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I just cannot understand why we seem so content on throwing towards the boundary time and time again this year, relying on bubble screens and screen passes by trying to spring our receivers, as opposed to the way we used to simply carve up teams with Josh Harris and Omar Jacobs with a lot of quick strikes over the middle, whether they were short, midrange or deep passes. I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever pass toward the boundaries, but when you have a receiver haul in three of four passes and they have anywhere from zero to five yards, what is that telling you? We’ll throw a pass 20 yards horizontally for a minimal gane if anything, but we can’t connect on one five or ten yards vertically heading in the direction we need to be going? We’re spreading four or five wide and we can’t find one guy going the direction we need to be going – downfield? I feel like we used to see more of a vertical passing game when Gary Blackney utilized a three yards and a cloud of dust approach.

Our offense isn’t spreading teams out and picking them apart, we just seem to be lining up and making a quick toss when we do pass, hoping for a missed tackle and hopefully some yards. It's equally as frustrating as our run game when we need a yard or less, and we drop back in the gun and run horizontally getting dropped in the backfield for a five-yard loss. I don’t know what it is, whether we’re just not calling the proper plays, whether Sheehan can’t make the proper reads, or if we just can’t get guys open….and it could be all of the above….but this team needs to sit down and watch some footage of the way used to dissect teams with our vertical passing game just a few short years ago when Harris and Jacobs were guiding potent BG offenses. We look nothing like those offenses, despite running a similar type of an offense scheme.

BGSU33 wrote:I just cannot understand why we seem so content on throwing towards the boundary time and time again this year, relying on bubble screens and screen passes by trying to spring our receivers, as opposed to the way we used to simply carve up teams with Josh Harris and Omar Jacobs with a lot of quick strikes over the middle, whether they were short, midrange or deep passes. I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever pass toward the boundaries, but when you have a receiver haul in three of four passes and they have anywhere from zero to five yards, what is that telling you? We’ll throw a pass 20 yards horizontally for a minimal gane if anything, but we can’t connect on one five or ten yards vertically heading in the direction we need to be going? We’re spreading four or five wide and we can’t find one guy going the direction we need to be going – downfield? I feel like we used to see more of a vertical passing game when Gary Blackney utilized a three yards and a cloud of dust approach.

Our offense isn’t spreading teams out and picking them apart, we just seem to be lining up and making a quick toss when we do pass, hoping for a missed tackle and hopefully some yards. It's equally as frustrating as our run game when we need a yard or less, and we drop back in the gun and run horizontally getting dropped in the backfield for a five-yard loss. I don’t know what it is, whether we’re just not calling the proper plays, whether Sheehan can’t make the proper reads, or if we just can’t get guys open….and it could be all of the above….but this team needs to sit down and watch some footage of the way used to dissect teams with our vertical passing game just a few short years ago when Harris and Jacobs were guiding potent BG offenses. We look nothing like those offenses, despite running a similar type of an offense scheme.

I have only seen one game live this year and three games on either tv or my computer, but it seems like this is a player issue.

I'm not absolving Brandon of what seems at times abysmal play calling, but there have been several times where receivers are wide open downfield and Sheehan is content with the 3 - 4 yard gain. Whether this is because he's afraid of getting picked, or an inability to make the throw, not making the read, or just an overall playing not to lose instead of playing to win mentality - I have no clue.

It seems like to me, though, that his primary receiver is always on a short curl route near the sideline. That's kind of silly, though, because curl routes really only work really well when mixed in with deep ball throws - much like play action only works well when you've established the run.

If I remember correctly over years past, our passive offense was most prolific when we had a very strong catching back in the backfield as our safety valve. How are Bullock and Geter at catching the ball in the backfield and picking up 5-7 yards? It seems like if we had that option, it would eliminate a lot of the need for the short routes by the receivers and we could stretch the defense vertically. I'd really like to see incorporating the backs in the passing game and then throwing in some nice deep post and slant routes. I did that with NCAA this year and Geter won the Heisman 3 years in a row

ok, so I haven't been a Falcon fan all my life, but why is our offense not scoring the points as we have in the past? How much say does the new quarterback coach have in the offensive scheme as well?

Seems to me like we haven't had any confidence in our passing game (either the coaches or the quarterback) since the BC game.

Peregrinner wrote:Seems to me like we haven't had any confidence in our passing game (either the coaches or the quarterback) since the BC game.

Good point.

So my next point; you bring in a juco qb with experience, a big arm, and good leadership skills and you leave him on the sideline. And, you do this after his red-shirt year is burned up by having him hand off the ball 3 times in the Wyoming game after BG was killing them?
Help make sense of this??

observer wrote:So my next point; you bring in a juco qb with experience, a big arm, and good leadership skills and you leave him on the sideline. And, you do this after his red-shirt year is burned up by having him hand off the ball 3 times in the Wyoming game after BG was killing them?
Help make sense of this??

So my next point; you bring in a juco qb with experience, a big arm, and good leadership skills and you leave him on the sideline.

Not exactly...He has no experience at the D1 level. We have no idea how "big" his arm is since this coaching staff hasn't let him throw in mop up duty as you mentioned. And we certainly don't know anything about his leadership skills. The backup QB is always the most popular guy on the team with fans...especially when the team is losing. Could we find a better QB for our system? Obviously. But, I think we could win with Tyler at QB if he's coached right and the play calling would make sense. We certainly shouldn't 3-5 after 8 games.

Rollo83 wrote:

observer wrote:So my next point; you bring in a juco qb with experience, a big arm, and good leadership skills and you leave him on the sideline. And, you do this after his red-shirt year is burned up by having him hand off the ball 3 times in the Wyoming game after BG was killing them?
Help make sense of this??

Not exactly...He has no experience at the D1 level. We have no idea how "big" his arm is since this coaching staff haven't let him throw in mop up duty as you mentioned. And we certainly don't know anything about his leadership skills. The backup QB is always the most popular guy on the team with fans...especially when the team is losing. Could we find a better QB for our system? Obviously. But, I think we could win with Tyler at QB if he's coached right and the play calling would make sense. We certainly shouldn't 3-5 after 8 games.

Honestly, I'd love to see Brandon pull out the playbook from 2004 and run it against Kent. "Tyler, here are the throws you need to make in this game." Challenge him to throw them. I'm curious if his reads are supposed to be the short passes (as if the plays were designed that way), or if he chooses to read those because they're easier to see. Until Tyler is challenged to make the mid-range to deep throws consistently, we won't know if he can throw them. I'd rather see a game full of INTs next week while trying to throw downfield than a game full of stupid screens and 3 yard passes. Maybe others aren't with me on that, but being at 3-5, if we play the screen ball again, we'll lose again. Might as well lose doing something different, and then at least know what we have for player abilities.

I'm with footballguy51 on this one. I'd rather see 10 picks next week and us trying to score points and move the ball than this dink and dunk junk. What's the worst that can happen? We lose? That shouldn't surprise anyone.

--MH

We like to believe in each of the last five games NIU has played, it takes two O players to occupy Larry English- otherwise the QB will not have much time to go vertical because his rush is so quick and relentless. When double teamed -another NIU defender can hurry the QB effectively.

The fact Huskies have not given up the big pass play in five games sez something. Whether we can do likewise with BSU & CMU will be determined in the next two games on our schedule.

I will be mildly and pleasantly shocked if we can contain/limit Nate Davis from making big pass plays. He has yet to face a D as sound as is NIU.

This is one of several reasons why BGSU was not successful downfield - IMO - PLUS playing two quarters against a very stiff wind.

I remember one of the football rags stating that Sheehan would be playing on Sundays. Don't know if they meant in a touch league or NFL but I assumed the latter. Is he misused? Was the football magazine *GASP* wrong? He looked pretty good against our horrendous D last year but so did everyone. He seems to have tailed off over time.

We would love to use our backs more for some receptions...Geter, Ransom, Barnes anyone? Oh...they are all hurt. I think people tend to forget that.

Tyler can not see over the line... It became really apparent during the EMU game and has continued ever since... Although I think that Recruiting got relaxed and thought that whoever they threw into the system would work well... this obviously is a miscalculation

cowboyjoe wrote:We would love to use our backs more for some receptions...Geter, Ransom, Barnes anyone? Oh...they are all hurt. I think people tend to forget that.

Please explain how throwing to the RBs MORE would result in us throwing down the field more?

Ryan Henry.

A quarterback that looked like God one year, sucked the next. His receivers made him look good, and remember objectively, you'll recall we had tall, lanky WRs, great TEs, and some simple artists at WR. Yet when he started sucking, instantly the issue became that we had horrible WRs, and that trend didn't end there. There is something to be said about the injured players, but not enough that the team should be this bad. And if the team is that thin, recruiting come into question. And in any case, the play calling doesn't lend itself towards helping the case.

I'm checking my watch and waiting for the first Brandonista to say "oh, but the team is sooooo young," which has been an excuse for going on five years when things go badly.