An analysis of the Mustangs and of Houston
Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2000 8:11 pm
Okay, this might get a bit long winded, so hold your breath .
First, an analysis of the mustangs, and some ideas of what is going wrong and how to fix it. I will start with the offensive line. Since the Death Penalty, there has only been one year in which the stangs looked like they had a good offensive line. That was the first year of Cavan, when we had the winning record. If you recall that year, we had several 200 yard rushing performances as a team. That is what we all remember, so we all expect the o-line to be on the upswing, right? well, "not so fast my friends (sorry Corso)". If you remember that year, we started off horribly. We couldnt run the ball at all. Then what did we do? We put ramon in, had a shotgun formation, forced everyone to back off the line, then ran the ball all over the place. We spread things out a bit. Even when we ran up the middle, we put a whole slew of recievers out there so we spread the D out. This is how you compensate for a weaker offensive line from a running standpoint. It also allows your QB to scramble a bit. Now, I am a big fan of the style of offense that cavan likes, grind it out, no mistakes, pass when you have to, because I LOVE defensive, smash mouth football. HOWEVER, you have to adjust to weaknesses. Now, granted I went to the first game and have only listened to pieces of the last two, but after the first game I made the observation that we had a LOT of trouble running the ball out of normal formations. Our O-Line just isnt strong enough. We need to spread things out and be a little wacky- that is what the offense did right in the first game- big runs were out of spread formations, and these crazy formations helped the passing game. We need to turn it up a notch and be a lot more aggressive in the passing game. This will help the running game out a lot. When you spread things out and run out of a shotgun, you also slow down blitz packages. The reason freeman does well right now and briggs does not, is that with a weak offensive line, you cant get anything up the middle, but with speed you can allways break a long one every once in a while to the outside. Now, will that work 25 times a game- no. You can't rely on that offensively because you will have one touchdown and then 8 drives of nothing. So you go in a shotgun formation, open things up, and run out of that formation with briggs and freeman. This gives the offensive line less people to block and will let briggs have a couple of holes to run through. Spreading out the field also helps a small team use great teem speed. So my solution on offense- make the team grow up fast and take the bull by the horns. Lets throw first, pass second. Sure, our D might be on the field more, and we will possibly turn the ball over a little more, but it will give our offense some real experience, some confidense on the way, and possibly make us more effective on that side of the ball.
Now for the defense. As I pointed out early on in the season, Pratt and ALdridge ARE TOO SMALL. They are really athletic and I love that! But they are not getting enough pressure on the QB. Well, let me re-phrase that. What we need right now are GREAT DEs because right now, our secondary is bad enough that 1) you have to force the QB to throw early, and 2) you only have about 3 seconds to get the guy to throw the ball instead of 5, because by 5 seconds our guys are burnt. But, this has happened the last two years!!! Both of the last two years, our defensive coordinator has worked with a young secondary. He tries to teach them defense for the first few games, and plays them in zones to try and help their confidence out (geting beat man-to-man is a lot more draining that forgetting a zone assignment or having a QB pick apart a zone). Then, they mess up the zones, it leads to a big play. This is worse now because if our safteys, who are young, also mess up, then we give up an even bigger play. But every year the defense comes up with a scheme that works for the second half of the year, that either hides the weaknesses of the defense, or the corners grow in confidence and experience so that they let them play man-to-man. Just watch, One of these games the defense is going to grow up, have a pretty strong game, and for the rest of the season we are going to be okay.
Remember, to start the season, we all knew our defense would struggle. We new we had to rely on our offense. The offense is learning a new scheme and JUST ISNT THERE YET. Give it a little bit of time, and by the end of the season we will put up some points and be playing better defense. The skill is there, but the experience isnt- and experience is everything in college football. Just watch NC state when they have to go against a good defense- they are gonna get wolloped, trust me. You can win for a while with athleticism, but in the long run a great expereinced defense will shut you down.
Okay, now about Houston. I live in austin and was unable to miss a couple of days this weekend (due to work), so I went to the UT game instad of heading up to dallas (will be there for San Jose State though!). UT killed Houston 48-0. But that score is VERY misleading. Houston has a great defense that kept the horns in check all day. Major and Simms had awful days, and UT couldnt run either. UT's defense won that game. So Houston is very good on defense. BUT, UT never went in shotgun sets to spread the field out. Offensively, Houston's QBs make a lot of mistakes. They have a good amount of skills, and some atheletes on the team. However, this will be an interesting game to see if the Mustangs can capitalize on the mistakes that Houston is definately going to make on offense. The turnovers are there if we can grab em.
First, an analysis of the mustangs, and some ideas of what is going wrong and how to fix it. I will start with the offensive line. Since the Death Penalty, there has only been one year in which the stangs looked like they had a good offensive line. That was the first year of Cavan, when we had the winning record. If you recall that year, we had several 200 yard rushing performances as a team. That is what we all remember, so we all expect the o-line to be on the upswing, right? well, "not so fast my friends (sorry Corso)". If you remember that year, we started off horribly. We couldnt run the ball at all. Then what did we do? We put ramon in, had a shotgun formation, forced everyone to back off the line, then ran the ball all over the place. We spread things out a bit. Even when we ran up the middle, we put a whole slew of recievers out there so we spread the D out. This is how you compensate for a weaker offensive line from a running standpoint. It also allows your QB to scramble a bit. Now, I am a big fan of the style of offense that cavan likes, grind it out, no mistakes, pass when you have to, because I LOVE defensive, smash mouth football. HOWEVER, you have to adjust to weaknesses. Now, granted I went to the first game and have only listened to pieces of the last two, but after the first game I made the observation that we had a LOT of trouble running the ball out of normal formations. Our O-Line just isnt strong enough. We need to spread things out and be a little wacky- that is what the offense did right in the first game- big runs were out of spread formations, and these crazy formations helped the passing game. We need to turn it up a notch and be a lot more aggressive in the passing game. This will help the running game out a lot. When you spread things out and run out of a shotgun, you also slow down blitz packages. The reason freeman does well right now and briggs does not, is that with a weak offensive line, you cant get anything up the middle, but with speed you can allways break a long one every once in a while to the outside. Now, will that work 25 times a game- no. You can't rely on that offensively because you will have one touchdown and then 8 drives of nothing. So you go in a shotgun formation, open things up, and run out of that formation with briggs and freeman. This gives the offensive line less people to block and will let briggs have a couple of holes to run through. Spreading out the field also helps a small team use great teem speed. So my solution on offense- make the team grow up fast and take the bull by the horns. Lets throw first, pass second. Sure, our D might be on the field more, and we will possibly turn the ball over a little more, but it will give our offense some real experience, some confidense on the way, and possibly make us more effective on that side of the ball.
Now for the defense. As I pointed out early on in the season, Pratt and ALdridge ARE TOO SMALL. They are really athletic and I love that! But they are not getting enough pressure on the QB. Well, let me re-phrase that. What we need right now are GREAT DEs because right now, our secondary is bad enough that 1) you have to force the QB to throw early, and 2) you only have about 3 seconds to get the guy to throw the ball instead of 5, because by 5 seconds our guys are burnt. But, this has happened the last two years!!! Both of the last two years, our defensive coordinator has worked with a young secondary. He tries to teach them defense for the first few games, and plays them in zones to try and help their confidence out (geting beat man-to-man is a lot more draining that forgetting a zone assignment or having a QB pick apart a zone). Then, they mess up the zones, it leads to a big play. This is worse now because if our safteys, who are young, also mess up, then we give up an even bigger play. But every year the defense comes up with a scheme that works for the second half of the year, that either hides the weaknesses of the defense, or the corners grow in confidence and experience so that they let them play man-to-man. Just watch, One of these games the defense is going to grow up, have a pretty strong game, and for the rest of the season we are going to be okay.
Remember, to start the season, we all knew our defense would struggle. We new we had to rely on our offense. The offense is learning a new scheme and JUST ISNT THERE YET. Give it a little bit of time, and by the end of the season we will put up some points and be playing better defense. The skill is there, but the experience isnt- and experience is everything in college football. Just watch NC state when they have to go against a good defense- they are gonna get wolloped, trust me. You can win for a while with athleticism, but in the long run a great expereinced defense will shut you down.
Okay, now about Houston. I live in austin and was unable to miss a couple of days this weekend (due to work), so I went to the UT game instad of heading up to dallas (will be there for San Jose State though!). UT killed Houston 48-0. But that score is VERY misleading. Houston has a great defense that kept the horns in check all day. Major and Simms had awful days, and UT couldnt run either. UT's defense won that game. So Houston is very good on defense. BUT, UT never went in shotgun sets to spread the field out. Offensively, Houston's QBs make a lot of mistakes. They have a good amount of skills, and some atheletes on the team. However, this will be an interesting game to see if the Mustangs can capitalize on the mistakes that Houston is definately going to make on offense. The turnovers are there if we can grab em.