Defense Changes Everything - Watson Would Be Fine (Long-Form Analysis)

[Goldenheart]

I think a lot of us are thinking about our offensive needs based on how bad our defense has been in the recent past. The reality is that offense and defense must coexist, and a quick look at the top spread offenses in the country generally proves this point. If you consider Baylor, Oregon, Northern Illinois, Ohio State, Fresno State, Auburn and A&M to have been the best "spread" offenses (however you want to define that term) this year, only one of them was in the top 20 in the country in Points Against Defense (Oregon was 13th at 20.5ppg). Ohio State was 28th (22.6 ppg), Baylor was 36th (23.5ppg), Auburn was 48th (24.7ppg), Northern Illinois was 52nd (25ppg), Fresno State was 74th (28.1), and A&M was 96th (32.2ppg). Clearly there is a correlation between teams that put up tons of points quickly utilizing a spread offense and giving up a lot of points on defense. Basically, if you play that kind of offense, you better score a ton of points because you are also going to be giving up points on defense. It seems unlikely to me that you can just choose your own spread coordinator, insert them into Strong's staff, and nothing changes on Strong's defense. It certainly hasn't worked like that for most of the prolific spread offenses in the country this year. Our problem, of course, is that our defense has been weak and we had a middling offense this year, but let's not let that delude us regarding our changing offensive needs under Coach Strong.

The good news is that that high scoring offense/weak scoring defense combo is not the only way to win football games. Charlie Strong's Louisville Cardinals were second in the country this year in points against defense (12.2ppg). On offense, Louisville scored 35.2ppg, averaging 314 yards per game passing and 146 yards per game rushing. That's materially better than what Major did this year (against a better schedule, admittedly) at Texas, who put up 29.3 ppg, averaging 212.5 yards per game passing and 196.5 yards per game rushing. It's also a little better than our best offensive team in the very recent past with Harsin's second season in 2012. That year Harsin's offense clearly did enough to win football games, but our defense was atrocious. Harsin's 2012 offense put up 35.7 points per game, averaging 263 yards passing per game and 171.5 rushing per game. The defense in 2012 was the problem, giving up 404 yards per game, 212 yards passing per game and 192.2 yards rushing per game (that's just ridiculous right there). And we gave up 29.2 points per game in 2012 (also horrific).

So here's the bottom line. If we could get Harsin 2012 like production, which was not earth shattering by any means, we will be more than fine with this Charlie Strong defense. And it appears to me that Shawn Watson is fully capable of putting that type of an offense together based on what he's done at Louisville. Is he going to come in and put up the 550 yards plus per game that you see at Oregon or Baylor? No. But defense will be the identity of this football team and I think our fan base is ready for that identity, and we will need a ball control offense that doesn't turn the ball over to help facilitate that new defensive identity. We don't need 550 yards per game, and there is solid support for the notion that if we want a defensive identity we don't even want to seek that out given the high likelihood that it will impact our defense (not quite a zero sum game, but close). The ideal would be a ball control offense that doesn't turn the ball over and produces results on the scoreboard (see Florida State this year for this type of offense - no spread).

Another important consideration that we can't overlook is continuity. More than anything I want a coordinator that will be here a few years. If you look at Harsin's first year, the offense was not great. 392.5 yards per game; 28.1 ppg. The improvement in the second year was dramatic (35.7ppg, 263ypg/pass, 171.5ypg/rush). And then when Harsin left we go back to square 1 and Applewhite's offense was back to 2011 levels (408 ypg; 29.3 ppg). While the offense was middling this year, even with this middling offense we would have had at least two more games if we had a Charlie Strong defense, which gave up 251 yards per game this year, and only 81 yards per game on the ground!! If we can get a Shawn Watson to come and stay for 3 years+, we will benefit from that continuity and get this thing rolling by year 2. I think year 1 in a new offense will create challenges, and we've seen that with Harsin 2011 and Major 2013. I would expect a bit more of that under Watson (or someone else), but I think the defense will be hugely improved game 1 next year, so I think we will see significant improvement overall next year. But year 2 and 3 should be very strong if we can get that continuity, even with Shawn Watson in control of the offense.

 

[mesoHorny]

Look at Colt's last year with Boom as DC. There were games that Colt had to bail WM out in a big way.

 

[BiscuitsAndGroovy]

It was actually the other way around. The D in 09 was the reason we were in the hunt for the MNC. The offense in 2009 was less than impressive in a number of games. If it weren't for the D bailing out the offense we would have lost to OU, Nebraska, and possible Colorado. The Defense kept us in the 'Bama game. With out their performance it would have been a blowout. There were games where WM had to bail out the offense in a BIG way. The only time it was the other way around was against A&M.

 

[Topstarr]

My wife says we will do fine in football in the year of 2014.

 

[BBQ time]

How do the adjusted defense rankings for Texas opponents compare to Louisville?

 

[Goldenheart]

I'm sure not favorably. We unquestionably play stiffer competition than Louisville does on a week in/week out basis, and I agree that will have an impact. It will not be likely that we give up 12/game next year. But if we field a solid ball control offense that produces numbers akin to the Harsin 2012 team (which was a good but not great offense) or something short of what Louisville did this year (because obviously we don't have a QB on our roster that will throw for 4,000 yards with 31 TDs and 4 INTs like Bridgewater did), we need to remember that the Big 12 defenses we are up against are not the reincarnation of the 85 Bears. So, with a much improved defense under Strong (maybe giving up 18-20/game), we should see significant improvement over the 5 losses suffered this year, with a chance to be really good in Year 1 and great thereafter. And all that being said Louisville did play a handful of solid teams for comparison sake. Check out the box score in the Miami game, they absolutely obliterated them in that game. Miami had 174 total yards. 28 rushes for 14 yards. 12-27 passing for 160 yards. Miami was 0-11 on third downs. Miami had the ball for all of 21 minutes. That's dominance right there. They didn't fare as well against UCF, giving up 446 yards in that game, 250 in the air and 196 on the ground, giving up 38 points. But still significantly better than the 556 UCF put up on Baylor and 52 points. Turns out, UCF was a pretty solid squad this year.

 

[Baron Von Tejas]

If we got a young hot-shot OC, he'll be gone in a year or two as a HC.

We need to hire either on old successful OC, who nobody wants as a HC or a really good OC, who has already failed miserably as a HC! Otherwise we'll be having a new OC every couple of years if we are successful.

 

[Goldenheart]

I tend to agree with that take. It seems clear to me that in college football continuity is king. They don't get that much time to practice all in, and I think the Harsin experience quite clearly showed how much more comfortable everything looked in Year 2. Now some of that was because David Ash was like a lamb to the slaughter in Year 1, but he still looked a bit deer in the headlights-ish in Year 2 yet the offense just flowed much, much better. I'd love to see an OC Charlie is comfortable with come in and be his sidekick for a nice little run. Remember that Mack Brown went out and hired the all-star young gun coordinator crew in Harsin and Diaz. And my recollection is the vast majority of the fan base, including me, was thrilled with this decision. I thought at that time it showed guts on Mack's part. Looking back, at least on the defense, it seems outrageous that Manny Diaz was ever going to be in the position of being JERRY GRAY's boss. Hindsight may be 20/20, but we should be using our hindsight on this front as foresight on these coordinator hires. Vance Bedford seems like a perfect fit here on this criteria. Shawn Watson is less perfect, but he could do just fine here given the approach Strong wants to take, especially if he'll stick around. Harsin was a good hire in my view, but he was still a desperation grab because it was more than obvious looking back that that guy's shelf life was 1-2 years at Texas before taking a HC job. Now, I've got nothing against hiring great young coordinators that will get HC jobs, but I would take someone that will stick around a bit over a young buck that is sure to leave in a year or two.