East Carolina

[MarkL]

So far we've compared our team consistently to Baylor, which makes sense seeing Babers' coaching history. However, if you want a better comparison, look at East Carolina.

ECU under Skip Holtz was a solid team relying upon a solid defense and efficient offense to win games, which led them to the C-USA title. Sound familiar? Then they hired Ruffin McNeill from Texas Tech who turned them into an offense-first type of team in a non BCS conference. Also sound familiar?

McNeill's first year was 2010. The defense was pretty atrocious but the offense was at points unstoppable. Record: 6-7, 5-3 (C-USA), including a nailbiter win over NC State
2011: Lost a lot of seniors. Record: 5-7, 5-4 (C-USA)
2012: The offense is roaring against C-USA schools but stagnant against big competition. Record: 8-5, 7-1 (C-USA)
2013: The offense is again roaring and the defense makes big strides. Record: 10-3, 6-2 (C-USA) including a blowout of UNC.
2014: Currently 3-1 with a win over VT and a win including hanging 70 points on a good UNC team.

I believe the fast offense-oriented football system can work. It has worked quite well at East Carolina in the C-USA including some good upsets of big teams, and now their team was invited to a step-up in competition in the AAC. There were growing pains including a defense that basically played dead for two years, but as the offense became more consistent, the defense also improved. As long as you can stand watching their hideous uniforms, I suggest watching them.

BTW, a fun video of Grover from Sesame Street teaching UNC a thing or two about how to defend the ECU offense:

[Dayons_Den]

I was at the ECU-South Carolina game in Week 2 and can say their offense is the real deal. Even after getting torched by aTm and their fast paced O the week before South Carolina had trouble with ECU. Watching ECU in person, I was reminded of Spurrier's fun-n-gun.

ECU has a confident in the system QB, a small but elusive and tough RB, a future NFL receiver, a solid kicking game and a bend but don't break defense. Sound familiar?

[San Diego Falcon]

No, a bend but don't break defense does not sound familiar

[Dayons_Den]

No, a bend but don't break defense does not sound familiar

You should watch the BG-Indiana game, I believe it is available on WATCH-ESPN

[footballguy51]

No, a bend but don't break defense does not sound familiar

You should watch the BG-Indiana game, I believe it is available on WATCH-ESPN

One game. Yeah, not quite what San Diego was referring to.

[Beaker]

That defense bent in the Indiana game for 2 1/2 quarters.......then it shattered into little tiny pieces. Fortunately, Indiana's defense broke even more. Giving up 42 points and almost 600 yards is doing a little more than just bending.

As far as the ECU comparison, that's fine, but there's no reason why we can't be successful and compete for championships and for wins against the bigger conferences, no matter what style offense we play, as long as we can play good, solid defense and special teams. If we do that consistently, we will almost always be in games and have shots to win them. If we consistently give up 40, 50, 60 points a game, then there will be a far higher frequency of times where they are out of reach and we have no chance to get a win. Until this defense makes huge improvements, we are going to have a very tough time winning consistently, even in conference games.

[kdog27]

I get that our offense may be superior to the defenses we face in the conference but will other teams offense be just as superior to our defense? If so, where is the advantage? Unless our defense shows improvement, I see most games as toss ups.

[Dayons_Den]

That defense bent in the Indiana game for 2 1/2 quarters.......then it shattered into little tiny pieces. Fortunately, Indiana's defense broke even more. Giving up 42 points and almost 600 yards is doing a little more than just bending.

As far as the ECU comparison, that's fine, but there's no reason why we can't be successful and compete for championships and for wins against the bigger conferences, no matter what style offense we play, as long as we can play good, solid defense and special teams. If we do that consistently, we will almost always be in games and have shots to win them. If we consistently give up 40, 50, 60 points a game, then there will be a far higher frequency of times where they are out of reach and we have no chance to get a win. Until this defense makes huge improvements, we are going to have a very tough time winning consistently, even in conference games.

But this is where our history, and the history of football at our level, will provide reason(s). Our ones can match up with big time (SEC, Big 10) ones. But the problem is and the reason is we can't be successful is depth. I sat and watched our team take a 20-6 lead late in to the 3rd quarter at Missouri and kept thinking to myself how long before Pinkel and Blaine Gabbert stop trying to throw the ball and just run it down our throats. I sat, in the front row, at Wisconsin and watched Joe Thomas pancake and Brian Calhoun run wild on our defense.

From a macro-view, historically-- Even though our ones can line up and play with those teams, We simply do not have the depth and wear down when playing against "bigger" teams with larger players and deeper talent on their benches.

And don't paint this as a defeatist post or that I have no faith in our team or the program, but the reality of it is we aren't in a place (literally and figuratively) where we can regionally build up the program (Boise State) because of our big brothers in the big ten and other MAC foes. So my next assumption then is how can we gain some sort of advantage and I think this style is an option to help us compete.

[Flipper]

In a sport where the rule changes generally favor the offense....and by that I mean when have you heard anyone say "we need to change the rules to help the defense"...I'll bet on offense winning.

[hammb]

That defense bent in the Indiana game for 2 1/2 quarters.......then it shattered into little tiny pieces. Fortunately, Indiana's defense broke even more. Giving up 42 points and almost 600 yards is doing a little more than just bending.

As far as the ECU comparison, that's fine, but there's no reason why we can't be successful and compete for championships and for wins against the bigger conferences, no matter what style offense we play, as long as we can play good, solid defense and special teams. If we do that consistently, we will almost always be in games and have shots to win them. If we consistently give up 40, 50, 60 points a game, then there will be a far higher frequency of times where they are out of reach and we have no chance to get a win. Until this defense makes huge improvements, we are going to have a very tough time winning consistently, even in conference games.

But this is where our history, and the history of football at our level, will provide reason(s). Our ones can match up with big time (SEC, Big 10) ones. But the problem is and the reason is we can't be successful is depth. I sat and watched our team take a 20-6 lead late in to the 3rd quarter at Missouri and kept thinking to myself how long before Pinkel and Blaine Gabbert stop trying to throw the ball and just run it down our throats. I sat, in the front row, at Wisconsin and watched Joe Thomas pancake and Brian Calhoun run wild on our defense.

From a macro-view, historically-- Even though our ones can line up and play with those teams, We simply do not have the depth and wear down when playing against "bigger" teams with larger players and deeper talent on their benches.

And don't paint this as a defeatist post or that I have no faith in our team or the program, but the reality of it is we aren't in a place (literally and figuratively) where we can regionally build up the program (Boise State) because of our big brothers in the big ten and other MAC foes. So my next assumption then is how can we gain some sort of advantage and I think this style is an option to help us compete.

This is truth and our history (and the history of most successful non-power conference schools) bears it out. When you try to win games by lining up in a pro style offense and playing stout defense you are putting the onus on your lineman. That is the one position where we just cannot compete with the Big 10 teams. There are only so many guys that go 300+ pounds on the OL and 280+ on the DL and have elite athleticism. We're lucky to have one or two such guys any given year and those teams can typically roll out 2 strings of them. Eventually our lines wear down and we get pushed around.

The one counter to that is to play a high scoring offensive system that doesn't put the onus on controlling the line of scrimmage. It moves the onus onto skill position players and history has shown that the MAC, and other non-powers, can stack up quite favorably with skill position talent.

That's the only way we have a shot at beating those types of teams, and I feel pretty confident saying that. We just had pretty much the best "traditional style" coach you could ever ask for, and in 5 seasons he never once beat a power conference team. In fact most of those games were blowouts.

You can win the MAC playing football the old fashioned way. If you want more than MAC titles, then you have to think outside the box offensively.

[Dayons_Den]

The more I was thinking about this I was also reminded of Texas A&M. Watch them in SEC play, they toss the ball all over the place, score points, and their defense is just brutal- soft coverage, give up big plays etc. The last two years everyone looked at Manziel as the catalyst but their QB this year is showing it is more likely the Offense than any one (or two) players.

[mscarn]

We also underestimate the caliber of player Clawson was able to recruit on the defensive line. Chris Jones is in the NFL and Ted Ouellet and Jairus Campbell both got looks from NFL teams. That's huge.

The odd thing about East Carolina is that their head coach coached defense his entire career. His last stop was at Texas Tech and he hired coaches that he knew from that system to run the Mike Leach Air Raid offense.

[Siborg]

I agree this system will give us more opportunities to defeat BCS teams and maybe even better BCS teams than IU. I think Clawson's system was very good for near equal talent levels. That includes some mediocre BCS teams like Indiana, Pitt and Miss St from last year. We 'could' have beaten 2 of those 3 using Clawson's system. We didn't do so but they were winnable games.

This years win over IU was with a brand new system and that in itself is good to see. We are certainly not a mature Baber's team yet. Once the players mature in this system, we can and should expect more competitve games across the board. I think we will compete well against near equal and somewhat better talent like 7-5 or 8-4 types of BCS teams as opposed to just 6-6 or lower BCS teams.

Some seem to imply we are making a choice (maybe that was not the posters' intent but I'll make the point anyways) between winning MAC titles and beating BCS teams. They are not mutually exclusive goals in this system. I see no reason to think this system can't do both and I expect us to do both.

[Beaker]

I agree that if we get to the point where we are able to beat BCS teams, then there's no reason why we wouldn't then also be able to win MAC titles. Like everyone else here, I want both.

What I don't think we need to make a choice between, is having the Babers style of offense and playing the kind of defense we've seen this year vs having the Clawson style of offense and playing solid defense, focused on stopping the run and pressuring the QB. For the folks that favor Baber's offense, sure, I'm fine with giving it every chance. What I'm saying is that playing that style of offense does not have to mean we just resign ourselves to playing poor defense, giving up huge point totals and hoping our offense can be prolific enough to outscore the opponents.

We can run the wide open offense AND still strive to build the kind of defenses we've had the past couple seasons. If Babers can ultimately deliver the type of offense he's advertised, then even an average defense will move us in the direction we all want us to go. If we accept the defense as we've seen it so far in 2014 and continue playing that way on that side of the ball indefintely, then we can forget about winning consistently. I can't imagine our coaching staff is satisifed with the defense we've played to this point. I only hope they find some answers for turning that around in a significant way. If they do, then we can still compete for the conference this year.

[Flipper]

That's just it NO ONE IS SAYING WE HAVE TO PLAY POOR DEFENSE>>>WE'VE JUST PLAYED POOR DEFENSE>>IT ISN'T BY DESIGN.

Ok?