Space Coyote: "Play calling put players in a position to succeed."
Space Coyote brings a provocative play by play counter-assessment of Al's playcalls, and concludes with support of Al's overall game.
Personally, I think he's partially right: Al Borges used a lot more variety and counter work than people give him credit for, and given the weaknesses and strengths of the team, produced a gameplan that was good enough put Michigan up by ten in the fourth quarter.
When you have no OL and a QB that turns it over, your options are limited, and he worked with those options.
Where I hold Borges responsible? He's the offensive coordinator. He bears some responsibility for the line being bad in the first place. More significantly, he is the QB coach, and I don't have a lot of faith in him in that capacity. I wonder how much of Devin's TO trouble is coaching related.
October 17th, 2013 at 4:30 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 2:24 PM ^
A brief way to sum up your argument and my rebuttal:
If Al Borges had the players able to execute those play calls in the particular situations described, then one could come to the conclusion that Al Borges called a good game.
Because Al Borges does not have the players able to execute the plays he called in the particular situations described, then one must come to the conclusion that Al Borges called a bad game.
October 17th, 2013 at 3:49 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 4:03 PM ^
People blamed MSU 2011 on Borges for heaving up deep pass after pass in a game with heavy winds. The blame lessened when it was revealed that Fitz was probably hurt. Most of the blame came on his crazy 4th and 1 playaction call.
Its funny how people are using this "turnover prone QB" excuse and then, in the same breathe, going on about how great Borges was in 2011. I'm sorry, who was the QB in 2011? David "Surehands" Robinson? Yeah....
I said above: My problem was with OT1, OT3 and the final part of the second to last drive. On all three of those drives, at critical moments Borges put the ball in the hands of Toussaint (1 yard a carry) to do these things: Make a field goal easier or get a first down. He chose to do this instead of giving the ball to Gardner who was far more likely to accomplish those things. It was bad, conservative playcalling.
October 17th, 2013 at 4:37 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 6:30 PM ^
The underlying assumption behind Coastal's argument--and he isn't alone in this--is that "conservative" = "bad" play calling, and any attempt at risk mitigation is conservative, "playing not to lose", and therefore bad.
There are no ties. Winning a game is exactly the same thing as not losing it. The coaches' goal is to win, and not lose. The moment that "playing not to lose" phrase gets tossed out there I know the time for rational argument is over.
You can make a cogent argument that Borges misestimated the odds here. But that argument would involve making some estimate of the odds, not just a waving of the hands and a 'he's playing scared".
October 17th, 2013 at 9:26 PM ^
for gibbons beyond 40 yds before the psu game. i've posted this a few times, if i counted them accurately. so borges/hoke must think those odds are good to kick a 42 yd FG instead trying to gain yardage for an easier attempt (he was perfect inside of 40 yds for his career). because in their minds they are playing with house money.
yet they also decided that punting to try to get 15-20 yds of field postion for psu at the end of regulation were better odds than a 47 yd kick (or even trying to improve that yardage on 3rd down or trying for a first down for a guaranteed win) and a potential miss or block. it all comes down to that. period. i disagree with both decisions strongly.
October 17th, 2013 at 9:42 PM ^
That's at least a cogent response, thanks.
I'm not sure it makes sense to use Gibbons's career average over 40 as your probability here--for one thing there's a big difference between Gibbons now and Gibbons when RR was looking under the team bus for a replacement. And while the overall average among kickers declines smoothly as you go out, for an individual kicker it's much more like a step function. We'd just seen what happens when Gibbons tries a kick out of his range--it's right on line but short. He's never going to make that. They would have watched him in warmups, and they'd just seen an exhibition of his range earlier--maybe they thought the dropoff was somewhere between 42 and 47.
But you're right that a 42-yarder is not a gimme. It's really a question of weighing the possiblity of increasing his odds by getting some yards, against the increased likelihood of losing via TO if you try. I wasn't sure at the time; I'm still not; nobody's really put together an argument that seems convincing to me or that even addresses the right question.
October 17th, 2013 at 11:35 PM ^
into a wind is pushing gibbons' limit, imo. even if he's 50-50 from there, i think 5-10 yds would be huge. plus, he's always been kind of a low trajectory kicker. i'm surprised he hasn't had a few more blocked.
also, i think he was 1-5 his first year. so even removing those 4 misses, he was still less than 50% from that range.
October 18th, 2013 at 12:25 AM ^
We're at the short end of "that range" and at the long end he can barely reach it, so I'm guessing he's better than 50%, maybe quite a bit better, given his record from inside 40.
Even so, I agree that five yards can matter a lot when you're anywhere near the edge of your range. I was especially surprised by the centering play, because that wasn't so much a matter of mitigating the turnover risk as trading three yards on a sizable kick for a precise centering. We were already on his better hash and it should have been possible to get a bit better centered without kneeling that deep in the backfield--I wonder if Devin did what they thought they were asking for there.
October 18th, 2013 at 1:19 AM ^
really interesting read... thanks for taking the time to break this down Space Coyote, nice to see another perspective! still have some problems with our playcalling though after reading this, though. a few thoughts :
1) I think, and have said this since the debacle happened, that I think Hoke is probably responsible for deciding when to mail it in and go conservative on a drive so I don't think Borges is necessarily to blame for the placalling on the first and third OT drives and our last series before giving it back to Penn State at the end of regulation. With that said, I think that playing for a field goal was absolutely a bad move, especially in the 3rd overtime when we had already missed twice. I mean Gibbons is absolutely money but since 2011 (when he started being good) he's still 8 of 16 from 40+... so it's by no means a guarantee that he'll make that kick in a hostile environment at the end of the game. Seems like if you play the percentages it's a much safer move to actually try to play offense and the option of kicking a field goal doesn't go away if you are stopped. Sure there are turnovers but we turned it over on 3 out of what, 18 (?), drives... so you're way more likely to miss a 42 yard field goal than throw a pick. Especially because you can still run some relatively safe routs that are way more likely to pick up yardage than a run up the middle (1 ypc).
2. The Space Coyote interpretation of what happened tends to not blame Borges for plays that could work based on the number of blockers we have versus how many defenders Penn State has in the box, but that doesn't really take into account whether or not we are any good at running those plays. I mean, yeah, a run up the middle when the other team has 7 in the box and we've got a tight and and fullback in isn't in theory wrong, but when your running backs have gone for less than a yard per carry on the night with like less than a quarter of those runs even getting 4 yards, you're not playing to your strengths by continuing to call handoffs to Fitz up the middle. You don't have to be an x's and o's expert to see that those playcalls aren't destined to succeed. Even on third and one from the PSU 15, I was begging Borges to do something besides run Fitz up the middle because I felt like we would get stuffed just like we have over and over again in that situation for the last few years. And you could say the same thing about our use of so many 1 and 2 wr sets... in theory there's nothing wrong with them but when you've got 4 good receivers and none of your tight ends are even average blockers it's the offensive coordinators fault if he calls a run out of a double tight end set and the guys he has in there can't block it.
3. The Space Coyote interpretation of what happened definitely tries to see things from Borges' point of view, which is useful if you want to understand why he called the plays that he did. With that said, it kind of excuses limitations on our offense that are a result of Borges coordination of our offense. I mean a bunch of his playcalls are (probably correctly) explained by Space Coyote as Borges anticipated a 7 man front and Penn State came out with 8 in the box and the safety playing up so his play didn't work. So maybe that's not a bad "playcall" but it's still the result of the limitations that his strategy has placed on our offense. If we didn't take all day in the huddle and had an offense that was actually capable of adjusting at the line to what the defense is showing, we wouldn't be throwing away plays every time that the other team comes out with 8 in the box when a run is called. I mean that is basic offense in college football these days, the fact that we don't do it is just pathetic. On top of that, like many people (including I believe Space Coyote) have pointed out, Borges is responsible for us having a decent line and a quarterback that doesn't throw picks. So even if you say he called great plays and the guys didn't execute, it's still largely his fault because he is the primary person responsible for getting the guys to execute.
October 17th, 2013 at 2:57 PM ^
October 17th, 2013 at 3:21 PM ^
And he did take advantage of what the defense was doing. I wrote pretty extensively about that.
October 17th, 2013 at 5:16 PM ^
You certainly know MUCH more about this topic than I do. While I respectfully disagree with some of your analysis, simply because I keep coming back to 27 for 27, I am curious: What do you think the ceiling is for Borges? In your estimation, do you think he is a fair, good, or great OC and why? And - in terms of his peer group - are there better ones out there that you think would be better fits at UM (green fields; ignore whether or not we could actually get them - I'm just curious who you think would be great here)?
October 17th, 2013 at 5:24 PM ^
Quick follow up: I ask these questions more as a student trying to learn from someone who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, rather than someone looking for an opinion that I can argue with...So, any response will be appreciated.
October 17th, 2013 at 6:36 PM ^