I said early this summer I thought the defense would need to carry the offense early due to how young we were. What I didn’t know was that we’d alter our offense this much. I don’t know if the Hunt situation has affected things or there are other things we don’t know, or we just thought we could do this because of an inferior opponent.
A basis of Frost’s offense is to use spacing and motion to create big plays. As Frost mentioned in postgame, they were able to bring a Safety into the box all day. Usually against his offense that’s tough to do. The difference is how much two tight and condensed sets we used. When we had a 2 back set with Robinson, instead of creating an advantage, we simply collapsed the area of the field they had to defend. There were chances to be had in the passing game because of this, but Martinez tried to place too many balls in zones than just accepting the open receiver underneath. Again, though, we could have greatly aided him by pulling defenders laterally with screens, TE/RB, etc.
One reason we didnt, and Martinez felt so much need to go downfield relates to the poor running on first down. Notice the best runs of the day were by Mo. That’s because he bounced plays outside. Mills just put his head down, ran into defenders and accepted the two yard gain. They may be fine in some offenses, but it neuters our playcalling if it’s constantly 2nd and long. I thought Mills showed a lack of vision all day. Yes, the blocking wasn’t there, and that’s a big problem, but Mo had it just as bad and he averaged over 6 ypc while Mills was just under 3.
The center position is as big of a worry as many of us feared. Not only the bad snaps, but both centers were constantly being driven back. I’m confident Frost will get back to creating numbers in the box to allow our running game to get going, and that will help Martinez get back on track. The offensive line issues are more concerning. We may not have an offensive line that allows him to call some of the formations he called today.
