Will the Gopher offense morph for Athan?

[RememberMurray]

Yeah, they are called football coaches.

All of the people here on the board who second-guess every other play call, every week, are football coaches?

I didn't know that. Impressive! Which league(s) do they coach in?

 

[60's Guy]

Don't forget the Nebraska game. He pretty well won that one for us. That was looking like an L until he came in a gave them a spark. He looked really good that game too.

I thought from his first game at Penn State he showed it was obvious he has talent. Play calling is a really big deal that effects results. When we put AK8 in position to be successful he has been exciting.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

read deeper, he has had many posts about his potential.

Sure. But about drastically changing the offense? Otis makes Otis’ posts. Rarely based on reason or fact. Lots of opinion.

 

[60's Guy]

All of the people here on the board who second-guess every other play call, every week, are football coaches?

I didn't know that. Impressive! Which league(s) do they coach in?

To me, it sounds like you haven't renewed your offensive coordinators continuing education license? Don't want to be the bearer of bad news, it's only $12 bucks. Gopher Lady can help you get set up. Testing is available most weekends. Study guide helps but it is out of print....sometimes find one on eBay for $100 or so but some people have passed without it. Good luck!

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

All of the people here on the board who second-guess every other play call, every week, are football coaches?

I didn't know that. Impressive! Which league(s) do they coach in?

Oh yeah, there are people who aren't coaches who obsess about it too but make no mistake, it's something football coaches go over A LOT.

Also, some of the folks on here weren't too far off with their ideas of throwing the football on early downs and starting Athan.

Sometimes the fans clamoring things are correct. Usually they are not, but sometimes they are.

 

[RememberMurray]

To me, it sounds like you haven't renewed your offensive coordinators continuing education license? Don't want to be the bearer of bad news, it's only $12 bucks. Gopher Lady can help you get set up. Testing is available most weekends. Study guide helps but it is out of print....sometimes find one on eBay for $100 or so but some people have passed without it. Good luck!

If I call lots of passes to the tight end, do I get extra credit?

 

[kg21]

Well, I have the feeling we will be throwing a lot against OSU and Michigan.

 

[60's Guy]

If I call lots of passes to the tight end, do I get extra credit?

And, probably more votes too!

 

[PMWinSTP]

I get why people got super frustrated with the way the offense was run in 2020 and 2021. I couldn't stand the last second running around like crazy trying to change the play.

I didn't feel like that was an issue at all this year. Yes we still bleed the playclock down in a number of situations but it didn't feel disorganized and frantic the way it did under Sanford. The sideline check offense is very common and while I have never been a massive fan of it, the way we ran it last year didn't bug me. Same was the case in 2019.

Yeah, not an issue this year. Many snaps happened between 20-10 seconds left.

 

[GringaGopher]

LOL -- I hate that - but didn't it seem to you we were a little better than we have in the past with that?? I could not stand QB Morgan running all over the backfield changing the play with seconds left on the playclock?? It looked absolutely ridiculous.

Especially since the majority of the times the play was RUTM or another run play we have done a thousand times.

 

[march madness]

The big change I want to see is throwing the ball a lot even against the teams we can run down there throat on!
So we have practice throwing it for when we play teams with great defensive lines, that we aren’t getting rushing yards on, that we are good at passing the ball.

 

[Pompous Elitist]

Need better receivers, and a bell cow back, and oh a good to great offensive line. Problems all solved. Ther ya go Murr

 

[MNVCGUY]

The big change I want to see is throwing the ball a lot even against the teams we can run down there throat on!
So we have practice throwing it for when we play teams with great defensive lines, that we aren’t getting rushing yards on, that we are good at passing the ball.

The time for practicing the passing game is during practice not during a game. Maybe mix in a few more passes but the goal on gameday is to win the game. So if you can control the game by playing it safe and keeping it on the ground you do it.

All of you who advocate working on the passing game during games would go crazy the first time a game changing pick 6 gets thrown.

 

[Word]

Kirk C even said it himself that we need balance, but then for I'm sure several reasons (bad OL, bad WR) we went away from "balance".

We need to 1) figure out what works with the talent we have and 2) keep defenses guessing. Just way too predictable this year (Sanford-like). It's not good when I can sit in the stands and look at our formation and predict the play call 80% of the time.

I liked what I saw vs Wisconsin so hopefully that is a sign of the future.

 

[matt]

(3) We keep the RPO. Athan's arm makes those slants pretty dangerous but I think you'll also see an addition of a deep threat (to the wide side of the field) off of this. OSU does this quite a bit but it requires having a QB who can really throw the football.

Two subtle things about Athan that I’m excited about as they relate to his execution of the RPO offense are his height and his ability to throw the ball away. Tanner had his fair share of balls tipped or batted down, and he also never learned how to throw the ball away. I am excited about Athan in the RPO offense, especially with his wheels.

 

[swelna]

Athans ability to pull the ball and run to keep the run defense honest will be nice. Do that a few times a game on top of a decent passing game and I think our backs won't need to be as experienced as Mo in order to produce. Hope that he meshes with the receivers in spring/fall practice and they use Spring to evaluate the playbook and tweak it to fit the strengths of the roster.