Why can't this offense move the ball

[BullsFanInTX]

Why does USF have one of the worst offenses in the history of college football.

[BullsFanInTX]

I'm still blaming this one on Holtz...for now...and his failure to recruit any offensive talent whatsoever, leaving cupboard beyond bare.

[usfgrad84]

There are a lot of reasons.

We can start with Holtz' coaching style if you want to start with your reasoning. Skip was soft on the players. From what I was hearing when he was here, he was more concerned with being liked in the locker room than impressing discipline.

If you read between the lines from what Taggart said about the players it points to poor off season work ethic. When he first got he, he mentioned that the linemen on both sides of the ball were no were near as strong as they should be. Taggart can't change that in less than a year.

Second, Skip left us with little to no experience at QB at RB. Shaw goes down at RB and this is what you get. At QB we were left with no experience and limited talent.

So, to start, bottom line is little experience with limited talent is a tough place to begin.

Now, performance...OL can't pass block for an inexperienced QB, regardless of talent, bad throws are forced and/or QBs fumble (in the early games) then throw in the fact that our receivers can't get open and can't catch consistently when they do. (Comes back to talent level of receivers recruited by Holtz). The opposing defenses can now show no respect to our pass game and stack the box to take our run game away.

Here is where the problem sort of shifts to the offensive scheme we run. Our running game is about power running. A stacked box on defense makes it tough to run between the tackles which is our offense's main point if attack. Take away our running effectiveness now you take away the effectiveness of play action passing to TEs and screens to the RBs.

Without Shaw and with Eveld at QB, we didn't have enough speed at RB or Mobility at QB to attack the edges and spread the field to create some running room. Bring it full circle, our OL can't pass block long enough for deep patterns and WR can't catch consistently enough to spread the field vertically. (Have we actually completed 1 downfield throw this year?)

Opposing defenses have nothing or no one on this offense to fear. It's easy to scheme against us. If we get down by more than one score and we are forced to throw it gets easy for them because we have an inept passing game.

We don't have one weapon on offense.

Look at the options Bridgewater had today. If we schemed to take away the long ball he had the time (pass blocking) to check down. When he did, the receivers actually held on to the catches. and no, not all his passes were perfectly thrown. He had receivers that made some difficult catches when they needed to.

All starts with the OL and then the talent and ability of the players. A lot of the deficiencies were masked because of BJ's athleticism and ability when Holtz was here. He was able to create space and also was able to extend plays giving himself the time to make plays.

[BullsFanInTX]

There are a lot of reasons.

We can start with Holtz' coaching style if you want to start with your reasoning. Skip was soft on the players. From what I was hearing when he was here, he was more concerned with being liked in the locker room than impressing discipline.

If you read between the lines from what Taggart said about the players it points to poor off season work ethic. When he first got he, he mentioned that the linemen on both sides of the ball were no were near as strong as they should be. Taggart can't change that in less than a year.

Second, Skip left us with little to no experience at QB at RB. Shaw goes down at RB and this is what you get. At QB we were left with no experience and limited talent.

So, to start, bottom line is little experience with limited talent is a tough place to begin.

Now, performance...OL can't pass block for an inexperienced QB, regardless of talent, bad throws are forced and/or QBs fumble (in the early games) then throw in the fact that our receivers can't get open and can't catch consistently when they do. (Comes back to talent level of receivers recruited by Holtz). The opposing defenses can now show no respect to our pass game and stack the box to take our run game away.

Here is where the problem sort of shifts to the offensive scheme we run. Our running game is about power running. A stacked box on defense makes it tough to run between the tackles which is our offense's main point if attack. Take away our running effectiveness now you take away the effectiveness of play action passing to TEs and screens to the RBs.

Without Shaw and with Eveld at QB, we didn't have enough speed at RB or Mobility at QB to attack the edges and spread the field to create some running room. Bring it full circle, our OL can't pass block long enough for deep patterns and WR can't catch consistently enough to spread the field vertically. (Have we actually completed 1 downfield throw this year?)

Opposing defenses have nothing or no one on this offense to fear. It's easy to scheme against us. If we get down by more than one score and we are forced to throw it gets easy for them because we have an inept passing game.

We don't have one weapon on offense.

Look at the options Bridgewater had today. If we schemed to take away the long ball he had the time (pass blocking) to check down. When he did, the receivers actually held on to the catches. and no, not all his passes were perfectly thrown. He had receivers that made some difficult catches when they needed to.

All starts with the OL and then the talent and ability of the players. A lot of the deficiencies were masked because of BJ's athleticism and ability when Holtz was here. He was able to create space and also was able to extend plays giving himself the time to make plays.

So in other words it's a combination of about 20 different problems.

[usfgrad84]

Yep. Starts with lack of talent and perhaps combination of limited talent and player development. That will take time to change.

[smazza]

we are so bad it is all of the above to a degree

 

talent

coaching-player development,lack of recruiting,in game play calling and scheme we are running

 

bench and white must have been terrible in practice not to beat out  the 2 qbs we had from last year

[mjadams]

Coaching....you have to adjust to the tools that you have and he does have some tools. Id like to have terrence Mitchell , sterling griffin, and D'Vo to add to the WR mixed. Griffin rarely dropped a bad pass.

[Joe]

Personally, I don't think we have the talent for this offense. There is some talent there, but clearly guys can't figure out this scheme. Give it another year.

Blaming Holtz for most things is okay. For not recruiting talent to run a complicated run based scheme? That's lame. I thinks Taggart has made it clear he's building for the future so he is going to stick to what he wants.

Whether it works out or not is another question.

[BullAdrian]

Why not to have some more drop back pass with 4 receivers than play action play?

[Bull Martin]

Talent