BE last week before the Rutgers and Maryland bombshells. They are coached by Tim DeRuyter who was my choice before RE was named. He'd been AF DC for years, moved to Texas A&M in the same post and then took over Fresno last December.
      DeRuyter at Fresno has used a spread option offense rather than the t.o.

I think th spread option would be viable at a SA...if you could find a QB who could run and pass.  A tall order for a SA, but I guess doable.  I think a Ron McAda might have worked out in such a set-up, a good passer and while not a break-away threat he could certainly pick-em up and put-em down when required.   I saw him make a lot of big plays after the original call had seemingly broken down.  But his likes will probably never come again to WP.  Had he had TS's speed, he'd have been another Brian Kapernick in the spread.

Running some read option.....

armyfan wrote: I think th spread option would be viable at a SA...if you could find a QB who could run and pass.  A tall order for a SA, but I guess doable.  I think a Ron McAda might have worked out in such a set-up, a good passer and while not a break-away threat he could certainly pick-em up and put-em down when required.   I saw him make a lot of big plays after the original call had seemingly broken down.  But his likes will probably never come again to WP.  Had he had TS's speed, he'd have been another Brian Kapernick in the spread.

It seems to me that you also need receivers who can get open against D1 quality defensive backs, and they may be harder to find than a quarterback who can run and pass, because every school in the country is looking for those kind of receivers.  Navy and Air Force have had better success at bringing in decent receivers.  Our receivers function more like tight ends than traditional wide receivers.  The other factor that needs to be considered is pass blocking versus run blocking.  Our offensive line is good at run blocking, but gets a bit porous if required to hold out a pass rush for the time required to get off the pass. 

I could see adding a few spread option plays into our arsenal, but don't know if it would work as a steady diet.

I wish Trent had run his own plays and game. Being a four year starting QB with about as much experience any colleghe QB could ever have and with his WP knowledge ability, I would have liked to see what he could have done in actually running the offense.
Signs prevented him from doing that. To me, that has been the biggest "crime" committed in this sorry season.
I feel bad for him as I feel his coaches failed him by not trusting him at all.
Somebody down the line will feel the effects of this decision and those effects will be felt and not so good -big time.

Doesn't rely on long passes, mostly quick slants. Line blocking is essentially the same as in the T/O, establish running lanes....

The "Read and Ride" is a pure option offense run from the gun. Appy State ran it beautifully a few years back. Where they would get 20 yds on a play we might have gotten 10, but it would have worked for Army and Steelman....

I think that the similarities are such that you could go in and out of it as the situation dictated. Moot issue because Army does what Army does......

Rab -- I don't know of any major college that allows the QB to call his own plays. Those days are long gone. ND sends in plays by hand and arm signals from sub QB's wearing red hats and other teams use signals from coaches. Some teams even use large cards 

barrynGA wrote: Doesn't rely on long passes, mostly quick slants. Line blocking is essentially the same as in the T/O, establish running lanes....

The "Read and Ride" is a pure option offense run from the gun. Appy State ran it beautifully a few years back. Where they would get 20 yds on a play we might have gotten 10, but it would have worked for Army and Steelman....

I think that the similarities are such that you could go in and out of it as the situation dictated. Moot issue because Army does what Army does......

Sounds like what we ran back in the 60's under Dietzel.  Stichweh operated from the shotgun as often or perhaps more often than he did from under center, and he couldn't pass particularly well either.  I don't recall having a specific name for the offense back then, but we also didn't know that there was a Red Zone back then either.

Most intelligent post on this forum in a long time.

barrynGA wrote: Doesn't rely on long passes, mostly quick slants. Line blocking is essentially the same as in the T/O, establish running lanes....

The "Read and Ride" is a pure option offense run from the gun. Appy State ran it beautifully a few years back. Where they would get 20 yds on a play we might have gotten 10, but it would have worked for Army and Steelman....

I think that the similarities are such that you could go in and out of it as the situation dictated. Moot issue because Army does what Army does......

With such a valuable asset as Trent with his huge experience, the coaches wasted his abilities with all this card nonsense.
The coaches have awful large egos today with their inflated over the top salaries, they will not trust a 22 year old to run the team based on the coaches teachings in practice.
In a year, Trent and every other senior on that team will be leading soldiers into possible battle somewhere. You mean that some ring-a-ding football coach would not allow a young man to lead his team on the field of friendly strife to really prepare him to lead soldiers in the future where it really counts?
I guess not, obviously.
To me that's hypocritical for any coach at WP not to allow his QB, especially one with Trents experience, not trust him to run the club and at the same time, says he is "preparing" him by his very training at the academy to do just that.
So they don't trust him. The coaches trust themselves because they don't want to trust some kid and put their thust in that kid and put their own job and salaries on the line instead. What the hell are they there for anyway? To hold up cheat sheet signs?
Geez, some teachers! Most of them wouldn't trust their grandmothers to do anything. Basically, this kind of stuff is all bull crap to me.
You are suppose to teach football. You are suppose to teach fundamentals. you are suppose to teach leadership and responsibility to lead a football team. So what do you do? You teach them to look at signs telling them what to do.
What they are REALLY telling these guys who they say can't think, act and deliver on their own. "Trust us coaches because we don't trust you, ecpecially our salaries." appears to be their motto.
No wonder this team is unresponsive, untrained and looked upon as a bunch of untrained kids playing a kids game.
That is why, my friends , this team has lost 9 of 11 games.

the formation, he must pass more often. Without a credible pass threat, opposing Ds have increasingly loaded the box against us. The OLine has done a fine job at the LOS but the O has produced far too few big plays because the LBs and safeties are able to cheat closer to the line, and long, sustained run-dominated drives are harder to achieve with the priority placed on ball-stripping.

So to continue your "the signs are useless and just mean that coaches are micromanaging" train of thought--why have coaches at all? Shouldn't the 22 year old firsties at a service academy be capable of running strength/conditioning and practices and setting the lineups on their own? I'm amazed no ADs have figured out how much money they could save by cutting coaching staffs and letting the players and maybe a grad assistant do everything.

On about 50% of offensive snaps Navy does the exact same thing as Army--they put a slotback in motion, see how the defense reacts, then the QB looks to the sideline for an adjusted playcall. They don't leave it up to the QB to make the adjustment, because the guys on the sideline and in the press box can see things the QB can't. The only difference is that Navy uses hand signals while Army (and at least a dozen other teams I'm aware of) uses cards.

If you can name a single college QB in the last two decades (other than Andrew Luck) who has called his own plays, I'd be very surprised. I watched Philip Rivers start every single game in his 4 years at NCSU and finish #7 in that year's Heisman voting, and even he didn't call his own plays. Game experience and "WP knowledge ability" don't mean a QB is qualified to call plays.

plain wrote: the formation, he must pass more often. 

The offense is fine.  Even with turnovers, we typically score enough points that a decent defense would suffice.  

Passing EFFICIENCY is infinitely more important than passing frequency.

BeatNavy wrote:

plain wrote: the formation, he must pass more often. 

The offense is fine.  Even with turnovers, we typically score enough points that a decent defense would suffice.  

Passing EFFICIENCY is infinitely more important than passing frequency.

Army's offense is very good and Navy will have their hands full.  The defense is a real problem and I am not sure why.

Navy's defense is fairly predictable - bend but do not break, and hope for a big play.  When we have won this year that seems to have worked.

Manning either calls or changes most plays at the LOS but most are free to change plays occasionally but they'd better be right or the OC will tighten the screws.
     I wonder if anyone has studied the efficiency of NFL passing attacks now against the days when QBs did call the plays, and sometimes even drew them up in the huddle in the dirt. I know where Rabble is coming from. The game seemed more fun back then possibly because QBs favored wide-open attacks unlike control-freak HCs today. Btw I'm sure neither TV or radio folks nor newspaper sportswriters ever mentioned TD-Int ratios prior to about 1970. The best QBs made more plays than mistakes and that was that. Stats didn't rule.

Wouldn't you agree that today's offenses are facing more complicated and athletic defenses than they did in the 50s and 60s? As coaching staffs have grown and film availability has become more widespread, defenses have gotten more intricate, which leads to offenses getting fancier to counter those changes, which leads to defenses responding in turn, and repeat ad nauseum.

Peyton Manning, like Andrew Luck, is the exception that proves the rule....an extremely talented QB who's also reported to have an encyclopedic knowledge of opposing defenses, and can predict down to a few percent the likelihood that a given defense with a given personnel package on the field will run a specific blitz scheme when he's facing 3rd and 6 from his own 40 yard line midway through the third quarter in a road game. So he is smart enough to call a particular play and adjust it if he steps to the line and sees a LB shading or looking one particular way, and can still have predetermined on-the-fly hot routes if the defense reacts a particular way after the snap.

The number of guys in the world who can pull that off is probably in the single digits, which would explain why Manning has been able to do what he's done for the last 15 seasons. It's also relevant that the pro game is a full-time job and allows for someone like Manning to watch film for 8 hours a day year-round (in addition to on the field practice time) if that's what he chooses to do.

Signs have not worked since the first time they have used them.
Good enough for me to drop 'em and try something else, like maybe running in with a play like they did for decades amd huddling up.
This nonsense of setting up, unsetting and resetting uses up as much time as a player running in with a play.
These coaches don't change a thing. No innovation, no difference, no thought. They look like robots on the sideline with nothing new to offer the opposing defense but the same old pictures and cartoons flashed to the players.
Read the damn comics on Sunday morning, not on gameday when the clock keeps ticking away, your are down by 4 with 3 minutes to play and you are at midfield trying to go in for 6.
This team is killin' me out there with all this useless stuff as I watch them. They are literally pissing me off with this baloney.
WAKE THE HELL UP, WILL 'YA?? and snap the damn ball 
They just make me frustrated game after game watching this garbage unfold before me.

Well by that logic, neither has breathing or wearing cleats.

I'm pretty sure the problem has been what's happened after the play has been signaled in, not the method by which it was signaled.

And besides, hasn't Army's offense been pretty good this season? Where's your outlandish line of complaints about the defense? That's been the real reason for why Army has been blown out of a bunch of games.

RABBLE wrote: Signs have not worked since the first time they have used them.