Smart Football on Oregon's Offense

Great read.  Thanks for posting

That math bullshit will never work in the BiG Ten.

I feel smart when I read smart phootbaw

sounds like Communist math to me.

I just read this article last night and thought it was informative.  Many folks think that Oregon's spread is a gimmicky finnesse offense.  But I've always thought it's just a different strategy to power run the football that puts the defense at a disadvantage in many ways.  The defense is basically forced to tip their hand, and then the offense can set up the right blocking scheme to run the ball, which is what old school football is all about.  I'm impressed.

Will it work against a team as talented on defense as Alabama?  That's the big question.  When Oregon played Auburn in the national title game, it wasn't quite as explosive.  But I think any offense will struggle against a talented defense, no matter what the scheme.

"For all of the hype surrounding Oregon games, Oregon practices might be even better. Oregon practices are filled with blaring music and players sprinting from drill to drill. Coaches interact with players primarily through whistles, air horns, and semi-communicative grunts. " - from the article

I found this part about practices interesting as well. It is interesting that he's using the football equivalent of quality management here in that the practice is essentially designed to minimize wasted time and maximize the work. Making concepts like "uptempo" and "no-huddle" part of the football culture of Oregon is obviously paying huge dividends.

In looking at the highlighted play against Wisconsin, the link in the story to LaMichael James doing the same thing against Stanford essentially provides some even better views of Kelly using unbalanced sets in a basic zone read formation. The Oregon offensive line is pretty good, I think, at creating the holes necessary for the inside run on these option plays, holes that no one ever seems to pick up against them. The Ducks are one of the better teams at creating one more gap than the defense can reasonably defend.

Systems are super-sexy.  I don't think there is a man among us who doesn't believe that game-planning and creative scheming can create a competitive advantage.

But what system you run really doesn't matter--it's how well you run it.  I know lots of people on this board favor the spread no-huddle approach to offense, because it can be fun to watch and is most definitely college football's current preferred flavor.  But again, the system itself isn't the most important thing--it's how well you run it, and that has a lot to do with your players.

Let's jump to the NFL for a second.  Not long ago, many fans and pundits declared that the Tampa 2 (a base cover 2 defense) was dead.  After all, Tampa doesn't even run it anymore.  But this year's Chicago Bears are the NFL's 5th-ranked defense, and lead the league with 19 INTs and seven defensive TDs.

The famed West Coast Offense has often been lambasted for being out-of-date, and even "dead".  But the Green Bay Packers offense is based on the WCO, and they don't seem to have too much trouble moving the ball.

My point is this: while systems can be a method used to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent, every system requires precision, talent, and execution in order to be successful.  And, any well-run system can be successful.  It wasn't long ago that everyone thought the wishbone and veer triple option was dead; Georgia Tech and Air Force have proven that's not the case.  Alabama uses two running plays on about 90% of their runs: the inside zone and the outside zone.

The Grantland article points out the strengths of the Oregon system: spread out the defense to make it easier to read, thus simplifying the decisions for the offense to counter what the defense is doing.  But it also demonstrates the importance of talent: that 91-yard TD run depended on great blocking and a RB that is faster than lightning.  

Ironically, Borges' WCO-inspired offense is styled in much the same way: force the defense to show their hand before the snap.  He uses bunch formations and motion to force his opponents to show him what they're doing with their coverage, and to move them around pre-snap.  Unlike the original WCO, which used short, quick route trees almost exclusively, Borges believes in having a deep option on almost every passing play, spreading the field vertically.

Kelly's offense depends on his WRs beating man coverage in order to be effective (if opponents sell out against the run).  This is EXACTLY what Borges tried to do against 'Bama and ND...but Denard couldn't get them the ball and the WRs couldn't get open.  Even the inventor of the spread no-huddle, Rich Rodriguez, couldn't get his offenses to be effective against top competition while at Michigan--largely due to personnel issues.

The truth is, any system can work, as long as it's coached and executed properly.  That requires not only smart scheming and intelligent players, but also talent.  As Grantland rightly points out, not even Chip Kelly's mad-scientist-genius-golden-child offense could move the ball effectively against Auburn in the NCG...and we now know that Gene Chizik is no mastermind.

Bottom line: X's and O's do matter...but not nearly as much as the QUALITY (not the scheme) of the coaching and the players.

While I am thoroughly entertained during Oregon's games with the pace and scheme, it's all dependent on their athletes. Their stable of lightning quick backs, rangy receivers, Lyerla and Mariota make it explosive. Thomas is lightning and maybe only 1 or 2 other players would've taken the Rose Bowl play to the house so easily.

Chip certainly deserves credit for developing a pace, conditioning the team and recruiting the right players (snarky comments aside) to constantly pressure the D. The pace creates even more situations where one-on-one matchups in space give and advantage to O's speed and conditioning.

At the end of the day, all the great teams and programs have matched their scheme and their talent pool. When the talent pool weakens, these "great" schemes are exposed. OU wishbone, Neb power-I, Miami pro set, Florida power spread - each were incredibly productive until the key skill positions were less than elite. Then the reliance on superior athleticism becomes a liability because the scheme totally depends on winning specific matchups.

Maybe Chip wants to go to the NFL because he knows the recruitment of key athletes is too difficult without testing NCAA bylaws ...