Interview by a Seattle-area paper with Seahawks draft pick Owen Schmitt earlier this month:
“Q: How different is the offense here from the one you ran at West Virginia?
Schmitt: Oh, God. We had 12 plays there. Literally. And we ran six of them.
Q: Give it to Slaton?
Schmitt: Yeah. Literally, we had 12 plays and ran six. Maybe. At the most.”
To prepare for the upcoming college football season, I’ve been watching last year’s WVU football games I’ve kept on TiVo, with Schmitt’s quotes ringing in my head.
I see what he means. We’ll get to that in a minute.
I didn’t record either loss (South Florida and Pitt), and I’ve found that the victories provide various levels of satisfaction in re-watching.
For instance, the 55-14 victory over Syracuse is almost unwatchable. I’m not sure if it’s because Syracuse was stinking up the screen, or because of their really ugly unis (only Syracuse can find ugly throwback unis), or because of that really, really annoying low-angle television camera angle necessitated by the dingy Carrier Dome.
Further, imagine a 41-point win in which A) you don’t have a running back to hit 100 yards, or B) your quarterback doesn’t throw for 150 yards.
On the other hand, the Louisville game was terrific television, full of drama throughout, at nighttime on ESPN HD, brilliantly illuminated by the Mountaineer Field lights and the Mounties' all-gold unis.
Today's Must Reads
Other games provided partial satisfaction. The first quarter of the Mississippi State game, for instance, which began with a 60-yard Pat White TD run. The East Carolina game was an all-three-phases domination that bogged down in the fourth quarter.
Perhaps the most deceptive win of last year was the 66-21 wipeout of UConn, and this speaks to Schmitt’s point. This game was only 24-14 at halftime, with UConn running the ball at will and consistently stopping WVU on defense.
Three third-quarter TDs put the game out of UConn’s reach, and evidently the Huskies gave up in the fourth quarter, giving up three more TDs to WVU backups.
But despite the score, the UConn victory was a predictor of the Pitt loss the following week, which ruined the Mountaineers’ bid to play for the national championship.
Against UConn the Mountaineers ran essentially three plays: Steve Slaton/Noel Devine left and right, direct snap to Pat White, bubble screen left and right. Almost. Nothing. Vertical. (Except for White scrambling on a broken play.)
It was amazing to watch—we all saw it last year and on some level knew it, but the breakaway 50-yard runs and big-point victories made us overlook the banality of the play-calling. And by the end of the season, the defenses were hip to it.
UConn was getting it, but simply got overwhelmed by athletic superiority as the game moved along. But Pitt had athletes equal to WVU’s, or at least closer, and they had a defensive coach who devised a game plan that he knew could focus on an entirely horizontal, non-vertical offense.
Heck, South Florida has figured it out the past two years. Asked how South Florida shut down the jaw-dropping WVU offense after the 2007 win, the South Florida defensive coordinator’s easy-as-pie answer was devastating: Heck, it’s just defending the old-fashioned triple-option. Translation: We didn’t have to defend the pass.
The 79-yard touchdown post route TD that Tito Gonzalez caught in the Fiesta Bowl—did we see that route during the season?
So I look forward to Jeff Mullen’s imported offensive schemes from Wake Forest. All spring long, Coach Stewart talked about exploiting the middle of the field, and Mullen talked about reducing the wear and tear on White’s body by having him throw more.
Which means White won’t connect on 70 percent of his passes like he did last year, and he’ll probably throw more than the four interceptions he threw last year because he’ll actually be throwing upfield and those throws are riskier.
But the payoff should be worth it.
comments (3) write a comment »
write a new comment
2 months ago
yep. Rich Rodriguez stopped innovating over the years and eventually defenses caught up to him. RR schemes STILL do work well for teams that do not see them on a yearly basis such as Georiga, Oklahoma and Georgia tech. But for teams that do see it yearly and have ATHLETES on defense like Pitt and USF, then as you have seen, they started figuring things out. I'm glad to see RR go, because he just plain stopped innovating and relied on his own greatness and his, admittedly well recruited athletes.
The funny thing is I still have the WVU and UGA Sugar Bowl on TIVO. There were a little bit more varied and interesting passes called in the first half at least, then more predictable run plays called in the 2nd half. Don't know why RR couldn't use the 1st half success and develop passing games in future years.
Hopefully Coach Stew will innovate enough new plays without hurting their core strenght - the running game from the spread offense. We'll see, won't we?
about 1 month ago
All it takes is the threat of a downfield pass to keep the defense honest. I hope they remain focused on the run, but mix in the pass in strategic places.
about 1 month ago
What's interesting is to compare Pitt 2006 and Pitt 2007. Pitt's game plan is the same...stack the box and try to stop the run. The difference in 2006 is that we passed. Boy, did we pass. We passed so much that we, WVU, the king of all running football teams, went into the locker room at the half with more passing yards than running yards. Remember the words, "Wheel Route"? Remember Pat White meowing? That was the game. The domination through the air in the first half and then on the ground in the second half was complete and total.
Then, in 2007, Rodriguez tried to play against the same defense while using only half of his offense. He completely eliminated the passing game. In 2006, we passed for 204 yards, mostly in the first half. By the second half of that game, Pitt had given up on their defensive plan and pulled their guys out of the box. Then, we ran all over them.
But, we abandoned the balanced gameplan in 2007. Only 67 net yards passing. Pitt gambled that we wouldn't throw downfield.
The announcers said that Pitt was daring us to throw over the middle. The wheel route that was so devastating in 2006 was nowhere to be seen.
Yeah, it will be a welcome change. The Fiesta Bowl was already evidence of that. When you take the fastest backfield in the nation and couple that with a decent VERTICAL passing game, you get one nasty offense. For this reason alone, I believe our coaching staff is an upgrade. I can't wait for this season to start.
write a new comment