MSU football from ESPN. Not much but something.....

What coaching situations to keep an eye on:

Hale: I'm paying close attention to the many second-year coaches out there who are just now getting their first taste of a real spring with their teams. At Baylor, Dave Aranda missed last spring, dealt with interminable delays to the season, then upended his offensive staff. At Florida State, Mike Norvell lost out on meaningful culture-building time last offseason, and it showed -- with multiple off-field dust-ups (largely based on miscommunication and lack of trust) and a bevy of in-season departures. At Mississippi State, Mike Leach pulled off a Week 1 stunner and then his team forgot how to move the ball, but he has always shown big gains in Year 2.

I believe Leach's offense takes a giant leap this year. Time will tell.

I sure hope so....

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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I think most of early failures rests of Costello's shoulders. He wouldn't check into a run and then throw into double or triple coverage. Rogers is smart enough to know when to go with a run.

Costello literally could not see a defender if he was playing zone. Literally could not see them.

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Originally Posted by Lord McBuckethead

Costello literally could not see a defender if he was playing zone. Literally could not see them.

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that is what i thought also

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Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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I'm still not convinced it's not that Leach later in the season relented to running the ball more than he'd wanted to, but rather that it took until that point for the OL to improve enough to do so. Regardless, I agree that hopefully it's a trend that continues.

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Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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Leach's whole offense centers around the ability of the QB to read defenses. Mike Leach does not call pass or rush - he calls a formation with pre-set options. He puts the ball in the hands of the QB and says "if you read the D and you can run call the run, if you read and you can pass then pass". Look at it as the opposite of what Fitz did in the Moordread Offense - Fitz had the option on almost every play to call his number, pass or hand off. When he couldn't figure out what to do, he called his number because he trusted his running above all else. Last year Will started out pretty much passing because it was what he was comfortable doing. As he learned the system and reads, he started trusting his decisions enough to hand the ball off when it was there. It made all the difference in the world - and the offense clicked more because of it.

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Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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It is my understanding that Leach rarely, if ever calls a running play. Almost every time they lineup, the pass play is primary but there is also a running play available to the QB to check into presnap.

The better the QB gets at reading the defense and learns the offense, the more run plays will happen and the more successful they will become.

Having more running plays will not be a Leach change in philosophy but it's the QB that has to have the ability to check into them at the right times. Rogers was better at that than KJ.

Another aspect is the quick pass to the RB that will make the defenses change how they defend as well rather than just the check down after all the other reads have been exhausted.

There are a lot of nuisances to Leach's offense that requires reading the defense and not just running a specified play that a team gets better and better at doing.

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Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG

I think the offense will be improved if Leach continues to commit to the run more as he did in the last several games. Had we done that against Arkansas that would?ve been another win and the Kentucky game would?ve been a lot more interesting. The way we played against UGA, Ole Miss, Missouri and Tulsa to end the year was much improved. I?m still mad about that Arkansas game!

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If we had just played a different QB we win Ark and probably UK. We did to ourselves most of last year on QB and running the ball stuff.

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Originally Posted by R2Dawg

If we had just played a different QB we win Ark and probably UK. We did to ourselves most of last year on QB and running the ball stuff.

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Honestly we outgained both of those by over 100 yards as is. We ought to have won them both even with KJ.

Had we finished 5-5 in the regular season, we would have been ranked most of the year and gotten a good bowl. We just weren't that far off from having a successful season as it was, and Leach tends to improve a lot in year 2.

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Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg

Leach's whole offense centers around the ability of the QB to read defenses. Mike Leach does not call pass or rush - he calls a formation with pre-set options. He puts the ball in the hands of the QB and says "if you read the D and you can run call the run, if you read and you can pass then pass". Look at it as the opposite of what Fitz did in the Moordread Offense - Fitz had the option on almost every play to call his number, pass or hand off. When he couldn't figure out what to do, he called his number because he trusted his running above all else. Last year Will started out pretty much passing because it was what he was comfortable doing. As he learned the system and reads, he started trusting his decisions enough to hand the ball off when it was there. It made all the difference in the world - and the offense clicked more because of it.

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This is a good post.

I think ultimately what will happen is as we develop as a program under Leach we will end up seeing his typical historical norm of about 70/30 pass.

We had a lot going on last year needless to say.

QB was hurt by having Costello being a turnover machine all year and then Rogers had COVID which delayed his development and caused Leach to stay with Costello longer. With Rogers the turnovers decreased and the point totals went up with Auburn being the exception.

RB was hurt by Hill not being a team player and then we had two freshmen who really weren't ready for the amount of reps we had to play them. They started to get it in game ten and will be fine. Up until that point they looked slow to react most of the time. I think it was 100% just making the adjustment to college ball. When we passed the ball to the RB's more often than not they were both too slow to respond or they danced and allowed defenders to tackle them. Per SECStatcat.com one of our two least successful plays was inside zone. Which tells me if we had tried to run the ball a lot it would have likely been a disaster. Part of that is on the o-line and more on that in a second.

WR group was the best that they have been since 2014 but still with a lot of room for improvement finishing out routes and we didn't really have a great deep threat last year. As we add talent and our guys pay more attention to the little things it will help the entire offense.

OL was hurt the most by inexperience, a new system, and the COVID stoppages affecting our S&C program. Some of the confusion was because it was a new system but I think a good bit of it was general inexperience. We started a RS freshmen and 2-4 sophomores and then two RS seniors- one whom struggled with SEC pass rushers his entire career.

And then once the offense made strides then our defense became decimated with injuries and COVID. And you know that good ol MSU is going to follow all the rules to a T when it comes to COVID or anything else.

I'm expecting us to be much better next year if Leach continues to follow his historical norms. We have a lot of x-factors in the form of transfers but even if none of those pan out we should still be improved with our known players. Add in a likely improved and healthy defense and special teams that will be as good or better and we could make a jump next year.

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Originally Posted by Quaoarsking

Honestly we outgained both of those by over 100 yards as is. We ought to have won them both even with KJ.

Had we finished 5-5 in the regular season, we would have been ranked most of the year and gotten a good bowl. We just weren't that far off from having a successful season as it was, and Leach tends to improve a lot in year 2.

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Turnovers absolutely killed us in our losses last year. It seems like all of them were in the red zone too when we were about to score. Basically when we didn't turn the ball over we won.