Link?
Sorry 'bout that.
I remember a Rodriguez interview where he basically said that a lot of what Walker was doing with the spread was straight from the Clemson/WVU playbook to the point that they didn't even change their signals, etc., yet Brown credits Walker (and Meyer) with the "great leap forward" in the spread/zone-read.
I don't know who to believe, but Brown doesn't seem to be particularly fond of Rodriguez for anything more than being the pioneer of the spread; he's also said that RR's passing game lacks a conceptual foundation.
Hopefully we'll see another great offensive leap at Michigan.
I have heard others describe RR's passing game as a mixed bag of routes. Seemingly lacking in design or structure.
Either RR has a poor concept of passing schemes. Or he has effectively concealed his primary intentions.
If it is the latter, then RR is a genius. Because if your offense does not appear to have a point of emphasis or design then the opposition has no point of reference to form a defensive posture.
Basically, if the defense does not know what the hell you are doing then how can they possibly figure out a way to stop you?
Smart Football
If you scroll down past the two videos Chris explains what he meant when he discussed Rodriguez's passing game earlier (the post you mentioned).
Northwestern supposedly adopted the spread almost by pure luck. They didn't have a scholarship tight end on the offense, so they looked around for an offense that didn't need a tight end and voila -- RichRod's spread at Clemson was a perfect fit. Or so I've been told.
One fact lost on a lot of analysts of last year's Michigan team is that a lot of schools have successfully implemented spread offenses almost overnight with personnel who were recruited for a vanilla pro-style game. Bowling Green, Northwestern, and Utah, for example, did this.
Also:
One fact lost on a lot of analysts of last year's Michigan team is that a lot of schools have successfully implemented spread offenses almost overnight with personnel who were recruited for a vanilla pro-style game. Bowling Green, Northwestern, and Utah, for example, did this.This kind of support's Meeechigan Dan's argument about last year's struggles being related to "culture shock."
I am a huge believe in the "culture shock" theory. RichRod frequently chewed out guys as they came off the field and Carr rarely did that. Different people respond to different kinds of motivation. I think that it helps explain why our defense with seven returning starters was arguably the worst in the program's history. If Michigan blocks, tackles, and hangs onto the ball well enough this year to win eight games, it won't be because there was a massive turnover in the personnel (Other than Tate Forcier, we basically have all of the same people back on offense). It will be because the poison apples are gone and the team is now truly his.
I can buy that on the defensive side of the ball. On the offensive side, though, we just didn't have the players (or if we did, they were frequently injured).
I think UM's problems last year were more related to not having a real QB than "culture shock." Bo's first team finished pretty well, and they probably would have had the same "culture shock" that this team supposedly did.
FWIW, I wasn't necessarily advocating the culture shock argument as much as I was simply acknowledging what posters were saying elsewhere.
Another thread recently discussed the fact that Bo's spring practice started with 140 players and ended with roughly 75; perhaps culture shock wasn't evident in the W-L column b/c Bo still had the personnel to field a decent team after all the defections.
I'm sure other factors, including "No-Manningham shock," "No-Arrington shock," and "No-[insert player here] shock" all contributed to the debacle that is known as Michigan's 2008 football season.