thatguy2016
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Agree that the defense has suffered since the middle of last year, but part of the issue has been the change in offensive philosophy. When it became clear last year that WF had some elite offensive weapons, WF ramped up the offensive pace.
That plan to maximize the number of offensive plays continues. WF ran 100+ plays last week -- a ridiculously high number of plays. The idea is pretty simple: our offense is potent, more plays means more chances to score means more offense points. This change is philosophy to increase the number of plays and drives; also means that the WF defense is on the field for more plays and more drives. Last week, the WF defense forced BC to punt 9 times. That is a lot. Yet, BC still scored 6 TDs; and ran out the clock on one other possession. BC had 16 possessions last week that is a ton. As an example, in the BYU v. Wisconsin game last week, each team had 10 possessions; last week against Vandy, when ND scored 22, they had 11 offensive possesions. The WF offense could help the defense by slowing the offensive pace. Clawson has decided that is not in our interest (and is also not as fun to watch). The downside is that playing up tempo will mean more points given up.
It's somewhat akin to the flawed de facto conclusion that up tempo hoop teams play bad defense because they give up more points, than slower paced teams. Not always true. Uptempo offensive teams will give up more points because the opponent has more possessions, but allowing more points doesn't always mean that the defense isn't as a good or better than a slow paced team that gives up fewer points. That is why hoop analytics values points per possession as an offensive and defensive metric as compared to points allowed per game.
I've been harping on this since last year
our goal on offense is also to tire the opposing defense out, and we achieved that last week; at the end of the game the BC defense was absolutely gassed
however this has been and continues to be an absolute killer to our defense as well
even in the Towson game, with the game well in hand, we continued to run plays with much time on the play clock vs. running down the clock and keeping the defense off the field
I would hope that as we evolve we will see opportunities to run clock while on offense