The basic objective for football is to score more points than your opponent. Both Kugler and Dimel always talked about winning the time of possession battle. I listened to Dimel say something to the effect of 95% of the time if you win the TOP you win the game. We are the 5 percent when we do. But, he is the Head Coach with decades of experience, so you have to pretty much give him credit for some knowledge. It begs the question, among others, then why are you losing every game? How is it you end up in the five percent when you do win the TOP battle? But, it does tell you why the two coaches heavily emphasize the running game. It tells you that they would rather run and that means run the clock, too, than pass. In a perfect world, Kugler and Dimel would run every play. They don't pass for balance. The pass because they can't run enough yards per carry to keep drives going. So, they are forced to pass. It worked for Lombardi. Now, contrast that with Mike Price. He looked at the very basic objective of football. Not to win the TOP but to win the game, and that was to have more points than the other team.
To run the ball effectively requires power at the line, mixed with technique. Kugler's whole reason for being alive! But, it also requires consistency. You must be able to do it every time. There is little room for failure. And it sacrifices half of the offense. Because it requires so much and has no room for error, it requires almost total commitment to it. Receivers are turned into blockers. Passes are just a run with an overhand lateral. Quarterbacks are another running back. Pass blocking isn't given that same emphasis in practice, quarterbacks/running backs aren't practicing passing and receivers aren't practicing catching. As a matter of fact, receivers are required to abandon their identity and passion, along with their natural skills. So, in the end, if they can't be nearly perfect at running the ball, they have abandoned their only way to make up for that-the pass. Mike Price didn't go the team perfection way of the run. He went with the individual matchups being able to beat their opponent of that one play, with a couple of options in case the first one didn't work out on that play. He used the run to keep the defense honest instead of vice versa. Every single player, at every single position was into the game because every single player knew that at some point they would be the star or part of it in their way. Of course there is the old saying that there are three things that can happen on a pass play and two of them aren't good.
As the season progressed(the season did-the team maybe not so much), I better understood what Dimel was trying to do. A little. I also had felt during the season that the defense was not stellar, but sufficient. By the end, I was wondering if I had been too easy going on the defense while I was so focused on the damned offense. I had believed all along that the offense was the root of the problem and keeping us from winning. So, I went to the NCAA stats to see how the defense compared and while there to look at the (damned) offense to see if I was justified in my blame.
First, the offense. In total offense, we are ranked 117th, and for some perspective in comparison with Rice at 126th and NMSU ranked 102, we are pretty bad on the offensive side of the ball. Reflecting what I had figured in general, our Rushing offense was ranked 93rd, while NMSU is 92nd and Rice is ranked 101. Passing offense shows us ranked 103 and Rice at 117th. Bottom line? Well 1-10? Pretty bad, but could be worse? But that is only half of the story. What about the defense? Was it in fact, decent enough? Well, 99th in total defense is horrible, but in comparison to NMSU's 124th it seems better, but Rice's 60th ranking is way better, like it is average! It had to be that damned pass defense that was killing us, right? No, not exactly. In Yards allowed per game, UTEP is 82nd ranked at 240 yards, Rice is 86th at 244.5,and get out of here, NMSU is 61st ranked at 225. So, it was the rush defense, then? Well, UTEP's ranking of 106th and 196 ypg is way better than NMSU's 128th ranking and 254 ypg. The defense wasn't the hidden culprit that maybe I had not seen while it was hiding in plain sight.
But, turnovers will kill you, right? That must be it. Nope. That isn't it, either. As much as I used to blame the interceptions and fumbles, seems as though we are tied with 8 other teams at 106th in turnover margin of -.55 per game. NMSU, at 127th is a -1.09.
Penalties! Those damned penalties are killing us, right!? Nope. In number of penalties per game we are ranked 83rd, tied with 6 other teams and 90th with 60.9 yards per game.
I wish that I had found an easy answer to why we are 1-10 with the one win a squeaker over a lower division team. I didn't. It wasn't an answer that jumped out at me. We are bad in total offense and we are bad in total defense, but neither of them are so bad that we should be 1 and 10.
I look forward to your opinions, ideas, possible explanations, and comments. One last thing I will leave you with. Rice has the 60th ranked team in Total Defense, are ranked 2nd in fewest penalties and first in yards per game. The Rice team plays defense and isn't stupid.
