Manny Diaz versus the Spread Offense

Great write up. Still having horrible replays of Hicks hitting the wrong gap and Gideon screwing the pooch as well.

Young team but the experience they are getting now will pay itself off. 8-4 9-3 looking realistic.

Thank God! Longhorn football talk!

Thanks for the explanation on the 2 TD runs. I saw that Hicks should have made the play on the first one, but hadn’t seen the problem with the 2nd.

Sweet. 2013. Texas will be unstoppable. Obama will be retired. The stock market will double and my wife will decide its time for a open relationship. Looking forward to the utopia.

Color me superficial, but I can’t tell from reading this whether you think Manny called a good game or not. You seem to be trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear on the two TD runs and the play where Byndum was left all by his lonesome on Blackmon for the TD was a major fuck up. That play and others look like a team that is so desparate to make a big play that they are willing to bet the house on it and then don’t even come close to delivering. How about just playing some freaking straight defense once in a while? I’m sure I’m showing my ignorance, but everything we do seems to have an odor of all or nothing to it. I love blitzing as much as the next guy, but running headlong into the closest available OL isn’t what constitutes blitzing, IMO.

Keenan Robinson clearly, to me at least, ran up into the line on TD #2 and failed to even notice the RB until he was by him and Gideon for some reason hauled ass into a pile of his teammates before the ball was snapped on the play side. These are four year starters! Hicks in in his first year as a starter. I’ll admit I’m confused and just leave it at that.

Obviously, the staff doesn’t believe we have any depth at LB or safety. Too bad!

Byndom, Kenny V, Phillips and Diggs are excellent players, BTW.

Nice breakdowns. I figured some of the 4 4th down plays would get probed.

OSU 4th and 9, 2 plays before the touchdown pass to Blackmon. Blitzed here too, pass to Blackmon.
OSU 4th and 1. TD. Well documented
UT 4th and goal. Fozzy needed NFL down by contact rules.
UT 4th and 2. 5 wide. Pass to Shipley tipped.

On the long TD run, was Gideon lined up on Blackmon’s side? I’m trying to understand why he was out on the numbers.

Much to think about, NR. So much, I’m hitting the sack and plan to read it all again in the morning. I’m with Jake. I think I have a few queries on where this all leaves us.

Seeing as it is Thursday — I had prepared myself for a “monday in the humidor” segment and fired up a Romeo y julieta reserve maduro AND a Cohiba…but alas, it still didn’t show up. Sigh. Jesus — why have you foresaken us?

In any case, great write up — I know I speak for everyone when I say that your write-ups are truly enlightening. Is there any way that these can count towards masters or PhD credit?

On a completely unrelated topic (and I apologize if this derails the thread), but I was trolling texags earlier tonight, and they are seriously contemplating what will happen WHEN they go 10-2. Somehow, they seem to think that they’ll jump over both OU and okiest, even with the assumption that both teams go 11-1. Truly delusional.

Top-notch analysis sir! This is exactly why we can’t dump Diaz after just a few months on the job. I think he is going to get it. That said, I would love to get a little more analysis on how OSU managed to control our front 3-8 plus stunts to keep the pocket as calm as a baby nursery — are we truly that out-manned up front?

Jake: Manny has a fairly aggressive approach that he tempers with a degree of risk-averse deep coverage. When you see guys flying at the line on 4th and 1 that’s about 2 things: One is that it’s 4th and 1 and we are expecting a run, another is that the Diaz run defense is about building a wall.
Because of the stunts, you want the linebackers to aggressively fill gaps that they aren’t lined up in. If all of them do that except one, big trouble like we saw with the Hicks TD. If Hicks is just in the right place though it’s a safe play.

I think the staff loves our depth at safety and linebacker and we take out our starters more than many other teams.

Oldtimehorn: How’s it been going? I’m pretty pleased with how we played against OSU. We had a few schematic gaffes and a few schematic defeats but we played that passing offense better than anyone else in the last 2 years. As we develop our DL’s pass rush (see the humidor) and our younger safeties I think we can expect to see some greatness on defense. Diaz has really absorbed Akina’s excellent man-defense into his schemes well.

RivalWear:
Aggy is as deluded as ever. The odds of them beating OU in norman after winning last year in college station are at about 15% in my book. Not sure what Huckleberry’s stats say but I don’t ever bet against Venables and Stoops gameplanning at home, in a revenge/statement game, against a coach like Sherman and a QB like Tannehill.

ziizizzizzizy: I don’t think OSU handled our pressure that spectacularly, they just got the ball out quickly. We continue to not get a ton of sacks or pressures but opposing teams continue to not really test our pass-rush much.

Ultralight: Gideon was on the boundary side, Blackmon was on the field side. We generally kept Scott and Gideon on the boundary side where there was less ground to cover, which I suppose answer my own question of why they were played where they were played.

Re , David Ash running a dumbed down version of Colts offense. Considering thats what David ran in high school, it is logical to help him along in the passing game by running plays he is already comfortable with.

55f100tx: I don’t know how some of y’all come up with your handles, good point about Ash’s college offense, didn’t know that detail. He has a similar skill set to Colt with a stronger arm.

Great stuff. Thanks.

I’m no expert, so I may be spouting silliness here. Consider this all a rambling question.

I know people like sacks, but does the stat really indicate much? Look at Alabama. While they habitually lag the FBS field in sacks, they seem to lead the FBS field in QB bodybags. Force the offense to get the ball out quickly, get a hit on the QB if he takes anything deeper than a 3-step. Isn’t that the new model?

While any new gig/conference is going to involve a learning curve, I just have a hard time believing that a DC who was successful in Starkville is going to struggle in Austin. The risks/rewards with the Diaz schemes seem fine to me. I prefer 11 guys attacking with discipline. Yes, we got chewed up by two teams with exceptional talent and experience, but I honestly expected as much with everyone on our side still in a steep learning curve.

I like where I think the D is heading. Am I alone in that?

Nickel rover…. I don’t know 55f100tx but here goes nothing.
55f100tx= ( I’m taking a guess at this one)
1955 f(ord) 100 (series) pickup
Neat trucks …. mine was a 1955 baby blue stepside F-100 with a 292 V8. I think ford called it columbia blue like the houston oilers columbia blue. Wish I still had mine… I imagine it would look sweet painted burnt orange with orange/white roll and tuck interior.
FYI

Jet: Ah, I see. I drive a Corolla. I’m more of a pragmatist when it comes to cars and I’ve never needed a pickup.

G.O.F: Great thoughts and I’m in agreement. Some of you might remember that I had a distaste for Diaz’s stated philosophy and strategy when he signed on here. I preferred someone who could get our talent lined up in sound schemes and make teams beat us. I did a bunch of research into Diaz to write my “Longhorn Kickoff” piece and started to change my mind a little. Now I’m totally sold. The way he has modified his schemes to employ his underlying strategy against Big 12 offenses proves that he gets it.

I don’t think he faced anything in the SEC as potent as what OU or OSU attacked us with the last few weeks but he’s adapting quickly.

You can’t discount the fact that our offense put enormous pressure on our D. They had to line up for a lot of plays as we only had 2 sustained drives in the first 3 quarters. If we were up or even within one score most of the game, I imagine Diaz could have called a slightly less aggressive game, much like we saw before OU. Two games with the D under pressure not only because they are facing experienced, explosive offenses, but also two weeks in a row of having our own offense not keeping them off the field, and I can’t really hold Diaz any more accountable than I do Harsin and the O, who are trying to make do with a lot of inexperience and an OL without the talent to pass protect.

The numbers against OSU’s passing game are totally convincing to me that Manny knows exactly what he’s doing. Unfortunately for us, we had some mistakes (how many practices in this system? Not many, overall), and OSU is not your run-of-the-mill offense. OSU is pretty damn good, and they have good coaches.
NO,SIR!! Where we lost this game was definitely not the defense. It was our inability to produce anything like a competent passing game to complement our excellent running. The offense has a lot farther to go than the defense, which is usually the case, but is exaggerated this year by the particular balance of personnel issues.
As for the kick return allowed…Not good, but offset by Fozzy’s answer, so back to passing woes.

lurker and ricky, good points. Lurker, about the kickoff, we absolutely need to be winning special teams’ battles every week for a few reasons:

1). Our offense still isn’t very good and we need all the points we can get
2). special teams is a place where our superiority in number of scholarship athletes should manifest itself. If we don’t have dominant special teams we are wasting an enormous chunk of our strategic advantage.

We shouldn’t be trading special teams points with teams if we want to win 8 games and shock Aggy.

Ricky,

We dominated time of possession in the first half and for the game.

The problem with our offense seems to be that they have to take a lot of plays to move the ball and eventually a mistake, penalty or tfl stalls them in a second or third and long. I think defenses from here on out will try to do to us what Manny tries to do to other teams. Take risks with our anemic downfield game to hammer us into a play with no gain. We suck if we have to go more than five yards for a first.

Roma: While it is a much more intellectual and purposeful than most of it’s sisters, the Harsin offense is indeed much closer to the pro-style and run-based offenses that Diaz’s fire zones excel in stuffing.

Prevent deep coverage combined with a front designed to get TFL’s and pressure. You have to be able to get long runs and the intermediate game going to beat it.

Hey nickel … take into consideration that Manny is using a bunch of freshman /sophomore at key skill spots and I’d say I’m happy with where we’re at to date.
I said we’d win 9/10 games before the season started and we’d not loose after november 1st so it’s looking like 10 wins.

In regard to the pickup truck thing….. I think it goes back to having a “bed” handy… heh heh heh

Nickel,

Just a quick thanks for another in a long series of illuminating, educational breakdowns. Since access to your analyses is free, that means the readers’ ROI is infinite. Yeah, I’d call that a decent value proposition.

Dmitri: you are most welcome.

NR – thanks. The dual fake WR screens was just a great play call against what Diaz was doing.

My questions with Diaz’ call.
1. Initial wide alignment of the 2 deep safeties.
2. Deep safeties ignoring the backfield action and charging forward to help with the potential screens. Basically end up with 3 players committed to stopping 2 on both edges and leaving 5 on 5 blocking in the middle.

ultralight: Good thoughts and Mack and Diaz mentioned them both in their press conference.

1). Wide alignment: we were sold out to stop the short/screen game. Up till this point OSU hadn’t really successfully punished us for it.
2). OSU didn’t really employ much misdirection in the game before this. I think for 2 reasons: one is that misdirection is usually a tactic to use with zone defenses rather than man where many of the defenders aren’t paying attention to your fakes anyways. Another is that a lot of misdirection requires time in the pocket to execute. OSU wasn’t getting that unless they wanted to take receivers off the field and bring in TE’s and backs.

You could tell we were ready to live with the consequences of 5 in the box until they figured out how to get rid of our safety help as well. After that we switched to 4-2-5 nickel but the game was already over so I don’t know how that would have played out.

Back in 08 Muschamp opened up in dime vs. Tech and they ran all over us so we had to go back to nickel or drop Gideon into the box before the snap. That’s always the key with the Air Raid. You can sell out to stop the pass and they may or may not yield and run the ball.

NIckel -

On the fourth and 1 TD play, what was Blake doing running up on Robinson’s back? I’m not saying he misplayed it, it just seemed to be a strange reaction. It wasn’t an aggressive move toward the line, but it was enough to take him out of the play once the RB crossed the LOS.

A-Tex Devil: there was another running crease in the C-gap that I think he wanted to maintain before coming back to the cutback lane. You can see it in the frame that has the view from behind the QB. He did get too close to the line but that same aggressiveness prevented a first down on the previous play. Also, if the Mike gets blocked into the safety you would normally not start with the safety in assigning blame.

We were about 5-6 plays away from beating a legit top 5-10 team. I can deal with that. It’s frustrating given the consistency of winning that we’ve become accustomed to, but we’re on track. I was quite pleased with how well we shut down that potent passing attack and the emergence of Byndom at corner with Diggs getting some snaps playing deep. Beyond ATM, I’m not sure there’s another team left on the schedule that will require us to play on such a knife’s edge of perfection to win. We’ll see how many other teams hold OSU to 29 offensive points by the end of the year.

I think what Manny is learning, and what we already know, is that Akina can’t teach a competent zone to save his life. It’s not his thing. That’s fine. He has some talent and youth issues this year, but I don’t recall us really doing it well even with our better secondaries.

KSU and ATM will punish us if we don’t get our run fits figured out, and the lack of production from our defensive line is frustrating as well. Seeing Rak, Kindle, Miller, and Melton destroying pockets is still too freshly imprinted in my mind. I think that perhaps your best point was that teams still refuse to do much beyond the quick passing game against us. That speaks volumes.

Nice article. Harsin and Diaz are doing just enough well to tease an expectant fan base, but the extreme limitations placed upon them by the sloth of some current and former staff members makes the lack of immediate performance palatable for most.

NR,

What’s it going to take for us to develop LB’s that consistently understand their gap responsibilities, have the ability to get there, and have the ability to cover RB’s in space? Are these skills mutually exclusive? Is it simply a product of inexperience in the new defensive system? I’ve come to terms with our coverage LB’s giving up a few yards when they make tackles, but the mental lapses bother me and I seem to recall them being common last year as well. We absolutely have depth at LB, but we need to find a game-changer there, particularly since we don’t have any depth along the DL.

NR,

I don’t care what Vasherized says about you, that was an outstanding write up.

Great piece, Nickel Rover. I definitely agree with you that the main story line of the defensive side of the ball for this game was how we adjusted with our gameplan and learned from the OU game (in fact I would even argue we learned and reacted during the OU game). We used press and the threat of press to directly address their quick game and take away their easy yardage/big upside plays with screens. We paired that with pressure concepts to help mitigate the other big danger in their passing game: late breaking inside routes off of 5+step drops.

Unfortunately we did have to give up a significant amount in our run support to make that happen. At times with our pressures and so few in the box we openly invited OSU to gash us. I think with Gideon the argument isn’t so much about could he have made some of the tackles from where he aligned, it’s if he had better range / ability to close then he could have aligned in better spots for our defense. He was not the primary culprit on some of the run issues we had but his alignments were a significant contributing factor.

On the 4th and 1, it’s fairly complicated to assign blame. On the one hand the play is clearly there for Hicks if he attacks the backside A gap one the OC commits to sealing Robinson. On the other hand, the lead blocker on the play is going outside and our force player is DB: that play could have easily bounced outside. When you combine that with the knowledge from Diaz that there was supposed to be a stunt between Dorsey and Hicks and Dorsey was supposed to get across the guard into the A gap. Those two factors make it hard to put it completely on Hicks even though in a broken world you’d hope he makes the instinctual play on the ball carrier. This is where Gideon’s alignment is in question… why was he brought down in a linebacker alignment in that set? I get going for the TFL, but I don’t know if I agree with taking away the 3rd level of the defense there… especially when you are stunting liberally in the front.

Overall, I was left wondering what would have been possible if we have played more nickel but still went with wide alignments from our safeties. We may have gotten torn up by the slots rather than giving up the run busts. If we are going to short our front that much, we have to play extremely disciplined up front and that takes away from our ability to pressure somewhat. The ideal solution of course would be to go with the same gameplan but to have the range from the safety positions to be able to align closer to the seams. Regardless, I saw definite progress and Byndom/Phillips played huge games.

That’s awesome work, Nick. Terrific breakdown of what we wanted to accomplish schematically. There is a hell of a lot to get excited about with this defense and this DC – the ability to rebound from a gut-wrenching blowout to have this level of success in disrupting OSU’s bread and butter is really strong work.

We had to make a bit of a devil’s bargain as you point out in what we did to disrupt their pass game, and it wouldn’t have bitten us much at all if not for Hick’s brainlock on one play and some regrettably slow recognition on the other. Byndom’s game seems even better in retrospect, and I’m really excited to see what he can do against Fuller on Turkey Day. On the TD he gave up I just didn’t like the fact that he was giving up inside leverage if he was indeed not supposed to have any help on the interior. I always bias towards playing inside leverage and forcing the tougher throw with the sideline as your friend if you’re truly on an island with no help inside or behind.

General: ha!

LS: Even if Dorsey failed in his assignment the ideal is for Hicks to read that and fill the necessary gap. Regarding Gideon, We had a safety and a corner devoted to making sure Blackmon didn’t turn that play into a touchdown so it makes sense that Gideon would be closer to the line to give us a numbers advantage.

I wish we had played more 3-3-5 nickel myself and rotated between Scott and Hicks as the 3rd linebacker although that probably wouldn’t have solved any of the TD plays I diagrammed.

The trouble with the 4-2-5 is it keeps us from employing our best pass-rusher, Acho, unless we want to send a DL into coverage or blitz. Also we have to take Scott off the field.

I think Diaz’s plan makes a lot of sense we just failed to execute a few times against one of the best offenses in the country. Maybe 4-2-5 nickel works if we had a Brian Orakpo or our secondary were more experienced.

Nobis: I think you’re right about inside leverage on that TD but my main point was that it was a nearly impossible assignment and we asked if of a guy who had already done better than was reasonable to expect against Blackmon.

Thank you for this. Am I reading correctly that you expect to see more of Edmund in, say, the KState game where he’s maybe a better fit against the offense they run; but that you don’t expect he is where he needs to be to help with spread? Also, I don’t know if the schedules have been locked already for next year; but given the general consensus about progress between OU and OKState, is there a chance we play a similar back-back next year but flip the order?

tx2step: I would expect to see more of Edmond in every instance, but yeah, definitely the KSU game. His conditioning, they say, has kept him out of games against fast-paced opponents that can play games to trap out of shape defenders on the field.

I think he’ll play a valuable role against the spread in the future as a defensive end if not as a Mike linebacker. He actually looks pretty quick, I don’t really know what he’ll turn into here but I’m pretty sure it will be awesome.
I don’t know how the schedule works for next year but hopefully we don’t have to do this again. Especially if OSU comes even sooner on the schedule.

Good point Roma about the time of possession. While watching the game it certainly didn’t seem like we dominated the ball. I have a feeling we didn’t run many more plays than OSU did, but instead of passing and stopping the clock with incompletions and first downs as OSU did, we were running the ball and generally getting first downs after two or three plays with the clock running a lot more. Either way, the score seemed to dictate a more aggressive and risky D than we saw when we were in close games or in blow outs.

Ricky -

OSU ran a total of 68 offensive plays; we ran a total of 89. I think I remember reading that coming into last week’s game OSU was averaging close to 90 offensive plays per game. Their yard total was 420; ours was 370. They punted 6 times; we punted 7.

As others have noted, the stat line for this game indicates a much closer game that the scoreboard, which I think is indicative of a) our red-zone problems and b) the two TD runs that Nickel breaks down in the post.

For all our former conference partners that accuse us of running the conference to our benefit, we get screwed almost every year on the scheduling. I don’t think OU has ever faced even this sort of gauntlet much less the one we almost successfully ran in 2009. It always seems like we end up with back-to-back or back-to-back-to-back games against the best teams in the conference and yet I struggle to think of any season where OU faced a top ten team right after playing us, much less facing two other top 10 teams in a row.

One thing i was thinking about on that 4th and TD play, that i haven’t seen mentioned, is that there was less than 50 seconds left in the half, and therefore, it wasnt completely necessary to sell out to try and stop the play.

Anyone have thoughts on that?

RivalWear: that’s a pretty good objection. I think it would be fair to argue that our aggressive call there and when we put up only Byndom between Blackmon and the end zone were overly-risky calls.
Diaz is at his best when he plays for TFL while still leaving his defense a safety net.

tx2step, I just went to ESPN to count them! I came up with 88 to 69. In the fourth quarter we ran 25 plays and they ran 13, so that was most of the difference at the point where the game was their’s to lose. When the game was in doubt we were pretty even on total plays ran even though we dominated the time of possession. They only had 53% of our time of possession but ran 78% of our number of plays.

I thought Manny was rather mild in his reaction to Hicks as Hicks came off the field after the td run. Certainly not a Boom reaction.

If a guy blitzes every down, almost always from the same place, it is not a blitz.

“Because of the stunts, you want the linebackers to aggressively fill gaps that they aren’t lined up in. If all of them do that except one, big trouble like we saw with the Hicks TD. If Hicks is just in the right place though it’s a safe play.”

Maybe it is a safe play or maybe the back runs through Hicks and it is still a big play. This approach (when not at the goal line) makes no sense to me because it is super vulnerable to the big play. It is not a fault tolerant approach. Why take such a risk when the offense is on their own 25 yard line? Much better to keep the relatively small, light LBs free to run and make a tackle than to get them ensnared with the big OL who are much bigger and stronger than the LB. Manny coaches the LBs so I guess they are doing what he wants. It is not easy for an LB to make a tackle at the LOS and nearly impossible if the LB is blocked by an OL. Better for the LB to stay in space, keep his pursuit angles clear, and stay clear of OL blocks.

When they did play dime (which I agree with), would it have been possible to play zone or at least some zone concepts? It would have made run support by the DBs much, much more effective. I realize teaching man is Akina’s thing but if you are going to gamble up front, it is really hard to support the run from the secondary when you are in man because your back is turned to the play.

In general I don’t agree with the super aggressive tactics to stop the short passing game. You need a superb D to take that approach and the horns are not there yet. Better to play more zone (or zone concepts), hit them hard when they catch the ball to try to force a fumble or drop. Hold them to a field goal in the red zone where the D has the advantage. Don’t give up the big play. Don’t bite on the fakes. It is awesome to blitz but zone blitz so that the net of the guys playing back is the same.

If you put 8 men in the box and can’t stop the run with those 8 guys, you are in big trouble.

Blackmon deserves a lot of credit for the success on the big run since he drew 2 defenders away from the run.

I understand the rationale, which I would characterize as….

If you believe in a scheme, you teach it and rep it. But if you’re constantly pulling back in your scheme to account for athletic deficiencies or for learning curve issues, then you’re in constant short-term gain/long-term loss mode.

OU and OSU 2011 are about as good as a B12 offense gets – or any offense, for that matter. If you scrap your schemes, or adjust them radically enough, to compensate for talent gaps and learning curves, you’re wasting two weeks of practice and admitting that you don’t believe in either the kids or the scheme (perhaps both) down deep.

In other words, I get it. Take away what an offense is most comfortable doing and make them execute something different. No different than making a shooter in basketball launch from the spots you choose instead of the ones he wants. If he makes them, good for him.

Certainly not a Boom reaction.

Getting this attached to someone who’s married is not healthy. In fact you should seek professional help.

Kafka,

We mixed in plenty of zone in the game plan and our fire zones are a zone blitz. I think that addresses two of your paragraphs.

How many you need in the box relates to how many they have in the box. 8 in the box is the common water mark because the traditional pro sets have two backs and a tight end. But if the offense is in big personnel then 8 in the box is light.

" Acho had 2 QB pressures and another 2 TFL playing a LB/DT hybrid-position that I think Diaz may have invented for him."

While some may see this use of Acho as creative, it seems like Diaz is asking him to do something that he really isn’t built to do. Having Acho who I’m guessing is probably 230 lbs take on an offensive lineman one on one just isn’t the best use of his talents IMO. Now if this was Donte Hightower from Alabama who is probably 265 lbs then I could understand it. The same could be said for having Christian Scott and Blake Gideon performing too much man to man coverage on guys that they just flat out can’t cover. To me you have to build a scheme around what your pieces can do well.

I wish Diaz would quit trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak and play more of a conventional defense.

Scott,
“How many you need in the box relates to how many they have in the box. 8 in the box is the common water mark because the traditional pro sets have two backs and a tight end. But if the offense is in big personnel then 8 in the box is light.”
 
You also have to factor in what yard line you are on and how aggressive/conservative you want to be re: stopping the run. If you are not on the goal line, you want to have at least one safety deep and better two. The safety(s) can always come up for run support but stays back initially to protect against big plays. That is why they are called safeties. You also probably want to keep your LBs clear to make plays. You don’t necessarily have to match the offense with numbers in the box unless you are really aggressive about stopping a run for no gain. BTW, it is really difficult to match numbers in the box if you are double covering one WR.

“We mixed in plenty of zone in the game plan and our fire zones are a zone blitz. I think that addresses two of your paragraphs.”

Not really. Gideon said after the game that on at least one of the long runs, the DBs were in man even though Manny were putting everybody in gaps in the box. That is unnecessarily risky. People who think of football abstractly (rather than from a player perspective) and ignore all the screwups and missed/defeated assignments that happen in real, chaotic football tend to have unrealistic expectations for player performance. There are good reasons not to commit LBs to gaps and to keep safeties back. If you are going to be very aggressive against the run, your secondary needs to be prepared to support the run (i.e. not have their backs turned to the play).

A DC has safe ways to confuse an offense. He can change his defense very frequently, he can disguise his defense, he can zone blitz. None of these things are risky but they are confusing and effective.

Great point, dudoo. A lot of fans (and commentators and maybe even coaches sometimes) over emphasize the importance of the abstract scheme. Way more important in the real world of football is understanding matchups and using schemes and plays that exploit those matchups and hide your own weaknesses. It is absolutely critical to put your players in a position to succeed while they are playing within their abilities. The coach can’t ask them to do something beyond their abilities and expect them to reliably succeed.

Nickle Rover JET has my handle figured out, that pickup is my hobby outside of back seat coaching the Longhorns and grandkids. Burnt Orange would be a cool color, mine is seamist green at the moment.

Kafka,

Regarding having a safety on the goaline calls:
Please re-read my first post in the thread. I think you are confused about my position on the issue.

Regarding zone defense in the game:
66 defensive calls, 20 of which were zone calls. It’s grating when people speak in absolutes particularly when it conflicts with the facts.

“A DC has safe ways to confuse an offense. He can change his defense very frequently, he can disguise his defense, he can zone blitz. None of these things are risky but they are confusing and effective.”
You do understand that those are precisely the things we have been doing very frequently this year, right?

dudoo: Your concerns are answered by 2 facts: One is that Acho did a fantastic job playing a stand-up 3-tech DT. If we had him with his hand in the dirt trying to defend against the run that might have been a poor idea but in the pass-rush shooting gaps it was very effective. He even beat double teams at times.
As far as asking Scott and Gideon to play man-coverage: We didn’t have Gideon play man-coverage at all. The only time he’s played anything even like Man-coverage is picking up deep receivers in Zone at the 3rd level. Scott had to play some man but it didn’t really hurt us much and he did it with safety help over the top. If we don’t use Scott in man-coverage there who do we use?

NR,

Impressive write up, I think we all need to give Diaz a chance to catch up on the learning curve. Not many DC’s have seen the B12 offenses with elite athletes that OU and OSU have.

I agree that he seems to be getting better, hopefully, after going through the B12 batting order this year it will bear fruit next year in better schemes, preperation and performance.

Diaz is adjusting to a new environment at the same time the players are trying to adapt to him. I would also say that while someone like Nick Saban has a fully developed defense perhaps Manny Diaz is still tinkering with his ultimate construct. That might be frightening on some level, but it can also be an exciting prospect to witness growth. I suppose it remains in doubt whether the end product will be eye catching for its horror or delight, but there’s certainly intrigue in many corners.

“Can either play coverage like Robinson?”

Nickel Rover,

I believe that will fall to Cobbs, but we’ll see. Good post. Appreciate it.

Hey nickel …. good stuff as usual
the most amazing thing for me is that you, jesus, vash, longhorn scott, and probably most of you cats come from a nerd, geek, statistical and or financial background but have an uncanny grasp of the strategies involved in football..
I guess you could say the modern coach could well come from a diaz mold… no organized football, no coaching including first professional job but great organizational skills and ability to teach/motivate…
I think someone needs to herd all you cats into a room with some video equipment and comment to making some training videos for players as well as coaches…
keep the good stuff coming and oh, by the way…… Texas vs Washington in the

Cotton Bowl to finish this year and set up next year for a top BCS Bowl game prior to a National Championship game against Florida State) after

We win the 2014/15 championship.
Harsin becomes head coach.
Applewhite named OF
Mack moves to front office.
DeLoss takes grandkids fishing and starts collecting retirement pension

Nice centerline wheels on the 55 stepside, tx

Mack moves to front office.

Aaaaakkk! How about Mack moves to Tennessee instead? Visions of Cleve and FatDog, Greg and friends in burnt orange La-Z-Boys.