For those who think this is an issue, do you think ‘good’ OC’s use ‘new’ routes every game or don’t use the same plays at all from week to week?
As a defensive player, we watched film specifically for play recognition purposes, so you’d know generally speaking what to be ready for when you’d see certain looks.
I'm hoping to find the film from the OSU game and look at it, plus some of the other games. Some of these short yardage things are clearly by design (screen plays), but I'd agree that Raiola is either deciding on his own or is being coached to take less risky options when throwing the football. While we certainly don't want to be turnover prone, we also have to be willing to take on some risk in the passing game, especially if we are going to throw the ball 30+ times a game. At the end of the day, I'd rather throw a INT 40 yards down the field on 3rd and long in our own territory than a RB screen pass that goes nowhere. At least on the INT you had a chance at something good happening and it ends up being like a punt. Suffice to say that while INTs aren't good, there are varying degrees to their badness.
I'm also curious how much we are tipping our hand in our play calling and formations. We had a number of plays that OSU couldn't have defender better if we told them what we were running at the line, which makes me wonder if maybe we are telling them what we are going to do based on tendency or formation.
I got the opportunity to sit and rewatch all the offensive snaps from the Indiana game and noticed a tendency that might be "tipping our pitches". When Emmett is in at RB and we are in shotgun formation, where he lines up in relation to the QB almost always tips whether we are doing a run or a pass play.
On pass plays, he lines up even or often slightly ahead of the QB.
On run plays, he lines up often time a full yard behind the QB. The only times we passed the ball when he was offset like this were on what appeared (to my untrained eye) to be RPO plays, where he could have been handed the ball by design. I found zero instances where he lines up even or slightly ahead of the QB and it ended up being a run play.
I found this odd, so went back and found the highlights/snaps I could find from the Ohio State and Rutgers games. While Dowdell and Rahmir also lined up similarly in different situations, there wasn't the same sort of consistency in play type tipping that I saw on Emmett snaps. Dowdell had a few runs where it looked like he was even with the QB at the start of the run and Rahmir had some snaps where it looked like he start offset on a pass. Emmett's pretty consistently held with the trend outlined above (with the main exception being some play action passes (which could potentially have just been RPOs).
This might be nothing, as I am far from a trained eye. However, it could be actually inadvertent play tipping, and if it is I'm sure someone more football savvy on another team's staff picked up on this, if I was able to into 20-30 minutes of looking at film on YouTube.
The reason this would be of increasing concern, if it is indeed tipping what we are doing, is that we've seen Emmett take over as the primary running back since his breakout game at Purdue (46% of the snaps over the last three games). Despite having a good game at Purdue (averaged 6.3 ypc), he has been held to 2.8 ypc since and the offense as a whole has floundered, putting up just 12.6 ppg.
Tipping run or pass on some plays, might not be that big of a deal (obvious pass or run downs), but it can make a big difference if you are trying to catch someone off guard. Regardless, there are a number of plays where it seems like the defense is in way too good of a position to stop what we are doing. That tells me that we aren't just not executing, but we are giving the defense an edge to stop us.
