put together an interview with a coach at a big-time school, have a meaningful discussion on how they think and game plan while the big sports news outlets like ESPN continue to spew bland garbage headlines with no real substance to their articles.........
Great job, fantastic interview!
Love the interview BTW Heiko. Awesome work.
Along with everyone else great job. I love the fact that Borges is willing to address certain complaints that fans have in the play calling the osu game. I cant even imagine sitting in a coaches room and having him draw up plays and having a intelegant thing to say after words. I would be is such fanboy mode. Again great work.
Rich Rodriguez knows more about football defense than most fans. He also knows more about the importance of recruiting and how to recruit offensive linemen. That doesn't mean he always makes the right decisions regarding each of these. Al Borges has lots of experience with playcalling, but is not in any way infallible with it; he even admitted as much to Heiko.
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