The Shula offense

[18IsTheMan]

Dating to the bowl game, the offense has averaged 14.5 ppg. That is a criminally low number. And it's a pattern at this point. The number would be a tick lower if you took out drives aided by defensive takeaways that produced short fields. It is somewhat ironic that we fired Teasley (who was seen as the main source of the offensive struggles), the OL cleaned up the false start penalties, and we still had arguably our worst offensive performance in years on Saturday. Yeah, the OL still sucks, but if you applied a correction factor to our ppg to account for a lousy OL, how many ppg do you think that gets us to? Maybe 22 ppg?

14.5 ppg should be a felony. That is so bad.

Also, we have not won a game this year that did not include a score by our defense or ST. Our highlight of the season so far is the 35-13 win over UK, but that featured 2 defensive scores and a turnover at the UK 43 that gave the offense a short field TD. Take those away and it's a 14-13 nailbiter. The offense really has not gone out and won a game all season. I can actually recall all of our good offensive drives this season, and count them on one hand.

If you want to make it worse, take out the scripted opening drives for VaTech and Vandy, which were by far our prettiest drives of the year, and what do you have?

You simply can't ignore a number like 14.5, can you?

 

[Piscis]

Dating to the bowl game, the offense has averaged 14.5 ppg. That is a criminally low number. And it's a pattern at this point. The number would be a tick lower if you took out drives aided by defensive takeaways that produced short fields. It is somewhat ironic that we fired Teasley (who was seen as the main source of the offensive struggles), the OL cleaned up the false start penalties, and we still had arguably our worst offensive performance in years on Saturday. Yeah, the OL still sucks, but if you applied a correction factor to our ppg to account for a lousy OL, how many ppg do you think that gets us to? Maybe 22 ppg?

14.5 ppg should be a felony. That is so bad.

Also, we have not won a game this year that did not include a score by our defense or ST. Our highlight of the season so far is the 35-13 win over UK, but that featured 2 defensive scores and a turnover at the UK 43 that gave the offense a short field TD. Take those away and it's a 14-13 nailbiter. The offense really has not gone out and won a game all season.

You simply can't ignore a number like 14.5, can you?

UK has two wins on the season, Toledo and Eastern Michigan. Using a win over UK as a "highlight" for anything is sad.

I would think a team could average more than 14.5 pts per game by accident.

 

[Legal_fowl]

Dating to the bowl game, the offense has averaged 14.5 ppg. That is a criminally low number. And it's a pattern at this point. The number would be a tick lower if you took out drives aided by defensive takeaways that produced short fields. It is somewhat ironic that we fired Teasley (who was seen as the main source of the offensive struggles), the OL cleaned up the false start penalties, and we still had arguably our worst offensive performance in years on Saturday. Yeah, the OL still sucks, but if you applied a correction factor to our ppg to account for a lousy OL, how many ppg do you think that gets us to? Maybe 22 ppg?

14.5 ppg should be a felony. That is so bad.

Also, we have not won a game this year that did not include a score by our defense or ST. Our highlight of the season so far is the 35-13 win over UK, but that featured 2 defensive scores and a turnover at the UK 43 that gave the offense a short field TD. Take those away and it's a 14-13 nailbiter. The offense really has not gone out and won a game all season.

You simply can't ignore a number like 14.5, can you?

No. But it seems like Beamer is ignoring it.

This is a weak staff on the offensive side. Very weak. I would not even list Furrey or Elliott as top assistants.

 

[18IsTheMan]

No. But it seems like Beamer is ignoring it.

This is a weak staff on the offensive side. Very weak. I would not even list Furrey or Elliott as top assistants.

I agree. I think the entire offensive staff needs an overhaul. I just don't see how Beamer will be able to attract a quality OC.

 

[sclawman77]

We are statistically in the bottom tier of the country in most if not all offensive categories and second to worst in sacks allowed.

 

[sclawman77]

The proverbial nail in Shane's coffin will be hiring crap OC's.

 

[18IsTheMan]

The proverbial nail in Shane's coffin will be hiring crap OC's.

Satterfield and Shula, for sure. They each get an F. I'd give the Loggains hire a C.

 

[92Pony]

I think its mostly Shane being stubborn and wanting to run his pro-style - or whatever it's called - type of offense. He needs to swallow his pride, admit that his idea of offense ain't cutting it, and go hire a successful OC who runs a prolific COLLEGE offense.

 

[muscleknight]

The score of the UGA - Ole Miss game went back and forth 42- 35. Offense rules now.

 

[Piscis]

I think its mostly Shane being stubborn and wanting to run his pro-style - or whatever it's called - type of offense. He needs to swallow his pride, admit that his idea of offense ain't cutting it, and go hire a successful OC who runs a prolific COLLEGE offense.

I don't know what offense that would be. Is it triple option, veer, I formation, air raid or what? If you don't run a pro style offense, how do you recruit offensive players who want to play in the NFL after college? Paul Johnson at Georgia tech ran the triple option and it was moderately successful but he couldn't recruit any talent above about a three star.

The style of offense isn't the problem.

 

[18IsTheMan]

I don't know what offense that would be. Is it triple option, veer, I formation, air raid or what? If you don't run a pro style offense, how do you recruit offensive players who want to play in the NFL after college? Paul Johnson at Georgia tech ran the triple option and it was moderately successful but he couldn't recruit any talent above about a three star.

The style of offense isn't the problem.

I don't know. For the rest of this season, I would basically scrap the run. Go Air Raid style. Tempo and 5 wide every time. What's the worst that could happen?

 

[cockyferg]

We need Georgia Tech's OC. King and sellers are similar in that they're both mobile, except GT takes advantage of it and we don't

 

[Piscis]

I don't know. For the rest of this season, I would basically scrap the run. Go Air Raid style. Tempo and 5 wide every time. What's the worst that could happen?

So, BYU in the '80s. It would at least be fun to watch. If they spread the field on every play with 5 wides, Sellers could probably pull off some of those dazzling runs.

 

[18IsTheMan]

So, BYU in the '80s. It would at least be fun to watch. If they spread the field on every play with 5 wides, Sellers could probably pull off some of those dazzling runs.

Yeah, the season is toast. Might as well have some fun with it.

Instead, we'll come out and run it up the middle on the first play against Bama.

 

[Builderman]

When your offensive scheme is first down run to A or B gap 80% of the time no defense in the country can’t stop you for no gain.
we are so predictable my kids are amazed at how I can call what we run next.
Defense is better than it seems, but when you stay on the field the whole game they just can’t hold up.
shula has to go or all of them.
i was never sold on Beamer or muschamp.
we do nothing well.
not even one play.

 

[Gamecock98!]

I think its mostly Shane being stubborn and wanting to run his pro-style - or whatever it's called - type of offense. He needs to swallow his pride, admit that his idea of offense ain't cutting it, and go hire a successful OC who runs a prolific COLLEGE offense.

Where did he get his love for a pro style offense?

 

[18IsTheMan]

Where did he get his love for a pro style offense?

I believe the basis for it is that he can sell it to recruits that it'll prepare them for the pros. All 3 OCs he has hired have NFL experience. That's not a mistake. I think he's placing WAY too much emphasis on it.

 

[ScWildthing61]

Dating to the bowl game, the offense has averaged 14.5 ppg. That is a criminally low number. And it's a pattern at this point. The number would be a tick lower if you took out drives aided by defensive takeaways that produced short fields. It is somewhat ironic that we fired Teasley (who was seen as the main source of the offensive struggles), the OL cleaned up the false start penalties, and we still had arguably our worst offensive performance in years on Saturday. Yeah, the OL still sucks, but if you applied a correction factor to our ppg to account for a lousy OL, how many ppg do you think that gets us to? Maybe 22 ppg?

14.5 ppg should be a felony. That is so bad.

Also, we have not won a game this year that did not include a score by our defense or ST. Our highlight of the season so far is the 35-13 win over UK, but that featured 2 defensive scores and a turnover at the UK 43 that gave the offense a short field TD. Take those away and it's a 14-13 nailbiter. The offense really has not gone out and won a game all season. I can actually recall all of our good offensive drives this season, and count them on one hand.

If you want to make it worse, take out the scripted opening drives for VaTech and Vandy, which were by far our prettiest drives of the year, and what do you have?

You simply can't ignore a number like 14.5, can you?

The only year I remember being more bored and frustrated by our offense was the 0-11 year when we averaged like 8ppg and maybe 200 yds of offense. We have been behind the curve on offense for about the last 30 years, at least since the day Wally Burnham went to Brad Scott whining about "slow your offense down, my defense is tired and can't compete", never mind that Wally just couldn't coach. We used to put the ball in the air back in the day and were on the cutting edge with our offensive scheme, whether it was the run-n-shoot of the late 80s or Steve Taneyhill quarterbacking the fast break offense of the mid 90s. These last 30 years have been mediocre to bad offense, with maybe the exception of a few games here and there. We've had scared, conservative offenses year in and year out that have played not to lose the game instead of playing to win. I don't think we've had an offense finish in the top 20 nationally in scoring and total offense since 1995, but we've had several offenses finish in the bottom 20 in one or both categories in that same time. Our offenses in that time averaged around 20-25ppg and 200-225 pass ypg, and some offenses averaged even less. Players just don't want to play that way.


One other consideration, guess who was changing their offensive scheme from ground and pound to a more wide open up tempo offense and making themselves more attractive to the better recruits in that same time. If you're not sure, they're located in Pickens county.

 

[Skuddy]

The only year I remember being more bored and frustrated by our offense was the 0-11 year when we averaged like 8ppg and maybe 200 yds of offense.

At least we had Holtz with his hilarious one-liners.

 

[Rhode Island Dork]

The Shula Offense:

 

[Rhode Island Dork]

You simply can't ignore a number like 14.5, can you?

Shame Beamer is ignoring it.

 

[Gamecock Jacque]

Where did he get his love for a pro style offense?

He was talked into it by Satterfield.

 

[Piscis]

He was talked into it by Satterfield.

I doubt that. What other offense do you think he would have preferred? Most colleges run some sort of pro style offense. The days of wishbone, triple option, wing T, I formation, veer, etc. are over. The spread, air raid and pro style are pretty much all of the offenses colleges run these days. The spread is basically basketball on grass where the object of the offense is to get one on one matchups in space. The air raid is exactly what its name implies, flood the field with receivers and attack the D vertically. Pro style relies on a stronger run game but mixes up running and passing.

Colleges like pro style for recruiting purposes too. A coach can tell recruits at all positions that their offense will prepare them for the NFL.

 

[PrestonyteParrot]

I saw Beamer's comment which basically said that ''we had a plan, but the Sooner's defense was just too good and adjusted to everything we tried''.
If what we saw was ''the plan'' and we couldn't adjust ''the plan'' to attempt to out scheme the Sooner defense, Beamer must forget the emotions and make a change. I did not see any effort to make adjustments by our OC.

 

[18IsTheMan]

I doubt that. What other offense do you think he would have preferred? Most colleges run some sort of pro style offense. The days of wishbone, triple option, wing T, I formation, veer, etc. are over. The spread, air raid and pro style are pretty much all of the offenses colleges run these days. The spread is basically basketball on grass where the object of the offense is to get one on one matchups in space. The air raid is exactly what its name implies, flood the field with receivers and attack the D vertically. Pro style relies on a stronger run game but mixes up running and passing.

Colleges like pro style for recruiting purposes too. A coach can tell recruits at all positions that their offense will prepare them for the NFL.

For me, the factor is that Beamer has very obviously prioritized hiring OCs who have NFL experience over any other considerations.

 

[Piscis]

For me, the factor is that Beamer has very obviously prioritized hiring OCs who have NFL experience over any other considerations.

In his defense, he's not alone. Coaches like to lead players they are recruiting to believe they have some kind of "pipeline" to the NFL.

UNC hired Belichick for that very reason.

 

[SouthernBelly]

I don't know. For the rest of this season, I would basically scrap the run. Go Air Raid style. Tempo and 5 wide every time. What's the worst that could happen?

They could lose all the rest of the games. Wait...

 

[Gamecock Jacque]

In his defense, he's not alone. Coaches like to lead players they are recruiting to believe they have some kind of "pipeline" to the NFL.

UNC hired Belichick for that very reason.

Unless every single school can claim NFL pipeline that doesn't make a lot of sense. It makes sense for schools that ARE a pipeline.

 

[gamecock stock]

Beamer should hire a top of the line OC from a lower tier FBS school, someone who will jump at doubling or even tripling his salary. But, I suspect he has tied himself to Shula.

 

[Piscis]

Unless every single school can claim NFL pipeline that doesn't make a lot of sense. It makes sense for schools that ARE a pipeline.

They don't have to be a pipeline, they just have to convince a HS kid they have some sort of inside track. Having an OC who has NFL experience is impressive to a recruit since every single recruit thinks he is going to be getting NFL riches in three years.

 

[JohnnySolo]

i hate playing devils advocate but has anyone watched the game again to see if good plays were called that just werent executed properly? Surely someone is open on a quick pass when the other team blitzes. Were receivers open that Sellers didn't see? Hard to argue runs up the middle. Either the hole is there or not. Love how we finally called the RB screen when the D didn't blitz. Even that was a disaster.

 

[gamecock stock]

Would Beamer have fired Satterfield after season 2 had Nebraska not taken him off our hands? I am not sure. We endured over 2 years of poor Teasley OLs. For whatever reason, Beamer is slow to make a move on unproductive staff.

 

[ScWildthing61]

The Shula Offense:

And the Satterfield offense, and Kurt Roper's offense, Chuck Reedy and 6 and one half dozen others the last 30 years!

One offensive coach we had on our staff for a couple of years in the mid 90s that we should've made OC back then was John Reaves. Came from Spurriers system at Florida, we blended that with the FSU fast break offense and Taneyhill had a big year his Senior year running that offense. Really thought we were onto something running that offense. But for some reason we didn't hardly give him the time of day the following two years and Reaves resigned after the 1997 season. I'm sure when either Shula and/or Beamer is let go, our next OC will be some behind the times fossil we dug up that no other school was looking at. We'll continue to run the same boring, tired, old, conservative, play not to lose offense that this program has been MARRIED to the last 30 years. Maybe the BOT will tell the AD to see if anyone out there is running the single wing or the Veer!

 

[Legal_fowl]

I agree. I think the entire offensive staff needs an overhaul. I just don't see how Beamer will be able to attract a quality OC.

He should hire the best OC money can buy, and give him the keys to offensive staff.

 

[18IsTheMan]

He should hire the best OC money can buy, and give him the keys to offensive staff.

I think a key if he wants any proven competent is OC is to give him full autonomy over the offense.

 

[Legal_fowl]

I don't know what offense that would be. Is it triple option, veer, I formation, air raid or what? If you don't run a pro style offense, how do you recruit offensive players who want to play in the NFL after college? Paul Johnson at Georgia tech ran the triple option and it was moderately successful but he couldn't recruit any talent above about a three star.

The style of offense isn't the problem.

I agree but we look too predictable. Throw some wrinkles in there and get creative. RPOs in particular.

That hand off to the lead back in the first half was the kind of thing we should see more of by SC. We saw it once and like others it just disappeared.

 

[Legal_fowl]

I believe the basis for it is that he can sell it to recruits that it'll prepare them for the pros. All 3 OCs he has hired have NFL experience. That's not a mistake. I think he's placing WAY too much emphasis on it.

If I were a recruit I would not be impressed by our version of the "pro-style." How is being almost last in the country in every offensive statistic going to get your ready for the NFL?

 

[SouthernBelly]

Would Beamer have fired Satterfield after season 2 had Nebraska not taken him off our hands? I am not sure. We endured over 2 years of poor Teasley OLs. For whatever reason, Beamer is slow to make a move on unproductive staff.

No.