Army Football's Blog

Air Force Game

USMA98 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:25:26 GMT

I was at the Air Force game on November 1st, where Army lost 16-7. While the defense played superbly, what disapointed me was the complete lack of imagination in the play calling. All we saw was option and drop back passing. I saw only one sweep, no counters, and no play action. The option must be the focus of the offense, but it must be augmented with other plays that keep the defense honest, such as the three mentioned above. Otherwise, they'll just stack the line and shut us down the way Air Force did.

Particularly disturbing was the insertion of Carson Williams and the spread "offense" into the game with 4:30 left, Army down by 6, and having all of its timeouts. The offense may have not been working SO FAR that day, but the Carson Williams spread has NEVER worked, which is why we scrapped it in the first place. In that situation, I would run the flexbone, trying to get the ball on the perimeter and taking shots down the field with play action. That had a better chance of winning than the sloppy garbage we saw at the end of the game.

Army's Objective as a Football Program

USMA98 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:51:37 GMT

Now that Army seems to have it's act together by dedicating to the triple option, where does it go from here? The answer is to continue to improve to the point where the following objectives are met:

1) Be competitive for the Commander in Chief's trophy every year. This almost goes without saying. There is NO excuse to not being able to compete at the same level as Air Force and Navy.

2) Consistently defeat small school low and mid-tier conference opponents. Sorry, but losing to the likes of Akron and Buffalo is an embarresment to the United States Army.

3) Occassionally upset large school major conference opponents. We can't have anybody saying to themselves that Army is an off week. I don't think anybody says that about Air Force or Navy right now.

4) Be bowl eligible every year.

Air Force and Navy are in large part currently at this level, although it looks like Navy has lost a little of its punch with the loss of Paul Johnson to Georgia Tech, who, by the way, has taken the triple option to a BCS program and shown that it can work very, very well at that "level," i.e. a 6-1 record and a number 21 national rank. At any rate, in spite of the low-wattage leadership of Stan Brock, I am confident that we'll get back to where we belong within the next year or two. Stay tuned.

Episode IV: A New Hope

USMA98 — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:00:26 GMT

Well it looks like "Coach" Brock took my letter to heart. Army benched Carson Williams at QB and ran the flexbone EXCLSUIVELY. The result:

1) Beating the spread by 29 points

2) 21 first downs

3) 280 rushing yards

4) 36:46 time of possesion

As the team gets more comfortable with the option, these stats will only improve, and we may actually end up winning a game or two.

Also, Navy, which is a pure flexbone option team, beat the 16th ranked team in the nation with glorified high school talent.

The bottom line:

The flexbone option works. Keep an eye on Georgia Tech...

A simple message for "Coach" Brock

USMA98 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:16:32 GMT

"Coach" Brock-

Get rid of the ridiculous four-receiver and two-back sets and stick to the flex-bone triple option. Doing this necessitates having a QB with a little bit of speed, i.e. NOT Carson Williams. He needs to change positions, because his skill set at QB isn't part of where we need to go.

Now I understand that you want to have "flexibility" in your play calling, but when you change sets as you have, you telegraph your play calling and destroy the whole purpose of running triple option in the first place, which is to loosen up a defense and create openings at the perimeter and down the field for big plays by giving opponents the SAME look every time and pounding them with the fullback dive and QB keeper. The part option, part pro-style, part West Coast "Brock-bone" isn't a system that creates offensive rhythm and opens up defenses; it's a disjointed mess that allows defenses to get inside your huddle. Fix it.

Thank you,

Dan Mauro
USMA '98

Colin Mooney

USMA98 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:29:15 GMT

Colin Mooney, the Army fullback, carried the ball 26 times for 81 yards, which isn't anything to write home about on the face of it (also no fumbles.) But when you consider that Carson Williams was no threat to run, and as a result the Temple safties were playing right in the guard-tackle gaps, I'm actually pretty impressed with his performance. I think he'll be alright if we can establish the QB and the pitch.

Temple Postmortem

USMA98 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:48:53 GMT

Army loses 35-7 to Temple. Of those five Temple touchdowns, three were a result of turnovers and blown kick coverage. The defense played well enough to win. Hats off to them.

Special teams play is a pure reflection of coaching in my opinion, and reflects poorly on Stan Brock, as per usual.

The offense was disjointed at best. Army lined up in three sets:

1) A double slot flexbone set out of which they ran dive option, sweeps, and counters.

2) A double back set they ran power off tackle with.

3) A single back, four receiver set they exclusively threw out of.

Way to telegraph your play calling Stan/Tim! I hate blowing Navy's horn, but they ONLY run a variant of the flexbone set and give their opponent the same look EVERYTIME. This is what the option is all about, guys: The same look with at least ten different major play types that can come out of it. Keeps the defense guessing at all times. That's the point. You're an option team now, and you better stick to your damn knitting.

QB Carson Williams is clearly not the man to run an option offense, if that's what they want to do. He simply does not have the foot speed for the job. Once again, in comparison to Navy: Williams ran the ball ten times for 15 yards, while Navy's QB ran the ball 17 times for 75 yards. Maybe they don't want to run option? Williams threw the ball 14 times with six completions for 74 yards and one INT, while the Navy QB threw the ball four times with two completions for 44 yards and a TD.

Stan and Tim, in the option, your QB is a running back FIRST and a passer SECOND. Running must dominate your play calling and the QB's ability to run is paramount. Navy QBs have spaghetti arms, I've seen it myself, but they consistently have higher passer ratings. Think about it, if you can.

The bottom line is that we need a QB with some speed, which I am sure we have, and the will to commit to the the option the way it is MEANT to be run. Half-assing never gets anybody anywhere. As I have said many times before, I doubt whether Stan and Tim have it upstairs to get this team where it needs to go. One game down, eleven to go...

Triple Option Comment

USMA98 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:56:39 GMT

After watching Georgia Tech run up a 27-0 score in the first half, Jacksonville State coach Jack Crowe predicted Georgia Tech's Atlantic Coast Conference opponents will have difficulty defending the option-based offense.

''There's just too many issues with this offense for people to deal with,'' Crowe said. ''We had two and a half weeks to deal with it. The rest of these folks will get two days. Good luck, ACC.''

I am excited about the new Army season but seriously concerned with the QB/FB situation. Big Dufus decided to stay with his pocket passer and blocking back from last year's pro-style abortion, in a running-based offensive system that emphasizes quickness on one's feet. I'm not surprised in the least given the demonstrated intellectual prowess of "Coach" Brock. The guy just doesn't get it. That having been said, I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Go Army.

Inside Army Football

USMA98 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:41:13 GMT

This is a blog written by a sports writer at the Times Herald Record, Army's local paper. It's worth reading:

http://forums.recordonline.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?webtag=th-army

GT to run flexbone

USMA98 — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:47:53 GMT

Former Navy coach Paul Johnson is installing his flexbone option attack at Georgia Tech. As expected, he is being met with resistnace from some in the fan base that think the ACC is the NFL. Read the remarks from Paul Johnson below:

On how long it will take for people to stop asking if this offense will work...
"I don't think it will ever stop. I mean as soon as you lose a game, that's going to be the reason. Everybody has their opinion and we will see what happens. It's like I said before; I find it amusing really. It's past the point of anything else other than being amusing to me. You ask people why they say that and the only answer I can get is there's too much speed. We ran the offense at the Naval Academy against the same teams and I promise you the kids here are faster than the ones we had at the Naval Academy, so the essence of will-it-work is ludicrous now. I mean if you don't execute now when your young and you put the ball on the ground, then none of it will work. You can look back on last year and say the pro style of offense won't work either. Every time someone lost a game you could say, `well, that offense won't work'. If they don't score 30 or 40 points, it has a lot to do with how you execute and how you do it, not as much as what you're doing. In my mind, over the span of time we have proven the offense will work at a lot of different schools and a lot of different places.

"That's the thing that's hilarious: `at this level'. I mean, what, are we in the NFC East? When I was at the Naval Academy, I can promise you we played Maryland, Wake Forest, NC State, Duke, Rutgers, Boston College, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and they're on the same level as we are. It's not like they weren't in the same division or the same level, so that's why I don't buy that."

It has never made any sense to me whatsoever why the triple option would not work at a BCS school. I challenged people to explain why in a previous post and came up with no answer other than "speed," just as Johnson describes. That doesn't help. Would not offensive speed running the option counter defensive speed? My opinion is that running the option takes vision and an IQ over 100, somethings that most me-too, copycat head football coaches don't have.

Offense Update

USMA98 — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:13:29 GMT

Based on the publicly available information I have seen, Army will be running a flexbone triple option offense, with a heavy reliance on play action pass. A flexbone offense is essentially run out of a spread fomation with the QB under center, a fullback, slots/wings on either side of the line, and a lot of motion and misdirection. This is the offense Navy has been running down our throats for six years now, although it sounds like Stan Brock wants to pass much more than Navy. I'm actually willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This blog has been calling for the adoption of such an offense for almost a year now, and I am glad that some sort of sanity has prevailed. This levers our strengths, teamwork and execution, and gives us the best chance to win on any given game day.

Go Army.