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Tequilla Thoughts: 2019 Season Review - Offensive Summary
Tequilla
Member Posts: 19,825
Following the reviews of the running and passing game independently, it's time to put the pieces together and really look at the offense as a whole with a particular point of emphasis on evaluating Bush Hamden.
Offensive Yards Per Play
Washington's averaging 5.55 yards per offensive play this year in P12 play, which ranked 8th in the conference heading into this weekend's game. More disturbing, the trendline for the overall offense over the last 4 years is relatively disturbing (yards per play / % above or below conference average):
2016: 6.77 / +15%
2017: 6.19 / +5%
2018: 5.75 / +1%
2019: 5.55 / -5
There can be many explanations as to why the trend is the way that it is and chief amongst them could be that the run/pass mix materially changing. And while that is true from 2016 to 2018 increasing from 57% of play calls in 2016 to 63% in 2018, so far through the Oregon St game UW has run the ball on only 52% of its offensive plays in 2019. Considering that Washington is a better running than passing team in 2019 for a number of reasons, it really is a curious path to take and calls into question the logic. Are we going heavier into the passing game trying to showcase Jacob Eason? Regardless of reason, it's a trend line that isn't favorable and moreover a decided down turn since Bush took over in 2018.
3rd Down Conversions (2019) vs P12 Conference
One of the biggest issues that is pretty clear in watching UW games is that they are a terrible 3rd down team in 2019. The reasons can be vast (and will be deep dived a bit), but getting a perspective of how bad things are relative to the conference is really important. CFB Stats (http://www.cfbstats.com/2019/leader/905/team/offense/split07/category25/sort01.html) has some great stats for 3rd down where you can isolate performance purely for conference play that allows keeping things apples to apples. For 2019, the average conversion rate for 3rd downs in P12 Conference games is 42%. That's a number that feels about right to me and is one that probably moves +/- 2% in any given year. But in the grand scheme of things, I think we can conclude that a conversion rate in the 40-45% range is relatively average, 45-50% is above average, and anything over 50% is fairly elite. UW's 3rd down conversion rate for 2019 is at 28% ... let me repeat that ... 28%.
3rd Down Performance By Distance
When I see a low conversion rate, the most likely candidates for what is driving the poor performance is that they are finding themselves in long down/distance situations and poor execution. With respect to down and distance, I've defined short yardage to be 3 or less yards, short-mid of 4 to 7 yards, mid-long at 8 to 10 yards, and long at over 10 yards. The results for UW are fairly interesting in 2019:
3 or less yards: 13 for 31 (42%)
4 to 7 yards: 7 for 28 (25%)
8 to 10 yards: 4 for 15 (27%)
10+ yards: 4 for 25 (16%)
2 things really jump out to me in looking at the 2019 numbers. First, and perhaps not super surprising, the conversion rate for 3rd and 3 or less is at 42% (which remember, that's the conference AVERAGE across all distances). The second being that we don't particularly do a good job of putting ourselves in positions to succeed on 3rd down by getting in more favorable situations. Only 31% of our total 3rd downs come in the 3 or less yard range. The work done on 1st and 2nd down isn't consistently putting UW in a position to succeed on 3rd down ... this is a primary responsibility of a play caller. Moreover, one of the interesting trends that I noticed in going through the drive by drive data was the high % of drives that ended up in UW TDs that by and large avoided 3rd down situations. More on this later in wrapping all of this up ...
3rd Down Performance in Petersen Era
One of the constant themes that I've been hearing is that this is "Pete's offense" and how it's broken, etc. In thinking through that, my hypothesis would be that UW would be seeing some significant downturns in 3rd down conversions. What I found in looking at conference only stats did not necessarily support that hypothesis (conference ranking):
2014: 40% (6th)
2015: 37% (10th)
2016: 46% (2nd)
2017: 46% (1st)
2018: 43% (6th)
2019: 28% (12th)
By and large, UW has resided in the upper half of the conference. The only exception outside of 2019 was in 2015 when the offense was turned over in a full youth movement with the starting QB, RB, and LT all being true freshman. In thinking back to 2015, there was a lot of execution issues which realistically was to be expected. But in 2019, you have a future NFL QB, one of the top runners in the P12, arguably the 1st TE/H-Back to be drafted in the 2020 NFL Draft, and a very experienced OL. This SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING ... and the conversion rate is almost 10 points lower than the 2015 performance.
What Are The Takeaways
The numbers here are very damning for Bush. We can talk about the lack of talent and/or youth at the WR position, but that's glossing over the real issue here. If we put all of the pieces together and go back to what was being said after 2018, the idea was that this offense needed to get more explosive ... and with an arm like Eason coming in it's logical to think that that was a possibility. The thing with explosive plays is that it's like hitting a home run ... you can try to force them and be successful from time to time. However, if you want to be successful with a greater success rate, then you're more likely to do so by doing the right things more often (football = play to your strengths and what the defense gives you; baseball = focus on hitting the ball hard). Instead, we've got a lot of evidence of forcing things (notably, the Stanford game plan where we went in thinking Stanford sucks against the pass so we'd just throw the ball all over the place). You can't force things to happen ... and you can't force them to happen if it doesn't match your strengths. This is one of the biggest issues on the offense and one that both Pete and Bush share.
Ultimately though on GameDay, it's Bush responsible for calling plays and across the board when you look at overall run/pass game performance, the mix of play calling, and the ability to get the team into a position to be successful on 3rd down. In almost all metrics, this has been largely a fail of a season.
My overall hypothesis of what is torpedoing things is as follows:
1) We are too focused on searching for explosive plays ... it's why we're seeing so many TD drives that largely avoid 3rd down all together. Instead of trusting the talent and scheme that we have to create explosive plays, we just flat out try to do too much. You can file this under the beta/underdog mentality that @Dennis_DeYoung talks about. Trying to take shots and relying on high volatility is what happens when you aren't as skilled as your opponents. Our strategy should largely be the opposite of that.
2) When we lose 1st down, we tend to panic on 2nd down trying to get the 1st down right then and there instead of focusing on setting ourselves up to be successful on 3rd down. Let's take a situation where we lose 2 yards on a run on 1st down ... that's less than ideal. Very simple play calls like finding the TE, a delayed TE screen, check down to a RB, etc. on 2nd down to get 6 to 8 yards sets you up to be successful on 3rd down. It's so important to manage down and distance in your favor.
3) Our execution is really bad ... that stands out massively when you look at a 42% conversion rate for 3rd and 3 or less. Execution can come in a couple forms. First, players have to make plays. If we're calling an off tackle play on 3rd and 1, that play needs to be blocked. More often than not, our OL are more talented than our peers in the conference. Don't get beat. Be an alpha and take accountability that that play is going to be successful. Instead, too often those plays get blown up. Second, the play calling needs to be varied enough that defenses can't easily predict the play call leading to execution challenges. If you're going to run that off tackle or counter as a bread and butter play there, then you need to also call a healthy balance of play action to the TE or H-Back to punish the defense for over committing. If you're going to call a quick slant or out you need to have a receiver that you trust to regularly win 1 on 1 battles. In my mind, 3rd and short and red zone situations (both of which we routinely struggle with) come down to making sure you aren't predictable in play calling and ultimately player execution.
In that context, Bush has been brutal in his play calling in those situations. It's where an OC earns his $$$ ... and he's flat out a bottom half OC in the P12 at this point. It's hard to argue that. But the execution issues fall at the feet of the positional coaches and players. And when looking at the positional groups, it's not a situation where you can look at one group above the other and say that anybody isn't guilty of being sloppy in their execution. So it really leaves a quandry. What should Pete do? We'll save that for another posting on what may be the most fundamental offensive issue ... what's the identity???
Offensive Yards Per Play
Washington's averaging 5.55 yards per offensive play this year in P12 play, which ranked 8th in the conference heading into this weekend's game. More disturbing, the trendline for the overall offense over the last 4 years is relatively disturbing (yards per play / % above or below conference average):
2016: 6.77 / +15%
2017: 6.19 / +5%
2018: 5.75 / +1%
2019: 5.55 / -5
There can be many explanations as to why the trend is the way that it is and chief amongst them could be that the run/pass mix materially changing. And while that is true from 2016 to 2018 increasing from 57% of play calls in 2016 to 63% in 2018, so far through the Oregon St game UW has run the ball on only 52% of its offensive plays in 2019. Considering that Washington is a better running than passing team in 2019 for a number of reasons, it really is a curious path to take and calls into question the logic. Are we going heavier into the passing game trying to showcase Jacob Eason? Regardless of reason, it's a trend line that isn't favorable and moreover a decided down turn since Bush took over in 2018.
3rd Down Conversions (2019) vs P12 Conference
One of the biggest issues that is pretty clear in watching UW games is that they are a terrible 3rd down team in 2019. The reasons can be vast (and will be deep dived a bit), but getting a perspective of how bad things are relative to the conference is really important. CFB Stats (http://www.cfbstats.com/2019/leader/905/team/offense/split07/category25/sort01.html) has some great stats for 3rd down where you can isolate performance purely for conference play that allows keeping things apples to apples. For 2019, the average conversion rate for 3rd downs in P12 Conference games is 42%. That's a number that feels about right to me and is one that probably moves +/- 2% in any given year. But in the grand scheme of things, I think we can conclude that a conversion rate in the 40-45% range is relatively average, 45-50% is above average, and anything over 50% is fairly elite. UW's 3rd down conversion rate for 2019 is at 28% ... let me repeat that ... 28%.
3rd Down Performance By Distance
When I see a low conversion rate, the most likely candidates for what is driving the poor performance is that they are finding themselves in long down/distance situations and poor execution. With respect to down and distance, I've defined short yardage to be 3 or less yards, short-mid of 4 to 7 yards, mid-long at 8 to 10 yards, and long at over 10 yards. The results for UW are fairly interesting in 2019:
3 or less yards: 13 for 31 (42%)
4 to 7 yards: 7 for 28 (25%)
8 to 10 yards: 4 for 15 (27%)
10+ yards: 4 for 25 (16%)
2 things really jump out to me in looking at the 2019 numbers. First, and perhaps not super surprising, the conversion rate for 3rd and 3 or less is at 42% (which remember, that's the conference AVERAGE across all distances). The second being that we don't particularly do a good job of putting ourselves in positions to succeed on 3rd down by getting in more favorable situations. Only 31% of our total 3rd downs come in the 3 or less yard range. The work done on 1st and 2nd down isn't consistently putting UW in a position to succeed on 3rd down ... this is a primary responsibility of a play caller. Moreover, one of the interesting trends that I noticed in going through the drive by drive data was the high % of drives that ended up in UW TDs that by and large avoided 3rd down situations. More on this later in wrapping all of this up ...
3rd Down Performance in Petersen Era
One of the constant themes that I've been hearing is that this is "Pete's offense" and how it's broken, etc. In thinking through that, my hypothesis would be that UW would be seeing some significant downturns in 3rd down conversions. What I found in looking at conference only stats did not necessarily support that hypothesis (conference ranking):
2014: 40% (6th)
2015: 37% (10th)
2016: 46% (2nd)
2017: 46% (1st)
2018: 43% (6th)
2019: 28% (12th)
By and large, UW has resided in the upper half of the conference. The only exception outside of 2019 was in 2015 when the offense was turned over in a full youth movement with the starting QB, RB, and LT all being true freshman. In thinking back to 2015, there was a lot of execution issues which realistically was to be expected. But in 2019, you have a future NFL QB, one of the top runners in the P12, arguably the 1st TE/H-Back to be drafted in the 2020 NFL Draft, and a very experienced OL. This SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING ... and the conversion rate is almost 10 points lower than the 2015 performance.
What Are The Takeaways
The numbers here are very damning for Bush. We can talk about the lack of talent and/or youth at the WR position, but that's glossing over the real issue here. If we put all of the pieces together and go back to what was being said after 2018, the idea was that this offense needed to get more explosive ... and with an arm like Eason coming in it's logical to think that that was a possibility. The thing with explosive plays is that it's like hitting a home run ... you can try to force them and be successful from time to time. However, if you want to be successful with a greater success rate, then you're more likely to do so by doing the right things more often (football = play to your strengths and what the defense gives you; baseball = focus on hitting the ball hard). Instead, we've got a lot of evidence of forcing things (notably, the Stanford game plan where we went in thinking Stanford sucks against the pass so we'd just throw the ball all over the place). You can't force things to happen ... and you can't force them to happen if it doesn't match your strengths. This is one of the biggest issues on the offense and one that both Pete and Bush share.
Ultimately though on GameDay, it's Bush responsible for calling plays and across the board when you look at overall run/pass game performance, the mix of play calling, and the ability to get the team into a position to be successful on 3rd down. In almost all metrics, this has been largely a fail of a season.
My overall hypothesis of what is torpedoing things is as follows:
1) We are too focused on searching for explosive plays ... it's why we're seeing so many TD drives that largely avoid 3rd down all together. Instead of trusting the talent and scheme that we have to create explosive plays, we just flat out try to do too much. You can file this under the beta/underdog mentality that @Dennis_DeYoung talks about. Trying to take shots and relying on high volatility is what happens when you aren't as skilled as your opponents. Our strategy should largely be the opposite of that.
2) When we lose 1st down, we tend to panic on 2nd down trying to get the 1st down right then and there instead of focusing on setting ourselves up to be successful on 3rd down. Let's take a situation where we lose 2 yards on a run on 1st down ... that's less than ideal. Very simple play calls like finding the TE, a delayed TE screen, check down to a RB, etc. on 2nd down to get 6 to 8 yards sets you up to be successful on 3rd down. It's so important to manage down and distance in your favor.
3) Our execution is really bad ... that stands out massively when you look at a 42% conversion rate for 3rd and 3 or less. Execution can come in a couple forms. First, players have to make plays. If we're calling an off tackle play on 3rd and 1, that play needs to be blocked. More often than not, our OL are more talented than our peers in the conference. Don't get beat. Be an alpha and take accountability that that play is going to be successful. Instead, too often those plays get blown up. Second, the play calling needs to be varied enough that defenses can't easily predict the play call leading to execution challenges. If you're going to run that off tackle or counter as a bread and butter play there, then you need to also call a healthy balance of play action to the TE or H-Back to punish the defense for over committing. If you're going to call a quick slant or out you need to have a receiver that you trust to regularly win 1 on 1 battles. In my mind, 3rd and short and red zone situations (both of which we routinely struggle with) come down to making sure you aren't predictable in play calling and ultimately player execution.
In that context, Bush has been brutal in his play calling in those situations. It's where an OC earns his $$$ ... and he's flat out a bottom half OC in the P12 at this point. It's hard to argue that. But the execution issues fall at the feet of the positional coaches and players. And when looking at the positional groups, it's not a situation where you can look at one group above the other and say that anybody isn't guilty of being sloppy in their execution. So it really leaves a quandry. What should Pete do? We'll save that for another posting on what may be the most fundamental offensive issue ... what's the identity???
Comments
1) The inability to convert 3rd down is a massive issue for this team ... it’s at truly low levels ... the numbers have been largely good throughout Pete’s tenure at UW (could argue for maybe an additional uptick but that’s a different discussion)
2) We know Pete and Bush deep dived in the offseason and a big emphasis was explosive plays ... while they identified a 2018 problem and attempted to correct in 2019 ... the pendulum swung way too much in the other direction creating a different set of problems
3) The biggest issue I see is what is the identity of this team on offense ... do we recruit to that identity? Do we play call accordingly?
I don’t think what we do on offense is that unique or dated or whatever. I think we are very predictable (what is the run % on 1st down) and that really hurts needlessly. I think the overall coaching has been sloppy and we haven’t held players accountable enough.
There’s probably some culture elements that need to be addressed as well this offseason ...
My sense is we got fat and happy and got caught by people that were eager to knock us down a level. We need to get an edge back in this program.
Our drives are either really easy and quick or they take multiple 4th down conversions. I can think of a few examples of each.
I think your point #2 is valid. All the talk about explosive plays has probably hurt us when we need to just simply move the chains.
It’s time for him to be aware and make the change. He’s a smart guy and I know it has to suck for him to admit he’s a huge part of the problem, but the facts are there. Every year we are talking about a bad or underachieving offense.
Move on
I'm willing to say Bush is not up to it but only after he gets a free crack of the whip.
Hamadan with full control isn’t something that would happen. His offense is probably like Pete’s anyways. That’s what he’s mostly been around. We need new ideas, new concepts, and a better play caller.
He had two similar QBs that could somewhat run an offense that Pete liked.
Better talent at QB and at WR (unfortunately on bench) and the offensive output drops.
Common denominator? Pete, an 8-4 Pete at that
This year he had an upgrade at QB and the most veteran OL a coach can have. All 5 had double digit starts, 3 of them were seniors. Say what you’re ant about Fuller and Baccallia, but they had played a lot of football for us. Our RB’s have been fine. Ahmed has probably been better and more consistent than expected. Two really good TE’s. This is a talented offense that is underachieving. You can’t keep making the same excuses forever.
It's also important to note that we have like 9 different formations but only run about 9 different plays so many times we are telegraphing our play to the defense by the way we line up.