Don’t think we need a ton of improvement. I initially thought we were farther away. Gabbert has a career 58% completion percentage and has been at 56% for the last 2 games. Difference of 3 completions, easy to find 3 incompletions that would have equaled 21 points.
Feth and J Walker both listed on the 2-deep that came out today FWIW
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4 years ago, Game 10 of the 2018 season, is the last time the Bobcats came to Oxford. They had a long winning streak against us and were battling with Buffalo for the East championship. We were 3-6 and there were more people calling for Chuck’s head than there were after the BG and WM games this year.
We won that night, OU beat Buffalo, but that loss to us cost them the MACEast. We turned that momentum into a win at NIU ( MAC champs that season) and a win over Ball State and a 6-6 finish. Since that time we have had 3 straight winning seasons, a MAC championship, a 16 game home winning streak, a bowl win, and a P5 win.
OU controls their MAC destiny right now, just have to win out. I well remember the great feeling we all shared that night in 2018, and how it wrecked their season.
In 2020 the cowards claimed to have Covid and cancelled the game in Oxford. I say screw the Bobcats, lets help keep their over 50 year streak of no MAC championships going, and lets use that momentum to win out again.
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In 1985, defending national champion BYU went 11-3 and finished the year ranked #16 in the country. Two of their losses that year were to #7 UCLA and #14 Ohio St. Their other loss was to UTEP, which finished the year 1-10, their only victory coming against BYU. As the story goes, after BYU won the national championship, the UTEP coaches decided to spend the offseason obsessively researching Lavell Edwards’ offense, both in preparation for the game and because they wanted to learn from it. With this research, they apparently knew what BYU was going to do on almost every play and they came out in a bizarre, never before seen defensive alignment that was specifically designed to counter the BYU offense. They were so well prepared that BYU actually made accusations that UTEP had tapped their phones and headsets to know which plays they were calling. Because of this preparation, the UTEP defense (which allowed 36 ppg in WAC games that season) was able to hold the BYU offense (which scored 38 ppg in WAC games that season) to just 16 points.
The reason I bring up this story is because our co-defensive coordinators left this past offseason to go to Ohio. They spent 8 years and 4 years watching our offense up close and personal in practices and games. Given that a bunch of schmoes on a message board know what our offense is going to do on most plays, I would imagine those guys won’t have much difficulty with that either, especially since I don’t have a lot of confidence in our offensive coordinator to come up with new and different ideas for this game. We have maybe the best defense in the conference, but Ohio’s offense is legitimately good (averaging over 40 ppg against non-P5 opponents), and I don’t think it’s going to take many points to beat us.
I’d be very surprised to see us win this game and I wouldn’t be shocked to see it get ugly.
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I enjoyed reading this. I hope you are wrong, but you may very well be right here. Thanks for the fun read.
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We have 10 days to prepare for OU…let’s hope Chuck and our OC put a few wrinkles in the game plan.
I share your concern about OU’s ability to score points. What has been our ceiling of around 20 points or so most games just won’t cut it against OU IMHO. We prolly need at least 28 points and likely over 30 to win.
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Most teams know exactly what the other team is going to do. Coaches will change formations or sometimes personnel to mask a variation. New plays are added. You can actually use that familiarity to trick them as well. The bottom line is if you are going to win you have to block, tackle and run better than the other team. You have to limit negative plays. Stay ahead of the chains, limit turnovers and you win most of the games.
The concerning part is how quickly OU’s back on top and got better each game this season…I know we’ve had setbacks this year…but Miami has been pretty flat on trajectory since 2018.
Our offensive coaches/game plans very stale.
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Awful. Get rid of the OC.
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Let’s see how we finish before panIcking.
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So, if we finish “poorly “ do you agree that major changes need to be made?
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Strange definition of “panic”…8 3/4 years in, and 9 games this season.
Offense has never been dominant or top of MAC statistics at any point.
Hope there are some new wrinkles, in year 8 3/4, but change is needed and there’s really no argument against it, regardless of finish, based on an objective review of O under this staff.
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Imo, given nine years of well-established mediocrity, we have already finished poorly, regardless of whether we go 4-8 or 7-5 in 2022. My minimum for not finishing poorly would have had to be 8-4 or better, splitting OOC and losing no more than two in the MAC.
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The losses to BG and WMU were due to horrid play calling (especially 3rd Down play calling). It was rather aggravating to watch. We seemed to be more prepared against Akron and actually came out ready to play.
I hope this team comes out of the gate ready vs. how it was against OU last year. As always, I will be watching!
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This has nothing to do with the poor percentages on third down ( in my opinion the huge overuse of running up the middle with small fast running backs is the biggest issue causing this) but it does have to do with the low yardage totals.
Nobody else in the MAC plays with such a conservative philosophy. Nobody else plays at a slower pace, or tries to constantly slow down the pace of our opponent ( any time our opponent subs players in, we then exercise our right to make responding subs and we take our time about doing it, which is legal and the ref will block the center from snapping while we are jogging off and on the field) when they are on offense. Offensively, we are often running the play clock down right to the end, more so than other teams. We also start trying to kill the clock earlier and more often than any other team. When we are way ahead, we hardly ever do anything other than run the ball up the middle and then wait to snap the ball around 1 or 2 seconds left on the play clock. We do not really try to keep running the score up, what we do try to do is minimize the number of snaps over the rest of the game by keeping the clock running. So when you compare the number of plays in a Miami game to the rest of the league, their are fewer total snaps in the game, plus once way ahead, we basically stop trying to score but concentrate on no turnovers and keeping the clock moving. Anyway, because there are few offensive snaps in our games, it does help our defense look better and makes our offense look worse. Fewer offensive yards, fewer points in our games.
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No way! we have the best OC and some of the best Ball Coaches around!*
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*I am not related to any ball coaches or have kids at Talawanda High School and don’t wan’t to move them to Findley after this gig as OC at Miami.
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You’re not wrong about tempo affecting the raw numbers, but it’s a lot more than tempo that’s causing our numbers to look bad. We’re 124th in the country in offensive efficiency, which is second worst in the conference (only ahead of Akron at 125). For comparison, the defense is 63rd in defensive efficiency, which is second best in the conference (only behind Toledo at 62).
What is OU favored by? By a TD I would guess.
Yes and No. Our offensive efficiency ratings are also effected by killing the clock by running up the middle late in the first half and the whole second half when we are ahead. We do this more than any other team I am aware of.
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