Just a thought about the sentence in your last paragraph: This spectacular season and our success in it is basically an indictment of our teams/coaching/Whittinghams’ defense first, safe possession offense philosophy.
A few weeks ago I heard an interview with Whittingham that really surprised me. I wish I could find the link to the interview but I can’t put my hands on it. The interviewer (Riley?) asked about the importance of the offense to this year’s team and Kyle [paraphrased] said: “I have always believed that the defense was the most important key to winning. Or, at least, I believed that to win you needed to win all three phases of the game and that the defense, offense and special teams were all equally important (IOW, offense, defense and special teams are each 33% responsible for game time success). But, Kyle continued “the analytics don’t support that belief and we’ve had to change. In fact, according to the analytics, offensive production is actually more like 45% responsible for success in a game, with defense being 35% responsible and special teams being 20% responsible. We’ve had to get better at offense, and we think we have done that this year.”
I think that quote shows that our 60 year old coach is still evolving. He’s not just showing up and collecting a pay check. He is still engaged and evaluating what is going right and what is going wrong. And even now, he is able to change, improve and get better. I think that the improved offense we are seeing was a process that was started some time ago. It is both an indictment on a past philosophy and a recognition that the coaching staff has evolved to make a change necessary to win at a higher level.
Loading ...
