Right now, however, the players are unable to execute it with a reasonable degree of consistency. This is particularly true of the quarterbacks but I've also seen it in the wide receivers.

Consequently, some of Kelly's play calls look foolish. The red zone reads are particularly complex and that compounds the problem. He's obviously not used to failure, which leads to this:



Since his starting quarterbacks are not yet at the level required to produce the desired results, Kelly must adjust to diminish the chances of failure (turnovers) at critical moments. Either the play calls or the plays themselves must be tweaked in order to put this particular group of players in a better position to succeed. Kelly can still develop his offense as the season progresses, but I can't believe that the team is currently executing his plays perfectly in practice only to fail on Saturdays. He must see and know what is not working. Hope is not a strategy on game day.

More elite players may lessen the impact of bad outcomes, but one constant will still be there, it's still high risk. My position stays the same even with elite talent, against elite competition. His offense will continue to bite him in the ass.

I'm old school, old fashioned, whatever. I believe in running first. Many didn't like Holtz's offense, but at least his special teams were special, his defenses usually played really disciplined, and just when his offense got boring or what opposing coaches thought predictable, he'd throw in a wrinkle keeping the defense accountable. Kelly, Weis, Willingham, and Davie have not done, nor were/are they capable of doing it.

Kelly's offense lacks accountability in all phases of it.

When the players know what they're doing, there should be a pretty wide-open receiver on most plays and it should be a pretty easy read for the QBs.

But let's compare the power-up-the-gut football many prefer to a spread offense and assume we have good players (but not outstanding ones) across the board. Imagine that we then play a team like Alabama that has studs across the board on defense. Do you think it will be easier to get our good-but-not-great players to consistently open holes in that front seven so we can gain 4 or 5 yards a carry, or do you think it's easier to spread the field and have a receiver that is wide open at the snap for a 5 yard gain? On paper, the spread makes perfect sense.

As people have pointed out, however, there are two issues (actually several, but two huge ones as I see it) with this:
1.) If the coach insists on calling plays that don't have a high probability of success, the team is in trouble no matter what offense we run (se Davie, Bob)
2.) We should have a talent advantage over almost every opponent we play and should be able to win the up front battle against almost all of them.

Thus far, Kelly hasn't seemed to appreciate the value of our offensive lines opening gaping holes in the front 7 for most of the game against both Michigan and USF. So we start 3rd and 1 with our running back carrying the ball sideways 5 yards behind the line instead of running forward with a full head of steam and needing only a small crack to run through. Our linemen need to hold their blocks long enough for him to run 6 yards. That's asking a lot. Somebody once made the joke that Weis was playing chess while everybody else was playing football and it stuck with me because it was true. Similarly, Kelly seems hell bent on calling plays that should work on paper, but require an inexperienced or unreliable player to make a big play.

If we begin to focus our play calling around our linemen being able to block pretty much anybody, even within Kelly's offense, our fortunes could turn around in a hurry.