Yeah my reaction to this article was "isn't the goal of an offense to fool the defense, not to be easy for the players to pick up?" I don't think that "Bajakian has done his job" just by teaching them the offense, he needs to have plays that move the ball too! I mean it's not a bad thing that they are saying they have full grasp of it I guess, but this sounds like classic pre-season grandstanding. I'll believe that we have a functional offense when I see it. In fact, after all these years, I'm not even sure I know what it looks like anymore.
Honestly if we can score even 24 ppg on offense against a conference only schedule this year I would be satisfied. We had 12.7 ppg last year in conference. 13th ahead of only Rutgers at 5.7 (yikes, but do they really count?). 24 ppg would have placed us 10th, though there is a bit of a cluster right there - 25.2 ppg would have been 7th. I think we can win with 24 ppg with this defense. Last year for context our D gave up 27.3 ppg in conference, but if you take out a 52 spot from OSU (who we don't play this year) that is a shade over 24 ppg. Btw the 27.3 was 9th in conference but there is also a clump there - just 1 pt less per game (26.3) would pass two teams and be 7th. Clearly the 24-27 ppg is sort of the league average range, to win consistently you need to score that much or more, and give up that much or less.
(PS Lou appreciate the article, good writing and appreciate the content so not criticizing - just a but skeptical of the preseason talk...)
bigten.org
I think it was Mike Leach that said something like the best offenses are ones where the players don't have to think, because they are intuitive, simple, and easy to execute. When you have something that players know how to execute, guess what? They execute. Which is what you need.
I think the other thing I like about what I'm hearing about Bajakian run offenses is that it is flexible in adapting to the personnel and making use of their strengths. They ran heavy at BC because that's what fit their personnel.
Jake ran a pass happy offense when he had Dan Lefevour who is one of the leading passers in NCAA history throwing to Antonio Davis at Central Michigan. In Bajakian’s first season, they all wound up having career years. Running a traditional spread offense, LeFevour threw for 3,562 yards and ran for 1,122 yards. The two running backs, Ontario Sneed and Justin Hoskins, combined for 1150 yards on the ground. And Brown caught 102 passes for 1,003 yards.
When Bajakian was hired to run the offense at Cincinnati, he tailored the spread offense to feature tight end Travis Kelce, now the best player in the NFL at his position. Kelce caught 45 passes for 722 yards in his senior year, and the Bearcats had back-to-back ten win seasons with Bajakian running the offense.
When Bajakian became the offensive coordinator at Tennessee, he had better athletes across almost every position of the roster, like future Pro Bowl running back Alvin Kamara. The Volunteers ran a shotgun spread offense with pro style principals. That meant Tennessee ran most of the same formations Bajakian used at his previous two stops, but the plays were designed for the quarterback to get the ball out more quickly to a playmaker in space.
From 2015-2018, the Buccaneers were a vertical passing team that featured Jameis Winston throwing the ball down the field regularly to playmakers like Mike Evans.
Then at Boston College last season, Bajakian’s offense ran the ball over 50 times per game. All ACC running back A.J. Dillon rushed for 1,685 yards before declaring for the NFL Draft in December.
Another thing I like about Bajakian is that he has consistently run top 40 offenses at every stop in his career. I'm confident we'll see one again this year at NU. McCall had ONE top 40 offense in his time at NU, and many in the bottom quartile including our pitiful close to dead last offense last year. How anyone could defend him is beyond me. He was terrible.