Offensive philosophy/distribution

ButchCassidy85 · Jul 11, 2015

I've been looking through team statistical data over the last seven seasons to try and get a gauge on what we will actually see with this new regime that is different from the past staff. As with many comparisons like this where you may have preconceived notions, there were clearly some findings that surprised me. Obviously, the formations, packages and overall run/pass ratios will change but my interest was in distribution (i.e. who will be getting the ball relative to the overall touches/attempts).

Rushing from 2007 - 2014 at Oregon St / Nebraska (with a Watson/Beck breakdown):

Percentage of rushing attempts by running backs - 75.5 / 70.8 (Watson 71.0/Beck 70.6)
Percentage of rushing attempts by wide receivers - 11.7 / 1.2 (Watson 1.0/Beck 1.4)
Percentage of rushing attempts by quarterbacks - 12.8 / 28.0 (Watson 28.0/Beck 28.0)
Percentage of rushes credited as a sack - 7.5 / 4.1 (Watson 4.3/Beck 4.0)

Receiving from 2007 - 2014 at Oregon St / Nebraska:

Percentage of receptions by wide receiver - 60.7 / 64.9 (Watson 59.0/Beck 69.8)
Percentage of receptions by tight end - 16.8 / 17.0 (Watson 21.2/Beck 13.6)
Percentage of receptions by running back - 22.5 / 18.1 (Watson 19.7/Beck 16.7)
Percentage of pass attempts resulting in a sack - 6.1 / 6.6 (Watson 6.4/Beck 6.8)

This was the cleanest and most efficient way that I could come up with the represent my findings. Hopefully it is understandable and what it represents is self-evident.

A couple of the findings that seem to lead to obvious conclusions/projections:

Wide receivers will clearly become more featured in the run game. Going from a ratio of approximately 1/100 to 1/10 is significant and it should be noticeable.
I would expect the overall rushing attempts by QB's to see a bump from the historical OSU average. I doubt it will come close to the almost 3/10 ratio NU has experienced but a 2/10 ratio wouldn't surprise me at all.
The percentage of receptions by RB's should see an immediate 4 to 5 point bump from what we've seen recently under Beck.

A couple of things that surprised me relative to my perception(s) going in:

You don't see it in the data that I provided but OSU clearly leaned on their top backs and receivers more heavily than what we've seen at NU. The number of players getting touches wasn't appreciably different but on average the distribution at OSU favored the "featured" back or receiver to a higher percentage.
Receptions by the TE position were clearly in a nose dive under Beck but overall, the usage of the TE was a lot more comparable between the regimes that what I had anticipated. OSU passed quite a bit more so the TE individual stats are much more substantial but as a percentage of the overall receptions/touches, this position group was fairly comparable w/NU. Mind blown.

Summary: how the package is "wrapped" and delivered will clearly look different on the surface but what we'll see relative to overall distribution among the players and various position groups likely isn't going to be as big of a change as many NU fans perceive (including me). As discussed since MR took over, there are a couple of differences in this regard that will likely be very noticeable, but within the larger scheme the percentage of times players/groups touch the ball will be fairly similar. In some cases, eerily so.

Huskers129870 · Jul 11, 2015