Let’s talk Offensive Line

[clonefanpaul]

Everyone (Woody in post game, Heartland Sports mentioned it, some folks here have) keeps quoting that we ran over 100 yards in the second half as some fix for our offense, but lets break that down.

Iowa State ran for 128 yards in the second half on 21 runs. Now, before I say this, I despise it when people discount big runs when looking at yards/rush. That being said, 3 of those runs I don't think should count:

1st run was Klotz's 22 yard run on the fake punt. This was a 4th down trick play, not indicative of our Rush O.
2nd run was Becht's scramble for 15 and the TD on a broken play. Again, not the designed play, not indicative of our Rush O.
3rd run was Sama's 27 yard TD. Cincy sold out to stop the run at the LOS, so the instant he broke through he was gone. This was a fluke of the defensive play because they had to go all out to stop Sama from gaining 3 yards.

So what does that leave us with? 64 yards on 18 runs. Keep in mind, one of those runs was 32 yards by Becht, but we should absolutely leave that in as it was a designed run and nothing fluky about it. That comes out to 3.5 yards/rush. Not great...

 

[bozclone]

At least part of the time in the second half Barrett was at LG and Buhr was at RG. Black has struggled in recent games and teams seem to be targeting him.

 

[BigLame]

James Neal changed numbers to 93 and came in on some shorty yardage plays as more of a TE.
Has he changed positions??
93 - is that a TE or DL?
Came in at G during last half of UCF game & did well, so curious as to the move

 

[stewart092284]

3rd run was Sama's 27 yard TD. Cincy sold out to stop the run at the LOS, so the instant he broke through he was gone. This was a fluke of the defensive play because they had to go all out to stop Sama from gaining 3 yards.

Sorry, this part is just dumb. Like... you discount it because they sold out to stop the run? Dou also discount passing yards then at the end of the half when a defense is playing primarily prevent defense? Do you discount any yardage gained once going up 30 because you're team is kind of on cruise control?

The rush offense was bad in the first half.

But honestly, all the quanitfying about how the O-line still sucked in the 2nd half because well, that was a broken play. That was a sell out by the defense. That was my grandma buying me snacks at half time.

Just tells me you want to b*tch about the offensive line. Rush for 12 yards in a half. They get blamed. Rush for over 120 yards in the second half. Yeah well, it was fluky and it was this and it was that and oh look, a mermaid that's also a velvet unicorn.

You know what fluky, off script plays are? Football. Its like the old saying in war - the first plan never survives contact with the enemy. Well, in football, whose making the most contact with the enemy? The OL or DL. And unless you just have a bunch of future NFL players - which we don't - up front, its not always gonna to look pretty.

This idea that they simply forgot how to block mid-season makes no sense. Which is more likely.

That's the offensive line, collectively or as a whole, forgot how to block and all, every single of them regressed - OR, and I know this is wild -


other teams, with millionaire coaches and paid players - watch film, saw what we do offensively and said " huh. Maybe, if we blitzed and crowd the line of scrimmage and make it hard for the OL to identify what's what, maybe we'll be able to slow them down a little bit"

all while our most effective running back all season has been dealing with some kind of injury along with a starting guard and our best, now two of three top Tight ends? Might that be a possibility? That until we figured out how to counter what teams were doing to use, with a young first year OC, that maybe the OL was struggling during that time not because they suddenly decided "lets suck." but rather the defense's we were playing against watched film and specifically designed game plans for us after seeing about 5 games of film? And then we had to readjust to their adjustment? I know, just wild.


Nope. They just suck. Ok.

 

[NorthCyd]

Everyone (Woody in post game, Heartland Sports mentioned it, some folks here have) keeps quoting that we ran over 100 yards in the second half as some fix for our offense, but lets break that down.

Iowa State ran for 128 yards in the second half on 21 runs. Now, before I say this, I despise it when people discount big runs when looking at yards/rush, so I'm not going to do that. The end.

Here, I found a way to dramatically improve your post.

 

[Cloneon]

I can't help but think, given how thin we were on defense, was to have a strategy to keep the offense on the field as long as possible; meaning fewer plays drawn up for longer yardage. I could be wrong, but the logic seems sound.

 

[Aclone]

I can't help but think, given how thin we were on defense, was to have a strategy to keep the offense on the field as long as possible; meaning fewer plays drawn up for longer yardage. I could be wrong, but the logic seems sound.

It’s more that the whole reason for running so often was that every run takes thirty seconds off the clock, and keeps your defense off the field.

Incomplete passes or passes on the sideline that go out of bounds? Not so much.