The Offense

[Juan]

Good article from Ian Boyd about what already happened and what may happen with our offense

http://insidetexas.com/inside-texas-gameplan-offense/

Inside the Texas Gameplan: Offensive ReviewJanuary 8, 2015 by Ian Boyd
 
For much of the year, Shawn Watson and the offensive staff have mostly avoided major criticism due to several observable realities that made big expectations unrealistic.
 

In their first offseason, the staff designed a pro-style offense in emulation of the Bridgewater system at Louisville. The team was equipped to field double TE sets and set up backs Malcolm Brown and Johnathan Gray to punish defenses and then feast on opposing secondaries with Ash throwing the ball an underrated receiving corps of Marcus Johnson, Jaxon Shipley, and John Harris.

All of that fell apart when the three best OL and Ash all went down to injury or suspension after only a single game. After that, Texas spent the year scrambling to get anything going while slowly trying to grow Tyrone Swoopes into a Big 12-caliber QB.

Texas seemed to have some traction in this mission…until they closed the year with TCU. A horrendous performance that included six turnovers and only 4.1 yards per play meant a 48-10 beatdown on Thanksgiving day that squandered a defensive effort that genuinely gave TCU serious trouble on offense.

Concern bubbled back up due to Swoopes’ hopelessly poor game, which included five of the team’s six turnovers. However, with the bowl game secured and rigorous bowl practices instituted, there was hope that Tyrone and the offense might yet get things back together.

Instead, after a full year and extra practice time to rebuild the UT offense around Swoopes, they dropped one of the biggest turds in Texas football history. They produced 59 total yards, at 1.4 yards per play, with 34 of those yards coming on Texas’ final drive throwing underneath routes against a prevent defense.

Was Texas just so limited by personnel at OL and QB that these performances were excusable?

Former Longhorn letterman and current offensive consultant Dan Gonzalez doesn’t think so…

“That’s garbage. Any HS coach in the state can tell you that’s not true.â€

Gonzalez added, “When I talk to people, and I talk to a lot of coaches and former players, we agree that too often you watch a play and wonder ‘well how was that supposed to work? Why did Swoopes stop getting better? What are they working on practice?â€

---- LOTS MORE AT THE LINK ^^^^ ----

 

[Juan]

Link ^^^

"Finally there’s Texas’ “zone read†which was clearly recognized as a non-read play and easily stopped by Arkansas. Evidently the poor attempts by Texas to run the zone read against stunts by the Hogs made some Texas high school coaches laugh disdainfully as they discussed the Longhorns’ performance at a Dallas clinic the following day.

You have to wonder how Texas will fare in recruiting top offensive talent from DFW if the staff lacks the respect of the region’s coaches."

 

[Juan]

More --

"Gonzalez saw Texas wasting the efforts of older players on the offense whom Watson defenders seem to forget about when bemoaning the lack of talent on the roster.

“Jaxon Shipley, he’s a guy where if you throw him the ball there’s a higher than 60% chance it’s completed. You can’t press him, he knows how to get open, he’s smart, and he always comes down with the ball. He should have caught 80 or 90 balls.â€

Despite frequently turning to the passing game, Shipley had the lowest yardage total of his career (577) as a 4-year starter while catching 59 balls. Somehow, the ideal ball control receiver and die-hard Longhorn struggled to find a prominent role in a ball control passing offense.

----------------------

The inevitable retort to all these suggestions and criticisms is the hand waving retort that “Swoopes couldn’t do any of that.â€

Yet here lies perhaps the biggest problem with the performance of the Texas staff in 2015. Why was Watson, the supposed QB development guru, unable to get Swoopes to perform at a higher level, particularly down the stretch of the season after he’d already demonstrated competency in league play?

Beyond the bizarre regression in Swoopes’ footwork down the stretch, there was one play in particular that really hammered home how lost the quarterback was.

 

[Worster1]

2014 Offense was truly offensive.  

Swoopes, the OL, the offensive scheme / strategy, the injuries and suspensions, not fully utilizing the talent the O did have, Watson and his play-calling, etc. - what a disgusting mess!

 

[North Texas Golfer]

A very interesting take on the offense and Watson to say the least.

 

[HornEsch]

It is not a bad article, but to say it is what really happened is a stretch as the guy doesn't have any facts to back it up.

As far as Swoopes is concerned, while I agree there has to be some blame on Watson, to think every player can get better is absurd. The player has to a. want to improve and b, have the capacity to improve. That is not a given for every player, period. Some people get crushed by pressure, where others excel. I think we have seen what type of person Swoopes is. Hard to change that.

At the end of the day, unless you are there watching practices, you don't know where the majority of the blame.

As for Daje, the fact that he was out a lot of the season and got hurt again once he came back could very well play into that. Again, beating a dead horse, a quick screen game requires a competant QB. Whether it was Swoopes, Watson, ot both (likely) we did not have a compenant QB play to pull off a quick screen game.

Ironically the biggest quote in the article...

“That’s garbage. Any HS coach in the state can tell you that’s not true.â€

Is the most laughable. High School football is nowhere near the same as college. The level of play is much higher in college and the same principles are not the same. OL and QB, while they can be schemed around to some degree, can not be completely incompetent.

As I have said, you can win with a bad OL, you can win with a bad QB, you can't win when both are bad.

Saying all of that, I was dissapointed that the offensive scheme did not seem to change even when things were not working. That is my problem! Even throwing a walk on QB in some of these situations would have been a good idea, just to let Swoopes see from the sidelines.

I am not giving Watson and the offensive coaches as pass, they most certainly have a lot of the blame. It would be one thing if we were just bad, but we were regressing and inconcistent.

Pile it on, just my point of view

 

[Hiphopopotamos]

More --

"Gonzalez saw Texas wasting the efforts of older players on the offense whom Watson defenders seem to forget about when bemoaning the lack of talent on the roster.

“Jaxon Shipley, he’s a guy where if you throw him the ball there’s a higher than 60% chance it’s completed. You can’t press him, he knows how to get open, he’s smart, and he always comes down with the ball. He should have caught 80 or 90 balls.â€

Despite frequently turning to the passing game, Shipley had the lowest yardage total of his career (577) as a 4-year starter while catching 59 balls. Somehow, the ideal ball control receiver and die-hard Longhorn struggled to find a prominent role in a ball control passing offense.

----------------------

The inevitable retort to all these suggestions and criticisms is the hand waving retort that “Swoopes couldn’t do any of that.â€

Yet here lies perhaps the biggest problem with the performance of the Texas staff in 2015. Why was Watson, the supposed QB development guru, unable to get Swoopes to perform at a higher level, particularly down the stretch of the season after he’d already demonstrated competency in league play?

Beyond the bizarre regression in Swoopes’ footwork down the stretch, there was one play in particular that really hammered home how lost the quarterback was.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken-shit.   You could work with Tyrone Swoopes for years and he may never get any better - QB guru doing the coaching or not.  And should it be a surprise that Swoopes played worse against the TCU and Arkansas defense than he did against some conference foes earlier in the season?   This isn't hard to understand.

 

[Juan]

A very interesting take on the offense and Watson to say the least.

Perhaps more scathing than simply interesting --

Check this part out:

"..... Gonzalez couldn’t believe the error that led to this play. “Literally, my 10-year old son could have read that option route that Swoopes threw for an interception. I asked him, ‘son how often do we throw that route?’ He says, ‘about four times a game.’ I respond, ‘how often have you thrown an interception on it?’ He responded, ‘never.â€

As a coach who’s had major experience helping turning raw passers into passing record holders, Gonzalez puts the blame squarely on Watson and questions what Swoopes is doing in practice to show so little improvement making reads and drops.

“You have to teach him where to go with his eyes in time with his feet. I think whoever you have you need to teach and when you don’t have the best players that’s when you need to coach hardest and scheme the best.â€

That play ultimately demonstrated many of the failings of the 2014 Texas offense. Harris was moved inside to run a route he hadn’t run much that year (and he didn’t run it very well) while Swoopes demonstrated horrifyingly poor awareness of how to execute the play. How can a staff who’s top two offensive coaches make a combined $1,145,000 be unable to teach Texas football players to execute a play that 10-year olds understand?

 

[Hiphopopotamos]

Perhaps more scathing than simply interesting --

Check this part out:

"..... Gonzalez couldn’t believe the error that led to this play. “Literally, my 10-year old son could have read that option route that Swoopes threw for an interception. I asked him, ‘son how often do we throw that route?’ He says, ‘about four times a game.’ I respond, ‘how often have you thrown an interception on it?’ He responded, ‘never.â€

As a coach who’s had major experience helping turning raw passers into passing record holders, Gonzalez puts the blame squarely on Watson and questions what Swoopes is doing in practice to show so little improvement making reads and drops.

“You have to teach him where to go with his eyes in time with his feet. I think whoever you have you need to teach and when you don’t have the best players that’s when you need to coach hardest and scheme the best.â€

That play ultimately demonstrated many of the failings of the 2014 Texas offense. Harris was moved inside to run a route he hadn’t run much that year (and he didn’t run it very well) while Swoopes demonstrated horrifyingly poor awareness of how to execute the play. How can a staff who’s top two offensive coaches make a combined $1,145,000 be unable to teach Texas football players to execute a play that 10-year olds understand?

Michael Vick has been a college and pro-quarterback for nearly 15 years - and still can't read a defense.  Do we blame every single coach he has had along the way for failing to teach him?

Sorry - but this article lacks any objectivity and is nothing more than a hit piece.

 

[Juan]

The article is critical, no doubt about that.

But it's well-earned criticism after what the offense did in our last 2 games

 

[Hiphopopotamos]

The article is critical, no doubt about that.

But it's well-earned criticism after what the offense did in our last 2 games

Its not well-earned unless the criticim is objective - this isn't.  The author clearly has an agenda.

TCU had the 19th ranked defense in the NCAA and Arkansas had the 10th.

We had no OL, and a TE playing QB.  We had a walk-on who had never thrown a pass backing him up.

What exactly were realistic expectations for those two games?

I get the Watson hate - but the articles/posts laying all of the blame at his feet are ridiculous.

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

In particular, Gonzalez highlighted an unimaginative running game that reared its head against TCU. In particular, he noted that the OL actually improved over the course of the season but wasn’t given a chance against the Horned Frogs.

Instead, they tried to run Power from the offset I-formation into unblocked Frog defenders while doing nothing schematically to create hesitation or consequences for the TCU safeties from aggressively stuffing the Texas runs.

This gets back to my biggest complaint about Watson's 2014 offense. It requires physically dominating personnel to run it effectively. When can UT expect to "assert its will" on opponents again - if ever?

Agree that it appears Boyd may have an agenda against Watson and the staff, but c'mon. The criticism is justified based on Swoopes regression and our results.

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

"..... Gonzalez couldn’t believe the error that led to this play. “Literally, my 10-year old son could have read that option route that Swoopes threw for an interception. I asked him, ‘son how often do we throw that route?’ He says, ‘about four times a game.’ I respond, ‘how often have you thrown an interception on it?’ He responded, ‘never.â€

I remember Swoopes throwing that pick and thinking the same thing.

I ran the same option route myself as a TE in high school. Against zone, you "sit" outside the ILB and the QB should know to throw it away from him. Harris did the right thing cutting off his route, but he looked a little confused, too, on the play.

 

[Juan]

.....

Agree that it appears Boyd may have an agenda against Watson and the staff, but c'mon. The criticism is justified based on Swoopes regression and our results.

Yep.  If one is unwilling to level criticism at Watson after 59 yards of total offense in a bowl game, then it's just never going to happen.  And we only got to 59 by "padding" our stats in the 4th Q after the Piglets started replacing defenders.  For most of that game, we were looking at an all-time historic low offensive output.  So, I don't really get it. It almost feels like Watson is bribing folks with hacked Snapchat pics.

Furthermore, the main person quoted in that article is not some aggy but rather he is a UT grad and former Longhorn football player.  Not only that but he has fairly extensive in-state coaching experience as an offensive coordinator (college and high school).  He has even written two books on passing offenses and is sought out as an offensive consultant --

   

   

But he wasn't alone.  By pure coincidence, there was a state high school coaches clinic the day after the Texas Bowl.  Naturally they had watched our game the night before and .......  they were laughing at us --

Evidently the poor attempts by Texas to run the zone read against stunts by the Hogs made some Texas high school coaches laugh disdainfully as they discussed the Longhorns’ performance at a Dallas clinic the following day.

You have to wonder how Texas will fare in recruiting top offensive talent from DFW if the staff lacks the respect of the region’s coaches.

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

But he wasn't alone.  By pure coincidence, there was a state high school coaches clinic the day after the Texas Bowl.  Naturally they had watched our game the night before and .......  they were laughing at us --

That's just sad - and embarrasing.

I don't think TXHSFB coaches have a lot of confidence in nor respect for Watson right now. I base that assertion on the number skill position players we have committed for the 2015 class from Texas. I can't blame 'em, plus kids wanna play in high-octane schemes where they can potentially put up numbers. 

They seem to be okay with Wickline. I was excited about his hire last year because I thought we'd implement the OSU offense. No such luck. Spring is gonna be interesting!

 

[J.B. TexasEx]

Spread vs Pro-style offense: What's the difference?
http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2015/1/8/7509819/spread-vs-pro-style-offense-whats-the-difference-Florida-State-Oregon-Ducks

 

[Juan]

I like and look forward to Ian's X's and O's pieces

I think one reason he utilized all the quotes in the article at top of this thread is that he got tried of always having to be the one to point things out.  He let someone else do it this time.

 

[HornEsch]

I agree that there is a lot of blame on the offensive coaching staff, but that article also posts a lot of BS as well. The bad part of it all is the HS coaches thow. If I was a HS coach I would have a hard time telling my athletes to take a look at Texas, until they can prove that this last year was an aboration.

Louisville had pretty good offenses with Watson, so he does have some skill. However that does not mean that it will translate to success at Texas.

 

[Matt Cotcher]

Spread vs Pro-style offense: What's the difference?

http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2015/1/8/7509819/spread-vs-pro-style-offense-whats-the-difference-Florida-State-Oregon-Ducks

I enjoy IB's work, but I didn't find much in this article that fit with the explanations I've received from coaches.