HC Ryan Day (National Champion)

[Onebuckfan]

Wanted to comment on something I’ve found extremely unique to this years team….

We run the fewest amount of plays per game. It’s insanely counter-intuitive, as Day always liked a bit of tempo and to maximize amount of possessions. And common wisdom is, if you have the better players, you want more possessions bc over the course of a game, the extra possessions will favor the better team.

But Day has been pretty pissed over last few years over the amount of possessions per game when a team slows pace and tries to shorten game.

To his credit, he gave up on trying to increase possessions per game, and focused on maximizing points per possession. And to maximize that stat, they take more time between plays to make sure they will execute play to its maximum potential. They play slower but execute at a higher level.

I found this strategy to be very odd as it played out throughout season, but I’ll give him his flowers. It’s not necessarily the most exciting, but it has worked extremely well. It’s like he’s beating our opponents at their game….with much better players. He took lemons and made lemonade…

Just for context Michigan ran 42 plays and Stanford ran 70 against Notre Dame. Our D rests during games.

 

[billmac91]

Just for context Michigan ran 42 plays and Stanford ran 70 against Notre Dame. Our D rests during games.

Yeah, it’s interesting bc the common theme going on right now is “well he wants to keep the starters fresh”.

I actually don’t think that’s it necessarily….its a nice byproduct though.

He got sick and tired of a half where we got (2) possessions and if we didn’t execute perfectly we were in tight games against average to bad teams.

I think he said “fuck it”. College wants to keep the clock running all the time and shorten the game, we’ll just adjust and become the best at it.

He preferred “old” college clock rules but for the first year has leaned into the new rules (which suck IMO) but maximized the teams Points per possession.

And to your point, it absolutely keeps the defense fresh.

 

[Jaxbuck]

Wanted to comment on something I’ve found extremely unique to this years team….

We run the fewest amount of plays per game. It’s insanely counter-intuitive, as Day always liked a bit of tempo and to maximize amount of possessions. And common wisdom is, if you have the better players, you want more possessions bc over the course of a game, the extra possessions will favor the better team.

But Day has been pretty pissed over last few years over the amount of possessions per game when a team slows pace and tries to shorten game.

To his credit, he gave up on trying to increase possessions per game, and focused on maximizing points per possession. And to maximize that stat, they take more time between plays to make sure they will execute play to its maximum potential. They play slower but execute at a higher level.

I found this strategy to be very odd as it played out throughout season, but I’ll give him his flowers. It’s not necessarily the most exciting, but it has worked extremely well. It’s like he’s beating our opponents at their game….with much better players. He took lemons and made lemonade…

I think it's actually ruthlessly smart, he's saying my #1 weapon is my teams skill which manifests itself in stats as efficiency.

When you gain more yards and points per play than opponents and convert third downs better then it's counter intuitive genius to limit the number of plays because you get so much more out of every play than they do.

Forget taking air out of the ball, you are taking it from their lungs.

 

[billmac91]

I think it's actually ruthlessly smart, he's saying my #1 weapon is my teams skill which manifests itself in stats as efficiency.

When you gain more yards and points per play than opponents and convert third downs better then it's counter intuitive genius to limit the number of plays because you get so much more out of every play than they do.

Forget taking air out of the ball, you are taking it from their lungs.

I’d just say….

Do you know the insane amount of convincing this must have taken for Day to agree to this…

It’s not in his nature and never was….until this year. It’s been the right call though….

 

[Jaxbuck]

I’d just say….

Do you know the insane amount of convincing this must have taken for Day to agree to this…

It’s not in his nature and never was….until this year. It’s been the right call though….

You have to be rock solid in your belief in that efficiency.

You think about it though, and I'm glad you brought his up because it's been one thing I've been looking at all year the same way as you-like what in the hell is he doing? ...it's a refinement of Tresselball.

The old school, defense and field position philosophy was always said to be the "surest path to victory" and I argued my ass off during the Tressel years that that was no longer the case. Offenses have gotten better, they won't make as many self inflicted wounds if you just try to keep it in front of you and protect a 7 point lead with a rested defense.

Early Urban Meyer philosophy was score in volume and fuck resting the defense. Defense is there to get the offense the ball back. This was a swing too far the other way and all that volume dilutes the efficiency.

This is the perfect update, if you are going to compete on skill, because you are beating people with a rate stat while 95% of them are still thinking in absolute numbers/counting stats. "We ran for more yards, we will win"

This approach is sort of like saying I can hold my breath longer than you so I'm going to take air out of the room and wait for you to keel over.

It's fascinating to me and once I saw it, I was even more impressed with the change in Day. It's fucking ruthless and smart. I love it.

 

[Onebuckfan]

He found a way to manipulate these rules in our favor. Some idiots were supposing that if Indiana blew us out we could lose our bye. Their evidence was Iowa beat us 52-26 in 2017. I doubt IU scores 20 so there can be no blow out.

 

[BUCKYLE]

The ducking, the cheating, the flag planting...

To paraphrase:

All they've done is wake a sleeping giant and fill it with a terrible resolve.

They thought they were seeing the future. It was a mirage and behind the mirage, Ryan fucking Day was building a fully operational Death Star.

Fuck TSUN

 

[billmac91]

You have to be rock solid in your belief in that efficiency.

You think about it though, and I'm glad you brought his up because it's been one thing I've been looking at all year the same way as you-like what in the hell is he doing? ...it's a refinement of Tresselball.

The old school, defense and field position philosophy was always said to be the "surest path to victory" and I argued my ass off during the Tressel years that that was no longer the case. Offenses have gotten better, they won't make as many self inflicted wounds if you just try to keep it in front of you and protect a 7 point lead with a rested defense.

Early Urban Meyer philosophy was score in volume and fuck resting the defense. Defense is there to get the offense the ball back. This was a swing too far the other way and all that volume dilutes the efficiency.

This is the perfect update, if you are going to compete on skill, because you are beating people with a rate stat while 95% of them are still thinking in absolute numbers/counting stats. "We ran for more yards, we will win"

This approach is sort of like saying I can hold my breath longer than you so I'm going to take air out of the room and wait for you to keel over.

It's fascinating to me and once I saw it, I was even more impressed with the change in Day. It's fucking ruthless and smart. I love it.

I’m too old to recite each year the rules changed and under which coach….

But there was absolutely a time, when college games basically lasted 5 hours and the clock stoppages created an insane amount of possessions.

So offenses rightfully wasted to exploit tired defenses and error on the side of defensive mental mistakes instead of executing their offense at an elite level.

Fast forward to today, where college is now NFL-lite (which I hate) but it makes sense to play the game like an NFL team. Clean possessions, minimize TO’s, and force your opponent to “out execute” you if they can.

In retrospect, what made Tressel-ball so crazy, is it took extra emphasis over a much longer period of time in a game, to win. It probably didn’t seem like a lot, but I’d guess there was 3-4 more minutes of actual gameplay during Tressel’s years….

 

[BB73]

Wanted to comment on something I’ve found extremely unique to this years team….

We run the fewest amount of plays per game. It’s insanely counter-intuitive, as Day always liked a bit of tempo and to maximize amount of possessions. And common wisdom is, if you have the better players, you want more possessions bc over the course of a game, the extra possessions will favor the better team.

But Day has been pretty pissed over last few years over the amount of possessions per game when a team slows pace and tries to shorten game.

To his credit, he gave up on trying to increase possessions per game, and focused on maximizing points per possession. And to maximize that stat, they take more time between plays to make sure they will execute play to its maximum potential. They play slower but execute at a higher level.

I found this strategy to be very odd as it played out throughout season, but I’ll give him his flowers. It’s not necessarily the most exciting, but it has worked extremely well. It’s like he’s beating our opponents at their game….with much better players. He took lemons and made lemonade…

Football will always be a “points per possession” contest. A team will almost always have either the same number of possessions, or 1 more, than the opponent. An onside kick can steal an extra possession, but that’s really the only way. Fumbled punts can either be looked at as an extended possession, or a possession/turnover for the receiving team. Defensive scores are short, successful possessions. Field position games are played to reduce the likely points in the opponent’s next possession while increasing the next one for your team.

Possessions for the opposing team can be mimimal scoring opportunities due to good clock management, like scoring in the final 30 seconds of a half. A perfect example from Saturday, the Buckeyes got the ball with 5:24 left and scored with 16 seconds left in the half, a thing of beauty. Wonderful clock management by Day/Hartline. At 5:24 I said “It’d be great to have a 5-minute TD drive here “, and went into halftime happy, up 17-9 after a useless 16-second possession by TTUN, looking forward to tOSU getting the second half kickoff.

Somewhat off-topic, but it’s crazy that the red zone stat for supposed RZ effectiveness is the % of scoring possessions. If a team gets 100% and kicks FGs they will lose to a team scoring only 50% of the time but getting TDs. I measure red zone by PPP, points per possession, looking to achieve at least 5.5. 10 possessions will result in 55 points if there are 7 TDs, 2 FGs, and 1 non-score (missed FG, 4th down failure, turnover, or kneel-down). Within a smaller sample, 3 red zone possessions in a game are successful if they result in at least 17 points.