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Gus Holding Back?


Weegle777

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Gus' is consistent. Students of the game know his history shows at least two crystal clear parts to his O brilliance/success every...single...year :

1. He's particularly talented at forming his offense each year around his personnel. Result, every year we're on here in September asking why things are different, slower, not as exciting, disorganized, etc. After 2 or 3 agonizing games we have an emerging O built around some tall junior college transfer QB phenom, some bowling ball RB, some man-among-boys WRs, some Wuerfful-esque accurate QB (see Tulsa) etc. It may not be the plan advertised in August but it's racking up points after the "painful early period".

2. Gus Malzahn sees the game like he sees the season. Survive early, crush them late when they're tired or think they've seen all you've got.

Huge caveat: nobody, including Gus Malzahn, can adequately plan for injuries or turnovers.

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Gus can be stubborn and does like to prove points. Remember the Arkansas game a couple of years ago? Bilemia said that AU was a spread team that couldn't run the ball. What did Gus do in that game? He only threw about four passes THE ENTIRE GAME. And we won.

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One of the tendencies I've seen from Gus is that he likes to establish a pattern early in the game, and then break that pattern to throw off defenses and break a big play. This works great when the running game is clicking. However, when the running game is getting 1-2 yards a pop, we can't stay on the field long enough to establish anything. I think (hope) this is why 1st down is primarily [insert back name] up the middle and second down is pass to [insert receiver name] running down the sideline. Unfortunately, until the O-Line starts making holes or JJ starts hitting 75% of his passes, this is a formula for 3rd and long and never establishing a rhythm.

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Gus' is consistent. Students of the game know his history shows at least two crystal clear parts to his O brilliance/success every...single...year :

1. He's particularly talented at forming his offense each year around his personnel. Result, every year we're on here in September asking why things are different, slower, not as exciting, disorganized, etc. After 2 or 3 agonizing games we have an emerging O built around some tall junior college transfer QB phenom, some bowling ball RB, some man-among-boys WRs, some Wuerfful-esque accurate QB (see Tulsa) etc. It may not be the plan advertised in August but it's racking up points after the "painful early period".

2. Gus Malzahn sees the game like he sees the season. Survive early, crush them late when they're tired or think they've seen all you've got.

Huge caveat: nobody, including Gus Malzahn, can adequately plan for injuries or turnovers.

Well Gus had some pretty bad vision for last season, 'cause we didn't crush anyone late in the season.
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Gus' is consistent. Students of the game know his history shows at least two crystal clear parts to his O brilliance/success every...single...year :

1. He's particularly talented at forming his offense each year around his personnel. Result, every year we're on here in September asking why things are different, slower, not as exciting, disorganized, etc. After 2 or 3 agonizing games we have an emerging O built around some tall junior college transfer QB phenom, some bowling ball RB, some man-among-boys WRs, some Wuerfful-esque accurate QB (see Tulsa) etc. It may not be the plan advertised in August but it's racking up points after the "painful early period".

2. Gus Malzahn sees the game like he sees the season. Survive early, crush them late when they're tired or think they've seen all you've got.

Huge caveat: nobody, including Gus Malzahn, can adequately plan for injuries or turnovers.

Well Gus had some pretty bad vision for last season, 'cause we didn't crush anyone late in the season.

There was 1 game all season that our offense didn't play well enough to win, and a lot of folks have theorized that they finally got tired of being let down by their defense. In their next game against a team with a pulse, they dropped 44 points and over 600 yards on the 5th-ranked defense in the country (that's final ranking, which was undoubtedly lower because they played Auburn).

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Anyone? Laying 44 points and 630 total yards in the last regular season game against Bama when they had the SEC's #1 defense shows bad late season offensive vision?

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^Guys, when canuck is the optimist, it's time to put the gun down.

Lol. I agree on both points. Those that know my posts know I actually am not a big optimist but more of a flip flopper between both good and bad...but I see a better season coming than most on here. Can't pinpoint a single reason, but I have pointed out a good 15 or 20 reasons spread throughout many posts. Call it a gut feeling.

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^Guys, when canuck is the optimist, it's time to put the gun down.

Lol. I agree on both points. Those that know my posts know I actually am not a big optimist but more of a flip flopper between both good and bad...but I see a better season coming than most on here. Can't pinpoint a single reason, but I have pointed out a good 15 or 20 reasons spread throughout many posts. Call it a gut feeling.

Good grief I hope you are right.
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Ha! I guess that's true Loof. Lest I blow my reputation as a cynic though, remember I'm only referencing Gus offensive ways historically.

We'll leave for another thread the probability of even a historically terrific defensive coach like Muschamp making consistent silk out of a sow's ear on that side of the ball in one less than a dozen games.

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^Guys, when canuck is the optimist, it's time to put the gun down.

It's kind of funny because I can think of a few on this board that are usually pessimistic that have seemingly turned optimistic all of a sudden. I guess their niche is opposing popular opinion.

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I think one of if not the biggest thing that has everyone so concerned is the seeming ineptness of our quarterback to read defenses and not pass the ball the way someone three years into the system should not be passing it.

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we had better hope he is holding back or we go winless in conference play....and that's a fact....I doubt that's the case and I think what we're seeing is the reality of the situation....if the defense can get healthy, the losses might not be by huge margins, but if they don't get well in a hurry, and the offense has to carry us, then we go 0-8

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Guess I just don't understand the concept of "holding back"....well, not until you are up 40-0 or something like that at least..

Otherwise it seems reasonable that the coaches and players will go 100% at the start of every game and not let up until the game is no longer in doubt.

To start a game giving less than a 100% effort IMO is cheating the fans who bought tickets to the game....and sponsors who bought time on TV.

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Guess I just don't understand the concept of "holding back"....well, not until you are up 40-0 or something like that at least..

Otherwise it seems reasonable that the coaches and players will go 100% at the start of every game and not let up until the game is no longer in doubt.

To start a game giving less than a 100% effort IMO is cheating the fans who bought tickets to the game....and sponsors who bought time on TV.

I believe the term is in reference to limiting the playbook- so as to limit the ability of future opponents to gameplan for your team- as opposed to limiting the effort.

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Where did all the misdirection and "who's got the ball" part of our offense go?

. Those plays are most effective for dual threat abs. Marshall must have taken those plays with him
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Guess I just don't understand the concept of "holding back"....well, not until you are up 40-0 or something like that at least..

Otherwise it seems reasonable that the coaches and players will go 100% at the start of every game and not let up until the game is no longer in doubt.

To start a game giving less than a 100% effort IMO is cheating the fans who bought tickets to the game....and sponsors who bought time on TV.

I believe the term is in reference to limiting the playbook- so as to limit the ability of future opponents to gameplan for your team- as opposed to limiting the effort.

So you are saying that if you want to see some exciting offensive effort, don't bother going to games against Jax or San Jose or Idaho 'cause all they are going to do is run dive plays off tackle and a few crossing patterns with the passing game?

Just curious as to when they are going to perfect the "real offense" so it's ready to be used when they play the SEC teams ? :dunno:

This idea of "holding back" makes no sense to me....and even the idea of it should be offensive to football fans. JMO

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Guess I just don't understand the concept of "holding back"....well, not until you are up 40-0 or something like that at least..

Otherwise it seems reasonable that the coaches and players will go 100% at the start of every game and not let up until the game is no longer in doubt.

To start a game giving less than a 100% effort IMO is cheating the fans who bought tickets to the game....and sponsors who bought time on TV.

I believe the term is in reference to limiting the playbook- so as to limit the ability of future opponents to gameplan for your team- as opposed to limiting the effort.

So you are saying that if you want to see some exciting offensive effort, don't bother going to games against Jax or San Jose or Idaho 'cause all they are going to do is run dive plays off tackle and a few crossing patterns with the passing game?

Just curious as to when they are going to perfect the "real offense" so it's ready to be used when they play the SEC teams ? :dunno:

This idea of "holding back" makes no sense to me....and even the idea of it should be offensive to football fans. JMO

If Gus thought he could play vanilla (hold back) against Jax State and win easily, he obviously miscalculated. I actually think that may be a lot of what happened. Combine that with JJ's shaken confidence, injuries, and our guys not getting up for the game (maybe looking ahead to LSU), and we got an almost perfect storm.

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Guess I just don't understand the concept of "holding back"....well, not until you are up 40-0 or something like that at least..

Otherwise it seems reasonable that the coaches and players will go 100% at the start of every game and not let up until the game is no longer in doubt.

To start a game giving less than a 100% effort IMO is cheating the fans who bought tickets to the game....and sponsors who bought time on TV.

I believe the term is in reference to limiting the playbook- so as to limit the ability of future opponents to gameplan for your team- as opposed to limiting the effort.

So you are saying that if you want to see some exciting offensive effort, don't bother going to games against Jax or San Jose or Idaho 'cause all they are going to do is run dive plays off tackle and a few crossing patterns with the passing game?

Just curious as to when they are going to perfect the "real offense" so it's ready to be used when they play the SEC teams ? :dunno:/>

This idea of "holding back" makes no sense to me....and even the idea of it should be offensive to football fans. JMO

If Gus thought he could play vanilla (hold back) against Jax State and win easily, he obviously miscalculated. I actually think that may be a lot of what happened. Combine that with JJ's shaken confidence, injuries, and our guys not getting up for the game (maybe looking ahead to LSU), and we got an almost perfect storm.

That's what it sounds like after seeing the look on his face after the game. Don't think he expected that kind of threat.
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There's a huge difference between holding back and simply not being able to dominate either line of scrimmage. We should have been able to dominate both line of scrimmages and blow them off the ball and we didn't. As a result the running game was way less effective than it should have been and has been in the past. I hope you are right in one aspect, but our line not dominating their defensive line is troubling.

Gus addressed this in AFR this week. We moved a bunch of linemen around because Avery young was out. He said that it took them a bit to develop chemistry like the starters had. That's in part why the offense looked better in the second half.

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