The underrated Hokies are expected to win 9-14 games this year on the back of a experienced Michael Brewer, with better time for passing from the new OLine.
So are the Hokies moving to a Passing attack offense?
It's an area the Hokies haven't been active at or very good at. Since 2000 when having 40 or more passing plays the Hokies are 2 - 8. In 2014 Hokies went 0 - 3
Compared to the Running game. Since 2000 111 - 18 and in 2014 7 - 0
The Hokies ran an average of 74 offensive plays per game last year so 40 plays is just 57% of the total, just over half. Currently the split is 39 running - 35 passing.
I'm all for a passing attack, it's just not a thing VT seems to have a history with. If we have a pocket passer with a great pass but still run the ball all game without a set running back at lead then all the improvement in a pocket passer isn't relevant
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Our increased passing occurred simultaneously with the bottom falling out of our running game. We have passed more because we had to pass more, because it was our only hope of moving the ball. We were one dimensional, and this easier to stop.
There is reason to believe (or at least hope) that the running game will improve in 2015. If it does, look for the passing game to improve with it. It opens up play action and in general will create opportunities in the passing game, lest opponents simply concede the run.
Indeed. Aggregate stats create problems. With the passing numbers, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for the most part. "We had to pass more because we were losing, and ended up losing." It would be interesting to break down situational play-calling, e.g. what is the balance of run vs. pass when VT is up by 7, down by 7, etc? Is it dependent upon the quarter, e.g. does the playcalling evolve as the game evolves? Oh sure, NOW I think of a question to ask Andy for his series...took me long enough.
I had the same thought about asking Andy as I was reading your post...probably not too late to ask..right?
Sidebar: Joe, is there a way to incorporate 'mention' notifications? As in, if someone mentions your username in a post you would get a notification that tags that particular post so you can go right to it? I don't know if that's feasible, or even if people would want that as an option but wanted to throw the idea into the hat.
Or even a notification that someone has replied to a post of yours would be awesome.
they already kind of have that. If you go to the comments tab and pick on the "my recent comments" tab you can scroll through and see if there are any unread replies to your comments
Yeah, I know. But it would be so much easier if there was just a little notification that showed up an the header.
And it wasn't even that we were passing because we were losing. We couldn't bleed clock with the ground game to protect a lead and shorten games. It was our only option to move the ball. If we could have grinded out some first downs on the ground, we would have won the BC game at the least.
Sounds like a question that should be emailed to Andy Bitter for off season research.
This is a good chicken-egg debate. Are we passing more because our receivers are better, or do we perceive our receivers as better because we are passing it more and generating solid stats?
I think in the past we failed to utilize strong receiving corps; highlighted by the time all 4 of our wideouts get drafted or ended up on NFL rosters: Harper, Hyman, Morgan, Clowney, yet we were not a dynamic passing team with those guys.
I think Lefty probably wants some even splits of pass/run, but I also feel that if we are running it 40 times a game and winning then he will hand off all day.
Who is expecting us to win 14 games?
Me!
So I guess no one is expecting the Hokies to win 15?
try this on for size. anOSU beats VT early in the season and VT becomes a better team over the course of the season as they knock off every other opponent they face and become the eventual national champion. anOSU wants to return the favor right? that's how I see it playin' out
Winner of the OSU at VT game gets bragging rights. Loser gets National Championship! Sounds fair to me.
wait, wait....is that how you really see it playin' out?
I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
honestly, I think we're an 8 or 9 win team this season. 10 if we stay health on the Oline (which I think is highly unlikely, unfortunately). I think most of our games are winnable (I don't have high hopes for beating OSU) but in typical fashion I expect us to lose one stupid game that will make us the laughing stock of the week. I don't think any team has been undefeated in the Coastal Division since we did it several years ago. I don't expect us to go undefeated in the conference this year either, though it wouldn't surprise me if we did. Missing Clemson and FSU should help and, save for GT, the whole coastal is pretty laughable right now.
If we win 14, we are going to win the 15th.
I think it was more of a, "within the realm of possibility but unlikely"
I don't want to see us go back to 1 dimensional football. We stagnated and our downturn began because we blatantly neglected the passing game, and recruits took notice, and avoided us like the plague. Our best chances of us having success going forward is if we have an offense where the passing and running game compliment each other and can work equally well in any given situation. The more we can get to a 50-50 run/pass ratio, the better we'll be. And when I say passing, I mean down the field passing, pressing the ball forward, and not screens.
I disagree that it was a downturn in WR recruiting that begat our slump. You're right that a downturn in WR recruiting happened, and it did hurt us as a program, but I think our past three seasons of essentially .500 football has more to do with recruiting and developing the OL than the WR position. I think the replacement of Sherman with AMo basically fixed the WR spot overnight.
Oh, I don't think its only a WR recruiting downturn that killed us, it was across the board. We turned ourselves off a lot to OL recruits as well because they knew if they were going to come here, they would really only get taught to run block, which would significantly hinder their prospects at the next level. And we hurt ourselves at QB as well, because any recruit knew if he came here, he would primarily be asked to win with his feet, rarely showcasing his throwing abilities, during a time when the NFL was establishing itself as a pass happy league. In turn, our recruiting well dried up, and we suffered.
Now that we have a philosophy that shows we're willing to put the time and effort into developing the passing game to compliment the running game, and coaching the proper techniques that will help players at the next level and make them more attractive to NFL scouts, the dividends should start paying off in spades in the next few years. Once production ramps up, we're going to be a very attractive spot again for recruits, and we'll reach recruiting levels we didn't know we could attain.
This post gets my
Also, Newsome's lines weren't even that good at run blocking until three or four games in, when he abandoned his idiotic zone scheme and simplified everything to more of a straight power blocking. He never built any cohesion on his lines, and it takes a lot if solidarity to zone block.
To answer the title of this thread, yes I think the offensive philosophy of the program is changing, but I don't think that has anything to do with becoming a pass-first team.
I think Scot Loeffler, much more than his predecessor (or his predecessor's predecessor) plans his offense around exploiting situational mismatches against the opposing defense. Bryan Stinespring brought an attitude of "we're going to do what we want to do, and you can try to stop us" to the offense. He inherited that mentality from Rickey Bustle, who was admittedly much better at it than Stiney was.
This is the double edged sword of having an "offensive identity." You know what you are as an offense, but so do your opponents. A team that rigidly adheres to a particular offensive strategy is easier to beat with equivalent talent. A multiple offense that can switch things up situationally has more flexibility. But it also requires greater discipline, and is in general a more complex offense to learn.
I like the way Scot approaches scheming an offense, but there are caveats. Leaning too heavily on exploiting mismatches gives way easily to taking what the defense gives you. It's a passive philosophy. At some point, especially when protecting a least, football must come down to a "try to stop us" attitude. A successful team will at some point take the game by the throat and throttle it.
Scheming around mismatches also gives way to overthinking. The OC can hamstring himself, and I do l think that happened to Scot to an extent the last two seasons. What makes me hopeful about positive change in that regard is the focus on attention to detail and discipline rather than trying to install a playbook longer than War and Peace. A multiple offense doesn't have to be able to do everything (although that was certainly Stiney's approach to being multiple, and it cost him his job.) Ultimately, a successful multiple offense just has to have the flexibility to do different things in different situations. That's accomplished much better through being very focused and disciplined and not hurting yourself through procedural penalties than by trying to run ALL THE PLAYS.
The job of any coordinator during games should be to find the weakness of the opponent and attack it repeatedly until they either stop it, or you kill them.
Sometimes, in the past, I think our coaches have shied away from doing that (abandoning the run in the Kansas Orange Bowl). I don't see this being an issue with Loeffler going forward. When we find something that works (passing game vs Ohio St and BC or running game vs WMU) we destroy teams with it.
If you're waiting until the game starts to find your opponent's weakness to exploit, you aren't a very good OC. But I get what you're saying and I agree with it.
The tricky thing is, the weakness you thought you could exploit suddenly dries up when the opposing coordinator switches things up to cover up that weakness. See OSU's repeated excuses for why we manhandled them at home last year. The point is, there's only so much you can do pre-game. You can have your gameplan and what you think the opponent might do to counter it, but until you get into the game and see exactly what's going on, all you've got is an educated guess. The great OCs can adapt and exploit weaknesses without deviating from the core of their gameplan (see Stanford against us in the Orange bowl).
The bad OCs go into games with a specific gameplan and an inability to deviate from it, even when its blatantly clear that nothing good will come of it as the game is taking place. You know, the kind of coaches who go into games having already scripted the first 25 plays or so before the game even kicks off.
I think "scripts" are actually fairly common in higher levels of the game. The first certain number of plays in normal down and distance situations are usually predetermined, and goof OCs set these plays up to test the waters of what the defense is throwing at them. Usually OCs go "off-script" if you get 3rd and long or 2nd and short type situations.
The problem with the way Stiney scripted was, he didn't take the results of those scripted plays and adjust. There was no feel for the game, no fluidity to the play calling. The absolute best he ever did as a play caller was against Florida State when both Tyrod Taylor and Sean Glennon got knocked out and he had to go with Cory Holt at QB. He was flying blind, had absolutely nothing prepared for that situation, and did probably as good a job as he ever had. That tells you a lot about his game planning.
Yeah, every west coast/Pro offense scripts plays.
Only "system" offenses (Georgia Tech, Oregon, Oklahoma State) don't, because their offenses are so unique that the teams they face change their defense up specifically to face them. It's almost pointless for Paul Johnson to watch tape of his opponent defending Duke, they aren't going to look even remotely similar the next week.
I know that scripts are followed, but as you said, good OCs go off script when the situation calls for it. We had been plagued for a long time with a coaching staff that never went off script regardless of the situation, and... well... yeah. Good coaches adjust.
Your last sentence says it all. The problem wasn't the script, it was the fact that we weren't using scripted plays they way they're supposed to be used. You basically bring 25 plays in, and based on the results of those 25 plays you know what's there and what's not in any given game. Then you attack. It was more like we were using scripts because that's what you're supposed to do. When the script was over, we still tried to do what we wanted to do anyway, not what the scripted plays showed were working.
Kind of like how we became a pistol offense by going to Texas for a weekend. It was a really half-assed approach to running an offense for a while. Kind of like we were looking around at how offensive coordinators do their job and trying to mimic it without understanding what we were doing. Incompetence will eventually catch up to you.
Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth...who said that?? Anyone...? Iron ____
Mike.
That was the Michigan game in a nutshell.
Very well stated, particularly on the overthinking part...except I think you contradict yourself on Stiney.
How did he manage to have a "we're gonna do what we want to do" mentality AND a 'try to be able to do everything' mentality?
Are you saying he morphed from A to B and he had the personnel to do neither?
I'm saying he tried to have a multiple offense, and then game planned with a "we're going to impose our will" attitude. Basically, I'm saying he was in over his head as OC and couldn't put together a cohesive offensive vision. An honestly, it wasn't his fault. He lacked the skill set for that position and was kept there way too long. I'm just glad we were able to retain him on staff in his current capacity, because now that he's being used effectively he's an asset to the program.
I want this back....offensively anyway. Bud has done a great job keeping to this philosophy.
Someone print this off, run it to Beamer, hand him his spectacles, and remind him of this STAT
I mean he looks like he's ready to woop somebody's ass right there. Seems like I've seen that look before. . .
It's in every media guide from 2000 on up to.....I'm not sure. I found it while on a side project trying to find out when Bud Foster went from mustachioed, bespectacled, Kip Dynamite looking poindexter to a hulking beast of a man.
It started when I was watching the end of the power hour today and in the clip from the 1995 Sugar Bowl they show Bud Foster with the biggest goggle glasses and ugliest VT polo I've ever seen. The results of my research show that in 2005 Bud hit the gym. Hard.
It was actually in the off-season that this occured and he decided to never let it happen again......
Where'd you get video of this? Wow!
I think it will look different as a fan, but I don't think Loeffler's philosophy has remarkably changed since he stepped on campus.
We are getting closer to having the personnel and practice time to actually see the type of offense Coach Loeffler envisioned.
Our WR's, TE's, FB's, QB's and O-line are an upgrade from last year. RB should be better, but remember, we started the year with Williams and McKenzie healthy.
This year should allow an assessment of what Coach Loeffler can do, versus the last two years; which was a lot of duck tape and gum holding stuff together.
definitely.
the last three years...AU, Logan, Brewer...Lefty's QBs have posted some remarkably similar stats. and not in a good way. but each time it was a new guy. this is also his 3rd year calling plays (I'm giving him a pass for AU). time for Lefty to show what he's got as an OC.
You mean we're going to scrap the three and out and play D offensive philosophy?
I like our offensive philosophy if it will move the chains when we need to do it! I want to convert short yardage with power and take away the will of the opposing defense as opposed to taking way the will of OUR defense!
So you're saying VT should just run on their first 40 plays since they're 7-0 the last two years when they run at least 40 times a game?
Somebody get this man a Nobel Peace Prize!!!
Talk about selling the fake for the play-action pass on play #41.
we'd go empty backfield
QB sneak?
Triple reverse wide receiver pass
Fake punt on 2nd down
I just tried all of those plays on NCAA. They all worked! Thanks guys!
Let's add some numbers
5 years of stats, with 3 QBs
data from hokiesports.com
So are the Hokies going to continue this play calling trend, but now with a better QB we will get better results. But what better results? 59% completion rate is pretty good.
Have we moved on from the screen pass or made it better. Tech hasnt played offense well from a passing POV, so as the trend continues and we become split 50/50 pass/run have we made the leap to a better offense?
59% isn't that great- Michigan State last year was 60th in the country (out of 128 teams) at 59%. That doesn't take into account that not all pass attempts are equal- shorter passes tend to be completed at a higher rate.
The point is, you've got your cause and effect backwards- VT's offense hasn't been very good, and they've been trailing more often the last few years and have had to throw more passes.
So are the Hokies going to continue this play calling trend, but now with a better QB we will get better results.
Wait, Michael Brewer is a better quarterback than Tyrod Taylor and Logan Thomas?
No answer to that until the end of the coming season. But it would take a heck of an improvement for it to be true.
I read it as "with an improved quarterback."
Perhaps, I guess stats from five years back led me to believe the poster was comparing offensive production in the past and how it related to QB play.
It was the fact that he referenced a 59% completion rate. That was Brewer's from last year. So he posted stats for five years but then referenced a stat from last year.
Yep, I noticed that too when I did the math for that season. Thanks!
ooooh...yeah that would make more sense...I was scratching my head too
He is more accurate than Logan, as accurate as Tyrod. We just have to play to his strengths. I think the hurry up quick passing game is his bread and butter and we need to do it a lot. Then toss the runs in when you think we are going to pass.