I live in the DC area now and listen to sports radio when I drive in the afternoon.
The frustration with Bienemy this year was his insistence on passing on a vast majority of the plays instead of just pitching the ball and designing a blocking scheme to move the ball. They were last in the NFL in rushing attempts. It put the Commanders in a ton of 2nd and long positions, which led to a lot of sacks, turnovers, punts since 2nd down became an obvious passing down and 3rd often became a mandatory passing down.
I know analytics say that throwing on 1st down leads to more success, but I have issues with analytics at times. The only goal of the offense is not scoring points. The goal of the offense is to also wear out the defense, allow their own defense to rest, perform in the red zone, manage the clock effectively, and to save some of their better plays for later in the game. The goal of a single offensive down isn’t to gain the most yards. You could argue in football that losing yards on certain downs and distances is a far worse fate than gaining a couple fewer yards on average. There is nothing more demoralizing to an offense than being second and long. There is nothing more demoralizing to a team than giving up a long, time consuming touchdown when you are already behind or your offense doesn’t have time to score before the end of a half.
Similarly, if first down runs only average 5+ yards 35% of the time and first down passes average 5+ yards 45% of the time, that doesn’t mean you should pas 100% of the time. If the average gain on a 1st down rush is only 3.9 yards and on passing it is 5.9 yards, that doesn’t mean you should use it 100% of the time. The analytics may fail to mention that the odds of gaining zero yards is 35% on a passing down and the odds of losing 5+ yards is 10% via penalty or sack. If running lowers the odds of gaining zero yards to 5% and the odds of losing 5+ yards to 5%, then there are other things to consider. Like investing money, timing needs to be considered. Real time conditions need to be considered. Strategies to mitigate risk or realize the reality of risk also need to be considered.
In a nutshell, Sam Howell is no Patrick Mahomes, so you can’t use analytics the same. And if you get into trouble on a 2nd or 3rd and long, Sam Howell is no Patrick Mahomes. UCLA quarterbacks should not be expected to perform like Patrick Mahomes.
I say all of this because privately he supposedly refers to probabilities an annoying amount of the time. A lot of airtime was spent talking about that faulty logic, especially as Howell was getting sacked and throwing interceptions at a league high rate and good running backs were being used as blockers or decoys.
ucla.rivals.com
