re: 9 years ago today, tDecline began.

quote:

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Les's style required an overwhelming superiority of talent. You can beat 95% of your opponents that way but it will always struggle against teams with a parity in talent. It is doomed to failure against teams with better talent (Alabama).

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This is true. But what was on Les' mind, always on his mind, was that if you execute the plays you win.

That's why he'd run 80 plays in a practice. Always trying to get perfect execution with the same plays. And if it wasn't executed properly in practice, it didn't get on the play sheet for the game. In his mind if you couldn't execute it just right in practice, it wasn't going to be executed in a game, period. And the idea of introducing adjustments or new plays in which the execution couldn't be nailed down was as alien to him as Klingons.

You often heard Les cite execution after a loss. That's why- a loss necessarily equaled poor execution. The flip side of that is that a win necessarily equaled great execution. Which is entirely un-self critical and fed the belief that all you had to do was execute. This also stymied any changes. Why change things when all you had to do was execute and win?

It didn't account for adjustment. If every OL and the FB get their block, in Les' mind, you win the play. It didn't account for the opponent crashing the line and S up on a TE who never went on routes.

In other words, perfect execution can be defeated by scheme. Les' style offense required bringing more people to the point of attack, and executing. Most defenses can bring more people to the point of attack at any given time given the keys are easy to read (most of the time) and you are willing to risk taking away from one area of the field.

We were such a low-risk offense you could always risk bringing people to react on a key. And that key was usually the FB. Even high schoolers know watch the FB (and for a pulling OL).