Originally Posted by
KB21
Paul Johnson is credited with this quote: "If you are going to run something, you better know how to fix it when it breaks."
I think we are looking at that situation at Mississippi State. Everyone got excited with all the talk about "we are going to find our best 11 players and build a scheme around them", and in reality, no coach goes into a situation like this and builds a scheme from scratch. You have to have a system, and the coach has to know that system inside an out. He needs to know how to solve the problems that will turn up against that particular scheme.
With Zach Arnett, he's been running the Rocky Long 3-3-5 scheme long enough that he should know what the solutions to the problems are. Matt Brock has only been in this scheme for three years and has never run it. At some point, Zach is probably going to have to interject a little more than he wants to if this defense is to improve.
Offensively, we are looking at a different story. Kevin Barbay came up in Jim McElwain's scheme and a few other schemes that are nothing like what he is currently trying to run at Mississippi State. He spent one year at App State and realized "Hey, this is a pretty good scheme". Now, he's trying to run that scheme at Mississippi State. He's not versed in it enough to know all the solutions to the problems. He may get there at some point, but he's clearly not there yet. He doesn't seem to know how to connect everything together in this scheme yet.