Crawford's take on the offense

http://www.courier-journal.com/blogs/crawford/blog.html

Great blog post by Crawford about the offensive problems.

I generally agree with what he's talking about. I guess there are no magic plays, but if week after week we see the same deep cover-2 zone, maybe come up with SOMETHING to counter that. Don't just accept that we're going to have to throw short -- that's what they want you to do.  It's not like we're playing the '85 or even the '06 Bears.

Why waste Brohm's talent on dink/dunk? How awful is it going to be watching cantwell throw 100 MPH passes on 4 yard curls to Peter Notcha?

The thing Crawford said that sticks out the most is that it is an offense that relies on the talents of the players -- not getting guys open.  

Petrino's offense was about getting people open.  They never just ran routes -- everyone on the play went somewhere for a reason it seemed. And people got open -- so it didn't matter who the players were, as long as they did what they were supposed to do, the play succeeded.

But Petrino also put people in a position to succeed. He didn't ask Lefors to throw the ball downfield, and (other than the UK game in 2005) he didn't ask Brohm to run the dink/dunk/finesse offense that lefors ran.

And in terms of game planning -- last year's WVU was a clinic in finding a weakness and exploiting it.  Play-action passes to the seams -- I think we started EVERY offensive possession with that. Remember Herbie's call: "The linebackers are biting SO HARD on play-action."  

But have we changed our offensive game plan once this year? It's the same set of plays over and over.  

All of which is to say, things are Different now -- not exactly breaking news.

But Crawford has done the best job I've seen of describing why.