Thoughts on the new look offense

Thoughts on the new look offense

Saw a lot of new LOOKS, but not much of a new offense. That's not a criticism.... the first order of business was to win and Orgeron and Canada obviously knew what that would take. The rest of the new offense will come, I believe, based around all the motion, and it was given a nice foundation last night.... I saw a lot of offensive confidence this team hasn't had since Mettenburger. Overall, I was very pleased.

 

I would agree with all of that.

I am hopeful the issue is that Canada was holding back on showing the passing game. Otherwise, we just traded one style of running the ball 70-80% of the time for another. Misdirection or not, running the ball up the middle with a lead blocker is running the ball up the middle with a lead blocker. The rest is just window dressing. Both of those styles look fine against teams we can overpower physically. Neither of them are going to work in games where we don't have a decided strength and power advantage over the opponent. If we don't have more creativity and a roughly 50-50% split between passing PLAYS not YARDS, we are going to be the same old team at the end of the year.

The one real positive was that we were efficient in the passes that we did attempt, and we even had a pass to a TE early in the game, which is unusual for us to say the least. In addition, we got plays in on time for the most part, though we did still have too many penalties on the offensive side of the ball, particularly early in the game.

Long story short, I am withholding any sort of real opinion until we see more. I will say however, that I was disappointed not to see more in the way of a passing game emphasis last night, even if it was simple stuff so as not to tip their hand too much.

 

Agree with most of this. LSUStrength, and Istsl makes some good points in op.

My takeaways:

1. RZ offense needs to finish. More pass options needed here, and o-line will improve w/maturity in this area.
2. Our biggest area of concern going in was o-line. They looked good for the most part, except RZ. Im encouraged, but they need to mature quick. Depth here will be our Achilles heel come NOV and ALA.
3. I thought Etling looked great for the most part. By great, I mean solid in execution, and didn't try to do too much. Played his role, moved the offense, was accurate and strong w/throws, and no TOs.
4. I'm a bit surprised we didn't pass more, but I recall Canada's rep being more of a run guy, just with lots of motion. It does look smoother than CLMs smash mouth approach, and D can't stack box as easily.
5. Defense was obviously amazing. We'll be in all games if they play that way.
6. This BYU is not yesterday's BYU. They had no way to threaten us.
7. With CLM gone, watching LSU football is fun again. Appreciate his tenure, but boy is the start to this season refreshing, minus Taint, who may have turned a corner himself this game.

 

TT was very complimentary all game. Must have had a nice beverage by his side.

 

Or his doctors changed his meds.

 

Yeah I did not recognize at first, that BYU was covering the pass & daring us to run. The offense looked like last year's with added motion. I suspect it will look different against teams that defense the run.

 

I don't really care about 50/50 if we're playing smart. I really think Canada will bring a passing game when needed but is smart enough to run the clock when we've got a lead, which makes Aranda's D even stronger. BYU was totally demoralized and I hope to see more of that. This might be a very special season, but I'm pumping the brakes a bit because it was BYU.

 

Also, by running effectively, the clock was just running and running, while the D was resting and resting. CLMs teams were pretty good at that at times, too. Hopefully, the difference here is that we run when it is working/allowed by opposing D, but pass when we need to and when opposing D is stacking. Gameplanning, I suspect, will be very different w/this regime.

 

A couple of things. Firsts Canada's reputation it that he adapts and gets the most out of what he has. That's why he had varied offenses at the several schools where he has been he ran a quick pass scheme with Jacoby Brissett(and BTWcoached him up enough to play for Belichek), to a heavy run offense in Pittsburgh. With Guice we'll still be run heavy, but as several commentators said we didn't only run the toss dive left, right and play action pass on 3rd ad infinitum. We ran him from formations ran unbalanced lines faked off the jet sweep, ran Guice on the jet sweep. Had Guice & Edwards-Hillere in the backfield together running pass routes. 8 different receivers catching passes. Notice the tempo changes????
We'll do what we do best and enough differently to be more than effective. I hope. They said we showed less than 10% of the offense tonight. Let's see what we do at Moo State & Auburn before we jump to conclusions.