re: Drive Killing Play: An Analysis

The reality is you said we ran the ball well. The facts are we ran the ball 9 times in 3 possessions in the 4th quarter for a net total of 15 yards....when you are running the ball 70% on first down, that puts a a guy starting his first regular season primetime start in a hole. In the first half they mixed it up much better. I see you have moved the goal posts now to blaming Nuss....who again, in his first regular season start in a primetime game went for 300+ yards and a 75% completion %. Initially, you were saying we ran the ball well, which in crunch time, is not true at all. EOD

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when you are running the ball 70% on first down, that puts a a guy starting his first regular season primetime start in a hole.

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again, he started off “in a hole”

on 1 drive in the second half.

first drive he got the bal 3rd and 3

Second half ran on 8 first downs.

5 went for 3 or more yards
on 1st down we had rushes of

3
39
3
6
4
-5
0
2

and don’t get me wrong the last 3 aren’t great, but what are you going to call “starting in the hole” on 2nd down?


what’s worse a 2 yard run on 1st and 10 or a 2 yard pass on 2nd and 3?

And i’ve said a bunch of time Nuss wasn’t bad, but he needs to be better.

39 passes for 304 yards isn’t efficient.

considering one was for 41 yards that’s 38 passes for 261 yards. 6.9 yards an attempt.

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We did. It's all about situation not the overall percent. They decided to focus on running more and we were near ineffective. That not only wasted plays it put more pressure on the passing downs which were out of sync and more telegraphed.

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I’m not really disagreeing with that.

I think it’s easy to look back at a 3rd & 1, see it get stuffed, and say “we should have passed.” The flip side of that, though, is that if you can’t run tempo after a 14 yard gain, with your 6th year senior RB, behind 3+ future NFL OL and pick up a yard on 3rd down, you’re going to have a rough day on offense. (And yeah I know that the issue on that play was Pimpton. Just making a point.)

It’s also easy to look back at 3rd & 3 and go “how the hell do we complete a 2 yard pass?” And honestly, if we were a threat to run the ball past the sticks on 3rd & 3 it would probably make that situation a lot easier.

So yeah the rhythm was weird. Yeah, we wasted some plays when you look back at our effectiveness. Yeah, I think the staff should have seen that they weren’t getting any consistency on the ground and probably tried to do something different.

But it’s never (I should say usually not) one specific thing from one specific person/group that loses a game. The desire to stick with the running game in hindsight looks like the wrong move. But our inability to be consistent running the ball in the first place was also a problem. As was the fact that we were constantly throwing short of the sticks on 3rd down even when it was manageable.

I do think that at least part of the reason for wanting to run the ball was to slow the game down. We held USC to 27 points but they only ran 58 plays. And 8 of them were on the last drive in 2-minute offense. If they were on pace for 65 plays going into that final drive would our opinion of the defense be different? I don’t know, maybe. It’s impossible to say but I do think it was a factor in the game plan.