Hill, Williams YPC

[Leroy Jenkins]

If at the beginning of the year I told you that 5 games in, Hill would be at 7.7 ypc and Williams would be at 7.0, what would you guess our record would be?
I expect to see a lot more opportunity for the RBs in the future. You would literally have to be an imbecile to not recognize the strength of the offense. Im gonna muster my optimism one more time.

[the_real_MSU_is_us]

I'm not mustering my optimism, just my support. I've rooted for State when there was no reason to be optimistic, and I'll root for State again even though I don't believe things will be fixed. Truly hope they are though

[parabrave]

If at the beginning of the year I told you that 5 games in, Hill would be at 7.7 ypc and Williams would be at 7.0, what would you guess our record would be?
I expect to see a lot more opportunity for the RBs in the future. You would literally have to be an imbecile to not recognize the strength of the offense. Im gonna muster my optimism one more time.

If you told me that they would avg 6-7 carries a game I'd call whitfild for you room.

[Political Hack]

The system allows the defense to call the plays for you and the two SEC defenses we've seen have been callinngnpass. They know what presnap alignments they need to be in and they force us into the pass option, then we pass and screw it up because we can't throw and catch very well and we can't protect very well. Defenses aren't going to stop doing what they're doing, so we'd better prove we can pass or change the system to where every run call doesn't have a pass option.

[Tbonewannabe]

The system allows the defense to call the plays for you and the two SEC defenses we've seen have been callinngnpass. They know what presnap alignments they need to be in and they force us into the pass option, then we pass and screw it up because we can't throw and catch very well and we can't protect very well. Defenses aren't going to stop doing what they're doing, so we'd better prove we can pass or change the system to where every run call doesn't have a pass option.

Exactly, every defense wants Fitz to try and throw to win the game.

[Todd4State]

The system allows the defense to call the plays for you and the two SEC defenses we've seen have been callinngnpass. They know what presnap alignments they need to be in and they force us into the pass option, then we pass and screw it up because we can't throw and catch very well and we can't protect very well. Defenses aren't going to stop doing what they're doing, so we'd better prove we can pass or change the system to where every run call doesn't have a pass option.

Well said. And when teams stack 8-9 in the box- can we not throw a fade or a slant or something quick to back them out? It's absolutely ridiculous on so many levels.

[BrunswickDawg]

Well said. And when teams stack 8-9 in the box- can we not throw a fade or a slant or something quick to back them out? It's absolutely ridiculous on so many levels.

And that is an area of criticism I think we can all agree with. While it would be great to keep them honest with downfield passing, if that isn't working you can use the short game. It doesn't even have to be a fade or a slant. A TE dragging across the middle on a 5-8 yard route would work. A RB screen would work. Neither of those plays need the pass protection that even slants/fades do and are much higher percentage. What happened to JoMo saying we would use the TE's a lot in this offense? We went to Green 1 time Saturday. We threw no passes to TE against KY.

[RiverCityDawg]

The system allows the defense to call the plays for you and the two SEC defenses we've seen have been callinngnpass. They know what presnap alignments they need to be in and they force us into the pass option, then we pass and screw it up because we can't throw and catch very well and we can't protect very well. Defenses aren't going to stop doing what they're doing, so we'd better prove we can pass or change the system to where every run call doesn't have a pass option.

This is exactly right. And it's not a new revelation, Moorhead has been telling us this since he was hired. People just haven't been listening. I just thought we would be better at protecting and executing in the pass game, more like what we saw against ULL. That was obviously very very foolish.

[Coldsleeve Jr.]

JoMo said the reason RBs avg 7 YPC is bc we call run plays at the right time. This does not give me confidence things are going to change.

[Dawgology]

Or...we could load up our line, bring in some TE's and cram the ball down their throats. We have the talent on the OL and in the backfield to run against teams that are expecting the run. We just don't. This OL was not created to pass block it was built to push down the field.

[Dawgology]

Hell, we could even move all of our WR's to one side which forces the 8th man in the box (safety) to slide over for coverage which eliminates him. Then we have a numbers advantage. But literally none of that is happening. It's so frustrating. Just a "check-with-me" at the line to tell the RB where to run where the defenders aren't would help.

[Prediction? Pain.]

One thing to remember about those YPC numbers is that they're buoyed quite a bit by our non-conference games. The most-used backs in our SEC games had more pedestrian numbers -- Williams averaged 2.75 YPC on 8 rushes vs. Kentucky and Hill averaged 4.56 YPC on 9 rushes vs. Florida. (Though our "most used" back so far has of course been Fitz -- 16 rushes vs. KY and 20 vs. FL -- and his numbers have sucked. 1.25 YPC vs. KY and 1.6 YPC vs. FL. Even assuming that includes sack yards, if you add those back in, it doesn't look great either -- 2.7 YPC on 16 rushes vs. KY and 3.6 YPC on 20 rushes vs. FL.) Still doesn't excuse getting away from the RBs in the second halves of the KY and FL games, but it's still important to note.

As an aside, when looking into those numbers, I noticed something interesting about our running game last year that I had either forgotten or never picked up on. Williams accumulated ~1100 yards rushing on 4.7 YPC. But in eight SEC games, he averaged over 4 YPC only twice -- 6.4 vs. LSU and 4.4 vs. Bama. (Odd that the high marks would be against those two teams, though they were at home during prime-time games, so maybe that played into it.) But against our other six SEC opponents, his numbers ranged from a low of 2.2 YPC (vs. UGA) to a high of 3.75 (vs. arguably the worst run defense in the SEC, U. Miss.). Hell, against Kentucky last year, while we were rolling offensively, we could only manage to get him to average 3.55 YPC on 20 carries. Another similar stat of note -- of the 44 players in the SEC that averaged 4 rushes per game or more last year, Williams was 32nd in YPC in SEC games at 3.95 YPC. Counting only RBs, he was 27th out of 31 in the SEC.

Fitz, on the other hand, averaged 5.3 YPC vs. SEC teams last year (second highest of any QB, behind only Key), and only dipped below 4 YPC once in conference play (against Bama). (And I'm guessing that those numbers include lost sack yards, too, so the stats are likely even better.) Against KY last year, he averaged a whopping 9.6 YPC on 12 rushes.

Another way to look at this via advanced stats:

Before the season, Bill Connelly released a list of the most efficient and explosive RBs and running QBs returning in college football. (Here's the link (https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2018/8/13/17684268/college-football-rushing-jk-dobbins-myles-gaskin) if you'd like to see the full lists and the parameters of the "efficiency" and "explosiveness" measures.) In the running-QB rankings, both Key and Fitz were in the Top 20 nationally in explosiveness as rushers in 2017 and in the Top 15 in efficiency. Williams, on the other hand, was in the middle of all RBs nationally in efficiency and sixth from last in explosiveness.

This isn't meant to bash Williams as a RB. But I think it's helpful for me to see those numbers to better understand part of what made the running attack successful last year and what's different so far this year. Last year we succeeded by consistently getting smallish chunks of yards from Williams (2.5 - 4 YPC) and then explosive runs from Fitz. That bears out in this stat as well: Our QBs had 27 runs of 10+ yards vs. SEC teams last year. Williams and Hill combined for 13. Our QB run plays last year were more efficient and way, way more explosive than our RB run plays.

[Dallas_Dawg]

The more I read this mother****ers quotes, the more I think he thinks he's just smarter than everybody. This is the SOB who thinks he invented football

[Tbonewannabe]

The more I read this mother****ers quotes, the more I think he thinks he's just smarter than everybody. This is the SOB who thinks he invented football

This is funny since that was the impression that Mullen gave everyone.