Running game efficiency

[NikkiSixx]

taken from http://journalstar.com/sports/huske...cle_d6ac2e75-9ba8-5f5f-99f4-c27a5c76f75e.html

I guess after the bowl game, too many fans took coaches words about how they wanted to focus on the run game, study it, learning how to block it etc to mean that we were going to run it more, or switch to a more run game type of offense. Sounds like what he means is just for the yards per attempt need to go up.

 

[TheBeav815]

Well that didn't last long. Let's say you get about 60 offensive snaps a game and he wants 50/50 balance. If they're gonna keep throwing 30-35 times a game, they're gonna keep losing more than they should.

Much like he wants to coach the game he's in, he'd better coach the team he has. About 20-25 passes per game is where they should seek to be. The numbers don't lie on what happens when Tommy is asked to throw 35+ times.

 

[NikkiSixx]

Well that didn't last long. Let's say you get about 60 offensive snaps a game and he wants 50/50 balance. If they're gonna keep throwing 30-35 times a game, they're gonna keep losing more than they should.

Much like he wants to coach the game he's in, he'd better coach the team he has. About 20-25 passes per game is where they should seek to be. The numbers don't lie on what happens when Tommy is asked to throw 35+ times.

Completely agree.. makes me wonder if the starting QB influences the play selection or not? With a different QB, that 35+ times a game would not be a liability. I'm guessing the situation is fluid until they get closer to September on just what kind of offense we will be.

 

[N-sane]

Does balance mean running 35 plays passing 35 plays? Or rushing for 225 yards and passing for 225?.......So if you rush 45 times for 225 and pass 25 times for 225 are you balanced or not?... just curious what people think is meant when Riley says "balance".

 

[NikkiSixx]

Does balance mean running 35 plays passing 35 plays? Or rushing for 225 yards and passing for 225?.......So if you rush 45 times for 225 and pass 25 times for 225 are you balanced or not?... just curious what people think is meant when Riley says "balance".

This is just my personal opinion, but to me, when a coach says balance, it means they are going to play the cat and mouse game with the other teams defense.. i.e. if the other team loads the box, they will pass more, and when they drop more into coverage, we will run more.. it's the "take what the defense gives you" type of thing. Others may have a different meaning. You could say, it also means a lack of identity. That is a touchy subject.

 

[Husker.Wed.]

This is just my personal opinion, but to me, when a coach says balance, it means they are going to play the cat and mouse game with the other teams defense.. i.e. if the other team loads the box, they will pass more, and when they drop more into coverage, we will run more.. it's the "take what the defense gives you" type of thing. Others may have a different meaning. You could say, it also means a lack of identity. That is a touchy subject.

I seem to recall a past coach saying we don't take what they give us, we take what we want.

 

[TwinsRRUs]

Makes me wonder if he has his own motive for stating what he said...

If Riley is trying to recruit 4* and 5* QB's to come play here, he better not say we will mostly run and ball and only pass it 20 times a game. (Bama and other dominant teams run about 58% of the time, but they pass the ball 25-30 times a game too)

How many (primarily) passing QBs would have wanted to come to Nebraska when they ran the option?

Riley is in on some good recruits that are thinking about coming here to play and move on to the NFL afterwards. Whatever he says publicly should somewhat match what he is telling recruits.

If he is recruiting athletic passing QBs and big time WRs, then he needs to say what they want to hear.

Does balance mean running 35 plays passing 35 plays? Or rushing for 225 yards and passing for 225?.......So if you rush 45 times for 225 and pass 25 times for 225 are you balanced or not?... just curious what people think is meant when Riley says "balance".

As far as balance goes, from answering the question in the article, I take it Riley thinks balance is 50/50 pass/run play calling.
If you want 225 yards each, you will run the ball 66% of the time as passing generally leads to more yards (yards per catch vs yards per run).
50/50 pass/run generally would lead to 100-200 yards rushing and 250-350 yards passing.

 

[schuele]

I agree that you're not always going to be able to run that ball as successfully, or as often, as NU did in the UCLA game. But I would hope the big takeaway from the bowl game was that establishing the running game made the entire offense more effective. Sticking with the running game, even after falling behind early, kept UCLA's defense honest and didn't put the whole burden on Armstrong - and the results were outstanding. I don't care about the raw number of running plays in a given game, I just don't want to watch the s--- show that inevitably unfolds whenever NU abandons the running game.

 

[jay-cheese]

This has nothing to do with any PAST coach...

Balance is yardage or # of plays called (run or pass). Part of being balanced is both planning for it and not planning for it. You want balance so the D stays needs to stay honest but you also have to take advantage of how they are playing you in the moment too-so if your opponent thinks they have a strength against your existing strategy, you better be able to try and use that supposive strength against them...

Riley gets that "glory day" fans love the run here at Nebraska. He's good at playing to the fans (opposite of previous coaches). Very clear that UCLA had no depth or much talent in stopping the run...so we did, and fans are still knee-jerking saying "aha!! See....". The goal is to be flexible to excel in both areas and then you can do damage at all times...

GBR

 

[NikkiSixx]

some analysis here:

 

[dockentwo]

This has nothing to do with any PAST coach...

Balance is yardage or # of plays called (run or pass). Part of being balanced is both planning for it and not planning for it. You want balance so the D stays needs to stay honest but you also have to take advantage of how they are playing you in the moment too-so if your opponent thinks they have a strength against your existing strategy, you better be able to try and use that supposive strength against them...

Riley gets that "glory day" fans love the run here at Nebraska. He's good at playing to the fans (opposite of previous coaches). Very clear that UCLA had no depth or much talent in stopping the run...so we did, and fans are still knee-jerking saying "aha!! See....". The goal is to be flexible to excel in both areas and then you can do damage at all times...

GBR

Hope the trolls are sleeping; you make so much sense

 

[Tulsa Tom]

Forget our glory days. Just go look at how much (and how efficiently) the top teams last year and the champions over the last few years run the ball.

MSU supposedly had the best college qb and a freshman at running back. They still ran the ball significantly more than they threw it.

 

[huskerssalts]

Dont care if we run or pass, as long as it equals a win at the end of the day. Im not hung up on running it 70% or passing it 70% of the game. I want a balanced offense too, it will bring in the top QBs, WRs and RBs along with the top Oline.

 

[mkbrkloster]

Dont care if we run or pass, as long as it equals a win at the end of the day. Im not hung up on running it 70% or passing it 70% of the game. I want a balanced offense too, it will bring in the top QBs, WRs and RBs along with the top Oline.

This. Balanced to me is that we move the ball every game, and can do that in different ways.

 

[TheBeav815]

Forget our glory days. Just go look at how much (and how efficiently) the top teams last year and the champions over the last few years run the ball.

MSU supposedly had the best college qb and a freshman at running back. They still ran the ball significantly more than they threw it.

That's the core of it. FSU is the only team to pull off a title without being clearly run-first. And even then, they had a couple RBs who are now in the NFL. And oh by the way their QB won the Heisman and went first overall in the draft.

Meanwhile, Alabama is just doing what they do, pounding teams into submission, and exactly zero of their QBs are doing anything noteworthy in the NFL.

 

[jbt25]

taken from http://journalstar.com/sports/huske...cle_d6ac2e75-9ba8-5f5f-99f4-c27a5c76f75e.html

I guess after the bowl game, too many fans took coaches words about how they wanted to focus on the run game, study it, learning how to block it etc to mean that we were going to run it more, or switch to a more run game type of offense. Sounds like what he means is just for the yards per attempt need to go up.

People need to get over this heavy run thing. It really doesn't work today as in past because NU is not as superior vs 9/11 teams like TOs days on LOS. That's just fact. It will never be again even Bama can't just line up and running. Every play. They are way more 50/50 when game is in doubt than people think. They end up most game more like 60 or 65 run % because they run late heavy with big leads

 

[jeans15]

Yet our Division has won by teams who run more than they pass. Wisconsin seems to be doing just fine at it.

You have to practice something to be good at it. This team played good football when they came out establishing the run. We don't have to run it 70%. but if they can't stop it, why pass. That's all we are saying. Hell we ran for 170 yards on Michigan St. Which made for one of Tommy's best passing days, over 60% against a top defense.

 

[nebcountry]

Hmmmm. 6 ypc versus 4 ypc. Well, we'll have an initial 2 yard positive field advantage when we punt after two consecutive incomplete passes. So, there is upside.

 

[huskerssalts]

My Lord, get over it guys. Like many have said over and over again we will never be successful running it 65/35. Most great teams these days are very close to balance as it gets, and like dude anove pointed out with Bama they run more late so there balanced attack looks more run heavy when in fact the the first 3 quarters there very balanced. We have to keep every team we play scared we will pass at any time, this will allow us more yards per carry because they won't stack the box. At least right now talent wise, we will lose running it 65/35 as bad as we would lose doing a 35/65 split. We have to be close to 50/50 split as we can get with Tommy making good choices.

 

[nebcountry]

My Lord, get over it guys. Like many have said over and over again we will never be successful running it 65/35. Most great teams these days are very close to balance as it gets, and like dude anove pointed out with Bama they run more late so there balanced attack looks more run heavy when in fact threw the first 3 quarters there very balanced. We have to keep every team we play scared we will pass at any time, this will allow us more yards per carry because they won't stack the box. At least right now talent wise, we will lose running it 65/35 as bad as we would lose doing a 35/65 split. We have to be close to 50/50 split as we can get with Tommy making good choices.

I'm not worked up, so nothing to "get over" really. Just joining in on the discussion. I disagree with your opinions. My opinion, we would have won more than 5 games last year if we ran more. But, doesn't matter, we can't reset the clock to 2015 and replay the year to test opinions. As far as making other teams scared we will pass, I didn't see any fear in Darrell Hazell's eyes when we were throwing it 50 times against Purdue.

Snohomish started a thread right after Christmas, following Riley's run game remarks:

Here is a quote from Riley :

Part of it was a game plan to do with what we thought we can do, the other part of it was what we really wanted to do,” Riley said. “I made it a point earlier that next year what we want to do is be in the top three of the league at running the football. When you can do that, life goes better everywhere. We didn’t necessarily have to wait until next year to start that idea.”

My question is does Riley call the plays next year if its Langsdorf I have no confidence this happens. This year in one of our best outings Minn - Riley also alluded to the running game - Langsdorf followed up Minn with NW and Purdue both games with 48 passes and two losses - then wins where we were run heavy against MSU and Rutgers to again follow that up with a loss to Iowa where we threw 45 passes

I want to believe this statement from Riley but I am skeptical because of Langsdorf

My response:

We'll have to wait 9 months to see what this means, if anything.

Seems like there are some who want to try and prove others wrong. In this case, I'll straight up admit that I was wrong. We don't have to wait 9 months.

 

[Nebraska Fan]

My Lord, get over it guys. Like many have said over and over again we will never be successful running it 65/35. Most great teams these days are very close to balance as it gets, and like dude anove pointed out with Bama they run more late so there balanced attack looks more run heavy when in fact the the first 3 quarters there very balanced. We have to keep every team we play scared we will pass at any time, this will allow us more yards per carry because they won't stack the box. At least right now talent wise, we will lose running it 65/35 as bad as we would lose doing a 35/65 split. We have to be close to 50/50 split as we can get with Tommy making good choices.

Do you have stats showing they run more late? I was looking through the play calls they had against LSU in the first quarter and they seemed more run oriented.

 

[Tulsa Tom]

Do you have stats showing they run more late? I was looking through the play calls they had against LSU in the first quarter and they seemed more run oriented.

I would like to know as well. I always felt that Bama would start throwing the ball whenever they got the lead and wanted the knockout punch. If it was close, they would stay a run-heavy team. However, that is just looking in from a far.

 

[AndyHanline]

I think a big factor in Bama's success is that their qb's can make key throws in important situations. It's not so much how much they throw it but when they throw it. Also, they have athletes at the skill positions that make can make big plays.