A-Rod vs Taylor

[UteThunder]

Anyone still want to make the argument that the big difference between A-Rod and Taylor as OC isn’t simply QB talent?

The big knocks on A-Rod were lack of QB development, redzone production, completion percentage, WR drops, and stretching the field horizontally instead of vertically.

Taylor comes in with his “iPhone” offense and rightfully names Huntley the starter. The first 3.5 games we are running this dynamic new offense and Taylor looks like a genius. Then he is forced to play Williams at QB and our offense looks eerily similar to the A-Rod offense run by Travis Wilson and Troy Williams. There has been no development of Williams as a QB(if anything he looks worse), redzone production hasn’t been good, completion percentage is way down, WR drops are way up, and we haven’t been stretching the field vertically.

I’m not saying A-Rod was better than Taylor or that he should have been retained, but I am worried we haven’t actually upgraded at the OC spot. 

[Onlyu]

It comes down to two things for me.

1. I have seen progress in each game offensively so far. Latest progress last night was in the run game which has been average at best so far but clearly looked better last night.

Now you can argue that some of the play calls last night were not great for sure but how many WR’s did we see wide open last night…I mean the whole crowd screaming for Troy to throw the ball to the open guy. We didn’t run it as much as I’d like, especially after it seemed like we had something positive there. Negative marks there for sure.

2. Tyler Huntley (as the starter) is night and day better than he was last year. Is that on Tyler or on Taylor? I lean to Taylor because Tyler is decisive, accurate and on time with the majority of his throws in a completely new offense and when we saw him as a freshman, albeit briefly for most, we worried that he wasn’t close to being a thrower at the level needed in the Pac12.

There were plenty of plays to be made last night that Williams completely missed.

Last thing, under Roderick we CLEARLY regressed offensively as each season went on and he put more on film. Defenses adjusted and completely shut us down. In fairness, maybe it was injuries and lack of depth…all we could do was run with great backs and a great o-line and we rarely if ever had ANY open routes. Play design and scheme are huge and Taylor is far and away better than ARod was, is or ever will be.

[UteThunder]

I don’t know how you can give credit to Taylor for Huntley’s improvement when Williams is the same or worse than he was last year. That tells me that Huntley’s improvement from last year is more of a product of no longer being a true freshman than it is anything Taylor has done with him. If it was Taylor’s coaching, shouldn’t we expect both guys to be better than last year, even if by just a little bit?

I’ll agree with you on the amount of plays that were there to be made last night if Williams had only seen the open WRs. I don’t recall ever having guys open like that under A-Rod.

[UtemanUtefan]

Having seen TW2 in 2 games now I think I can confidently say I’m more than underwhelmed by Troy Taylor. Not necessarily his scheme but his inability to adjust in game.

* In the games Huntley played, I think I was blinded/overjoyed? by the completion percentages, but by the Arizona game I started noticing that the play calls are almost all exactly the same (part of his iphone offense I guess.) For example: literally every pass play left is designed to pull the safety over the top with the corner on a long route as distraction, while the underneath route just pulls in the direction/space left open by the linebacker – and if the linebacker pulls toward zone coverage then Huntley pulls it down to run. Only if the safety crashes would you throw over the top to the 1 on 1 deep route (I don’t think that happened once or if it did they missed it) No looks to the right side, no 4th option.

It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s effective when your QB can make the read and run the ball on his own if the pass lanes are taken.

TLDR; The offense only works because of Huntley. That’s why they went with him out of fall camp.

Troy Taylor made no adjustments for TW2 for this game, those short easy 4-7 yard throws are now 50% balls (or less) instead of 80-90% balls with a more accurate QB and if you can’t get 5ish a carry in the run game you’re always behind the chains. Makes for a long night offensively. 

For such a supposed QB whisperer I’m less than impressed, and I can’t even blame TW2. He’s being told if the first read isn’t open to run with it, but he’s such a pocket presence he’s looking for that 2nd option and doesn’t have enough time with this o-line to let downfield stuff develop.

A-Rod would at least go with the hot hand, run game going well? ok let’s run all day. Pass right on fades worked 3 times this drive? lets do it again in the end zone… but with TT, I don’t even know.

 

[UteThunder]

Agree with everything you said except for Williams having good pocket presence. He ditched the pocket without being pressured time and time again last night. If he had just stayed in the pocket for another second or two(which he had time to do more often than not) before rolling out in a panic, he would have likely found those open WRs.

[UtemanUtefan]

That’s probably true, but the amount of times he was pressured/hit in the first half had a lot to do with the phantom pressure.

[PorterRockwell]

What you saw and what Troy are from two different vantage points. You e no idea what he did or did not see. You ever actually play football and QB or are you just armchair QB know it all?

[UteThunder]

Yes I did and even if I didn’t, everyone in the stadium and watching on TV at home could see that the pocket was not collapsing and he repeatedly took off without being pressured. If you can’t see it or think that the coaches won’t be dressing him down in the film room for it, well, then I guess your football takes are as accurate as your political takes. That is to say, not at all.

[PorterRockwell]

Hey genius none of us has any way of knowing what Troy saw. Of course his performance will be broken down and reviewed and critiqued as it should be

As far as your opinion about my opinions. Meh.

[UteThunder]

Really? You say you are done interacting with me and then reply to one of my posts not even 10 minutes later? 

Have you no integrity?

[PorterRockwell]

Troy Williams doesn’t have a joe Williams to give the ball to this year, doesn’t have four or five NFL lineman blocking for him and the backs

ARod clearly didn’t develop quarterbacks How has Williams r greased? His completion percentage in six quarters is about the same as last year’s

Yes the offense looked dynamic under Huntley but is he reslly that good or was it the level of competition?

[UteThunder]

How has Williams regressed? More like, how has he not regressed?

Completion percentage(53.1 to 50), yards/attempt(7.07 to 6.36), TD:INT ratio(1.9:1 to 1:2), and QB rating(121.0 to 102.2) are all worse this year compared to last.

I also don’t recall Williams abandoning a perfectly good pocket over and over again last year, though maybe I am just misremembering. 

Your final statement is just more of a possible indictment of Taylor. Until Huntley gets healthy, we won’t know if the offensive improvement we saw could also be attributed to competition or not. 

 

[ironman1315]

Don’t you think that’s a fairly small sample size to declare regression?

[UteThunder]

Possibly, but it’s all we have at this point.

Interestingly, Huntley’s stats this year are quite comparable to his small sample size from last year. Completion Percentage(71.4 to 73.3), yards/attempt(8.57 to 8.05), TD:INT Ratio(0:0 to 3:1), and QB rating(143.4 to 154.1)

[PorterRockwell]

He was 20-39 for 238 yards with two picks.  Pretty similar to last year. When he did lead us to a 9-4 record.  Since you’re the board’s self proclaimed QB expert I will defer to your “wisdom”. 

 

I would prefer to have Huntley starting but right now we have Troy  he did lead us to NINE wins last year including a come from behind win over USC but some of you seem to forget that fact.  You want to blame all this on Troy while covering that he had a superb O Line last year and Joe Williams.  Smh 

[UteThunder]

Link to me proclaiming myself the board’s QB expert? Same clown here as you were on UF.N

Where did I blame TW? It’s not lost on me that we won 9 games with him as QB last year, but go look at his game by game performances for last year. We won many of those 9 games despite Troy Williams, not because of Troy Williams. In 4 of our wins last year, he had a completion percentage of 50% or worse. In 3 of our wins he didn’t throw a single TD pass. 

[PorterRockwell]

He has had six quarters of play, didn’t get the starter reps in Fall Camp I would expect the performance we are seeing so far and again your numbers don’t account for the loss of joe Williams, Oline talent etc

[UteThunder]

Didn’t get the starter reps in fall camp? Nobody got the starter reps in fall camp. For the first week of camp all three QBs were splitting reps and then for the remainder of camp Huntley and Williams split the reps until Huntley was named the starter at the conclusion of fall camp.

[PorterRockwell]

I phrased that incorrectly. My bad. I don’t believe that the reps were split as evenly as we’ve been told

[PorterRockwell]

No link. It’s implied in your attitudes phrasing etc you’re the same know it all clown here that you were on UFN.
Anyway I’m done interacting with you. You’re convinced you are right You cherry pick your data to suit your narrative

[UteThunder]

Cherry pick my data?! Hahahahaha!!! 

Of course I am convinced I am right. And that is NO DIFFERENT FROM YOU OR ANYONE ELSE ON HERE! We all have our opinions, of which we all believe we are correct, and then we discuss/debate them. For some reason you have always operated under the belief that anyone who has an opinion different from yours has no right to argue in defense of their opinion.

Honestly, I’m surprised you bother to climb out from under your rock over at UF.N where all of your opinions can be validated by the resident lefties. I have to say, it is incredibly sad that a grown man who is anti-mormon felt the need to adopt a mormon folk-hero and play up this “horse ridin, gun totin” character in an effort to not have the folks here know that you are actually ffu from UF.N. 

I’ll appreciate you sticking to your word to not interact with me.  

[Tony (admin)]

I get that Troy Williams won nine games for us last year but that argument only goes so far. We aren’t playing any more games for last year. We are in this year now LOL. If only those nine wins translated to good QB play last night, we might have won. 

[PorterRockwell]

You’re missing my point. Many here are acting as though Troy Williams is the worst thing in the world. Many seem ungrateful for what he did last year and many here are forgetting the loss of talent on O line and running back

[uteof]

A Rod had several years and mentored many for four or five years. Let’s give Troy Taylor at least one season before critiquing his impact. I think A Rod had a long tenure and didn’t measure up by any standard. Let’s see how TT turns out. 

[UteThunder]

A-Rod had two stints as co-OC. The first was 1.5 years back in 2009-10 and the second was 2 years in 2015-16.

He didn’t get to mentor any QB for 4 or 5 years. The longest he worked with any QB was two seasons with Travis Wilson. A-Rod was the QB coach during Wilson’s junior season and the co-OC/QB coach during Wilson’s senior season. Back in 2009-10 A-Rod was the WR coach in addition to co-OC so he didn’t mentor Cain or Wynn.

[Utahute72]

The key problem is the O-line. Both in run blocking and pass protection. Having watched a Troy Taylor offense for a number of years, it depends on misdirection as a key element. That takes time to allow the play to develop. The Stanford defense was breaching the O-line so fast last night we didn’t have time to execute. I know most are talking about the improvement in the run game, but if you go back and rewatch the game you’ll see most of those were all on the RBs either breaking tackles or bouncing off closed holes. In the pass game you have to have time to get the ball to the right spot, and that’s tougher to do for a traditional passer like Troy than a scrambler like Tyler.

[noneyadb]

Winner winner. How can a team be so bad at pass protection for sooo long?