The poll for best offensive staff turned into a two-man race between Mike Leach and Urban Meyer, but Meyer ran away with it with 28% of the vote to Leach's 17%. A distant third was Oklahoma with Stoops and Wilson at 8%, along with "other" at 8% as well. Not a total surprise, but I have to wonder how the poll would have been if I'd constructed it better: I left off Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson.
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7 comments:
the Paul Johnson aspect is what I thought of immediately when I saw that poll. They run an "out of date" "three yards and a cloud of dust offense" and hung crazy points at Navy two years ago and smoked a very athletic miami and Georgia defense last year at Tech. Definitely in the argument.
It's option football to be sure, but to characterize Johnson;s offense a 3 yards and a could of dust offense, pun aside is just offensive. Averaging 5.6 yds per carry with a average posession time of 30 minutes in the college game is not the clock control 3 yds mentality of previous option incarnations.
1/3rd of their total offensive yards came form passing this year. and they called passes about 33% of the time. They could have been more explosive but their passing efficiency was only about 48% throwing an interception for about every 10 completions.
Now don't get me wrong i don't think Johnson will ever air it out more than 35% of the time, but if that efficiency comes up and they get a more explosive passing game lookout, they are going to turn heads. I love option football, and Johnson's teams are more exciting to watch than any other options teams out there. Optimistically I want to believe that if he can get the athletes he may someday have an option team worthy of mention next to the Nebraska Dynasty.
GT had more plays over 20 yards than anyone in the nation I believe, and more plays >30 yards as well (I think). They were BIG play offense last season for sure.
Personally I believe Tennessee has the best overall STAFF- Meyer is great, but he's just one guy. If the question was "Who is the best coach?" I would have gone with Meyer or Leach. But that wasn't the question.
most people don't know how great Meyer's staff is, but consider the quality of the coaches that make it up and you'll see why Meyer does well.
Charlie Strong - by all accounts should be a head coach right now
Dan McCarney - former head coach of Iowa State and even enjoyed some success there
Vance Bedford - unquestionable resume with corners, including Woodson at Michigan
Chuck Heater - one of the better coaches at making something out of nothing in the secondary. See Vernell Brown, Reggie Lewis, and Ryan Smith
Steve Addazio - despite a revolving door with personnel, consistently turns in one of the top OLs in the SEC. There is a reason UF consistently is at the top of the SEC in both total rushing yardage and YPC under Meyer, and it hasn't been the backs up until this past season.
Billy Gonzalez - UF's WR performance has been good to very good on a year to year basis. This guy is going to be a head coach in the not too distant future. He'll probably take over at Offensive Coordinator when Addazio leaves to become a head coach.
Kenny Carter - Granted, the talent was better, but the 1 year turnaround at the RB position was remarkable. Consider that every one of UF's running backs averaged over 5.5 YPC in 2008.
Scott Loeffler - Tom Brady, Drew Stanton, Chad Henne, Brian Griese. Loeffler is one of the tops in the country at coaching QBs.
If that isn't coaching talent, I don't know what is
I think the first poster was being sarcastic. Too often the flexbone and all option offenses don't get the respect they deserve for being explosive. Even in DII Carson Newman is consistently a top 5 offensive team and they run Split Back Veer. Option coaches get pigeon holed as unimaginative and pound it out when it is just another way to get a 2 on 1 matchup which is the basis of the whole game. 2 receivers against one defender(ie Curl Flat vs the flat defender), a blocker and and runner vs one defender (ex D end on power vs fullback kicking and someone up through behing him), or optioning a defender in the dive phase or the pitch phase. Its all about making a defender wrong.
LSU's wizard, Gary Crowton, has shown great production.
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