Shawn Krest of the North State Journal joins us to discuss the Tar Heels, the good and bad from Saturday night, and projecting forward as they head to Syracuse.
THI Podcast: AJ & Shawn Talk UNC Football
- Thread starter andrew jones
- Start date
"Nobody has asked Larry about that because we know he's not going to answer."
Larry is like a Asperger's guy in that he apparently cannot fathom how what he does and does not do, and how he does or does not do them, eventually will be perceived by many people as intentionally insulting.
Larry is like a Asperger's guy in that he apparently cannot fathom how what he does and does not do, and how he does or does not do them, eventually will be perceived by many people as intentionally insulting.
Great insight: last week, the team played its best game of the year and lost a heartbreaker. That could mean either that we have turned the corner, or that we now will fold back into consistently erratic play broken only by truly poor play.
Wild swinging, lack of consistent building, consistent growth: that is Fedora, and that is the basis not a proven winner but of a proven mediocrity.
Wild swinging, lack of consistent building, consistent growth: that is Fedora, and that is the basis not a proven winner but of a proven mediocrity.
As the father of a daughter who has high functioning autism, which is very much like Asperber's, your point is an interesting one and a fair comparison. I've never thought of it that way but it's interesting to consider.
All good points in your posts and I agree. That's why I wrote it another thread this is an enormous game for Larry. The team, not so much. I think the huge-game part of the season has passed. But for Larry it's very big for the reasons you noted and others.
I have a son with it, and it has been tough getting him to understand that he can offend people, deeply, by doing things that have no meaning to him beyond being comfortable to him. He also has a number of unexamined obsessions and fixations, and he is adamantly opposed to being told that perhaps they are not good for him.
I think all people 'on the spectrum' create order for themselves and then act as if the world should conform to the things they internally have come to accept as making them somewhat comfortable with the world.
Now that points to the high probability that almost all 'eccentric' unsociable geniuses have at least 1 toe on the spectrum.
Here is a reason I think it matters if moves to some gimmicky type of game to run all the time with the QB (defined as 'the one who receives the snap') doing much of the running: how this team wins and loses with Big Plays.
To Fedora, whose offensive system is built upon them, a Big or Explosive play is a run of at least 12 yards and a pass completion of at least 15 yards. He assumes that the more of those he gets, the better his offense works and the much more likely the team is to win.
I think that helps explain Fedora's fetish for running QBs: if you have talented WRs who must be covered, a running QB will have a much higher percentage of Big/Explosive runs than will the RBs because of broken pass plays and QB draws when the back 7 fall back to cover receivers.
Below is the break down of Big/Explosive plays this season. The first number listed is for runs and the second for passes:
Cal - 1, 1
ECU - 5, 4
Pitt - 6, 9
Miami - 11, 2
VT 4, 4
The only W we have is the game in which we have more passing than running Big/Explosive plays. The game with the largest disparity is the one in which we were beaten like an old drum.
I think all that has meaning for how a spread operates best against opponents who have at least roughly your level of talent: you need to rely on the passing game for most of the Big/Explosive plays, using your RBs to carry the running game in a fairly traditional manner, which means your RB-based run game is used to pick up the tough yards and control the clock. And sometimes you will get the Big/Explosive runs.
Elliott is no future NFL QB, but he was 11 of 15 versus VT. And just as he tossed 2 very bad passes, he also had a good pass dropped (2 Fortin passes were dropped, one of which would have been a TD) and threw at least 1 great pass. If a D fears both Antonio Williams as a bruising RB capable of occasionally breaking tackles for 10 and 15 yard gains and Carter as a break away threat on most carries, then WRs and TEs will come open. And some of those will cover at least 15 yards. Just like against Pitt.
Because Ruder ran so much in HS and faced so few HS DBs who had Major College talent, he is farther behind in the passing game than is Fortin. Even so, I say let him play with a game plan scripted to pass.
If Fedora goes gimmick with Ratliff-Williams taking snaps to be backyard football QB, then he is signaling that next year he is going to prefer to direct an offense with a run-first QB rather than a QB like Fortin. And long term, that will not work, not if you want more than an average of 7.5 wins per year.
You sure it's 12 yards for explosive runs? Littrell and Kap have often said 10 yards, and that's the industry standard. When we break down per-game stats on Sundays, the explosive runs are measured at 10 yards or more. It's nit picking a little and wouldn't affect your numbers in your thorough and very good post. To your point about the running QB, as good as MW was much of the time, the Heels were 6-7 in 2014.
You just described my little girl, who turned 9 in August. And the older she gets, the more pronounced these isms are, for lack of a better term. She also has an anxiety disorder we've been told she may grow out of, but at this time it's a rough combination at times with high functioning autism. My wife's a neonatal nurse who works nights, so three nights a week I put Ellie to bed, and it's usually a 60-120 minute deal. That's why there are nights I "disappear" from the boards. Poor thing, but she does have some amazing unique qualities and she's super smart.
