A 49ers Fan's View of Greg Roman
This is kinda long. So, if you'd like to move it to a Diary, that's cool with me. Nevertheless, given the possibility of Greg Roman joining the UM staff, I thought I would share some of the perceptions we Niners faithful had of his performance in SF. Please take this for exactly what it is: One fan’s opinion of Roman - - - nothing more and not intended to be a sign of support or doom-and-gloom for the guy.
For context, Greg Roman was one of several offensive coordinators on the 49ers staff from 2011-2014. I’m probably oversimplifying his role, but Roman was basically the running game coordinator between the 20s. Geep Chryst called most of the red zone plays (with Coach Harbaugh), and several other staff contributed to the passing-related playcalling both in the red zone and outside of it. More or less, though, Roman was known as “the guy” on offense, whether fair or unfair to him. Most fans – including myself – found this “offense by committee” approach pretty maddening; and, subsequently, it’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what value Roman brought to the table…but here it goes!
I’ll start with the Pros:
Establishing Ballers: Roman inherited a dumpster fire on offense from Singletary and immediately made superstars out of several players, including Staley, Iupati, Gore, and Davis. These guys were always good but had been very inconsistent. However, under Roman, those guys became the offensive core of the team and were the offense-based foundations for our deep playoff and Super Bowl run (Note: most Niners fans would argue it would really be our defense that led those runs. I also fall in that category, but this post is about Roman).
Rushing: Roman – and Coach Harbaugh – brought in a heavy smash-mouth brand of football that hinged on “out physcalling” the opponent. This worked well because we had such a dominant blocking scheme, and our rushing stats dramatically improved from Singletary to Harbaugh. Singletary averaged roughly 100 yards per game; Roman averaged a low of 128 and a high of 156.
Turnovers: Guh…Probably the most frustrating part of Singletary’s tenure was the inevitable 2-3 turnovers we’d spot the other team per game (at least it felt this way as a fan). Probably the best statistic of Roman’s time in SF is that in year 1 of his employment, SF had the fewest giveaways in the NFL.
Note: You could also argue the passing game improved under Roman (Smith went from disaster to manageable, and Kaep was a stud in years 1 and 2). However, I question how much Roman actually had to do with passing. Most fans believe he “influenced” the passing attack without ever actually managing it.
Now the cons:
Clock Issues: The Niners consistently led the league – or were close to it – in delays of game penalties and “wasted” timeouts. I can’t tell you how many times I screamed at the TV, “hike the f*cking ball” only to see another poorly timed timeout or DOG penalty. Roman absorbed a lot of the heat for this – fair or unfair. Probably the most egregious example of this was the last drive of the Super Bowl.
Conservative Playcalling and Style: Yes, if you look at the Niners record during the Coach Harbaugh era, there’s not much to complain about. It was a pretty dominant stretch, and Roman contributed to that. However, as a fan watching the games, we consistently left points on the field. We didn’t have a killer instinct to blow out opponents when we should have, and – instead – played a sort of “Lloyd ball” equivalent. Also, while I don’t necessarily hate “manball,” the best offenses in the NFL were running lots of spread or spread equivalents. The name of the game was scoring TDs, and we weren’t necessarily doing that. Also, as it relates to the Pistol and other schemes, there was a very inconsistent style of offense. We’d run Pistol one week and abandon it for a few weeks. Like UM, many Niners players openly questioned our offense game planning and the lack of a true identity for the team (especially in the red zone, which – as noted – didn’t necessarily fall under Roman).
Slow Tempo: This is partially related to the clock issues, but one of our big issues was tempo. We were simply not built to come from behind in games, and once we got down on the scoreboard we couldn’t adjust and speed up. This cost us a few games against Seattle, which – yeah – not a fun experience for Niners fans.
There were other issues with the 49ers offense during these years, but it’s hard to know what amount – if any – Roman contributed to them. Some of the issues including the lack of developing a true #1 WR; red-zone efficiency; red-zone playcalling; etc. I intentionally didn’t include them because technically Roman didn’t “own” those area.
Take these musings for what they are worth. They aren’t grounded in science or data per se; instead, like the message board, they are the reflections that we fans had over Roman’s tenure on staff. These are opinions, which you are totally free to disagree with. You certainly won’t hurt my feelings if you think they are wrong.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:23 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:01 PM ^
But in the almost 10 years since then college offenses have continued to adapt. Teams are not winning on the highest level running 1970 offense.
This just reminds me of Tropic Thunder when Robert Downey Jr is being told "you're Australian, be Australian". Harbaugh you're a college coach, run a college offense. This year is a perfect example of why it doesn't make sense to have a new WR come in and be expected to run a perfect NFL route, then expect a qb to make a perfect NFL throw, and then the same WR to make an NFL catch. It's a lot to ask of players who are not at the level, and some who never will be.
There are plently examples of great college players who never made it work in the NFL. Are you saying you wouldn't love a Tebow caliber player running an offense that fits his skills at Michigan? Because I think that would be amazing over what we've seen so far.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:39 PM ^
Well he did recruit Milton who can run. McCaffrey supposedly can as well. If Patterson can't play next season we might see him out there.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:59 PM ^
Milton is NOT a running qb. There is a huge amount of people who loosely following recruiting who see an African American player who's listed as a QB and automatically assume he's a runner.
January 3rd, 2018 at 8:51 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 8:19 PM ^
.....a kid a couple years out of high school will struggle to make the right reads. Even if we had an 19 year old Tom Brady......he would struggle.
Running a complex offense, you are matching a 50 year old defensive coordinator's wits against a 20 year old kid. I will bet on the middle aged DC.
This is one reason we have clock issues. You can see the QB analysing things and the OLine making their calls even as the clock ticks lower.
All the while, the defense is just shifting and getting inside the head of our guys.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:06 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:25 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:50 PM ^
Tressel was getting his ass kicked against SEC-level teams. Then Meyer came in with a modern offense and changed the story.
Meyer's O >> Tressel's O.
I want Meyer's O over Tressel's O.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:16 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:42 PM ^
I'll take slow and conservative over ineffective any day. Tempo doesn't necessarily win games and Ferentz and Tressell certainly beat plenty of teams with a conservative approach.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:53 PM ^
We need an offense that will beat Ohio State.
Period.
Not just an offense that's better than the awful mess we have now.
.
January 3rd, 2018 at 5:08 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 6:01 PM ^
The problem is you're cherry-picking your hypotheticals.
The trait that Ohio State fans find 2nd-most maddening about Urban Meyer is his complete willingness to go completely conservative on offense once he has a lead and rely on his defense. So if you assume in your hypothetical that a good QB gives Michigan 14 more points, you should also consider that Ohio State could have called a very different game if they hadn't been ahead and playing really well on defense. (For the record, the trait Ohio State fans find most maddening about Urban Meyer is his insistence on running the QB instead of RBs so often.)
Another hypothetical that seems almost as likely as the better-Michigan-QB one is what if Ohio State had a better QB? There's a reasonable case to be made that Ohio State has won in spite of JT Barrett at least as much as they've won because of him. It was probably due to horrible QB coaching, but even still, he was a truly awful passer for most of the last three years of his career. There are plenty of Ohio State fans that will tell you a better Ohio State QB would have won them a National Championship in 2015 and led to blowout wins against Michigan.
I am genuinely curious to find out if Michigan's offensive woes have been due to personnel or not. Their QB play certainly has been terrible, but it's not clear to me how much of this is due to lack of talent, and how much of it is due to scheme and supporting cast. If it's purely personnel, then there's a great chance for a quick fix. If it's more scheme and offensive line issues, I'm skeptical we'll see championship level offense in 2018.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:31 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:36 PM ^
So who would call the RPOs?
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:54 PM ^
They will be RROs.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:38 PM ^
Jedd left and the passing game took several steps backwards, granted there were other factors. We could do worse.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:39 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:49 PM ^
The RUMORS are that Fisch and Wheately didn't see eye to eye with Drevno and Harbaugh in terms of the offense both would be unlikely to come back under Harbaugh even for a sole OC position. Not that their was bad blood or they don't like Michigan, just didn't work as coaching staff.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:00 PM ^
Fisch is not coming back to Michigan. It's weird people are still bringing him up.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:02 PM ^
I heard this as well. Needless to say, the loss of Fisch and Wheatley were larger than what Harbaugh probably anticipated.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^
Rumors are often just that, rumors. Maybe this is accurate, maybe it isn't (I have no reason to disbelieve it, though Fisch wasn't going to stay around that long anyway). But as you say, it doesn't mean there's bad blood, just philosophical difference. Happens all the time. It certainly seems to have happened with Greg Frey, and I have no reason to believe that he didn't work as hard as he could to do his job for the rest of the year after it became clear that zone wasn't the way the team would work.
Seems it may be the same thing for Wheatley and Fisch.
January 3rd, 2018 at 2:47 PM ^
Great information/opinion. No real surprises there. Here's what I like about the idea of adding Roman to the team:
- Proven success with running strategies
- Tactics that fit our current personnel
- Overall success with OL
- Established working relationship with Harbaugh
Here are my concerns:
- Would Harbaugh, Roman, and Enos(?) put together a coherent strategy with a clear identity?
- Would Michigan's offense make use of space and misdirection to gain more "easy" yards? Would this staff "scheme" open some plays?
- Would the complexity of the offense be reduced?
- Would MIchigan move towards establishing core plays and a core identity, or continue the jack-of-all, master-of-none offensive apporach?
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:45 PM ^
There is a Facebook page dedicated to the firing of Greg Roman. I, for one, would pass on Roman as a OC. As a line coach, maybe. I think he and Drevno are on the same plane in the OC world, would rather see a newer/younger OC. Mark Helfrich comes to mind as a change of pace guy who is probably willing to adapt and learn some new schemes.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:25 PM ^
But past results are not indicative of future gains.
Pro and college are two different beasts.
We have ample proof that those who were successful in other places (sans Hoke- who didn't have much success prior and D. Brown) have not really fared well while at Michigan.
So, if hired, he could be great or he could be bad. There are too many vairables.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:27 PM ^
isn't very encouraging: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/greg-roman-chatter
Hard to see it as an obvious win from an OC standpoint. The one thing is Roman might be able to approve our OL play, which obviously has been atrocious.
January 3rd, 2018 at 3:46 PM ^
I posted this somewhere else and largely because I was aware of the negative attitudes towards Roman (and Enos, to a lesser extent), but the numbers don't really back that up.
Roman took over as OC for the 49ers (and obviously the caveats in OP's post still apply), but here are their rankings from Football Outsiders...
He was hired in 2011 as the 49ers OC. Offensive Efficiency Rankings from Football Outsiders:
2010: 24th
2011: 18th
2012: 5th
2013: 8th
2014: 16th
In YPP they were 23rd, 2nd, 13th, and 23rd. (17th in 2010)
Then, Roman takes the Bills job and the offense shoots up from 26th to Top 10.
2014: 26th
2015: 9th
2016: 10th
In YPP they were 27th in 2014 (before he took over), then 6th and 14th so there's been improvement in both his NFL stops. This year, Buffalo fell to 29th, but somehow made the playoffs. Football is weird y'all.
For Enos, he had never been an OC before going to Arkansas (outside of some HS and FCS), but here are their S&P rankings over the past 3 years:
2015: 4th
2016: 39th
2017: 43rd
To be perfectly honest, I wonder how much of this year is simply losing Speight and trotting out O'Korn and a RS Freshman who wasn't ready. Harbaugh 100% deserves the blame for bringing in O'Korn and recruiting Peters (who still may turn out to be good), but look at what happened to FSU when Francois went down.
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:05 PM ^
These are great data points. Thank you for adding. Admittedly, I have no clue what metric is considered the "best metric" for offense. I did check out NFL.com for their "Total Offense" stat, and SF's best finish under Roman was #11 in 2012. The other years the offense finished in the bottom half of the NFL rankings.
So - - - I don't really know how to interpret the information. Maybe he's efficient but doesn't generate a lot of yards and points?! IDK...
January 3rd, 2018 at 10:58 PM ^
Look at Clemson without Watson - sheesh!
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:18 PM ^
On balance . . . do not want.
A very DeBordian hire.
An NFL retread who's career has been on a downward trajectory.
We got Don Brown. Penn State got Joe Moorhead. Top-level teams have options.
There are better choices for Michigan than this.
There is only one criteria that matters:
Is this guy going to beat Ohio State?
Ohio State eats offenses like this for breakfast. Meanwhile their offense is scoring 30+ points.
We have Urban Meyer and Ohio State in our Division. We need to make better choices than this.
This feels like a very complacent hire if it happens. Ohio State, the rise of Penn State, and the tenacity of Michigan State do not call for a complacent hire.
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:07 PM ^
It seems we are not going the OSU route with Greg Schiano, ND route with Chip Long, or the PSU route with Joe Moorhead.
I am concerned about Roman or Enos as OC. Harbaugh needs to go in a different direction in my opinion. I mean, he is harbaugh and he probably knows more about football than some HR rep at a failing paper company, but I have concerns about trying to run a pro style offense in a sport that is moving more towards empty sets, 4 WR's, and no FB's. I guess we are going to see how this plays out.
Nevertheless, Go Blue.
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:18 PM ^
With Harbaugh and Andrew Luck? They seemed to have a good running attack with Toby Gearhart(Sorry if spelled incorrectly).
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:27 PM ^
Why is everyone so hyped about Stanford as our goal state?
I've yet to see them in the CFP. They've never even been close.
Their big accomplishment was beating Virginia Tech in a New Years Day bowl game.
OK.
Brady Hoke beat Virginia Tech in a New Years Day bowl game.
If Stanford was in the Big Ten East they would finish third most of the time too.
I don't want to just be the Stanford of the Big Ten East.
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:35 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 5:56 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 8:06 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 9:59 PM ^
All of Harbaughs best college offenses (2005-2006 SD and all 4 years at Stanford) involved David Shaw.
January 4th, 2018 at 9:49 AM ^
Harbaugh with David Shaw:
2006: #1 (Total Offense)
2007: #83 (S&P+)
2008: #31
2009: #6
2010: #3
Average: 24.8
David Shaw without Harbaugh:
2011: #8
2012: #29
2013: #17
2014: #54
2015: #12
2016: #60
2017: #29
Average: 29.9
Harbaugh without David Shaw:
2004: #9
2005: #3
2015: #38
2016: #40
2017: #86
Average: 35.2
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:36 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 4:49 PM ^
I'm guessing he's Roman.
January 3rd, 2018 at 5:03 PM ^
January 3rd, 2018 at 5:53 PM ^
I don't understand the extreme negativity towards these potential hires. Harbaugh is not a spread guy, period. As for other meaningless questions, like if this offense can beat Ohio State, the offense this year was good enough in many ways from a scheme perspective. I just want a coherent identity with stability. If the defense maintains and the offense is capable of development and steady improvement, that's good enough for me.
January 3rd, 2018 at 10:48 PM ^
And for the moment that is all they are. I would hope that Harbaugh could come up with some better options. Except, he has Drevno and Pep now and they are both terrible and he picked them. Of course, we don't know exactly what is going on on the inside, but we know Harbaugh sees the flaws in this offensive system.
I just hope and pray he makes the right decision on an OC or OCs, but I believe he wants a run-heavy offense, I just hope he doesn't pull an RR and he that he sees the strengths of his playersa and gears an offense around them.
I'm skeptical, but JH knows football better than any of us, I just hope he isn't doing all this out of some misguided sense of loyalty and he realizes that he won't have carte blanche forever in AA.
January 4th, 2018 at 3:57 AM ^
But I'd rather have Harbaugh look for a more passing type OC. Roman and Harbaugh can work on the power run side of things but we need an OC who will work with our young QB and WR and lead a good passing attack which will help the running offense.