[Husker] RE: Spurrier Interview

[Patrick462]

<< Are you listening Bill Callahan, you have to play to the strength of your 
players, not what you want to run.

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If you want to change the type of offense that Nebraska runs, when do propose
that this transition takes place? Next year, the year after, when? >>

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Both good points. When Bill was hired I looked into the West Coast Offense,
about which I knew very little. The Nebraska Bookstore sold a book about the
WCO along with the media guide, and there are several websites from which to
get information.

All of the sources indicated that the WCO was reasonably flexible in terms of
run/pass ratio as well as using the run to set up the pass (including play
action) and using the pass to set up the run (including draws). The main book I
read had almost all of the plays run out of the I formation. That was somewhat
surprising to me as I had believed the WCO to be a watered-down run-n-gun
passing attack (which turns out is not true).

At the time I was looking into this (before the season started) I figured that
we would use a two-back set the vast majoritiy of the time, and that we would
run about 60% of the time. That would be down from our previous years' run
percentage of around 79%. It would double the number of passes per game from
about 15 to about 30. It would implement the WCO in terms of blocking schemes,
play terminology, and philosophy. And it would play to our strength - run
blocking on the line, a stable of decent runninng backs. It would minimize our
weaknesses - an unproven QB with unproven passing/decision making skills, wide
receivers with more experience blocking that with route running.

But as it turned out, our favorite formation was with one back. This
essentially replace our first string FB with our third string WR. Over the
course of the season we ran 56% of the time (412 of 734 plays). We averaged 38
runs per game and 29 passes per game.