Point Blank – September 1
NCAA Time: Getting Assistance from Assistants…For BYU/Arizona, it really is what’s up front that counts…
The College Football season gets into gear this evening, a sport that provides some of the biggest edges of all because there are many factors that are difficult for the oddsmakers to build into the line. That means time to deal with both general handicapping technique, and also get into some specifics on this week’s NCAA board, across a key but often neglected handicapping aspect – the impact of new assistant coaches, especially early in the season.
Item: Some teams may have an edge in game planning this week
Noel Mazzone was the offensive coordinator at UCLA last year. Now he holds that position at Teas A&M, which takes on the Bruins this week. Dave Aranda was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin. This week he coaches against the Badgers. Shannon Dawson is the new offensive coordinator at Southern Miss, and will be looking across the sidelines at the Kentucky team where he had been the OC. That means some unique plot twists in this week’s matchups, and the kind of “game inside the game” story lines that can also mean edges.
What the new assistants do is bring two advantages – not just an understanding of the personnel of the unit that they coached at the previous school, but also the unit they are matching up against as well. It wasn’t just that Mazzone was the one helping to develop Josh Rosen and the UCLA offense, but the fact that he was also going up against the Bruin defense in practice. Aranda does not just know the Wisconsin defenders well, but also much of the Paul Chryst playbook, since he was lining his defenders up against it. And of course the same can be said for Dawson, and note that with him there may also be a little chip on the shoulder as well – Mazzone and Aranda voluntarily left for their new positions; Dawson was fired by Mark Stoops at Kentucky.
Before getting too excited note that there is a flip side – the opposing team also knows the ins and outs of the coach, and his preferred way of doing things. Dawson focused on that this week, when asked if Kentucky would likely change many things up because of him - "They’re not going to sit here and change their whole defensive scheme. I have a little knowledge about them and they have a little knowledge about me. Ultimately, the team that executes the best will win. Hopefully, our question marks will be better than theirs."
There was this from UCLA DT Eddie Vanderdoes, on facing Mazzone - “He’s a smart guy, so he’s not going to call the same stuff that we’ve been seeing for four years in practice. He knows better than that.”
As Wisconsin/LSU at Lambeau field nears, Chryst opted for diplomacy - “We’re going to be different than what we were last year. What LSU will do will be different than what we did last year. It’ll have an impact, but I don’t know if anyone has the upper hand on it.”
What are the practical applications? I give the edge to the coaches in terms of their knowledge of the opposing players, rather than vice-versa, though it is not something that we can be exact with in terms of a point value. But there are some specifics to dig into, not just for this week but the season ahead.
I believe the LSU defense will be special, a combination of talent and tactics, with Aranda getting the opportunity to coach better personnel than he had at Wisconsin. Considering that the Badgers were #1 in the nation in scoring defense, and #2 in total defense, in 2015 that says something (although an * is required because some of that statistical success was schedule-driven).
The Texas A&M offense has a chance to be much better after under-achieving significantly in 2015, much of those struggles looking like schemes that were not maximizing the talents of the players (there is a question as to how much upside Trevor Knight brings at QB, so perhaps he biggest improvements are a season away). But in terms of matching the talent to the playbook, one plot twist that I expect to see is that the Kentucky offense may be better without Dawson. His “Air Raid” attack is well-designed, but was not going to fit the kind of skill players being recruited to Lexington, with the new pro-style schemes a better deployment for the kind of talent that will be recruited there.
In a moment it will be time to look at a coaching change that we can put into play immediately, and I will go into deeper detail on this one to focus in on the general concepts involved. But first time to update something that was a prime topic yesterday, and is worth following…
About Last Night…
The Reds have now drawn two walks in 133 trips to the plate over the last four games, and were the enablers for Ricky Nolasco to throw a complete-game shutout at only 94 pitches. Nolasco had not won a game since July 9, and entered Wednesday at 4-12/5.24. That is a rather hideous display of a lack of patience at the batter’s box, and the sort of thing that can happen to a losing team on the road vs. a non-division opponent this late in the season.
In the Sights, Saturday NCAA…
The particular execution is a ticket on #205 BYU (10:30 Eastern), with +1.5 available in some key precincts, and value extending to -1. But there are general concepts at play here that lead to it, and they are worthy of a deeper dive.
There are some significant changes taking place at BYU, with alum Kalani Sitake taking over as HC, and fellow alum and former Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer returning to campus to be the OC. I believe they will be good fits, and part of the handicapping key is to note that there are changes being made from the get-go.
Sitake and DC Ilaisa Tuiaki are changing Bronco Mendenhall’s 3-4 schemes into a 4-3, and the personnel on hand allows for a relatively smooth transition. It is more drastic on offense, where the Cougars played at one of the fastest paces in the nation under Robert Anae in recent years, but are now slowing down into more of a pro-set under Detmer.
I will past something that was in an earlier thread on that front, how BYU starting center Parker Dawe explains it – “Last year with Anae we had the up tempo go fast go hard offense so we were all about go, go, go. There wasn’t any emphasis on clock management or situational stuff. It was just like we were going to smash people in the mouth regardless of the situation. We were just going to attack. That was the mindset. This year, first of all, coach Detmer is really smart and he understands the game really, really well so his focus in fall camp is execution [of] everything; [creating] the ability to run one play with 10 different looks and execute it perfectly. It is taking time over the ball; getting everyone to have a chance to think of what they are doing and where they are going. It’s about taking time and managing the game.”
What that does for the OL also leads to an interesting take by Dawe –
“The progression for the offensive line has been awesome. In Anae’s offense, we were in attack mode all the time. Now coach (Mike) Empey is on us every play about our technique, making sure we take the right steps, get to the right spot, move to position. We could go to the right people (to block) but if we do it the wrong way, he’s on us about it. Before, we were like ‘just go, don’t think, just go.’ So you’ll see the offensive line playing more fundamentally sound under Detmer and Empey.
“I think this year, I would say we are better because we are way more physical. We are becoming technicians. We aren’t just going to go. Last year there wasn’t a ton of footwork. We are big, strong, we’re technical and we are very aggressive, even on the ground. We are shoving all the way to the end of the play. That wasn’t something that was ingrained in us.”
There is also some more to it…
Item: Why I believe that matters this week
I see a major mismatch at the line of scrimmage in this game, enough to be a deciding factor in what the markets are pricing as an even affair. It isn’t just about technique with the BYU OL, but also getting stronger, and I will let Sitake take the lead on that front –
“That’s why we hit the weight room harder than we’ve ever done before. We felt like we needed to get that edge on the line of scrimmage and we did some unique things to get our guys ready. If you ask our players, we squatted more than any team. I can tell you confidently, we squatted more than any team in the country and we ran more stairs than them. So that built a lot of strength. We lifted every day. We did the same thing in camp. If you want to get bigger, stronger and have confidence, the weight room is the best place to do it.”
Note that part of why it is so important is that the Cougars literally have men in their OL, not boys. While the school does not show the birth dates of the players on their roster, there are starters older than NFL players at three of the positions, with graduate transfers in Andrew Ede and Keyan Norman, who have both already done their Mormon missions, while Dawe is a senior that has done his mission as well. That seasoned group now takes on an Arizona defense trying to rebuild under four new assistant coaches, including DC Marcel Yates, and look at the starting DL in their 3-3-5 alignment -
Justin Belknap 6-2/247
Parker Zellers 6-1/247
Sani Fuimaono 6-1/271
That may well be the smallest starting group in the nation, and in terms of confidence they are coming off of a season in which they allowed 35.8 points per game, that coming despite the fact that the Wildcats faced one of the weakest non-conference schedules of any team.
I believe the Cougars control this one in an old school fashion, with a terrific physical RB tandem in Jamaal Williams and Algernon Brown (at 245, Brown nearly weighs as much as two of the starting Arizona DL), and a healthy Taysom Hill being one of the better running QBs in the land. Arizona will make some plays with speed on offense to keep it close, but the fundamentals of this matchup point to BYU being able to command the line of scrimmage, in front of what I expect to be close to a neutral crowd, with this from Sitake something of interest on that front - "We have fans all over the world. It was evident when we went and did our firesides throughout the country at the destinations we will be playing. We’re going to have fans at every game wherever we play. Arizona happens to be a place where we have a lot of fans and we’re looking forward to them making a lot of noise. We have to give them reason to rise and shout."
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