Lamb performance so far

[ericsaid]

What in the world gives you any pause that Coach Satterfield and his staff don't already do all they can to maximize each and every player's mental and physical skills?

There is more than one way to maximize different players skills. I think overall that App has the personnel to run a true hurry up offense and be successful due to the beast that is the running game. App devolved from a hurry up with Armanti (the fastest I've seen App run the spread) to now, which is essentially a pro style pace with a simple pistol option formation.

[firemoose]

What in the world gives you any pause that Coach Satterfield and his staff don't already do all they can to maximize each and every player's mental and physical skills?

There is more than one way to maximize different players skills. I think overall that App has the personnel to run a true hurry up offense and be successful due to the beast that is the running game. App devolved from a hurry up with Armanti (the fastest I've seen App run the spread) to now, which is essentially a pro style pace with a simple pistol option formation.

We moved from the true multi-spread to the read option style during the second half of the season that first transition year. The multi-spread requires a QB who is a run every down threat. We don't have those anymore. It's not that they aren't out there but we've been recruiting more read option style DTQB's for several years. Satt made the decision to change our offense due to the move up. We're facing programs that have, for the most part, bigger, stronger, and faster players than were at the FCS level. Armanti, Richie, and the others we had in those last FCS years took a beating and would have taken more of a beating at our current level. Satt made the move to our current style and I don't see us heading back towards the multi spread any time soon. We still run some up tempo in practice but they are more content to grind out the yards and win TOP right now. It is what it is.

[ericsaid]

What in the world gives you any pause that Coach Satterfield and his staff don't already do all they can to maximize each and every player's mental and physical skills?

There is more than one way to maximize different players skills. I think overall that App has the personnel to run a true hurry up offense and be successful due to the beast that is the running game. App devolved from a hurry up with Armanti (the fastest I've seen App run the spread) to now, which is essentially a pro style pace with a simple pistol option formation.

We moved from the true multi-spread to the read option style during the second half of the season that first transition year. The multi-spread requires a QB who is a run every down threat. We don't have those anymore. It's not that they aren't out there but we've been recruiting more read option style DTQB's for several years. Satt made the decision to change our offense due to the move up. We're facing programs that have, for the most part, bigger, stronger, and faster players than were at the FCS level. Armanti, Richie, and the others we had in those last FCS years took a beating and would have taken more of a beating at our current level. Satt made the move to our current style and I don't see us heading back towards the multi spread any time soon. We still run some up tempo in practice but they are more content to grind out the yards and win TOP right now. It is what it is.

To me, the players currently have the skill set to run hurry up and pressure defenses. Against Miami, App did well when playing hurry up late in the second quarter and early in the third, however fell into a routine of stretch right, stretch left, 3rd and 9 obvious passing down and try to get Taylor killed.

With running backs like Marcus Cox and now Evans, it would be easy to evolve their play calling to give Lamb the chance to drop out of a pistol look based on what he sees and send the running back out into the formation for passing routes. This keeps teams in their base set while spreading them out. With a QB like Lamb, he is smart enough to make the call at the line. In a base set, the defense will really have no other choice than to play zone or blitz and hope to get home before Lamb get's a pass off.

Sure the running game is working perfectly fine now, I just feel like in games against good teams, App is forced to play out their game plan which isn't necessarily working due to match-up problems along the front. I don't pretend to know more than the coaching staff, it's just something I would like to see because it's not often that a program gets the son of a QB who coaches as well and if there was ever a QB to expand a playbook with, it's Lamb.

[Yosef84]

I don't believe our slower pace has anything to do with the offensive talent. It has to do with the fact we are playing more teams who like to air the ball out and score quickly. We are slowing down the pace and eating up the clock as a DEFENSIVE strategy.

I think most people know that, but the conversation keeps going back to the offensive talent and our own scoring so I just wanted to put it back out there. I think we showed at the end of the first half (Akron) that we can score quickly when we need to....although I wouldn't object to seeing it more often myself.

I actually think our D matches up much better with GSU than most seem to believe. Maybe we will see a little hurry up in the strategy this weekend...never know.

[firemoose]

To me, the players currently have the skill set to run hurry up and pressure defenses. Against Miami, App did well when playing hurry up late in the second quarter and early in the third, however fell into a routine of stretch right, stretch left, 3rd and 9 obvious passing down and try to get Taylor killed.

With running backs like Marcus Cox and now Evans, it would be easy to evolve their play calling to give Lamb the chance to drop out of a pistol look based on what he sees and send the running back out into the formation for passing routes. This keeps teams in their base set while spreading them out. With a QB like Lamb, he is smart enough to make the call at the line. In a base set, the defense will really have no other choice than to play zone or blitz and hope to get home before Lamb get's a pass off.

Sure the running game is working perfectly fine now, I just feel like in games against good teams, App is forced to play out their game plan which isn't necessarily working due to match-up problems along the front. I don't pretend to know more than the coaching staff, it's just something I would like to see because it's not often that a program gets the son of a QB who coaches as well and if there was ever a QB to expand a playbook with, it's Lamb.

I know what you are saying. Your original post referred to the tempo we played with Armanti. My response was to that reference and the type of offense we ran with him. Do we have the other personal to run a similar "Jet" type of speed. Yes. But we do not have a run every down QB threat like Edwards, Pressley, Williams, and Cadet. I played and coached defense and running the multi-spread with those types of DTQB's makes you always have to assign personal to spy on the QB. We saw what happens when we went to QB's like Jackson, Bryant, and the current crop, and still tried to run a multi-spread. It doesn't work. So Satt adjusted to our current offense, but instead of two back sets we use TE's and HB's in the backfield as blockers. Can we run a speed offense with our QB's? Yes we can. Troy did it last year without a RED QB. Miami and Akron, among others, have done the same. We can easily do what you are suggesting but so far we seem to be content to go with our bread and butter. It works more often than not but at some point I hope we open things up more, especially as the WR's get more reps and the QB's start to trust that they will be where they expect them to be. Having that threat will open up our playbook even more and could lead to more out of the backfield sets and more speed. As I said we were running more speed in practice but once some players went down and we had to shift others around we pulled back on it and we're not seeing it much in games, for now.

Honestly though this is really a moot point because, as Yosef84 just posted, we are choosing to run at a slower pace for defensive reasons right now, to try and keep the up tempo offenses off the field that have the personal to work our defense between the 20's. It doesn't make much difference if we score in under a minute if the other team can do the same. Got to give the D a chance to catch their breath and to make adjustments.