I like this. Knowledge of one's shortcomings is the first step toward correcting them. Good job Borges; way to man up.

Big fan of this. If nothing else, it takes some pressure off of Denard. This is a tri-fold problem; OC, Denard, and receivers. 

I may be making a crazy statement, but I think Denard will improve over the year with his passing...aka we won't be ranked in the 100's in passing (I think more like 60's). 

Put their players in a position to win the games... That is all we can ask of Borges.

He should probably take some blame for his hand constantly shoving foods into his face.

/fat joke

Install Al Borges' father at fullback. I really feel this has been the more glaring oversight.

Denard is sailing passes around ten yards and slightly under throwing passes over 30 yards. In my infinite wisdom I came up with the need to run 20 yard routes. Boom O-coordinated'

Even if it wasn't his problem at all (which I'm not saying) I think this is something he should say. Its always good to take some of the pressure off of your players.

Is a smart man.  I hope he keeps going in the next game, but when we get to the heart of conference play, hope he shortens up the routes, makes less risky throws, etc.  If so, many here will have to apologize to the guy...he may be one step ahead of all of us.  Time will tell. 

Seems to me the play calling has been pretty vanilla. I wanna see more of Denard rolling out of the pocket.

More high-percentage passes that stretch the field horizontally, not just vertically: curls, hitches, bubble screens, outs. etc.  Then I want to see some inside throws: slants, drags, etc. This is a huge part of the WCO, and Borges--who wrote a book about it--knows this way better than I do.  Whereas the traditional pro-style attack runs to set up the pass, in the WCO you also pass to open space for the run game.  

Obviously we don't run a real WCO, but I have expected to see more WC sets and plays than we've seen so far.  I also don't think it would be too hard to integrate these routes into shotgun sets, e.g. 4 wide plus Smith in the backfield, pull Roundtree and Hemingway inside and Gallon and Dileo on short outs, then release Smith as a checkdown.  

If Denard can hit a bunch of passes early, he'll have more confidence on the deep ball. and we'll get some chances to break off more huge runs.  

My fear is, if we can't figure something like this out, then good defenses like MSU's and Iowa's will just stack the box with 8 guys and dare us to beat them with Denard's arm.  This backfired on ND in the 4th quarter, but it worked several times last year for our opponents, and Denard was passing better then.  

I almost want teams to think that Denard can't throw. That way, Big Ten play rolls around, teams crowd the box and Borges starts calling the passing plays we can run perfectly. Then the camera goes to Borges up in the box with a big grin on his face.

If we had a running back who finished second nationally in 2010 with 1,702 yards and was currently leading FBS with 160.6 yards per game, wouldn't he be a Heisman favorite? If you took that same player and said that he had thrown for six TDs out of the Wildcat in four games, would we be knocking his accuracy?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/cory_mccartney/heisman-watch/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_bf3_a2

I love how people think that when someone states the obvious it's some sort of crazy thing and needs to be talked about in all sorts of ways.

Shit Sherlock! See last years passing plays that worked well. Fix the D... the offense did ok passing and fire up the run. It is football, and not rocket science. P.s. I am drunk, so yes I know my sentence structure sucks, and punctuation and or spelling bloz ballz. My bad. I am out like rich rod (who was a shitball and coached in the f'n big east)

hence, borges is a good coach.

A good leader is always slow to give the blame while fast to take it, slow to take the credit whle  fast to give it.

Borgess, if he didn't realize during spring and fall practice, when DR was completing at about a 70% clip, realizes it's going to take awhile for DR to transform into the type of passer who is able to hit at the necessary rate in this type of offense.

He has admitted same, and all we have to do as fans is look back at what our passing game conisted of during the first year with DR at qb. The defense was so afraid of Denard running, all it took was Roundtree to slip past his cover man, turn wave his hands until Denard spotted him, catch the ball, do a 180 and head for the end zone. This is not unusual when you have a qb with such gifted running ability. Pat White threw for over 70% completion rate when all his receveirs had to do was go downfield and the defense would create separation for them by coming up to stop White. So much easier to complete a pass when it's nothing more difficult than warming up on the sidelines. 

Roundtree, although owning certainly our biggest reception of this year, has maybe two pass completions all year and Jr., probably our most dangerous receiver has received the majority of his passes through a bit of luck, i.e., jump balls and compete defensive breakdowns not unlike last year when dbs were forced to leave their position because Denard was breaking containment.

This is a work in progress, but Al is as aware as all of us that these receivers were recruited more for working in space - much like Dan's receivers at WVU, than our prototypical receivers that we're now listing as priorties to fit into our new offensive system. When you have both qb and receivers trying to learn actual pass routes it is bound to take awhile.

Nice thing is we will have had five games to work on this and with each week that passes, even if it appears like we've regressed at times, we'll have practiced more and more and suddenly it will come together, more likely than not this season. 

Expect a upturn in short routes to forgotten men like Tree, Odoms and Gallon and Smith coming out of the backfield, just to give Denard the confidence he and receivers both will need to become more proficient in the more compex routes needed to run this offense at it's optimum level.  Al, and I know he's preaching it, will probably tell Denard when he's moving forward in the pocket and sees nothing but thirty yards of grass in front of him that it is now time to forget about downfield receivers and simply tuck and run. His reluctance to do this has cost us two turnovers that I can think of, so I think this type of mistake will become a non issue also as we move forward.

Al is a very smart man as we al know so he will more than likely do those things that allow Denard to have success now, even if it means learning his offense at a slower than ideal pace. He is aware that winning each game and instilingl the confidence in Denard that will be needed in bigger games is of paramount importance right now. Hence, allowing him to be Denard of last year in second half of ND game and increased running plays for him from that point on. He is also aware this will be the last time he'll have a qb with such freakish athletic ability, so I imagine his playcalling and teaching for the next year and a half will be predicated on this moreso than on making him the perfect w.c. qb.

This has to be one of the most difficult coaching jobs imaginable, trying to teach a once in thirty year athlete how to play football according to your system and at the same time realizing to miminize his natural abilities - something akin to being far superior to the system - might be a huge mistake. Something tells me Mr. Borges, or anyone that's been in football as long as him for that matter, realizes exactly what he has and is going to do just fine with him even if those passing stats end up closer to 50% than 70%.

Thinking those red zone trips of ours tells us all he has a pretty good grip of what's going on and to expect like results once conference play starts. The whole team seems to be feeling it right now and our RBs suddenly seem to be running with a sense of purpose, like "Hey we have a job too,"something we haven't seen since the days of Mike Hart. I'm liking it.