Is the Offense Too Complicated?
I have seen this question pop up in various hot takes for the last few weeks and I am curious if there is any truth to it. I would like the opinion of someone that would know more about college offenses Vs pro. I guess it could be possible, but I am of the opinion that if it was too complicated for college players, Jim Harbaugh would know or at least realize it. I have seen various people state that Saban started out with a pro offense and has moved to more of a spread. This could obviously be personnel related. Others also stated after the PSU game that they gave their QB a couple of simple reads as opposed to JOK having multiple to go through each play. Again, I don't know how much truth there is to any of this, I am just curious. Is the offiense set up to dominate when they have all the right pieces, which may or may not ever happen? Is a spread offense that much easier to to install and operate?
October 23rd, 2017 at 1:08 PM ^
October 23rd, 2017 at 3:14 PM ^
The whole notion of the offense being too complicated sort of confuses me. It's a run first offense. It's all about the offense line run blocking and pass protecting. The WR and TE routes don't look overly complicated to me. In fact, I would argue that they are too simple based mainly on the fact that our WR's are always covered! I think it all boils down to the OL (and RB's) is not good at blocking or picking up blitzes.
October 23rd, 2017 at 3:40 PM ^
It's true that pro style offenses take longer for players to learn and really internalize than (say) a Wing-T. However, it's naively wrong to call it "too complicated." Our offense is running with a backup quarterback and about FR/SO at all the key positions. We do not have that critical mass of upperclassmen skill players required to succeed consistently on offense.
This only means that a pro offense requires a critical mass of upperclassmen (which we do not have), not that FR/SO players can't learn it, or that it's too hard.
So the REAL culprit (wait for it...) is the coaching transition recruiting classes, which were tiny and horrendous. We'd prolly be fine if we had a veteran Damien Harris in pass protection, along with several of the other skill players who would have internalized the offense, but instead decommitted when Hoke got fired.
October 23rd, 2017 at 4:54 PM ^
No. It lacks a right tackle, and a championship qb, and we could upgrade a rb a tad if we had a choice.
When the offense gets those players, it will be humming.
October 23rd, 2017 at 5:59 PM ^
Hope so because right now we have 4 touchdown passes on the year. Only Georgia Southern and Army have less and they run the triple option. There is no glossing over that kind of stat.
October 23rd, 2017 at 8:42 PM ^
October 23rd, 2017 at 11:14 PM ^
This isn’t the Pac 10 circa 2005. B1G teams play solid defense.
October 23rd, 2017 at 6:19 PM ^
Stanford has had issues in the past where they have down years similar to this because their QB play is crap. When Hogan was at Stanford, he stank as an underclassman and eventually by the end of his career there he was very good for them. The difference between Stanford and Michigan right now is that Michigan hasn't developed the OL pipeline to give M the dominating ground game Stanford has year in/year out that carries them when their QB stinks.
Of course the other, darker line of thought is that maybe Michigan and Stanford's OLs are a lot closer than we think they are as far as run blocking, but Michigan is having to do this against Big 10 East defenses instead of Charmin soft Pac 12 defenses. I'd rather not think too hard about that though.
October 23rd, 2017 at 9:06 PM ^
I’d rather have this system when it works well that RR or other spread offenses. Watch the Stanford Oregon game from two or three years ago. Stanford continually bowled over the D at will. It was beautiful. They never needed to pass
October 23rd, 2017 at 11:07 PM ^
it ain't too complicated for the opposing defenses
October 24th, 2017 at 2:25 AM ^
It's not too complicated for an experienced group of players; it may be too complicated for an extremely young team down to basically one elite player with experience (Cole).
I'm sure this offense will work much better once all the young guys have another year under their belts, but in the meantime it's ugly.
The big advantage of simplified offense is that you don't really need to learn much to execute it. The old WVU offense was designed around 4 plays:
- Rock: zone read handoff
- Paper: zone read keeper
- Scissors: bubble screen
- SMASH: playaction pass
Of course that's no panacea, as 2008 Michigan and 2015/2016 Zona can attest. And simplifying the playbook from 2013 to 2014 did not help.
In the end, you still need guys who can execute--and then go out and actually do it.