I've been thinking about making this post for a couple of weeks now and have not. Before you jump on me just read this. It's not all bad.
For all the talk about Shula's offense the last couple of years, if you notice, some of the plays we run, in the formations we run them in, are pretty much identical to Shula's old "Pro attack". Have you guys also caught that as well?
Case in point. Look at some of our staple plays this year.
(1) Grant, "handsweep" around the end with pulling linemen. Typical Shula play call there. Or it was, before he fell in love with 22 dive. :lol:
(2) Fourth and 1 misfire was a typical Shula play call in the past. The only difference is we would have lined up a FB at the extra TE position. Still the same play though.
(3) First play against Ark (if I remember correctly) is the patented Shula bomb with max-protect on the QB's strong-side. Load up the right, fake the inside give, drop back 7 and launch it deep. Same play we've run for the last several years.
(4) HB swing. How many of those did KD catch under Shula? It was a staple play run about 4-6 times a game.
The things that bother me though are these;
(1) Does anyone else feel like BAMA came in offensively a little ultra-conservative? Or should I say....Shula-conservative? We looked early on like we were scared to death of UGA's speed. I saw this too many times under the old regime and I can spot the behavior a mile away.
(2) 4th and 1 trickeration. Don't like it. Sends a bad message to me, and this was very Shulaesq IMHO.
(3) WR's are catching passes well short of the marker on 3rd downs. Shula's offense was notorious for this. Hopefully we'll get it corrected in the second half though.
Anyway, has anyone else noticed some of this stuff? Like I said, it's not all bad. On the play-calling though I definately see some of that whole "Pro-style offensive attack" that Shula ran in the past. Thus far the only difference is that Applewhite and Pendry have run it better than Shula did. Hopefully we'll get back to business in the second because we did not do a good job in the first of capitalizing on some field position when we had the chance.