You are slightly off the mark. Book could indeed take

You are slightly off the mark. Book could indeed take
by btd (2019-09-23 10:48:55)

In reply to: I notice you don't mention ND's offense posted by Hanratty5ND

advantage. Brian Kelly refused to allow Book to take advantage.

Book probably had his best game ever in terms of throwing the ball well 15+ yards down the field. The last drive of the first half and the last scoring drive were repeatable the entire game -- if Kelly just allowed the offense to try doing what was working virtually at will.

UGA had no answer at all for the intermediate throws in the 15-25 yard range down the field. When actually thrown, ND was completing those at a high enough rate to score on nearly every single possession (let's assume we would have self destructed several times even if called).

Instead, Kelly hammered the 3 yard routes to death, UGA adjusted and either took them away entirely on many plays or crushed our WR instantly after the catch. Watching it live from a high vantage point -- you could see UGA literally forming a wall of 3 defenders in the middle of crossing routes knowing for 100% certain the ball was going there.

If Kelly simply mixed and matched what he did within each series - UGA was in severe trouble because they could not stop the intermediate throws and the shorter ones were hurting them too until they realized that was the one and only play they had to defend.

Kelly's offense isn't necessarily a failed system. It's failing because of his execution of the system:

1) Zone running can have dramatically more variations of runs than Kelly chooses to practice, perfect and then call

2) His passing game can have a dramatically wider array of routes, attempted throws, etc. He simply doesn't try that variety in any single game.

Book has limitations that are not great for being able to win a title. That doesn't mean if Kelly would get the F out of the way the offense could not be dramatically better even with Book.

This game was extremely winnable -- because the defense turned out to be in game 8 form by game 3. Lea managed to get the new players on D to play at a top 10 level in a span of 7 days. Kelly can't do that on offense in a span of 10 years at ND and 4 years per player.

Or Book was checking down into those throws *

Was at the game, so I am certain that was rarely the case

The throws were almost always immediate -- snap, catch and instantly throw. Check downs happen at a much slower rate.

You could also see the entire field from our upper deck seats -- which actually aren't bad for football games because of the ability to see the entire field every play.

Since we ran those 3 yard throws in an infinite loop, we began to focus heavily on your point -- is he checking down. The conclusion was no -- largely because of my first point, but also because of what the other players were doing. You could see the other routes being run, the attempts to block by other players, etc.

I'd say at least 90% of those crossing routes were designed calls.

Good points

Interesting to me was that GA was down 2 CB's and Finke seemed to get zero separation all night. Blanketed.

Maybe that had to do with the routes he ran and the D Georgia was in.

I've seen many ND fans lament not going to Claypool more before our last TD.

They forced the ball to him and it worked--he made plays.
As you stated--the medium and long passes were there for the taking, but Kelly/Long played too tight.

We had 1-2 wide open players most intermediate throws

They had absolutely no answer at all for the seam route to the TE. Had they been forced to adjust for that route, you would have seen the outside WRs become wide open.

Georgia looked very much like a defense missing its top DBs. When ND attacked that aspect of their defense we ate them alive. The shocking part was Book was getting a lot of time to throw the entire game -- sans the final two plays. He unexpectedly had the time to wait to throw deeper -- and when called it worked almost a will.

To El K's point -- on those crossing routes, you didn't see the TE sprinting down the center of the field, etc. They were designed to be short throws.

I suspect Kelly believed Book would be under instant pressure and planned for short throws. Great. Not a terrible assumption to make. However, when it was proven false, and we also were completing the intermediate throws consistently, Kelly became a proven dumbass because he was unable to adjust and actually call what was working.

Had he done it, the short game he was calling would have opened back up too -- and then an amazing thing could have happened: Georgia wouldn't know if we were going short or long each play and would have to attempt to defend both every play!