for one of their title runs- Bama ran the ball 601 time and threw it 330 times. On what planet is that "balanced"?
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That is absolutely not balanced, but we all knew they could throw the football with effectiveness. Therefore, the fear of balance helped them run the football.
If only we had an NFL offensive line and Heisman trophy candidates in the backfield, maybe we could run the ball 601 times and compete for a national title.
I am all for running the football as much as possible, but teams must fear our passing game in order to be consistently successful. Especially against good teams.
That year they also passed for 2631 yards and rushed for 3011 yards. Not to mention they also had Mark Ingram who they were trying to make the first Heisman winner in Bama history.
Usually, their yardage discrepancy is closer to being 50/50% even though they run the ball more plays typically.
Based on looking at their stats during their championship seasons since 2007, my thought is they run the ball more plays because more often than not they are ahead and want to run the clock out, which is smart football. But even though they don't throw it as much as they run it, they are very effective at throwing the ball when they do pass. I suspect the year you are referencing is an outlier to a degree because of the push on their part to have a Heisman winner by padding his stats. And I use the term outlier very loosely since we're talking a difference of about 350 yards or so.
So, when you analyze them, they're pretty balanced.
Denver Broncos last year, 675 passing attempts for 5,444 yards and 55 tds.
461 rushing attempts for 1,873 yards and 16 tds.
That's my whole point. RTGDF- because teams have to commit their D to stop it this gives you bigger pass plays. If we RTGDF- we"ll get what need out of the passing game. We need to be 65/35 run to pass. That will allow us to control games and make big plays in the passing game.
As I pointed out-during the SeC title run- the teams were all run dominant. The worst one was only 58%- the rest were mid-60's to as high as 73% run. That's how you win big in the SEC- RTGDF
I'm talking play calling Todd. You can't control your yardage- but
you can control the play calling. No excuse
for us to be less than 65% run this season
Seattle had 89 less pass attempts than rushes BUT had 1,048 more yards from passing than rushing AND 27 passing tds compared to 14 rushing tds. I agree that we need to run more times than pass but passing as you can clearly see does creates way more "damage" in terms of yards and touchdowns.
Auburn ran the ball to perfection last season on their way to a NC. Marshall hit just under 2,000 yards threw the air, very comparable to Dak. Mullen is more comfortable and we are a better team when we find ways to get our best athletes in space and run the ball. There's not a position on the field where they are better than we are, imho.
And our D is way better than theirs.
And to add to my above post, Dak doesn't have to throw for 3500 yards for us to be succesfull. With our D, if he can chunk it for around 2300-2500 yards and add another 900 maybe closer to a 1,000 on the ground, we will be ok.
Auburn choked and lost the NC to a team that threw the ball better than them. If we want to be a truly elite team we have to continue to grow as a passing offense on top of being a very strong rushing team. We have to be dangerous in both aspects and we are getting there. Let's look at a similar style player to Dak, Cam Newton. Cam was an elite elite runner his heisman winning national championship winning junior season. He rushed for 1473 yards and 20 tds. But he passed for 2854 yards and 30 tds and he did that with only attempting 16 more passes than he rushed it. My point is that passing does more damage. A lot more damage. Cam Newton is at the top of the list in terms of running QBs similar to Dak and even he has almost double passing yards and 2 to 1 tds from passing compared to running.
I'm sorry but the one loss Auburn had last year doesn't matter so much when nearly the last decade the SEC winner
was winning the national title and they were running ball. A lot. Win the SEC you do it by running the ball. Win the SEC you are playing for the national title. 95% of the time the SEC wins that game. Run the ball. Yardage can be balanced and should be closer. But not the play calling.
You do know that the Cam year Auburn ran the ball 68.8% of the time right? 57.1% of their yards came from running the ball. That was the worse example you could use as they were very run heavy.
Not at all. You are completely missing the point. I picked an obvious run heavy offense on purpose. 1. because their QB is similar to ours but 2. look at the 2 numbers you just showed. They ran it 69% of the time yet only 57% of their offense came from the run. Where is passing was only used 31% of the time yet still managed to produce 43% of their offense and almost 50% of their touchdowns. It was more effective and caused more damage. Passing does way more damage in terms of yardage and touchdowns. Cam Newton had almost double the passing yards than running yards and only threw it 16 more times than he rushed it. Passing offense is the extra base hit in baseball and running offense is the single.
THIS ALL DAY. More explosive pass plays will win us games, not more passes. You RTGDF, get teams tired and cheating up/selling out to stop the run, then burn them over the top for big chunks. It's what Bama, Auburn, FL, and LSU have all done consistently during this streak of SEC dominance.