just another opinion...

[davidpaul123]

http://www.athlonsports.com/college-foo ... nos-91-100


98: SMU — If you break a team into four quadrants — rushing offense, rushing defense, passing offense, passing defense — SMU is batting 1-for-4. Obviously, that doesn’t bode well. SMU’s passing game figures to be a credible threat this season as the unit will have a full year in Jones’ complex scheme, and the running game may improve just as a byproduct of a more efficient aerial attack. Coming off a 1–11 season, SMU will take wins anywhere it can get them. Four wins would be solid signs of progress with expectations of a bowl game in 2010, but only if the defense makes measurable improvement.

[davidpaul123]

ive got a question about a comment in the article.

they call jones' offense "complex". Im wondering if the R&S is more complex than other spread passing offenses? or is it just complex relative to offenses in general?

[rich59]

I think you make some valid points in your posts about SMU. Here are some random thoughts about the program in no particular order. Firstly, SMU, since the death penalty, has had very few players go to the NFL. That tells you a lot about the quality of the player we have had. On the other hand, during the same period of time. Air Force and Navy both have had few players go to the NFL and look at their records, playing similar schedules to SMU. Particularly look at Paul Johnson's record at Navy with, I submit, no better athletes than at SMU. Johnson came in and only won one or two games the first year( one was SMU, 34-7, seems like) but after that year he had all winning records and went to bowls often. I cite him because I think an outstanding coach, to quote Bum Philips freely, "can take his'n and beat your'n and take your'n and beat his'n." Another example of that was at TCU where Franchione came in, took a one win team from the year before, won six games and went to the Sun Bowl and beat USC. He did that with a option attack and with a converted wideout at QB who could not pass a lick. Another example from way back was Darrel Royal at Texas who took a miserable team the year before under Ed Price and went to the Sugar Bowl. June Jones had a big turn around at Hawaii also. What bothers me about June Jones and Hawaii is that if you look at his record closely, you find very few wins against top teams. His win record is also much better when he was playing at home where teams had to fly halfway across the Pacific to play him and they had to face an offense they hardly ever saw elsewhere. On the other hand, it probably hurt Hawaii to fly to the mainland and play. I believe that teams that rely on the passing game put more pressure on their defense because they don't play the field position game as well as a running team, they get on and off the field more quickly than a running team and their defense thus spends more time on the field, when they turn the ball over it is most likely an interception with a runback which overturns field positon and morale, and the defense of a passing team doesn't play the run well because they don't see it in practise. There is an old adage which says to have a good team you must run the ball and stop the run. Maybe that is out of date in modern football. Another point is that a passing team must have better athletes in the offensive line than a running team. I believe that most men who played in the offensive line would tell you that pass protection is more difficult than run blocking. Bottom line is that I believe that a successful passing team has to have better athletes on both sides of the ball than a successful running team That is why the Service Academys have had the best luck with a option attack. Pardon the longwindedness but those are concerns of mine for the future of SMU football. I hope I am all wet. I sure like what I hear about how Jones and his coaches conduct themselves as coaches even though I am not sold on his offensive scheme.

[PerunaPunch]

I believe that teams that rely on the passing game put more pressure on their defense because they don't play the field position game as well as a running team, they get on and off the field more quickly than a running team and their defense thus spends more time on the field, when they turn the ball over it is most likely an interception with a runback which overturns field positon and morale...

I'm not ready to sign off on everything you said, but certainly a team that relies on the pass – to the general exclusion of the run – puts immense pressure on the D. Before this team every gets really good with this scheme, it's going to have to build quality depth on D, which is tough when your head coach's reputation and focus if offensive players.

[rich59]

I certainly am not up to swearing all I said is gospel either. However, SMU in the late 70s, early 80s is a pretty good example of how a good running team can make a defense look good. I remember Ron Meyer saying, when he recruited Mike Ford, that by the time Ford was a senior, he would win the Heisman and SMU the national championship. There were some good defensive players on the team when Ford was the QB and of course Dickerson and James came along also. ( An aside, I thought , his freshman year, that Dickerson was the third best back they had, with Charles Wagoner being the best, until he had the career ending injury.) Anyway, with Ford at QB in a drop back passing attack, SMU was just not a consistently good team, especially considering the athletes they had. All that changed when they put Ford on the bench and went to the option attack out of the I with a true freshman at QB. I had an interesting conversation with Steve Endicott, the offensive coordinator about how that change came about. I give Ron Meyer a lot of credit for that bold move. Anyway, the better we got at running the ball, almost to the exclusion of passing, the better our defense got. Course, we had some great players on defense also.

[originaloverthehilltop1]

rich 59--the adoption of an option running game isn't what helped ron meyer turn the corner at smu. it was the adoption of a game suited to the superior athletes he was paying to come to smu, a plan we can't and don't want to adopt now.

if you saw the dickerjames sophomore team beat ut in austin that year, with the rest of us, you saw a team with equal or superior football athletes (on both sides of the ball) win a close low scoring battle, which was then considered a shocking upset. the outside world never dreamed we had leveled the playing field and the general public didn't have any idea how we did it.

without the rampant (and blatant) cheating, getting to (on the field, at least) respectable is a longer, tougher road, and you can't make a lot of mistakes in policy and execution and get there at all.

sure, i prefer a more balanced attack. in a perfect world. and you need to be able to run the ball. but lining up and forcing the run for 4 quarters isn't the answer.

it may well be that getting a bunch of whippets and playing "keep away" offensive football is the quickest way to parity in cusa. doesn't mean paul johnson can't do it with option offense. but i do think it is interesting that more pro teams and more bcs schools are adopting the spread offenses and paul johnson's is now the unconventional offense of the day.

can anybody here imagine UT adopting the darryl royal wishbone with three running backs behind the qb today? they actually have the generally superior talent to do this, but i can't see them competing for a national title with it. would colt mccoy, the current protypical college qb want to run this offense? they'd run the football a lot.

i'd like to know what mrydel and some of you guys who played at the college level think of all this. personally i am a lot more concerned about jjs defense than his offense. and that WILL take a talent improvement over what we've seen lately.

[Stallion]

Ford was not successful igniting our running game because quite frankly he was out of shape and after he suffered the knee injury against TCU the year before he had limited mobility. That effectively limited the SMU running game to running between the tackles or (TEs-right Ponyte?) With McIllhenney SMU's running game could expose the corners forcing the defense to cover about 10 more yards of field outside each flank-plus they had to account for McIllhenny. The RESULT: SMU within a short period, literrally went from the No. 1 Passing Team in the Country to the No. 1 Running Team in the country by simply switching QBs. You don't see that much flexibility very often.

No doubt a great running team that churns out First Downs and 350 yards rushing makes the defense look better because they aren't on the field.

But you can't discount the Defensive talent. SMU got better because of the development of top National Recruits like Eric Ferguson(National Top 100), Michael Carter(National Top 100), Russell Carter(National Top 100), and other top recruits like Byron Hunt, Harvey Armstrong, Richard Neely, Gary Moten, John Simmons, Charles Bruton, Kevin Chaney, Rod Jones and others all of which were Texas(or Arkansas Top 100 types) plus one helluva walk-on in Wes Hopkins .

In other words the talent leap on Defense was almost as great as the talent leap on Offense. Recruit well for at least 3 years and count to 3-4. Although SMU recruited better immediately under Meyer the first real standout recruiting year was 1978 and perhaps the No. 1 Class in the Nation in 1979

1978 4-6-1
1979 5-6
1980 8-4
1981 10-1

[originaloverthehilltop1]

all of stallions points are on the money, especially the one about good offense keeping the opposing offense off the field. the difference today is that:

1) a number of those top national 100 players were paid to come, including several of the (dickerson) "difference makers" we hear so much about.

2) generally speaking, we are not competing against "top national 100" players in cusa. and that's where we have to prove we can compete first.

there is an opening there for us.

[Stallion]

Recruiting is relative to your competition and especially your Top Rival(TCU) and other local Texas schools. The same comparison to our competition applies today where TCU is working on arguably their 20th straight year of routing SMU in recruiting.

[Mustangsabu]

Recruiting is relative to your competition and especially your Top Rival(TCU) and other local Texas schools. The same comparison to our competition applies today where TCU is working on arguably their 20th straight year of routing SMU in recruiting.

Are you saying that TCU's recruiting class in 2009 is only "arguably" better than SMU's? High praise indeed

[mrydel]

Recruiting is relative to your competition and especially your Top Rival(TCU) and other local Texas schools. The same comparison to our competition applies today where TCU is working on arguably their 20th straight year of routing SMU in recruiting.

Are you saying that TCU's recruiting class in 2009 is only "arguably" better than SMU's? High praise indeed

I am afraid that the arguably statement refers to one of Bennett's classes a few years ago.

I can not get into any nostalgic comparisons because the formation of the BCS has dropped SMU and the mid majors to a lower division of football. We are Division 1AA without the benefit of recruits being able to play immediately.

Yes we cheated to get where we were but so did the other schools. We just decided to try to fight the NCAA and then continued to do it after getting caught, and included the highest of the high in the administration. We just were not as polished as the others and we made the rise to the top a little too fast. And then forgot the first rule when caught....say your sorry and promise not to do it again...again, and again.

And yes, good defense is needed to be successful on a national level, but in CUSA we can be successful with a potent offense and a average defense. To take it a step higher we will need a strong defense.

[Stallion]

there was 1 maybe 2 at the most where the recruiting classes were relatively equal and a sunshiner might claim that SMU recruited on par with TCU although I think if you looked a little closer even those years slightly favored TCU's class.

[San Antonio Mustang]

Mrydel is correct in stating the BCS has dropped us to a lower division. As long as we cannot expect to compete for a national championship we will not be successful in out recruiting the BCS schools on a consistent basis. The good news is that I don't think the BCS can continue in its present form. The pressure is building and I believe will continue to build for a playoff system that will even the recruiting field somewhat. In the meantime, our coaches are recruiting against the BCS schools and this is doing two things. It makes us more respectable to all recruits and gives us a chance to catch one or two 4 or 5 star recruits. I think we are on the right track, but I don't look for us to be competitive with Texas, et al until we go to a BCS conference or the BCS makes radical changes in how the national title is chosen.

As to the pros and cons of different offense schemes I think it all depends on the talent you have and then how well you use that talent. Coach Jones has a great reputation for knowing what he needs and recognizing it when he sees it. This is validated somewhat by looking at the 2010 offers. Many of them were first offered by SMU and now have offers from several BCS schools. It is almost as if other coaches are saying "if Jones makes an offer then lets offer." SMU's recruiting will greatly improve when we win a Bowl game and then take another huge step when the BCS changes.

[rich59]

In my earlier posts, I mentioned the fact that SMU had some outstanding players on defense so what offense they ran was not the only reason their defense excelled. I may be mistaken but switching QBs was not the only change that Meyer made when Ford was benched in favor of LM. I thought they were mostly in a pro set with Ford and did not run the option. With LM, they went to the I and option. In fact, Steve Endicott told me that the coaching staff needed LM to show them some of the details of running the option since he had been a veer QB at Highland Park. I agree with other posters that although SMU cheated in recruiting, they were only doing what most other major schools were doing in those days. If you don't believe that, go back in "Texas Football" and look at the players who came out of schools such as TU, A&M, Baylor and TCU, etc and went into the NFL. My point I am hoping to make is that one needs better talent, defensively and offensively, to run a mostly passing offense than when running a option based offense. I don't necessarily mean the wishbone when I say option either. I saw New Mexico beat SMU when Franchione was coaching at NM and I was fascinated by what he was able to do with the spread option and a QB named Leigh. I was fortunate to be coached in high school by one of the icons in Texas High School history. He was an offensive innovator and although our base offense was the split T, we also ran some single wing, double wing and spread with split ends, what the pros call today, the shotgun formation. However, our blocking schemes were single wing type with double teams, cross and trap blocking with no varied splits. Later in college I was briefly exposed to one of the great teachers in college coaching, IMO, where I learned about orthodox split T blocking. We were taught to vary the splits, use a non rythmic snap count, were in a three point sprinter's stance, no pulling, no trapping, no cross blocks and no double teams. Our object, we were told over and over, was to occupy the defensive player so that the QB option and the runner could finnese him. All blocking was one on one and the end was often responsible for occupying the defensive tackle. I was a freshman but that varsity that year only lost one game, went to the Gator Bowl and rose from being unranked to 12th, I think, in the nation. That was when one platoon rules were in force so we had two teams, called the X team and Y team, but I recall the starting ends weighed around 180 and the starting center weighed around the same. The only big men on the team were the tackles who weighed around 240. I bring all this up because although I know football and football rules have changed, I think there is a misconception, in the media and among fans, that running the football is brute force and passing it is not. The option type whether it is the spread option like Urban Meyer or Franchione runs or what Paul Johnson runs, is a finesse offense not a power offense and, I believe can get by with less talented athletes in the offensive line and since the offense controls the ball better and maintains better field position, the defense can get by with slightly less talented athletes, especially in the defensive line. IMO, the games are won and lost, most things being equal, in the offensive and defensive lines. What it all boils down to, if my opinion is correct, is that SMU must have better athletes than our opposition, if we are in the R & S, if we are to win consistently. We don't see our one big rival, TCU, in a predominately passing offense, becuse Gary Patterson believes that defense and field position wins games. As to TCU's recruiting, I have a very close friend, a former TCU player, former college coach and who is very close to the TCU program who has thought for a number of years that SMU recruited no worse than TCU. A lot of his opinion is coach's talk but there is no doubt that Patterson has done a great job in taking unheralded high school players, sometimes switching them around and getting a lot of production out of them. However, my friend admitted to me that TCU probably did their best recruiting in 2009 and they are pretty much loaded this year. For all of you who disagree with my opinions, I can surely understand, because I am way out of date as far as experience, and I hope, that JJ can get us, in spite of my misgivings, back to respectable in college football.

[Stallion]

SMU ran the I Formation with Ford at QB. Of course we didn't run the OPTION well with a 6-3, 240? 250? pound QB in Mike Ford who was out of shape and had a bad knee. But we did one week later under Lance McIllhenney. That was basically it. Switch from big out of shape QB to option QB and run the ball inside and outside. Meyer knew SMU's offense would eventually transition to an option team as soon as he recruited Dickerson/James/ Waggoner -that's why he signed McIllhenny in the first place.

As for TCU fans they love to pretend they find the best players from the pumpkin patch that nobody else knew about. Its total [deleted]. Yes Patterson is a great evaluator (particularly good at projecting players to new positions at the College level) and yes some aren't as well recognized as UT's recruits but if you checked all recruiting services over the last 20 years they would unequivocally rank TCU's Classes at the Top 1-3 schools in recruiting by non-BCS schools. TCU outrecruits multiple BCS schools for just about every recruit they sign. Only a casual, unknowledgeable fan would state that SMU recruits the same caliber athletes. TCU plays 10-11 non-BCS schools are year. They have a talent advantage over 80-90% of the schools they play every year. Recruiting is relative to your competition.