A Tale of Two Offenses

It’s just an abortion across the board right now. Recruiting, scheme, player development, you name it. Who, I wonder, will be held responsible for the “coordination” of this “offense”?

“Texas’ pretentious ponderous collection of plays is enough to prompt the question, ‘What day did the Lord create Greg Davis, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?’”

Love that picture of Muschamp. Sums up exactly how I feel about this entire season. Gonna steal it and post it on Facebook.

Hmmmm,

While I agree with your conclusions, you leave yourself wide open by omitting game score/expectation of winning as a factor in offensive output. Tech beat SMU. Could that have enabled their defense to play looser, play for a turnover perhaps? In both games, could not the fact of their offenses’ relative success against SMU’s defense have meant that the defenses could lighten up a bit? Scores by quarter might help this analysis.

Also, as a former UT Press editor, I can assure you there is nothing wrong with the grammar of question 1.

Thanks.

Great article. Glad you decided to post it. The pic at the end is awesome. New screensaver.

Seen a lot of mental masturbation from Muschamp fanboys on this blog recently. Anything else on tap?

Just curious.

We decided to invest a significant amount of practice time repping an under center offense that doesn’t fit our current personnel. And our stats reflect that. Does anyone really think that GD made this call on his own? Isn’t it more likely that our HCIW had something to so with the decision?

Comparing our offensive production to SMU’s and blaming it on GD is so absurd.

Maybe you guys could stop trying to reduce everything about our season to a debate about the relative merits of our coordinators.

I’m sure you guys don’t care, but I’m giving this blog another two weeks. I don’t think I can take any more exasperated counterfactuals involving running QBs or any more attempts to blame defensive lapses on our OC.

You know. I don’t buy the line that the under center running offense was not a fit for our personnel. Texas has good enough personnel to run these plays. It may not be the perfect system for the talent but it is not a total mismatch. The game either way comes down to blocking people, running with speed and vision, running routes, throwing the ball accurately, catching the ball. The big problem is in fact execution. And I thank BrickHorn for defining “execution” properly. It is the outcome of all the factors discussed and much of “execution” falls on the shoulders of the coaches. The players are not totally without blame but college football is dominated by the coaching staff. It is they who recruit. It is they who plan and teach. It is they who decide who starts. It is they who are responsible for the discipline of the team. In other words, execution is a coaching problem especially in the case of the Texas Longhorns.

If properly coached this team could run a zone blocking scheme or any other blocking scheme for that matter. While not being the greatest play the WR screen can be effective when properly coached and players are held accountable for their performance. A quick way to get the attention of a player is to remove them from the field for whole games and putting some one in who is listening and doing what is told. It really is pretty simple.

Look, I didn’t read that thread, but a random thought after looking at that ending picture: Muschamp is still liked, and delivering.

“…or any more attempts to blame defensive lapses on our OC.”

If our DC had a 12 year catalog of defensive ineptitude like the first two series against OU, we might jump his shit. As it sits, he’s the one thing that’s right on the staff.

There’s a moritorium on pumping, sunshine or otherwise.

OldTime -

That’s an interesting point on the situational question, and might explain some of SMU’s success. By quarter, SMU’s YPP stats against Tech looked like this:

Q1: 3.92 (Quarter ends 7-0, Tech)
Q2: 5.35 (Quarter ends 21-7, Tech)
Q3: 6.23 (Quarter ends 35-17, Tech)
Q4: 4.21 (Game ends, 35-27, Tech)

So, your theory has some legs. I didn’t look at the Rice game stats, but SMU won that one.

Not a Fan -

I appreciate your annoyance with the pattern of negativity, and tried to give fair warning. As you can see from the comments, some of our readers appreciate this kind of analysis. Others don’t. I don’t know if you’re new to the blog or not, but it’s not always this way. In the off-season, we mainly post about avant-garde Slovakian cinema and run a massive on-line ancient warfare role-playing game. I encourage you to stick around for a while and give us a chance.

And, just to respond to a few of your criticisms and hopefully invite some healthy debate on the issue:

(1) If I blamed Greg Davis specifically, it was an inadvertent mistake certainly resulting from bad habits. I intended to apply the criticism generally to our coaches, since there is some uncertainty as to which coach is most responsible for the problems.

(2) Why do you believe it’s “absurd” to blame the coaches for our sub-par offensive performance? The whole point of the thread was to show that it would be absurd not to blame them. What factor do you believe I am missing that explains the discrepancy between our performance and that of lesser-talented teams like SMU?

(3) Who blamed the offensive coordinators for the defense’s breakdowns? I generally believe that there is a mutual coupling between the offense and defense in football, such that the performance of one affects the other’s. But I don’t recall anyone on this thread blaming Davis or any other offensive coaches for the defense’s lapses this season.

Texas v. Rice: 72, indoors
SMU v. Rice: 85, 6 mph wind, clear

You didn’t control for the deleterious effects of dry air.

Not: If the D’s YPP was worse than SMU’s against Tech and Rice, that would be a different subject.

Please send Not a cum-stained neck pillow.

Yes, I know I wrote that.

I set up my own punch lines.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you.

Sometimes, I think that MB and GD want to win the turnover battle at the expense of the ball game. I know this sounds ludicrous, but the game plan typically is to play as conservatively as we can get away with — to minimize turnovers. Why else would you play so conservatively?

As we all know, the conservative strategy gives the opponent’s defense the opportunity to overplay our tendencies and not pay a price for doing so. But, as Mack and Greg would argue, if our defense is capitalizing on our opponent’s offensive recklessness and giving our offense short fields, then the strategy will work. We make a couple of FGs on short fields, return an interception for a TD, and finally to put the game out of reach, punch it in from the opponent’s one (on 4th down). Statistics are for losers — right?

Maybe, I’ve been influenced by Mack’s press conferences. He likes citing statistics and he almost always cites the turnover ratio statistic. I’m conjecturing that Mack and GD have determined, through an extensive data analysis of thousands of box scores, that turnover ratio is the best predictor of which team wins the game.

Mack likes to talk about how our defense needs to “cause” more turnovers. I’ve had some problems believing this assertion completely, because it seems that turnovers are also caused by poor fundamentals, fatigue, falling way behind, and bad luck. Our defense needs to cause “three and outs” more so than turnovers.

I don’t believe that our players are dumb. They know what’s going on, and many of them may reminisce about all of the nifty plays their high school teams ran. It’s fine to get a pat on the back for a good block in the film room, but it’s a much better feeling to believe that your block contributed to a productive play and ultimate victory. If the players don’t believe in a play, then they’re blocking, running, or whatever to keep their jobs as opposed to striving toward the higher mission of winning the game.

Great stuff, brick. Terribly depressing plot. Great subversive ending. Very Orwellian.

Great stuff Brick. Critical thinking is what separates this site from others… and us from monkeys. That and opposable thumbs.

Failed to account for the curvature of the earth

I agree, Texas’ offense is TOTAL AND UTTER SHIT. But there’s ONE major intangible that you failed to take into consideration:

When Rice and Tech were playing UT, they were playing a TOP 10 RANKED TEAM. SMU, on the other hand, well, they’re SMU.

Know what I’m saying? The motivation factor to knock off a Top 10 ranked team can’t be discounted.

Having said that, yes, Texas’ offense is TOTAL AND UTTER SHIT.

The earth is flat

good stuff….as the season goes on and the big 12 near round robin occurrs, you will have more evidence and data of this phenominon.

yojimbox -

The motivation factor to knock off a Top 10 ranked team can’t be discounted.

That’s a popular old adage, but I’m not sure it’s true that lesser teams put up their most impressive performances against the best teams. In fact, when you put it that way (and, conveniently, I just did), the idea seems facially absurd. After all, if lesser teams were more likely to succeed against the best teams, then the whole notion of which teams are good and which are bad would reverse itself.

In other words, good teams should be expected to succeed because they are good teams, not in spite of it.

Good post , and well documented data. As jmanh said Mack has always wanted to play power running football. He just does not know how to coach for that kind of performance. He was not successful with it at North Carolina either. That is Fred Akers and Bill Parcells style of play and requires a lot of discipline to play properly. The Ravens use that style in the pros as do the Giants. UT has the talent to play whatever style the coaching staff chooses, but the coaches need to actually coach.

Not a Fan – There’s no excuse for our level of offensive performance, the common opponent comparison with SMU serving as painful confirmation. What are people supposed to say?

This is a great site, stick with it.

“Good post , and well documented data. As jmanh said Mack has always wanted to play power running football. He just does not know how to coach for that kind of performance. He was not successful with it at North Carolina either. That is Fred Akers and Bill Parcells style of play and requires a lot of discipline to play properly. The Ravens use that style in the pros as do the Giants. UT has the talent to play whatever style the coaching staff chooses, but the coaches need to actually coach.”

This. All of this. Exactly. Shit, at this point I don’t care what kind of offense we run. Just do it well.

What will be interesting to see is whether we say F it and use this season to return to that power running philosophy or continue on with the current impotent version of the spread should NU maul us this coming weekend.

How will Mack respond if the wheels come flying off? They’re wobbling badly as is.

SMU has a decent offense if you watch them and they got players on that side of the ball. June Jones is a great offensive coach. I’m not surprised at all that they’ve had more success than us on offense. I’d expect it more often than not even in the future. We don’t have a player on offense that is way more talented than someone they have or could recruit, except maybe Mike D.

Zack Line for SMU, a converted linebacker, rushed for 140 against TCU and we can’t get a 100 yard rusher ever. SMU lost to TCU at home by 17. Would Texas do that well against TCU at DKR?

The sadder question is whether or not we would be able to win CUSA this year like they might.

Against Rice, we definitely were trying to be stubborn about running the ball because we were confident about the outcome. Rice knew we were going to run it. The run-pass play disparity bears this idea out.

Tech is a different story, but the O started to roll in the 1st half. Minus some bizarre tipped balls and interceptions, the O was on its way to much better production. What’s so bothersome about how that game played out is that the O just seemed to get worse from that point forward. Play calling perhaps.

The UCLA and OU games against mediocre defenses offer the more convincing proof of coaching issues, absent anomalies, excuses, and early season bugs. Those games showed us what we’ve really got on offense.

I can only cut and paste the post I made on the GBU thread. It fits here.
To wit:

We have a really talented team which absolutely stinks on the offensive side and in special teams because the players are being poorly coached. How many schools in the country would give their eyeteeth to have the offensive talent we do, even if some key elements are young? I’ll bet there are more than half the coaches in the country who could make a nice naugahyde purse (if not silk) out of the sow’s ear we have right now.
The worst aspect of it is that we have no idea if the coaching staff is doing anything at all to make it better. They certainly didn’t in the fall camp or during the first weeks before the bye. I have no confidence that they even see anything really wrong. How can coaches allow the degree of inattention and boneheadedness we have seen week after week without absolutely kicking some ass to correct it?

Adding one further thought regarding the last sentence of my post above:

I gurandamntee you that Muschamp is kicking some butt to eliminate the stupid penalties his guys committed. I’d be willing to bet we will NOT be seeing more of that shit on the field from his guys.

But the offense? Who the Eff knows?

Excellent analysis. Thanks.

How about this thought? June Jones does a much better job with considerably less talent than do Mack and Greg Davis. Any comments on how he might do as OC on the Forty?

SMU had a change to tiethe game at the end, note. It was a very close game. If they had anyone else than a true sophomore 1 star they win handily.

You want evidence that the offensive problem is the coaching staff?

Compare/contrast what UT and Nebraska did between spring practices and now.

Nebraska went into the spring not knowing who their starting QB would be.

UT went into spring certain of a developing a power running game and had their power RB, Chris Whaley.

Seven months later:
- Nebraska is ranked Top 5. UT is out of the Top 25 for the first time in a decade.
- Nebraska has a Top 5 offense while UT is not even in the Top 50.
- UT has taken a Lazy Susan approach to picking a TB for each game using FOUR different TBs, none of them named Whaley. That “power running game” that we spent so much time & energy working on, is ranked 82nd out of 120 FBS teams.

Here’s one more stat. UT is ranked #1 in penalties. Hooray!!!!!
http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/ncaa-m-footbl-fbs-team-fewest-penalties-per-game.html

Reading that made my eyes bleed.

“That’s a popular old adage, but I’m not sure it’s true that lesser teams put up their most impressive performances against the best teams. In fact, when you put it that way (and, conveniently, I just did), the idea seems facially absurd. After all, if lesser teams were more likely to succeed against the best teams, then the whole notion of which teams are good and which are bad would reverse itself.”

For a guy who claims to watch a lot of football, you sure don’t know much. It’s the same reason Superbowl champs get the full 100% concentration and maximum effort of every team they play after winning the trophy. Likewise with college sports. Most of these kids have never sniffed a CG trophy in their life, and for teams like Tech and Rice, playing UT is essentially the closest they’ll come to playing in a Superbowl. You telling me that isn’t going to give them extra motivation to literally kill themselves on every single play? Especially in the first half? They’re not going to get that jacked up to play SM-friggin-U, dude. Not even close.

Another failure of this analysis: you assume that getting maximum yards is the goal of the offense. On every third and seven, it sure looks like the goal is to get exactly four yards.

yojimbox -

You may continue to reiterate that flawed platitude as many times as you like, but it won’t make it any less absurd. Just think about the logical consequence of the old cliche you’re advocating, when – and this is key – it is applied as an explanation for Texas’s observed inferior statistical performance.

Your argument, I believe, runs as follows:

1. An average team, A, has extra motivation to play a good opponent, G, compared to its motivation to play a bad one, B.

2. Because of (1), A will try harder against G than B.

3. Because of (3), G will be less successful against A than B will be against A.

4. Because of (4), the good team G’s stats will be inferior to the bad team B’s stats.

QED, right?

Wrong. The problem is that the conclusion of (4) is empirically false. The world doesn’t work that way. Good teams generally put up good stats and bad teams put up bad stats. See generally Huckleberry’s Compendium of Numerological Correlationism. The teams with superior stats end up with superior records, and are thus the “best” teams in the only meaningful sense of the word.

So, what is wrong with your hypothesis? I believe that your view has merit up to and possibly including step (2) in the half-assed syllogism above. Yes, there is often more motivation to play well against good programs than against bad ones. (There is also often more anxiety, fear, and general uncertainty, but let’s assume the extra motivation dominates). I agree that this motivation could result in more effort.

But, based on empirical data, it appears that that extra effort (if it exists) is not generally enough to overcome superior talent and coaching. Despite the extra effort opposing them, good teams historically do better than bad teams, even though those bad teams presumably face a lower level of effort from their less-motivated opponents. So, the argument breaks down at step (3). The hypothesized extra effort is not enough to overcome talent and coaching and lead to better results.

In summary, the “extra motivation” theory runs contrary to the data and is, in any case, logically absurd.

I think there is plenty of data to support that players will get up for certain games. I just don’t think that is the correct diagnosis here. The excuse is trotted out early in the season every year to excuse every bad performance, when in retrospect at the end of the year, we just end up finding out that we weren’t very good the years we were making those excuses.

But, based on empirical data, it appears that that extra effort (if it exists) is not generally enough to overcome superior talent and coaching.

No its not, but we are talking about human nature, and it cuts both ways. You are assuming that there is only extra motivation on one side, when there are plenty of opportunities for a lack of motivation on the other side as well.

Team A has extra motivation to play team G.

Players on team G (just like fans) can read a schedule and having looked at film believe team A is inferior. Perhaps they aren’t as sharp at practice that week phsycially or mentally. If they aren’t prepared you don’t necessarily get an upset, but you do get a performance that is “below average” for the better team.

You can argue the “get up, let down” theory all you want. That does nothing to explain away the fact that SMU has a better offense than The University of Texas. They do and it’s really not even close.

How the hell has that happened and what are we going to do about it? Those are the two questions that we need answered. Everything else is fluff and distractions and seems counterproductive to addressing our problems. Trust me, trying to rationalize it does nothing for our situation. The fact that SMU’s offense is quite a bit better than ours should be all the motivation we need to move on to answering the hard questions.

yeah, tech wasn’t motivated with a new staff, espn in town on labor day sunday with a national audience? keep telling yourself that. if TX and SMU played I guarentee it would be closer than most of you think. SMU is better than TX in 2 of 3 phases of the game.

Yes, this is a form of the “Texas gets everybody’s best shot” argument.

Seems like there should be a way to adjust for yearly fluctuations in talent — roughly saying, what did Texas do against scrubs in 2005, or in 1996, compared to this year?

I’m pretty much with Nordberg here. My hope/expectation for all Longhorn sports is that they are doing everything they can, every year, to get better, and (eventually) to compete for a NC. Players come and go, holes must be filled. Not every season has a championship team — that’s part of the deal. But when what we see is the HC essentially covering for and keeping his OC on the job, when he has chosen to replace his DC at an appropriate time, that’s worth exploring.

I’m never in the corner of firing a guy for the sake of doing it. What we have seen this year is an inability to react to poor performance. It’s not a matter of not winning 10 games or nine games or eight games, it’s a matter of maximizing your assets and minimizing your liabilities. We see Muschamp trying to do this, while Davis, by comparison, implies that the scheme would work fine if the players did what they were told.

When it comes to talent differential, I am not at all sure that comparing ESPN average grades is as scientific as we might wish.

Even comparing individual ESPN grades leaves something to be desired when 2 or 3 years removed.

My subjective impression is that the best teams are those where several players have turned out to be play makers or truly difference makers on game day. No matter how our players were ranked, what matter is their relative talent if or when they become starters.

The competition is always changing, and for some reason our guys just do not look good on game day when compared to their peers on Top 10 teams. Never mind SMU.

I am more than willing to blame the coaches for (5) – (7), but I would add (8) Evaluation of Potential. It looks to me like a serious failure over the past 2 or 3 classes.

srr50 -

If they aren’t prepared you don’t necessarily get an upset, but you do get a performance that is "below average" for the better team.

Where is the evidence for this? The stats don’t bear it out. Time and again, the good teams do better, statistically, than the bad ones. This is true despite the proposed double-incentive for good teams to actually fare poorly. It’s an interesting theory, but it simply isn’t justifiable in light of the evidence.

The reality is that Texas is doing poorly on offense because, well, Texas is just bad on offense. If teams are especially motivated to play Texas, maybe that adds to Texas’s poor performance (which would be poor even without an amped-up opponent). But it can’t explain why Texas is a bad offensive team in the first place. If Texas was good, the extra motivation wouldn’t matter.

How was UNL’s current starting QB (Martinez?) ranked by ESPN coming out of HS?

(I know it proves nothing, but I am curious because I was so impressed.)

“Your lavender-scented Barking Carnival travel pillow is in the mail.”
What, no tote? WTF???

This type of analysis makes me want to puke. Greg Davis’ approach to offense reminds me of the saying about economists: he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Offense is a science AND an art. I don’t doubt Davis as a statistician, but give him an art studio and he’ll produce a primitive crayon line drawing that kindergarteners would laugh at.

BC needs editors.

is it 3-7 yet?

The stats don’t bear it out. Time and again, the good teams do better, statistically, than the bad ones. This is true despite the proposed double-incentive for good teams to actually fare poorly. It’s an interesting theory, but it simply isn’t justifiable in light of the evidence.

That’s not what I am saying. I am saying that the better teams will perform below their level of competency when confronted with an “inspired” effort or when they put out an uninspired effort.

The reality is that Texas is doing poorly on offense because, well, Texas is just bad on offense. If teams are especially motivated to play Texas, maybe that adds to Texas’s poor performance (which would be poor even without an amped-up opponent). But it can’t explain why Texas is a bad offensive team in the first place. If Texas was good, the extra motivation wouldn’t matter.

I am in total agreement with this statement — well except for the last sentence. If that were true then we all would be on the next plane to Vegas with a copy of Huckleberry’s Compendium of Numerological Correlationism and retire.

srr -

That’s not what I am saying. I am saying that the better teams will perform below their level of competency when confronted with an "inspired" effort or when they put out an uninspired effort.

Fair enough. That might explain why good teams don’t ever do as well as they could do, assuming one can even measure that. But it doesn’t explain why good teams have done worse than lesser teams, because good teams actually do better than lesser teams.

The most you can say is that maybe Texas is actually a good team that only appears to be a bad team because its opponents are especially motivated to beat a big-name program. But then how do you explain that Nebraska is the #1 ranked offense in the country in terms of adjusted YPP? Clearly, the Huskers are a big-name program every bit as much as Texas. The same goes for #2 Auburn, #6 Alabama and #7 Michigan. And certainly #5 Boise State now has a huge target on its back, especially amongst its conference rivals. Shouldn’t these teams suffer from the same enhanced-opponent-motivation effect plaguing the Longhorns?

If you want to make yourself really depressed, compare our stats vs. UCLA against those of Cal vs. UCLA.

It’s true that the motivation/psyche angle can cut both ways. While the examples of the inferior team rising up and upsetting the superior one (or at least making the game surprisingly close), there are probably about as many examples of the former “lying down” once the outcome of the game appears in hand. Sort of a mental “oh no, here we go again” kind of process. Expectations of the weaker team not performing well often prove true, and there’s the creeping doubts in the back of its mind, even when the game may be tight in the early going.

I seem to remember someone from the SWC saying that when DKR had the ‘Horns in full gear that it was worth at least a touchdown alone when the opponent would see his team trot out on the field. Who knows if that’s accurate exactly, but there could be some merit to it.

There is very little doubt in my mind that when the opposition perceives that Texas is in a down cycle we lose some we shouldn’t and lose by wide margins when we are not favored.

Anyone that tells us that college football does not include a huge element of emotion when compared to the NFL is not very bright.

When the odds are so great, the mind boggles.

June Jones might be one of the top five College coaches in Football. The Ponies are finally enjoying a little success, it will be fun to see what happens when June is able to field a complete team wtith his recruits. I still root for the Horns, dad was an alum, and it sucks to see them struggle. Please, Please, beat those bastards from the cornfields this weekend.
Pony Up and Hook Em!

How about the most important single factor of all? SMU has a better QB, no matter how underrated he was coming out of high school. Padron was injured his senior year and flew under the radar. Aldrick Robinson is also probably better than any of UT’s skill position players.