Often overlooked aspect of the offense....

[BlueRaider22]

Brady Hoke has been on Sirius radio recently. He has mentioned that offense ruined him at Michigan. When he took the job, his roster was full of Rich Rod's spread guys. Hoke and Borges wanted to run a pro-style system but didn't have the personnel. So, the first 2 yrs they ran a spread and did fairly well.....while they recruited pro-style guys. And when they finally switched the offense for good they were playing with amid of left-over spread guys (like Gardner at QB) and a bunch of very young pro-style guys that couldn't run it yet. The result was a poor offense that couldn't execute.....and thus Hoke was fired. Harbaugh has maturing pro-style guys now and was able to run his offense.

Muschamp had a similar experience at Florida. He was on Sirius radio talking about he started with a spread roster and handed the reins to pro-style Charlie Weiss. The result was bad.....Muschamp panicked and switched OCs. The offense was a disaster throughout his entire time. Muschamp said his offense couldn't execute because the roster wasn't a good fit and the guys that had potential to run it were so young. McElwain hires Doug Nussmeier (pro-style) to run the maturing pro-style roster.....and it has done fairly well thus far.

Stoops is doing a massive shift. He's going from a pro-style offensive roster.....and one that is depleted.....to a spread offense.

Now certainly we have a bunch of other things to contend with....poor coaching, game management, etc, but this almost certainly is affecting the offense.

 

[Cats_2010]

Very well may be true but a coach has to coach to his players strength. It is poor coaching to play a system you are not built for.

If I take over a basketball team that has no interior post presence but my style of coaching is to establish the post then it's futile to try. Square pegs will never fit into round holes

 

[JasonRDunn]

Very well may be true but a coach has to coach to his players strength. It is poor coaching to play a system you are not built for.

If I take over a basketball team that has no interior post presence but my style of coaching is to establish the post then it's futile to try. Square pegs will never fit into round holes

I agree, in general with that sentiment; however, you also cannot change styles from one year to the next or it is like changing coordinators from one year to the next. Oh wait...

 

[BlueRaider22]

I think Muschamp tried to fit square pegs in. Hoke didn't until he absolutely had to in the end.

With Stoops, Brown tried to do his but he didn't have many "strengths" other than a few good RBs and a mobile QB. Dawson didn't do a good job playing the strengths I don't think.

Coincidently, the defense is changing over from a 4-3 to 3-4 personnel. In college this often takes 3 or 4 yrs under the best circumstances......and when you couple this with a new DC and with losing some DL commits (like Tubman) it's a rougher road.

 

[JasonS.]

Interesting points. I think Neal Brown did a decent job working through those issues, especially his first year. If you go by QBR, the best QB of the Stoops era thus far is Jalen Whitlow. And our offense in 2013, which wasn't all that great, was more efficient (81st nationally) than it was this year (108th).

Doesn't mean Jalen Whitlow was the answer for us, but it speak to Neal Brown's ability to duct tape together a semi-productive offense around the players he inherited.

 

[Levibooty]

Very well may be true but a coach has to coach to his players strength. It is poor coaching to play a system you are not built for.

If I take over a basketball team that has no interior post presence but my style of coaching is to establish the post then it's futile to try. Square pegs will never fit into round holes

Go back and re-read the OP please.

 

[RackOps]

Very well may be true but a coach has to coach to his players strength. It is poor coaching to play a system you are not built for.

If I take over a basketball team that has no interior post presence but my style of coaching is to establish the post then it's futile to try. Square pegs will never fit into round holes

So a new coach has to continue the old coach's system?

If you are going to run the old offense, you have to keep recruiting for it....

 

[merrimanm]

So a new coach has to continue the old coach's system?

If you are going to run the old offense, you have to keep recruiting for it....

Yup. Which is why any coach will tell you that it takes a couple of years to change a program. And that is with a school who recruits well. With a team like kentucky, it takes even longer.