Week 9 Stat Roll

[CANEFAN83]

Great post but I think you overstated it when you said "this offense stinks."

I agree we aren't national championship-caliber on offense right now and we need to get a lot more explosive. But we've seen bad offenses. This offense is scoring at a decent clip (32nd) and ranks high on a lot of the advanced stuff because we don't lose yards or throw incompletions.

The fundamental issues are pretty clear and evident in the stats: we aren't explosive enough in the passing game, and teams can stack the box with impunity because we aren't scaring defensive coordinators. Improving that element is going to the key to any potential playoff run (or even getting there).

If we can ever get Trader back in a bigger role moving forward to take off pressure of guys like Toney, Daniels, Moore, we will be that much better. Most people dont realize how talented Trader is when he is full speed out there plus mentally there which hasn't happened all year yet. Still holding out hope there.

 

[407cane]

If we can ever get Trader back in a bigger role moving forward to take off pressure of guys like Toney, Daniels, Moore, we will be that much better. Most people dont realize how talented Trader is when he is full speed out there plus mentally there which hasn't happened all year yet. Still holding out hope there.

maybe but there's also a point where people need to understand he's probably not as ready and/or good as local fans and people on CIS want to believe

sure he could be, but the longer he goes without working his way into the lineup, the more evident it is

 

[flips]

Shouldn't have mentioned Lance's name, he's not the only one saying this, I've just seen his comments on the pod mentioned more than once.

I understand all this, and thank you for the rational, adult thoughts. I guess I can't wrap my mind around the fact that going faster into mediocrity is going to produce anything other than mediocrity. But the more I think about it, the more I'm understanding, and one thing that just popped into my mind, if you want to break it down for a neanderthal like me, is points per drive.

We are 40th in points per drive on offense (2.67)

But we are 20th in points per drive allowed (1.65)

So, every time we trade drives with the other team, we're +1 point. If we have more drives, in theory, that gap grows. I suppose I understand that, but this is being driven by our defense, not our offense.

Again, in 2024, we were #1 in points per drive on offense (3.83 per drive). So my brain can compute going faster to run more plays to get more drives to score more points. But when your offense is 40th, I don't see how the magic pill to create more separation is to go faster on offense. Your offense isn't good, why is seeing more of it the be-all answer?

Cool discussion.

In the 3 FBS games (USF/FSU/UL) our defense has played more than 60 plays (just summing up rushes and passes from ESPN team stat box scores) we've given up 19.33 pts/game and 1.7 pts/drive (non-garbage time)

In the 4 FBS games our defense has played less than 60 plays we've given up 12.67 pts/game and 1.23 pts/drive.

So we are giving up 38% more pts/drive when our defense plays 60 plays+.

In terms of non-garbage time offensive plays we have run:

ND: 68 (.4 pts/play) (2.45 pts/drive)
USF: 65 (.75) (4.08)
UF: 72 (.36) (2.6)
FSU: 57 (.49) (2.8)
UL: 58 (.36) (1.91)
Tree: 74 (.57) (4.2)

50-59 plays, we average 2.33 pts/drive
60-69 we average 3.3 pts/drive
70+ we average 3.4 pts/drive

To me the issue with pushing the pace on offense for this team, is that there is a clear tradeoff: our defense performs worse when they play more than 60 plays. Now, it's not necessary that the defense play that many plays if we play at a faster pace, but I do think it's more likely. The two games we had the most offensive plays (UF & Tree) our defense only gave up .7 pts/drive. We also didn't push the pace much on offense in either game. We just controlled the ball and had many long drives.

Think we will get more bang for our buck (scoring more pts/drive on offense) if we limit our turnovers and our penalties (well at least the former is possible) than by pushing the pace - not saying we shouldn't run tempo in spots. We ran so few plays against UL because of our turnovers and because we nuked the first drive with a penalty.

Perhaps our defense will improve when they play
more plays as we build depth. Was great to see Simpson, Scroggins, Pickett, Popo, and some other guys in the front 7 get more meaningful snaps than usual against Tree.

 

[Calinative]

 

[OrangeBowlMagic]

Cool discussion.

In the 3 FBS games (USF/FSU/UL) our defense has played more than 60 plays (just summing up rushes and passes from ESPN team stat box scores) we've given up 19.33 pts/game and 1.7 pts/drive (non-garbage time)

In the 4 FBS games our defense has played less than 60 plays we've given up 12.67 pts/game and 1.23 pts/drive.

So we are giving up 38% more pts/drive when our defense plays 60 plays+.

In terms of non-garbage time offensive plays we have run:

ND: 68 (.4 pts/play) (2.45 pts/drive)
USF: 65 (.75) (4.08)
UF: 72 (.36) (2.6)
FSU: 57 (.49) (2.8)
UL: 58 (.36) (1.91)
Tree: 74 (.57) (4.2)

50-59 plays, we average 2.33 pts/drive
60-69 we average 3.3 pts/drive
70+ we average 3.4 pts/drive

To me the issue with pushing the pace on offense for this team, is that there is a clear tradeoff: our defense performs worse when they play more than 60 plays. Now, it's not necessary that the defense play that many plays if we play at a faster pace, but I do think it's more likely. The two games we had the most offensive plays (UF & Tree) our defense only gave up .7 pts/drive. We also didn't push the pace much on offense in either game. We just controlled the ball and had many long drives.

Think we will get more bang for our buck (scoring more pts/drive on offense) if we limit our turnovers and our penalties (well at least the former is possible) than by pushing the pace - not saying we shouldn't run tempo in spots. We ran so few plays against UL because of our turnovers and because we nuked the first drive with a penalty.

Perhaps our defense will improve when they play
more plays as we build depth. Was great to see Simpson, Scroggins, Pickett, Popo, and some other guys in the front 7 get more meaningful snaps than usual against Tree.

Awesome post. Really interesting ****.

I know this board thinks we have an entire building of semi-trained monkeys for coaches and support staff, but I’d bet you anything the coaches and analysts are aware of this. Maybe not the exact numbers, but the premise. You just don’t play the way we do on offense because you feel like it. These guys are paid very well to find every edge they can and pour all the data they have into a pot and spit out the best way to win. I’ve said it many times the past few weeks, Rueben Bain is playing virtually every snap. The staff feels he’s the best player in America. If you have the best player in America, the way to make him impact the game the most is to have him on the field as much as possible. How do you do that? By facing closer to 60 snaps than 80. And how do you face 60 snaps versus 80? Play a little slower and more methodical on offense.

Now, I’d be a complete moron to insinuate the staff doesn’t want to score points. If you can score in one play, ***** the defensive snap numbers. But I do think there’s some credence to the theory that the staff feels they have an elite defense, and they feel their starters are significantly better than the backups. So you want those guys on the field.

As an offensive guy, this makes me somewhat nauseous. Because I want to score every **** time I have the ball, and I want to do it explosively, and then I want to dance in your **** and run the scoreboard like a pinball machine. And I’m sure the staff, in a perfect world, wants that too, but it’d be great if we could do it while giving the defense as much rest as possible.

I just can’t imagine that being top 10 in time of possession, never taking negative plays, being one of the slowest teams in America is a total coincidence. You don’t play a certain way by accident. This is what they want to do. They feel the defense is the strength of the team, and they want the stamina bar at 100 for as many snaps as they can get it on that side of the ball. So you play complementary offense that way. And your numbers allude to it. We don’t rotate a ton. 3 and 4 play every play. So does 0. So does 8. 7 plans most of them. The backers are in for 70+%. We rotate where we have depth we trust. Corner and DT, to an extent.

Great post, I think this is definitely a piece of the puzzle as to the plan of attack. If somehow we can just get a touch faster and a touch more efficient while maintaining that level on defense, we’ll be good. But I hope the staff realizes this might be a viable strategy to win 11 games, but you’re not winning a natty with this offense the way it is right now. At least not without some crazy luck.

Good stuff.

 

[flips]

Awesome post. Really interesting ****.

I know this board thinks we have an entire building of semi-trained monkeys for coaches and support staff, but I’d bet you anything the coaches and analysts are aware of this. Maybe not the exact numbers, but the premise. You just don’t play the way we do on offense because you feel like it. These guys are paid very well to find every edge they can and pour all the data they have into a pot and spit out the best way to win. I’ve said it many times the past few weeks, Rueben Bain is playing virtually every snap. The staff feels he’s the best player in America. If you have the best player in America, the way to make him impact the game the most is to have him on the field as much as possible. How do you do that? By facing closer to 60 snaps than 80. And how do you face 60 snaps versus 80? Play a little slower and more methodical on offense.

Now, I’d be a complete moron to insinuate the staff doesn’t want to score points. If you can score in one play, ***** the defensive snap numbers. But I do think there’s some credence to the theory that the staff feels they have an elite defense, and they feel their starters are significantly better than the backups. So you want those guys on the field.

As an offensive guy, this makes me somewhat nauseous. Because I want to score every **** time I have the ball, and I want to do it explosively, and then I want to dance in you **** and run the scoreboard like a pinball machine. And I’m sure the staff, in a perfect world, wants that too, but it’d be great if we could do it while giving the defense as much rest as possible.

I just can’t imagine that being top 10 in time of possession, never taking negative plays, being one of the slowest teams in America is a total coincidence. You don’t play a certain way by accident. This is what they want to do. They feel the defense is the strength of the team, and they want the stamina bar at 100 for as many snaps as they can get it on that side of the ball. So you play complementary offense that way. And your numbers allude to it. We don’t rotate a ton. 3 and 4 play every play. So does 0. So does 8. 7 plans most of them. The backers are in for 70+%. We rotate where we have depth we trust. Corner and DT, to an extent.

Great post, I think this is definitely a piece of the puzzle as to the plan of attack. If somehow we can just get a touch faster and a touch more efficient while maintaining that level on defense, we’ll be good. But I hope the staff realizes this might be a viable strategy to win 11 games, but you’re not winning a natty with this offense the way it is right now. At least not without some crazy luck.

Good stuff.

Thanks. Caveat is that the sample sizes are so small that an outlier game could flip the script.

Also it's fair to point out that UL scored 14 of their 24 points on their first 15 plays. Whereas FSU clearly wore down our defense scoring 19 pts on their final 36 plays (all in the 4th Q - still insane lol).

I do think the path of least resistance is still to score offensive touchdowns on explosive plays, because we'd be scoring 7 pts on those drives, and if we have multiple explosive TDs I like the odds of our defense holding the other team out of the end zone more often than not. So am assuming we'd have >2 ppd differential in this scenario. I'm just not sure playing at a much faster pace on offense helps us achieve that end, and there is a potential negative tradeoff to playing much faster for our defense.

I guess tl;Dr I think we win out if we average 1 turnover or less per game (which is what we did in the first 4 FBS games) the rest of the way (& I guess limit our presnap offensive penalties - trying to be realistic here lol) without any meaningful change in the pace we play on offense.

 

[Calinative]

Cool discussion.

In the 3 FBS games (USF/FSU/UL) our defense has played more than 60 plays (just summing up rushes and passes from ESPN team stat box scores) we've given up 19.33 pts/game and 1.7 pts/drive (non-garbage time)

In the 4 FBS games our defense has played less than 60 plays we've given up 12.67 pts/game and 1.23 pts/drive.

So we are giving up 38% more pts/drive when our defense plays 60 plays+.

In terms of non-garbage time offensive plays we have run:

ND: 68 (.4 pts/play) (2.45 pts/drive)
USF: 65 (.75) (4.08)
UF: 72 (.36) (2.6)
FSU: 57 (.49) (2.8)
UL: 58 (.36) (1.91)
Tree: 74 (.57) (4.2)

50-59 plays, we average 2.33 pts/drive
60-69 we average 3.3 pts/drive
70+ we average 3.4 pts/drive

To me the issue with pushing the pace on offense for this team, is that there is a clear tradeoff: our defense performs worse when they play more than 60 plays. Now, it's not necessary that the defense play that many plays if we play at a faster pace, but I do think it's more likely. The two games we had the most offensive plays (UF & Tree) our defense only gave up .7 pts/drive. We also didn't push the pace much on offense in either game. We just controlled the ball and had many long drives.

Think we will get more bang for our buck (scoring more pts/drive on offense) if we limit our turnovers and our penalties (well at least the former is possible) than by pushing the pace - not saying we shouldn't run tempo in spots. We ran so few plays against UL because of our turnovers and because we nuked the first drive with a penalty.

Perhaps our defense will improve when they play
more plays as we build depth. Was great to see Simpson, Scroggins, Pickett, Popo, and some other guys in the front 7 get more meaningful snaps than usual against Tree.

Snaps would be the wrong way of looking at it because that's entirely about the quality/style of your opponent. I mean you could say adjusting our pace to the opponents expected pace/style makes sense. But Drives is far better to use as the comparison. Also it's pretty obvious that USF/Stanford were clearly not good opponents compared to our talent. ND, UF, FSU, Louisville are FAR more reflective of a solid/competitive team we'd go against going forward. In those 4 games we have surrendered 77pts in 44 drives (11 drives each game) = 1.75pts/drive allowed (0.29pts/play). We scored 102pts in 42 drives = 2.43pts/drive scored (0.375pts/play). So I mean just simply looking at the NET, we gain 0.68pts/drive or 0.09pts/play. We are the better team. The more drives we give our offense to get TDs, I expect our Defense to hold our opponents more than I expect our Opponents to hold us. Whether that extra drive per game results in us giving up an additional 0.25pts/drive (additional fg every 12 drives) doesn't matter IF we gain an additional 0.58pts/drive (additional td every 12 drives) from it. In those 4 games we've scored 6+pts on 28.6% of drives while we allow 6+pts on 20.5% of drives. We get held to 0pts on 57.1% of drives vs we hold opponent to 0pts on 70.5% of drives. So I know which way I'd bet...

And just in general we can absolutely EXPECT to play 11 defensive drives regardless. We ran 70 snaps on offense against ND? Our defense had 11 drives. We ran 61 snaps against USF? Our defense had 13 drives. UF 78 snaps! Still 11 drives. Against ND AND Louisville we had 11 defensive drives and allowed 2.18pts/drive in each. The difference is not getting 1 more TD against Louisville. The ONLY question is what is more likely to result in our offense scoring more TDs, going at quicker pace or slower pace. And specifically BECAUSE it makes the offense operate better (like not trying to get 13 drives instead of 11). But like if we score TDs at a higher rate going faster then it's better, period.

ND
Defensively: 60 snaps. 11 drives (12, but one was a knee before half). 7 resulted in 0pts. 1 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 24 pts allowed. 2.18pts/drive.
Offensively: 70 snaps. 11 drives. 6 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 27 pts scored. 2.45pts/drive.

USF
Defensively: 70 snaps. 13 drives. 10 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 12 pts allowed. 0.92pts/drive.
Offensively: 61 snaps. 12 drives (13, but before half we just killed clock). 5 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 7 resulted in 6+pts. 49 pts scored. 4.10pts/drive.

UF
Defensively: 52 snaps. 11 drives. 10 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 7 pts allowed. 0.64pts/drive.
Offensively: 78 snaps. 10 drives (12, but one was killing time before half other was killing time to end game). 5 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 26 pts scored. 2.6pts/drive.

FSU
Defensively: 88 snaps. 11 drives. 7 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 2 resulted in 6+pts. 22 pts allowed. 2pts/drive.
Offensively: 61 snaps. 10 drives (12, but one was killing time before half other was killing time to end game). 6 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 4 resulted in 6+pts. 28 pts scored. 2.8pts/drive.

Louisville
Defensively: 69 snaps. 11 drives (12, but killing time to end game). 7 resulted in 0pts. 1 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 24 pts allowed. 2.18pts/drive.
Offensively: 63 snaps. 11 drives (12, but knee before half). 7 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 2 resulted in 6+pts. 21 pts scored. 1.91pts/drive.

Stanford
Defensively: 54 snaps. 9 drives (11, but killing time before half and end game). 8 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 7 pts allowed. 0.78pts/drive.
Offensively: 62 snaps. 10 drives. 4 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 6 resulted in 6+pts. 42 pts scored. 4.2pts/drive.

 

[flips]

Snaps would be the wrong way of looking at it because that's entirely about the quality/style of your opponent. I mean you could say adjusting our pace to the opponents expected pace/style makes sense. But Drives is far better to use as the comparison. Also it's pretty obvious that USF/Stanford were clearly not good opponents compared to our talent. ND, UF, FSU, Louisville are FAR more reflective of a solid/competitive team we'd go against going forward. In those 4 games we have surrendered 77pts in 44 drives (11 drives each game) = 1.75pts/drive allowed (0.29pts/play). We scored 102pts in 42 drives = 2.43pts/drive scored (0.375pts/play). So I mean just simply looking at the NET, we gain 0.68pts/drive or 0.09pts/play. We are the better team. The more drives we give our offense to get TDs, I expect our Defense to hold our opponents more than I expect our Opponents to hold us. Whether that extra drive per game results in us giving up an additional 0.25pts/drive (additional fg every 12 drives) doesn't matter IF we gain an additional 0.58pts/drive (additional td every 12 drives) from it. In those 4 games we've scored 6+pts on 28.6% of drives while we allow 6+pts on 20.5% of drives. We get held to 0pts on 57.1% of drives vs we hold opponent to 0pts on 70.5% of drives. So I know which way I'd bet...

And just in general we can absolutely EXPECT to play 11 defensive drives regardless. We ran 70 snaps on offense against ND? Our defense had 11 drives. We ran 61 snaps against USF? Our defense had 13 drives. UF 78 snaps! Still 11 drives. Against ND AND Louisville we had 11 defensive drives and allowed 2.18pts/drive in each. The difference is not getting 1 more TD against Louisville. The ONLY question is what is more likely to result in our offense scoring more TDs, going at quicker pace or slower pace. And specifically BECAUSE it makes the offense operate better (like not trying to get 13 drives instead of 11). But like if we score TDs at a higher rate going faster then it's better, period.

ND
Defensively: 60 snaps. 11 drives (12, but one was a knee before half). 7 resulted in 0pts. 1 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 24 pts allowed. 2.18pts/drive.
Offensively: 70 snaps. 11 drives. 6 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 27 pts scored. 2.45pts/drive.

USF
Defensively: 70 snaps. 13 drives. 10 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 12 pts allowed. 0.92pts/drive.
Offensively: 61 snaps. 12 drives (13, but before half we just killed clock). 5 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 7 resulted in 6+pts. 49 pts scored. 4.10pts/drive.

UF
Defensively: 52 snaps. 11 drives. 10 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 7 pts allowed. 0.64pts/drive.
Offensively: 78 snaps. 10 drives (12, but one was killing time before half other was killing time to end game). 5 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 26 pts scored. 2.6pts/drive.

FSU
Defensively: 88 snaps. 11 drives. 7 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 2 resulted in 6+pts. 22 pts allowed. 2pts/drive.
Offensively: 61 snaps. 10 drives (12, but one was killing time before half other was killing time to end game). 6 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 4 resulted in 6+pts. 28 pts scored. 2.8pts/drive.

Louisville
Defensively: 69 snaps. 11 drives (12, but killing time to end game). 7 resulted in 0pts. 1 resulted in 3pts. 3 resulted in 6+pts. 24 pts allowed. 2.18pts/drive.
Offensively: 63 snaps. 11 drives (12, but knee before half). 7 resulted in 0pts. 2 resulted in 3pts. 2 resulted in 6+pts. 21 pts scored. 1.91pts/drive.

Stanford
Defensively: 54 snaps. 9 drives (11, but killing time before half and end game). 8 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 1 resulted in 6+pts. 7 pts allowed. 0.78pts/drive.
Offensively: 62 snaps. 10 drives. 4 resulted in 0pts. 0 resulted in 3pts. 6 resulted in 6+pts. 42 pts scored. 4.2pts/drive.

Good points. I focused on plays for our defense because how little we rotate in the front seven and at nickel. Do you remember if our defensive starters were still in against USF on these two drives?

I do worry that after a certain number of plays our defensive performance will degrade markedly, similar to what we saw against FSU (and perhaps what happened against USF if our starters were still in), and we should try to avoid putting them in that situation if we aren't going to rotate more guys in. But I get what you're saying, our defense would have to degrade a lot and there would have to be no benefit/worse outcome playing faster to recommend against playing faster. So absent evidence that our offense becomes truly awful playing faster, we should play faster. It also makes sense to speed up our offensive tempo when opponents are purposely playing slow on offense (UF & Stanford), instead of giving them more of what they want.

One thing I have come around to with this team (@CBurrr93 amongst others has been beating the drum on this) is that we definitely should be trying to score before half when we have the ball last. There's zero risk to tiring out our defense here. We had opportunities to do so from the USF game through the UL game and didn't take them. Starting field position was awful against USF and FSU, but still...giving up a free opportunity to have another scoring chance 4 games in a row with how the offense has struggled for multiple drives in a row was suboptimal. And we compounded the issue by not scoring any points on our first 2 second half drives against USF, our first 3 against UF, and our first 2 against UL. I do wonder how much a lack of trust in Beck has played into this decision making. I seem to remember we took more chances before half last year, but am too lazy to look it up rn.

 

[CBurrr93]

Good points. I focused on plays for our defense because how little we rotate in the front seven and at nickel. Do you remember if our defensive starters were still in against USF on these two drives?

View attachment 341058
I do worry that after a certain number of plays our defensive performance will degrade markedly, similar to what we saw against FSU (and perhaps what happened against USF if our starters were still in), and we should try to avoid putting them in that situation if we aren't going to rotate more guys in. But I get what you're saying, our defense would have to degrade a lot and there would have to be no benefit/worse outcome playing faster to recommend against playing faster. So absent evidence that our offense becomes truly awful playing faster, we should play faster. It also makes sense to speed up our offensive tempo when opponents are purposely playing slow on offense (UF & Stanford), instead of giving them more of what they want.

One thing I have come around to with this team (@CBurrr93 amongst others has been beating the drum on this) is that we definitely should be trying to score before half when we have the ball last. There's zero risk to tiring out our defense here. We had opportunities to do so from the USF game through the UL game and didn't take them. Starting field position was awful against USF and FSU, but still...giving up a free opportunity to have another scoring chance 4 games in a row with how the offense has struggled for multiple drives in a row was suboptimal. And we compounded the issue by not scoring any points on our first 2 second half drives against USF, our first 3 against UF, and our first 2 against UL. I do wonder how much a lack of trust in Beck has played into this decision making. I seem to remember we took more chances before half last year, but am too lazy to look it up rn.

Just goes back to us making it tougher on ourselves. You’re the more talented team. You want more snaps. More possessions. And we are okay with giving them away before half. It’s not a winning strategy. Especially when you’re the more talented team. You should be game planning around getting as many snaps you can for your offense. We are coaching as if we are the underdog and shortening the game. It’s extremely frustrating. Call your timeouts on defense before the half. Do whatever it takes to get the ball back and try to get points on the board. I truly don’t understand our coaches’ logic

 

[flips]

Just goes back to us making it tougher on ourselves. You’re the more talented team. You want more snaps. More possessions. And we are okay with giving them away before half. It’s not a winning strategy. Especially when you’re the more talented team. You should be game planning around getting as many snaps you can for your offense. We are coaching as if we are the underdog and shortening the game. It’s extremely frustrating. Call your timeouts on defense before the half. Do whatever it takes to get the ball back and try to get points on the board. I truly don’t understand our coaches’ logic

Makes sense. Went back and checked, and yes we were pretty aggressive in similar situations before the half last year on offense. Perhaps the force of Cam's personality made that happen, and coach is just reverting back to his comfort zone? I dunno, but it's definitely weird not to try to do anything 4 straight times before the half.

 

[Calinative]

Makes sense. Went back and checked, and yes we were pretty aggressive in similar situations before the half last year on offense. Perhaps the force of Cam's personality made that happen, and coach is just reverting back to his comfort zone? I dunno, but it's definitely weird not to try to do anything 4 straight times before the half.

The thing is you can’t just go slow all half then try to take the quick chance before half with no time left. In order to give yourself a realistic chance to score before half you have to go faster on your expected 2nd to last drive.

You want to have the ball with 2-3 mins to end the half. That means you want to score like with 6mins left at least on your 2nd to last possession before half. So if in 2nd quarter you get the ball with 8minutes, we shouldn’t be trying to absolutely bleed the clock there. THAT is the moment we need to run more aggressive tempo. You don’t want to bleed 6mins off the clock there and then give your opponent the ball with only 2-3mins left! You want to score quickly. If you get the ball back with 4mins before half, yes you go slow tempo to try to end the ball with your possession. But what we do before that adds to that. Going slow as **** earlier makes it less likely we can end the half with the extra posession

The 2nd quarter is really the most important quarter for playing tempo tbh, because that’s when you really can get the drive imbalance.

I don’t mind not starting the game with tempo, because one of worst things you can do is start with a really quick 3 and out. I mean I’d say after you pick up a 1st or two THEN you go tempo. That would really add to the momentum of the opening drive.

 

[flips]

The thing is you can’t just go slow all half then try to take the quick chance before half with no time left. In order to give yourself a realistic chance to score before half you have to go faster on your expected 2nd to last drive.

You want to have the ball with 2-3 mins to end the half. That means you want to score like with 6mins left at least on your 2nd to last possession before half. So if in 2nd quarter you get the ball with 8minutes, we shouldn’t be trying to absolutely bleed the clock there. THAT is the moment we need to run more aggressive tempo. You don’t want to bleed 6mins off the clock there and then give your opponent the ball with only 2-3mins left! You want to score quickly. If you get the ball back with 4mins before half, yes you go slow tempo to try to end the ball with your possession. But what we do before that adds to that. Going slow as **** earlier makes it less likely we can end the half with the extra posession

The 2nd quarter is really the most important quarter for playing tempo tbh, because that’s when you really can get the drive imbalance.

I don’t mind not starting the game with tempo, because one of worst things you can do is start with a really quick 3 and out. I mean I’d say after you pick up a 1st or two THEN you go tempo. That would really add to the momentum of the opening drive.

Think you're overthinking it a bit. Don't think it matters much what speed you play on your second to last drive of the 1st half.

Just look at the top25 games from last week, there were a handful of scoring drives before the half that were less than 2min, some less than a minute.

Take the UF game, I believe we had 2 TOs when UF got the ball with 1:29 left. We could have gotten the ball back with more than :43 seconds from our own 25. Even trying to get 35 yards for a long FG easily doable with :43 left. FSU I believe we had 3 TOs when we sacked Minime on 1st down with like 1:45 left. Had we used our TOs we could have gotten the ball with 1:20+ left on the clock.

It's just odd that we have conceded these possessions before the half since Beck threw the late 1st half pick against USF (which was the last time we used a TO on defense to try to save clock oops this was the 2min TO). We generally let it rip before the half last year. Don't know if that was an anomaly in Mario's career or not. I get why they don't trust Beck now after UL, but it looks like they stopped trusting him before the half a few games before UL

 

[bshaw28]

Disturbing Rushing Stat: If you remove WR & QB runs, so you're only looking at the RB's

2025 RB's - 4.4 YPC - this is the lowest YPC for Miami RB's since 1992
2024 RB's - 6.3 YPC
2023 RB's - 5.4 YPC

This is bad.

IMO it'll improve the rest of the year - but it's not gonna look good at the end of the year.

 

[skyman]