Minnesota knew what we were going to run all game.
Minnesota 25, Illinois 17 Postgame
Minnesota knew what we were going to run all game.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
doesn't every team ? it is really not hard to figure that out
1st down - run
2nd down - slant
3rd down - down & out
I would say we have a lot of tendencies and tip plays based on personnel and formations. I don’t think ill ever understand why we stopped running McCray. Laugher has a good burst but I’m not running him between the tackles unless it’s a draw.
At home, first downs are opportunities to visit the kitchen or bathroom. In the stadium, you have to grimace and watch the wasted downs. This eventually grinds down crowd enthusiasm.
When I was a kid in the 70's my grandfather told me illinois offense never really changes
Run run pass punt, run run pass punt
Run run pass punt, run run pass punt
Preach it brother!
And A LOT of students didn't show up to fill up the stands in the north end zone. Not good.
the brainworm that causes this is in my opinion the old big ten maxim of "You've Got To Establish The Run"
history is littered with big ten offensive coordinators for whom Establishing The Run was more important than winning the game.
we're nine games into the season. at some point you have to assess what you do well and what you do poorly and maximize your advantages instead of just wasting downs.
it's almost as though getting ourselves into third and long situations is the goal of the offensive system.
and that's to say nothing of pass blocking
mccray is clearly the best pass blocking back with feagin out, but if we don't give him enough carries it becomes obvious what we're going to do based on who we have in the backfield
Again, we are looking at zero originality when it comes to our ground game. Almost all of our runs involve contact or some level of evasion prior to getting past the line of scrimmage.
When you run an offense that needs to stay on schedule or ahead of schedule, early down runs that don't get 3+ yards are killer. Now you run again, and get stuffed, you need 5-7. You have an incomplete pass, it's 3rd and 7.
Too many plays are just throwaways that don't mesh with the flow of the drive. It's like we only have time to have a single drive/set of plays scripted. It's very much like a pitcher just throwing, not trying to change eye levels or move in and out.
I think Lunney is fine, but we see the limitations every week. How easily can he be replaced with someone who is an obvious improvement? How much is Bret influencing the risk management? I don't know. All I know is we have most talent at our skill positions in a long time, especially at QB, and if this is the best we can get out of it, we probably won't get it again soon.
When you run an offense that needs to stay on schedule or ahead of schedule, early down runs that don't get 3+ yards are killer. Now you run again, and get stuffed, you need 5-7. You have an incomplete pass, it's 3rd and 7.
Too many plays are just throwaways that don't mesh with the flow of the drive. It's like we only have time to have a single drive/set of plays scripted. It's very much like a pitcher just throwing, not trying to change eye levels or move in and out.
I think Lunney is fine, but we see the limitations every week. How easily can he be replaced with someone who is an obvious improvement? How much is Bret influencing the risk management? I don't know. All I know is we have most talent at our skill positions in a long time, especially at QB, and if this is the best we can get out of it, we probably won't get it again soon.
NASchamp
- Atlanta
I don’t know. Anytime you pick someone up who is already going down and flip them onto their head/neck, you are intending to do something more than tackle them….
What I know about coaching football (or any sport for that matter) would fill a thimble. I'm sure many will read the below and give a resounding "well, duh". I know my limitations and I'm fine with that.
I think there is both a physical and mental aspect to our first down strategy.
Physically our RBs are just not quick enough. Valentine is the exception but then (as has been mentioned here many times) everyone knows it's a run because he can't pass block. Therefore going straight up the middle is simply the shortest distance between two points, and directing the run there is the most efficient (assuming a hole is created, which is usually not a good assumption).
Mentally I think it is just a bit of repetition designed to lull opposing coaches and defenses into expecting the same every time. Then when we finally do something different we have slightly better odds of success. I know one of our drives Saturday (was it our opening one?) we ran a play-action on first down and I was pleasantly surprised.
Now does all the above outweigh 75% of your first downs being for little or no gain? Probably not.
Why not run some offense with two running backs in the backfield? A full back and a tailback.... to me that would give a lot of options. You could use the fullback for blocking for the tailback or fake up the middle and pitch out or rub the raglan to the flat for a screen. Just so many options.
Except that's not what happened. He wasn't picked up and he wasn't already going down. Luke was fighting through the contact and one of the defenders took out his legs, which is what he's supposed to do.
I think it's notable that our coach specifically singed out the refs after this game, with specific examples, and as far as I am aware did not mention this play. If what you claim happened actually happened, this would be Exhibit A in any complaint about the refs. Instead he talked about the targeting call against Scott and uncalled the late hit against Luke.
But if you want to explain what penalty the refs should have called, and cite to the language in the rule book that supports the penalty, I am always open to changing my opinion.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Yeah, the only call (or lack thereof) that ticked me off was the blown delay of game that they initially charged a timeout to Illinois, and subsequently returned the timeout. It was a very messed up sequence that should have pushed Minnesota back 5 yards.
I'm in the clear minority here but I don't place a lot of blame on play calling. In fact, play calling hasn't lost us a single game. Are we kind of predictable? Yeah, but that's more of a symptom than a root cause. IMO, it starts with the line. We're just so limited in what we can do. But we have to at least try to play complementary football.
I've seen some people suggest that we should pass to open up the run. Well what if I told you we already do that? Against Minnesota we ran 28 first down plays. Only 7 of them were hand offs.
Without a good line, we're going to continue to fall behind the sticks regardless of the plays called. That's just football.
I've seen some people suggest that we should pass to open up the run. Well what if I told you we already do that? Against Minnesota we ran 28 first down plays. Only 7 of them were hand offs.
Without a good line, we're going to continue to fall behind the sticks regardless of the plays called. That's just football.
That's largely a function of being behind for a good chunk of the game.
In the first half we ran 6 1st down run plays (including a Luke keeper on an option that you didn't include because it's not a "hand off").
That being said my main problem with the play calling was 3rd down, not 1st. That 3rd-and-2 where we ran McCray for a loss was particularly bad. Everyone knew what we were going to do and we knew they knew, and we did it anyway.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
I don't agree with that. We were down one score at most the entire game. You are not changing your offense a lot because of being behind by one score.
The greater likelihood is because the hand-off was not working and wrre trying something different.
blackdog
- Champaign
But also EVERY team runs plenty of straight handoffs every game. It's not like we are doing something old fashioned that nobody else does. Really a lot of the time the blocking isn't even that terrible but our RBs have not done a good job of finding holes. It's get the ball and just plow straight ahead into the back of the line. Think about how Chase Brown was effective, he always talked about being patient, waiting for blocks to develop, finding seams. Go watch the best RBs out there and they arent just blasting full speed ahead after the handoff. How often have you seen our RBs cut back, bounce a run outside, or really do anything other than go straight ahead. McCray is getting better YPC because he can actually read his blocks and find some of those seams, Laughery and at this point Valentine just don't have it.
I mean, of the 1st down pass plays we ran something like 6 of them were in the last drive of the 1st half (less than 2 minutes) and the last two drives of the 2nd half (3 minutes and under and needing a TD). That's a pretty significant chunk of our 1st down plays where it's just situationally heavily weighted towards a pass play. When the situation is more neutral, we absolutely do tend to run more often on 1st down, which is fine btw, so long as we're finding ways to make it work (which it did not in this game).
Which again is why I'm more critical of our 3rd down play calling than 1st down. I just think the added context is necessary as we ran a much higher percentage of our first down plays in the beginning of the game.
And yeah, our personnel is not ideal at RB right now. Really missing Feagin, and think we need to adjust our game plan a bit to match the personnel we do have.
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