Just a quick aside during your regularly scheduled weekly football coverage.
Offense
There is one thought regarding the offense that has pervaded my mind, and seems to be floating in the minds of others. That is the efficacy of Urban Meyer’s offense, particularly now that it is so well known and covered.
The question, worded succinctly, is “With so much film available on the Urban Meyer offense, can it continue to be as effective as it has in the past?”
Many people, particularly Florida fans, will be quick to point out Urban Meyer’s last season at Florida as an example. After years of 10 win seasons, Meyer’s offense sputtered in a year plagued by the lack of Tim Tebow. The season ended with a mere 8 wins and the ultimate second resignation of Meyer due to his health issues.
However, what exactly was the cause of the collapse that season? Was it a lack of skilled playmakers, due to poor recruiting or off-field difficulties? Was it the slow improvement of Florida’s opponents to work out a solution to his offense? Or was it his health failing him?
To be honest, it was probably a combination of all three. Meyer’s health very likely made it difficult for him to put in the time and effort necessary to engage his players in practice. With limited time – he missed the entirety of spring practice – there’s a good chance his players were unprepared to play in his offense during the season.
I must be honest that I don’t know enough about the playmakers Florida had several years ago to competently say if this was a signficant effect. Florida fans would likely say yes, though I doubt Urban Meyer would perform so poorly on the recruiting trail.
That leaves the abilities of his opposing coaches to gameplan against him. There’s probably a lot of truth to this fact. The simple fact that Miami of Ohio had months to dig up tape on Meyer’s system and study it well enough to put together a solid defensive scheme for a quarter tells us that this is more than a reasonable probability.
But is it something to really worry about? Simply – no. And no, I’m not wearing the homer glasses.
One of the key factors about football is that a perfectly run offense will always beat a perfectly run defense. You can quibble about the definition of perfect, but even the best laid defensive play can be beaten by a expertly run offensive play. If it were the other way around you would frequently see games with absolutely no scoring at all on either side. Despite Penn State and Iowa, and Mississippi State and Auburn, there are few other examples of that phenomenon.
An offensive system can get the job done, no matter how much film there is out there. It will, of course, make games interesting in the future as defenses continue to make plays against the offense based on game film. However, it’s Urban Meyers job, and the job of his assistants, to constantly evolve the offense, improve upon it, and continue to make life interesting for opposing defenses.
Defense
We’ve seen the defensive line struggle to get pressure on opposing quarterbacks the last two weeks. Considering the talk in the preseason that this might be one of the best defensive lines in college football this year, one wonders why exactly the line is failing so miserably to perform.
One possibility for this fact could be the weakness in the linebackers.
Knowing that the linebackers are the weak link on this team, Vrable and Fickell could very well be making play calls designed to keep the defensive line “home”. Instead of helping the secondary by putting pressure on the quarterback, instead the D-Line would be staying in place to make certain not to overrun a running play. Were the Line to overrun, that would leave only the linebackers to finish the job – a job they may be ill-equipped to handle at this time.
Instead of putting pressure on the young linebackers, the coaches instead put the pressure on the secondary, leading to several rather silly gaffes down the sideline. With the secondary being a strength of this team, that is not an unreasonable task to leave them.
Considering that the strength of UCF was in the running game, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was exactly the line of thinking the coaching staff came to during their game planning session. Urban Meyer may want to punish quarterbacks every time they throw the football, but it can’t happen if the defensive line has to play safe for the linebackers.
We’ll have to see if this changes in the coming games.
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