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Passing on 1st Down

LuCane said:
Yeah. I'd go a step further and hope we run the ball just as much regardless of opponent. After all, it's Rhett Lashlee, the Malzahn disciple, as I said in my post-game thread. It's a good thing to run the ball a lot. It's also a good thing Lashlee is already throwing the ball a good amount on 1st down. It'll help King.
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Exactly. In games where we can do it successfully it's what we should be doing. Against UAB, it was the strategy that we don't have to do much of anything other than run the ball to beat you, and that's what we'll do, we will control the game on our terms...and you can't stop us from doing it. Such a running game is the key to our offense, so why go away from it unless we need to?
 
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I'd love to see us go with more 1st down Bubble screens on drives, unless the Defense is in Press man it's almost a guaranteed 7-8yds off the bat, which gives you so much more flexibility in play calling dealing with 2nd & short situations.

And one of the big advantages I expect us to exploit this game is that LVille doesn't play as much Man coverage as UAB did, their corners aren't as aggressive & grabby, they pretty much sit back in Zone & play a lot of vanilla Cover 2, Cover 4 & Cover 6.

So, the Zone buster concepts will be available for us this game just like they were last year, hope we see a lot more Shallow cross, Air Raid Mesh, Stick & Corner etc..

I actually see us throwing the ball 35 attempts & up this game, I don't think we'll go heavy on the Run, at least not early in the game. I think we air it out early to get the lead & then lean on the run game in the 4th quarter to salt the game away.
 
I still go back to Lashlee's total body of work. Predictability and lack of imagination with the play calling have not really been an issue. I got the impression that they wanted to work on basic things, keeping it as simple and vanilla as possible, while still winning. I might be wrong, but it just looked like they were keeping it simple on purpose. Next year, there will be no reason, as the offense will have plenty of film to study, but right now, they will have to guess, based on his previous stints elsewhere.
 
Liberty City El said:
I'd love to see us go with more 1st down Bubble screens on drives, unless the Defense is in Press man it's almost a guaranteed 7-8yds off the bat, which gives you so much more flexibility in play calling dealing with 2nd & short situations.

And one of the big advantages I expect us to exploit this game is that LVille doesn't play as much Man coverage as UAB did, their corners aren't as aggressive & grabby, they pretty much sit back in Zone & play a lot of vanilla Cover 2, Cover 4 & Cover 6.

So, the Zone buster concepts will be available for us this game just like they were last year, hope we see a lot more Shallow cross, Air Raid Mesh, Stick & Corner etc..

I actually see us throwing the ball 35 attempts & up this game, I don't think we'll go heavy on the Run, at least not early in the game. I think we air it out early to get the lead & then lean on the run game in the 4th quarter to salt the game away.
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I expect some coverage to avoid turning the back to king
 
LuCane said:
Hope to see more of it and in a varied way starting this Saturday.

Against UAB, if my notes are correct, we ran:
34 1st down plays (of 78 total plays).
Of those, 19 were runs (debatable on a couple QB runs).
The remaining 15 were passes (one ended up in a King scramble/run TD).

Of the 15 passes, here are the results:

1. Pass Holding on Wiggins +10 yards
2. Pass to Wiggins +11 yards
3. Pass resulted in scramble for +12 yards (TD)
4. Pass incomplete to Harley
5. Pass completed to Wiggins +5 yards
6. Pass incomplete to Harley
7. Pass completed to Harley +6 yards
8. Pass completed to Pope +15 yards
9. Pass incomplete
10. Pass incomplete to Payton
11. Pass completed to Harley +8 yards
12. Pass completed to Jordan +25 yards
13. Pass completed to Payton +13 yards
14. Pass incomplete, UAB Pass Interference +10 yards
15. Pass (Perry) incomplete to Redding

It doesn't take deep analytics to conclude the 1st down passing play success rate is disproportionately positive in comparison to 1st down runs. Lashlee does a good job showing balance. Would love to see us tick up from 44% to over 50% and use underneath throws, rolls and RPOs to make it happen.
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10. Could have changed the game. You can't miss 10 or 4 if you want to be top tier.
 
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While this is valid, we'd all save a lot of heartache looking for this offense to do what we want it to do. Diaz has made pretty clear the offense they run in any given game will be predicated on what they think will win the game. They're not going to try to stick to "their offense" if they don't think it's the best route to a W.

If they need to run the entire game to win, they're gonna try to do that. See: UAB.

If anything, Diaz might have learned from the stubbornness of Enos/Richt that you play to the opponents weaknesses, not necessarily your strengths.
 
I like when the "Big Dogs" start a good thread and the other "Big Dogs" chime in with excellent content.
Thanks LuCane, The Franchise and others. I get tired of the mopey threads. :11263272045-489f4f7972-o:
 
The Franchise said:
Lu, if you start chucking it more on 1st, how do you think that affects the level of success we saw against UAB? In other words, the more you do something, the more it is expected, and the less you catch the opponent off guard with it.

Personally, I love the throw game, and I think that our TEs can be a HUGE advantage for us that we almost didn't use at all last week. So many weapons on O that we could truly make it a "pick your poison" type offense if we start mixing it up and spreading it around.
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This is where I'm at. They just saw us run 52 times for 300 yards with 3 legitimate RBs and King. So let's open it up and use the pass to set up the run this week, at least in the first quarter or so. Then start messing with the read option to keep the LBs on skates. With the horses we have, we can. And I think we should.
 
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I say continue to run the ball. Louisville is small up front. Our RB's and running QB are elite.

Play to your strengths. Take advantage of the mismatches that work in your favor.

Run the ball and when they stack the box, throw it to Brevin.
 
LuCane said:
Hope to see more of it and in a varied way starting this Saturday.

Against UAB, if my notes are correct, we ran:
34 1st down plays (of 78 total plays).
Of those, 19 were runs (debatable on a couple QB runs).
The remaining 15 were passes (one ended up in a King scramble/run TD).

Of the 15 passes, here are the results:

1. Pass Holding on Wiggins +10 yards
2. Pass to Wiggins +11 yards
3. Pass resulted in scramble for +12 yards (TD)
4. Pass incomplete to Harley
5. Pass completed to Wiggins +5 yards
6. Pass incomplete to Harley
7. Pass completed to Harley +6 yards
8. Pass completed to Pope +15 yards
9. Pass incomplete
10. Pass incomplete to Payton
11. Pass completed to Harley +8 yards
12. Pass completed to Jordan +25 yards
13. Pass completed to Payton +13 yards
14. Pass incomplete, UAB Pass Interference +10 yards
15. Pass (Perry) incomplete to Redding

It doesn't take deep analytics to conclude the 1st down passing play success rate is disproportionately positive in comparison to 1st down runs. Lashlee does a good job showing balance. Would love to see us tick up from 44% to over 50% and use underneath throws, rolls and RPOs to make it happen.
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"It doesn't take deep analytics" = "I didn't bother to do the math" lol. These numbers aren't all that great. Granted they're better than our running numbers on first down, but they're not overwhelming. And the play % wasn't very far off. Literally 3 passes away from being majority passing. I think we'll see Lashlee tinker game-by-game.
 
ALLoverCANE said:
"It doesn't take deep analytics" = "I didn't bother to do the math" lol. These numbers aren't all that great. Granted they're better than our running numbers on first down, but they're not overwhelming. And the play % wasn't very far off. Literally 3 passes away from being majority passing. I think we'll see Lashlee tinker game-by-game.
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What? I quite literally did "the math," which didn't take much. As noted. The point was to show Lashlee's numbers were relatively balanced, as noted throughout the thread. And, that I'd hope they tick up only slightly over 50%. Also noted throughout the thread.

Ha. Good job.
 
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LuCane said:
What? I quite literally did "the math," which didn't take much. As noted. The point was to show Lashlee's numbers were relatively balanced, as noted throughout the thread. And, that I'd hope they tick up only slightly over 50%. Also noted throughout the thread.

Ha. Good job.
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I meant the side by side comparison. By my count, we were 6/12 for 80-some yards. That's better than what we ran for on 1st (~50 yards), but 6/12 and 7 yds/attempt isn't anything to write home about.
 
LuCane said:
What? I quite literally did "the math," which didn't take much. As noted. The point was to show Lashlee's numbers were relatively balanced, as noted throughout the thread. And, that I'd hope they tick up only slightly over 50%. Also noted throughout the thread.

Ha. Good job.
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But fair enough, this took some legwork. Hats off.
 
ALLoverCANE said:
I meant the side by side comparison. By my count, we were 6/12 for 80-some yards. That's better than what we ran for on 1st (~50 yards), but 6/12 and 7 yds/attempt isn't anything to write home about.
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Didn't make the point that we got chunks out of it - only that it was generally positive. Also made the point I'd like to see it continue, if not slightly tick up, in order to keep opponents honest and give King better looks on 1st down. We generally didn't pass well in Game 1, so I didn't expect the numbers - 1st down or otherwise - to contradict that.

I appreciate the discourse, but not sure we're disagreeing on much here. We'll see what Lashlee calls tomorrow.
 
Quick notes without a RE-watch yet:

If my notes are correct, Lashlee called 44.4% pass plays on 1st downs tonight. Right in line with last week’s number. More interestingly, he called just over 56% pass plays on 1st down in the first half.

The number came down as the nature of the game (our lead) changed. Dude seemed to keep Louisville on the ropes from the sound of the opening bell down to the last throw to Jordan over a mixed up Louisville secondary. God bless him.

Much more to say once I re-watch a couple times, of course.
 
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