Originally Posted by
T1
I'll wrap this up for me (hopefully) with my subjective opinion of Holtz. I think he is a thinker, and it hurts him. I think he overthinks this game. It's the opposite of Tony Franklin. Franklin has 5 plays and runs them until you can stop them. It's all about catching the defense off guard with his pace and executing his system and it's up to you to stop it, but I'm going to stick to my system regardless of what you are doing to try to stop it. Holtz examines all this stuff... he bases his game plan on what the other team's tendencies are. He will have a different game plan every week to suit the opponent. We may try to run on UAB and throw on LSU, but that's what we are going to do. If they throw a monkey wrench into what he's seen on film all week, we are screwed (see USM in 2016, second half of ODU game, perhaps UAB this year). He observes what the defensive coordinator is doing during the game and plays chess with that. "He's in a cover 2 this series, we are going to throw crossing patterns, oh crap he moved to a cover 0, we need to throw deep, oh crap he's dropping his safeties deep, we need to run the ball." I'm not as smart as Holtz, but I like Tony's system better... do what you do best and stick with it. Our only strength on this offense this year, is our WR's... get them the ball in space somehow. Drop trying to run the ball, we can't. (I'm sure he would tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and I probably don't).
Another flaw is that he doesn't want to make a mistake to hurt the team. If he's up by 3 points with 6 minutes left, he does not want to call a play that may result in a pick 6 and the loss being his fault (and his dad calling him and telling him how dumb he was after the game). He wants to manage the game and play the odds. What sucks about that is that we usually have a terrible defense, so punting the ball with 4 minutes left usually results in a loss. He needs to remember that our defense usually sucks and maybe being aggressive here and trying to score again would be the best option. It's a tough job and there are many different approaches; his has kept him employed and going to championships and bowl games for a long time. It can be frustrating at times, but odds are, he is going to field a good team. He can be out-coached, but if he has the better players (execution), he will win almost all the time.