Having a tempo driven offense

Looking back on a few things from the season and this one was always interesting to me. RR has consistently mentioned the need to establish or that we did not establish offensive tempo in his post-game pressers, yet it is not really explained regarding the type of tempo our offense needs. You could simply say we run an “up tempo” offense, but what is that really? An offense that simply uses less of the play clock, snaps the ball quicker? What is our specific tempo since it implies a particular target or time period between plays. Additionally, since our offense controls the snap, why would we have trouble establishing the tempo (outside of placing the ball or a TV timeout)?

 The next question that pops into my mind is if our offense is more suspect to tempo if we are not running at a particular speed in between plays. This would seem to be hard to quantify and prove, but may actually be accurate. Going back a number of games, we are absolute machines when we are on a “roll” and seem sometimes really disjointed when we are not (as opposed to a more gradual drop off on certain drives). I am not sure if much of the feast or famine it is result of the play calling, just making wrong reads with a younger QB or needing to operate at a certain speed. Again, since we control the speed at which the play is relayed to the field, we should be able to dictate that speed.

It could simply be a case where our offense “cooled” off while on the sideline, waiting to get the ball back during long drives by the other team when our defense could not get the ball back. Not sure if that was what RR was really referring to in regards to tempo. Would be interested if anyone has any deeper understanding regarding our need for specific offensive tempo and why we would be more reliant upon tempo than other offenses?