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17X National Champions: 65, 68, 69, 83, 85, 86, 88, 90, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21
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Bison 1660 interview yesterday on Bison 1660 with the new OC was encouraging. Said take what defense gives you and that means both long and short passes. Both types of passes need to set up one another. Now can we really stretch the field vertically like EWU or other teams do?
IMO, the biggest reason we seemed stagnant at times was poor performance on 1st down. That seemed to be such a huge part of the past 5 years that really took a step back last year. Even against SDSU in the playoffs, we were converting 3rd and long all game. Also had a huge drop in 3rd down conversion percentage. 3rd and short makes us much less predictable.
As far as Stick running the ball, the threat of him running and the defense having to consider that is almost as important as the yards he gains on the ground. Look at UNI a couple years ago and the last quarter of Montana when Wentz's ankle wasn't 100%.
The thing is we actually were not that bad on converting on 3rd down It was our lowest but not by a huge margin. (we also had the lowest number of 3rd down attempts for the last 5 years by almost 10% so that isn't good either)
2016 46%
2015 47%
2014 48%
2013 55%
2012 51%
The bigger 3rd down number in my opinion and the effect it had on our team last year was the other teams 3rd down efficiency. Look at these numbers:
2016 40%
2015 26%
2014 32%
2013 26%
2012 29%
Agree that our defensive 3rd down efficiency took a big step back. Seemed like we gave up a lot of conversions on QB scrambles. I thought we sat back in coverage a lot last year on third down and hoped our DL could get there, and if they couldn't the coverage broke down and someone got open. Would love to see us more aggressive on defense on third down.
The offensive 3rd down numbers are skewed by 3 games: EWU, @USD, and the playoff game against SDSU. In those three, we were 31 of 43 for 72%. In the other 11 games, we converted 52 of 138 for 38%. We finished 9 games at 40% or under; in 2016, overall 3rd down efficiency was only 1% better, but we only had 4 games under 40%. Seems like consistency was the issue...
Anything on Jarrod Tuska? Herd an injury rumor.
Lardsin must go!