2010 Spring Thoughts/Reflections On UCLA's Offense
by Nestor on Apr 19, 2010 4:15 AM PDT
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PrintLet's follow up the discussion and reflections on our defense by zeroing in on our offense to start the week. As mentioned yesterday the offense has taken some steps forward this year due to a number of factors. Bruce Feldman who was at UCLA practice last Friday was impressed with Bruins' speed. Speed seems to be the major theme in the observations provided by David Carter and Rahim Moore in the following "offensive review":
I thought it was really interesting to hear from David Carter about how we are playing more of a "college" offense instead of a "pro" one which puts defense on its toes. Moore also talked about how offense has also been speeding up the defense through is no-huddle this spring. I'd think that also helps our defense to prepare for teams who feature more up-tempo/spread type of offense in and out of the conference.
It is still unclear though exactly how much further the offense has come along since the end of this past season. Piecing together notes from the roundup and posts from last three weeks jotted down some of the major points concerning our offense. Let's get to them in detail after the jump.
Offensive line: The biggest question mark for this offense heading into this spring was our offensive line. Well Coach Bob Palcic's comments to Jon Gold following the second full scrimmage were pleasantly encouraging:
"This is the best spring we've had since I've been here. I'm pleased with their work ethic - we've had a few more injuries than I would've liked - but I'm happy about the way they're progressing. We're running the ball better. Things are going very well."
Coach Palcic also offered up the following observation on the LT spot (the most glaring spot due to LDS mission taken by XSF):
"It is too early, but I think Sean Sheller is getting back to the form he showed me my first year here. Then he went through that knee reconstruction, and it's taken him this long to finally get back to his original playing form. I'm hoping he continues to progress. Then Micah Kia comes back in the fall, and we have some depth at the position."
Sheller's performance this spring has been pretty welcome development. Initially we though Nik Abele (6-4, 276 RS frosh) was going to gun for the starting position at this spot. Palcic also loves former walkon Brett Downey (6-7, 298, RS Soph) who has been competing for this spot. Yet Abele has been sidelined this spring due to stingers (which is a prudent decision on the part of our staff). He hasn't been practicing as much this spring. So Sheller's emergence has been crucial. Coaches were really counting on him before he went down with his ATV related injury two off-seasons ago. It is great to see him make this comeback (and I am sure the effort on his part will not be lost on kids like Reggie Stokes, Brandon Warner, who will be making to look their own comebacks).
Hasiak's spring: Speaking of comebacks, keeping my fingers crossed here but it sure looks like Stan Hasiak is having himself a very productive spring given where he was months ago. He certainly appears to have made some progress in terms of getting himself adjusted in Westwood and in this football program. You can see him having a good time during the pre-practice warm ups in this video (promoting spring football game).
MaltBaa observed how after the first spring scrimmage, CRN "let Hasiak lead the team" in "a breakdown cheer of some sort." We have also gotten couple of email notes on how Hasiak on at least one occasion played the role of peace-maker when practice skirmishes broke down between the offense and defense. Hasiak knows he just needs to keep working on his game and get along with all of his team-mates. Still these are all encouraging notes
F-Back: We have read a lot about how coaches have been using Damien Thigpen and Morrell Presley at the F-Back ("modified" half-back) position. It will be interesting to see how both of those guys develop at that spot. At least on paper it sounds like a great idea putting them in position with matchup advantages and turn them loose in space. I imagine when Anthony Barr checks in this summer, he is going to get a shot at this spot. From what I have heard, read, and seen (in his highlight reels) seems like his skill-set and size could be the right match for this spot if the coaches try him out on offense first. Throwing Presley, Thigpen and Barr from this spot sounds kind of mouthwatering ... well at least on paper. Chow certainly has few toys to work with now compared to what he had when he first came here couple of years ago.
Cleaning it up: This is a worry. Earlier last year we had lot of issues with center-QB exchanges. I remember the botched snaps especially against San Diego State and Tennessee earlier in the season. Fortunately they didn't cost us then. However, don't think we are going to have that luxury against extremely well coached Kansas State and Stanford squads. Looks like we had issues with snaps in the second scrimmage. Guess we can chalk it up a little bit due to the nagging injury of Kai Maiavia. This is something our QBs and center have to really work on though. Given the challenging schedule we have it is a must we clean up these issues. Last year we also got killed by untimely penalties by Logan Paulsen (sorry to single him out but he burned us few times). We can't afford to repeat the same pattern this season.
Red-zone conversion/Playmakers: Don't have to really add to all the discussions we have had concerning our red zone woes from last two seasons. Kai Forbath is amazing luxury but we need TDs. We need kids like Joe Fauria and Cory Harkey to emerge as dependable options at TE (who will not kill us wit mistakes). Fauria with his sheer size can create mismatches like in this TD catch from scrimmage. Video from scotucla:
We also need Josh Smith (hopefully he is healed up), Nelson Rosario, and Taylor Embree to become consistent playmakers. Embree as mentioned above just makes catches. scotucla grabbed one of those consistent moments from practice:
Now we need those guys to not only make the big grabs, but also get consistent separation from the opposing DBs (didn't get much of it). On the play-making front it would be huge if Ricky Marvray, Randall Carroll and Jerry Johnson can take a step forward. Carroll has had much publicized issues with the dropsies but by all accounts he has been working at it. Like here he almost came up with a spectacular catch (another fun video from scotucla who initially focused on Thigpen but then turned it back on Carroll right on time):
He had his moments in the second spring scrimmage. Johnson (and Mouta) always had the potential but it's a matter of translating that into consistent performance during practices and then carry it over to the game.
The Revolver: Well the big story this spring that traditional media has been having a field day with is the implementation (or I guess I should stay experimentation) of a revolver package in our offense. Don't really have a lot to add to what we have discussed about it here, here and through all the day to day roundups. To me it seems like the players have clearly enjoyed it and it seems to have added a sense of spark and excitement into our offense. I doubt the coaches will get away from the traditional pro-set packages but I can see it being an important part of our offense given the weapons we now have at our disposal.
I also think it could potentially give our coaches a schematic edge given there are at least two other teams in the Pac-10 - Washington and Southern Cal - who run some version of the Norm Chow designed offenses in their respective program. It would give other defenses something extra to think about when they are preparing for UCLA (provided it yields productive results on Saturdays early on this September).
That is about what I have for now on our offense. We still have a week left in practice with the last scrimmage which could provide additional datapoints re. various positional battles. As always, I am interested in hearing the takes from folks who have had the opportunity to take in multiple practices this spring. What other issues we should keep an eye on and anticipate this off-season based on what you have seen during last three weeks in Spaulding. Fire away.
GO BRUINS.
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Offense
I guess I am opening up to the idea of Barr playing offense. I have made it clear before that I thought he could fit anywhere on the defense but with guys like Iuta Tepa stepping up and snagging Owa it doesnt seem to be that necessary to put him over there. I was just mainly concerned about CRN putting him at RB which would most likely lead to limited snaps for him. The F spot for Barr sounds nice and could cause for a lot of mismatches, excited to see what develops out of this.
The one thing I am concerned about with the revolver is whether or not we have been ignoring our other sets this spring… I have only been to one practice so far and I am pretty sure the only set I saw came out of the revolver. I hope the coaches feel that our other sets are not perfect and could use some work as well. Just kind of a concern if the revolver doesnt work out for us and we lose an entire spring of working on our for lack of a better term bread and butter.
Grain of salt. When I was at practice for the sunday scrimmage I was speaking with someone who had some interesting thoughts on the way CRN runs his offense, As silly as it sounds he sid RN is to concerned about scoring points, and does not see that a good offense doesnt just score points but is able to get four yards when you need four, or milk the clock when it needs to. LOL I know it sounds weird, but it made some sense, and I am just not sure what to think about it.
On "too concerned about scoring points"
I’m not sure I agree, wasn’t the most commonly cited reason for investing time in this revolver package improving our running game a bit more via making opposing defenses respect the pass/run simultanously as well as not knowing who will be running the ball? I’m no expert so please correct me if I’m wrong, I just think I read that here on more than one occasion.
I’m sure there is a lot more theory behind the “getting 4 yards when you need 4 yards” argument as it pertains to offensive schemes, but with all this work that seems to be put in on developing a balanced running/passing attack I’m not sure I buy that CRN is only concerned with the big play (if that is synonymous with only concerened with scoring points).
I agree
Cade McNowns senior year we had like an average scoring drive of like a little over a minute, and clearly, the offense was not the problem with that squad.
Yes, but
you easily could make the argument that because the offense scored so quickly, the defense never had time to rest and this further caused issues on the defensive side of the ball.
I’m not sure I agree with the fact that Neuheisel doesn’t value running the clock on the offensive side of the ball, or only values the ‘big play’. I think he’d be happy with any offensive consistency this year. He’s been playing field position games for the past two years (remember his ‘punting is winning’ speech?) Hell, with our offensive talent over the past couple of years, punting was winning. Hopefully that starts to change this year.
Good point, but I wouldn't worry...
I think if things carry over from last year, our pro set already has the ball control components in place with all the short yardage passing plays and running plays that we saw last season. Our biggest problem with that was execution. With a year of experience under our belt with 8 or 9 returning offensive starters, hopefully we can shore up some of those execution problems. We have not been a down field passing threat for years and it definitely should be the focus this spring. I’m sure when fall rolls around and the coaches start to install the game sets we will get a better idea of what our team will be bringing come game day. Spring is the time for experimentation.
Revolver
Im wondering if this works out if this is going to be our new base offense. Seeing as how it does not seem like we are practicing our base sets from last year we might be scrapping the old stuff and just running our offense exclusively through this. Maybe its just advance game preperation for Nevada, who knows…
I think
practicing against revolver may help our defense against Kanas St. We struggled against all their misdirection plays last season and were lucky they didn’t score more than they did. For a defense to be good reactions need to be as instinctive as possible, and our reactions against Kstate were very slow. I think we can expect our guys to get to the right guy a little more quickly when we next visit Kansas St.
Of course, it’ll be nice against Oregon too!
Where is the evidence
That CRN is only concerned about scoring points? We haven’t done much of it in the last two years. You could probably count the amount of deep pass attempts (one indicator of looking for the quick score) on one hand, he opted to go with Chane the Train (ball security reasons) over Jet Ski, the quick strike option. We had no burners at the WR position during the last two years. So where do we see him going for scoring over sustained offense? I think, as Chris09 said, the revolver was put in to have a more consistent running game, which will in turn open up our quick strike abilities. But I, like you am a little nervous that I haven’t heard much about our use of Chow’s traditional Pro style offense. Because even though we have so many returners, they all had to learn a whole new offense, which is never a good thing.
formerly Westwood78
by PhoenixBruin on Apr 19, 2010 9:51 AM PDT up reply actions
Scoring
I wanna make it clear that this is not my point of view, but one I have heard from many. But in their defense it may be the direction he wants the offense to head in. It all has to do with the athletes he has on the field, and RN might not have been able to do what he really wanted to do so far given the skill level on the roster.
Barr on offense
Does anyone know if Barr likes to hit? My concern with Barr playing defense is whether or not he wants to get in their and mix it up with tackling. It’s one thing as a running back getting pounded and a defensive player giving the pounding. Does he have the mentality for it? As much as I love the athleticism, if he doesn’t have the mentality, he’s wasting his time.
Although we don’t need him there, it does make you wonder whether Notre Dame had the right idea with him playing WR…
Rahim Moore
This video solidifies Moore as one of my favorite Bruins. The best part of the video for me was hearing Moore ask coach Chow to challenge him in practice and knowing that practices are supposed to be more challenging then the games. Knowing Moore wants the challenge and the work, I know Rahim will be a success on and off the field.
Question about the Revolver
There seems to be a lot of concern that we are not working on our pro-style formations and are only focusing on the Revolver. It seems to me that we still run the same plays out of the revolver, but that we are simply changing where the qb and rb line up to make things more difficult for the defense to read, while occasionally mixing in a new wrinkle with a qb option. Can anybody who’s been out to practice make an educated guess as to whether or not the transition back to pro-style sets will be difficult, or if the plays will just translate to pro-style, and thus won’t require much practice time in those sets?
We're havin' too much fun today. We ain't thinkin' 'bout tomorrow.
Fair enough.
Seems to pop up every now and again in comment threads, but “a lot of concern” was probably an exaggeration. I’m still curious as to what people think about the ease of switching between the Revolver and our more traditional sets.
We're havin' too much fun today. We ain't thinkin' 'bout tomorrow.
by Steve Bruin on Apr 19, 2010 11:06 AM PDT up reply actions
I would think
the biggest difference is in Prince and his motions. He can play with a little less structure and is thus freer to make decisions. He does not have the timing/footwork to focus on as much. That is my biggest concern going back to the pro-style offense – how well does he still have his x-step drops/reads/timing down.
I haven’t been out there (Saturday!), but from what I have heard I can imagine many of the routes being drawn up the same way, the lineup is just a wrinkle that changes blocking assignments and creates a little more threat of run by use of misdirection.
Havent been to a practice from Prince’s comments it’s not all that different than what he ran at Crespi. Crespi who I have seen play runs sort of a hybrid shotgun-pistol formation – not really all that similar to Chris Ault’s Nevada’s offense. My guess is that it’s just more of a change-up, a superficial wrinkle while still using the same passing concepts and zone and power run game while still allowing for a bit of speed option which we have tinkered around with a few times over the years – it seems to make an appearance in a few early games and then fizzle away. I believe Kevin Craft ran it a few times from under center against KSU last seaosn.
That also seems to make a lot more sense to me. As far as “schematic edge” – when I hear that I think of Charlie Weiss upon taking the ND coaching job – I don’t think it’ll be as big a deal as the media has been hyping it – they jump on every single detail this time of year as there’s nothing else to report.
As far as our offense vs USC and UW – USC junked Norm Chow’s offense after a year or two. That’s what caused that rift between NC and Carroll/Kiffin. The USC offense actually stems from what John Gruden ran down at Tampa for many years, as Kiffin got access to the Tampa Bay complex during the offseasno and got to pick Gruden’s brains because of his connections with his daddy. They brought that NFL-style offense to SC. The first season PC was there with Chow they went like 6-6 and the offense fizzled, Carroll lost patience with Chow’s methodical approach he used at BYU and they moved to the Bucs-style offense and Kiffin began his rise to power while Chow was forced out. They took a lot of the run game from longtime NFL OL coach Alex Gibbs (who is now PC’s OL coach up in Seattle). Gibbs was a coaching “consultant” in 2002 (which may or may not have violated NCAA rules concerning the number of coaches allowed) because PC was not happy with Chow’s run game. When they tried to take away Chow’s playcalling duties that was the final straw and NC was out.
Our defenses are pretty similar because of the Monte Kiffin – Pete Carroll – DeWayne Walker – Chuck Bullough connection but the offenses split off around 2001 or 2002.
by jtthirtyfour on Apr 19, 2010 1:49 PM PDT up reply actions
So then
to whom do you give credit for the U$C offensive “juggernaut” (until John David Booty)…
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
With all the talent they assembled it didn’t really matter what offense they ran….so I think most of the credit would go to whoever had the bright idea of giving away free houses and SUVs to recruits. I think one of the reasons they wanted to junk NC’s scheme was to take advantage of the talent they were able to get. At BYU his offense was the passing equivalent of a veer offense, which is meant to maximize a less talented team – once they were able to start pulling in 5* recruits they were able to simplify like an NFL offense.
At that point it’s not really about scheme, but just teaching and preparing the talent, and playcalling. $C was able to put points up on the board because they had plenty of talent and their coaches were able to prepare and develop the talent – NC developed 2 heisman winners at QB, and was calling plays up until 2004 I believe, the bowl game vs. oklahoma.
USC’s offense is pretty basic and common, so is ours as Chow has evolved as well (every coach does), we run some of the same stuff now but so does everyone else. I don’t think there’s anything unique and specific to our two programs though simply because we shared an OC.
by jtthirtyfour on Apr 20, 2010 1:09 PM PDT up reply actions
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