Blue Zone Woes

I think that our problems in the Blue Zone are two fold, and the blame is equally shared by Anae and Hill.



As much as I don't like the offense that Anae is running, it does move us down the field. However, I've noticed once we get close to the end zone, instead of continuing to run the basic, simple plays that moved us down the field in the first place, Anae always resorts to doing tricky, gadget plays instead. Often these plays result in disaster, and we end up kicking FG instead of scoring TDs.



As far as Hill is concerned, he gets impatient once we are about 25 yards or closer to the end zone. I saw way too many times this past season where we'd start sniffing the end zone at about 25 yards out, and Hill would throw 3 consecutive fade routes to the end zone that would all fall incomplete.



Our realistic hope of the Blue Zone offense improving next year is for Hill to learn some patience, and to audible out of Anae's stupid,gimmick plays near the goal line (as did Beck and Hall) If Hill can learn those two things we will be fine on offense next year.

Great post, I agree with a lot of it. Taysom changes as he gets in the blue zone.

Passer Rating by Zone:

Blue Zone: 25 of 60 for 226 yards 11 TDs 3 INTs 123.81 PER, 41.7%

Non-Blue Zone: 212 of 383 for 2716 yards 8 TDs 11 INTs, 116.07, 55.4%



Bottom line - Hill just wasn't efficient enough inside or out side the blue zone for BYU to successful offensively this year.

1

SpiffCoug wrote:
Passer Rating by Zone:

Blue Zone: 25 of 60 for 226 yards 11 TDs 3 INTs 123.81 PER, 41.7%

Non-Blue Zone: 212 of 383 for 2716 yards 8 TDs 11 INTs, 116.07, 55.4%



Bottom line - Hill just wasn't efficient enough inside or out side the blue zone for BYU to successful offensively this year.

i think you rely on this stat too heavily is implying it is Hill that is the cause of our blue zone woes. i would have to disagree big time. anae's scheme and play calls, the oline, and no reliable tight end have more to do with it than taysom does in my opinion

I probably do rely on it too heavily. But the fact is, when the QB can throw the ball efficiently, BYU (and any team) is dominant. BYU hasn't had that in four years.



Hill played well in about half the season, including agreat five game stretch, but the other seven games left MUCH to be desired.



Great five game stretch plus Nevada:

120 of 180 for 1553 yards 13 TDs 5 INTs 157.42 PER 66.7% BYU averaged 36.2 points



Non-five game stretch:

117 of 263 for 1389 yards 6 TDs 9 INTs 89.53 PER 44.5% BYU averaged 24.9 points

Spiff



Now list the opponents in both categories and the picture should be clear. His PER drops vs better defenses. And defenses generally are better in the red zone because they have less field to defend.



Hill is not yet a great passer. Not even consistently good. Not having a RB, FB, or TE to consistently catch passes and to help block and having only one money wide receiver and a weak OL contribute to that.



Even so, Hill needs to improve his accuracy, get rid of the ball more quickly, anticipate and throw to a spit, and take a little zip off at times. Hopefully experience fixes this.

jonnylingo wrote:

Passer Rating by Zone:

Blue Zone: 25 of 60 for 226 yards 11 TDs 3 INTs 123.81 PER, 41.7%

Non-Blue Zone: 212 of 383 for 2716 yards 8 TDs 11 INTs, 116.07, 55.4%



Bottom line - Hill just wasn't efficient enough inside or out side the blue zone for BYU to successful offensively this year.

i think you rely on this stat too heavily is implying it is Hill that is the cause of our blue zone woes. i would have to disagree big time. anae's scheme and play calls, the oline, and no reliable tight end have more to do with it than taysom does in my opinion

I think a decent amount of our blue zone struggles is in fact on Hill. Yes, play calling needs to improve, but you get in the blue zone and the one thing you know is not going to happen is Hill handing off the ball during the option read play. He may hand if off 1 or 2 times in 10 outside of the blue zone, but once it's in the blue zone, no chance. It's the Taysom show all day long.

hawkwing wrote:

SpiffCoug wrote:
Passer Rating by Zone:

Blue Zone: 25 of 60 for 226 yards 11 TDs 3 INTs 123.81 PER, 41.7%

Non-Blue Zone: 212 of 383 for 2716 yards 8 TDs 11 INTs, 116.07, 55.4%



Bottom line - Hill just wasn't efficient enough inside or out side the blue zone for BYU to successful offensively this year.

i think you rely on this stat too heavily is implying it is Hill that is the cause of our blue zone woes. i would have to disagree big time. anae's scheme and play calls, the oline, and no reliable tight end have more to do with it than taysom does in my opinion

I think a decent amount of our blue zone struggles is in fact on Hill. Yes, play calling needs to improve, but you get in the blue zone and the one thing you know is not going to happen is Hill handing off the ball during the option read play. He may hand if off 1 or 2 times in 10 outside of the blue zone, but once it's in the blue zone, no chance. It's the Taysom show all day long.

we will just have to disagree then. having a qb like hill who is a serious threat to run should be a huge asset in the blue zone. it isn't and its not because hill often keeps it on an option read play. While it is surely a number of factors in my opinion the main reason is our offensive line. fi they can't block for a running or throwing play, with a shorter field, there are really just very limited options that will be successful. i think this is why taysom ends up running it alot more so than "it is the taysom hill show."

The biggest problem in the red zone for this team is the OL. When the field shrinks, you have to be able to get hard yards, and the OL just didn't give the offense the chance to get those hard yards. It also makes the play caller and the QB look bad.



Anae isn't great, but if he had a decent OL, the red zone plays aren't a bunch of misdirection runs and fades.



Hill does have to produce better, but again, it's hard in compressed space with coverage rolled to your best receiving option and all 11 guys that close to the LOS.

Cougarbib wrote:
Spiff



Now list the opponents in both categories and the picture should be clear. His PER drops vs better defenses. And defenses generally are better in the red zone because they have less field to defend.



Hill is not yet a great passer. Not even consistently good. Not having a RB, FB, or TE to consistently catch passes and to help block and having only one money wide receiver and a weak OL contribute to that.



Even so, Hill needs to improve his accuracy, get rid of the ball more quickly, anticipate and throw to a spit, and take a little zip off at times. Hopefully experience fixes this.

I'll try to put the raw numbers in different terms. Here is how Hill's PERs compared - by percentage - to the opponents defensive PER.



I haven't looked at these numbers, so I don't know what they mean or whether they tell us anything. But I think it should show how Hill was doing compared to other QBs against those teams.



Against UVA, Hill's PER was 43.6% below UVA's Defensive PER.

Against Texas, Hill's PER was 42.7% below Texas' Defensive PER.

Against Utah, Hill's PER was 44.4% below Utah's Defensive PER.

Against MTSU, Hill's PER was 12.0% ABOVE MTSU's Defensive PER.

Against USU, Hill's PER was 36.4% ABOVE USU's Defensive PER.

Against GT, Hill's PER was 21.0% ABOVE GT's Defensive PER.

Against Houston, Hill's PER was 40.6% ABOVE Houston's Defensive PER.

Against Boise, Hill's PER was 26.8% ABOVE Boise's Defensive PER.

Against Wisc, Hill's PER was 8.0% below Wisc's Defensive PER.

Against Ida St, Hill's PER was 17.0% below Ida St's Defensive PER.

Against ND, Hill's PER was 20.8% below ND's Defensive PER.

Against UNR, Hill's PER was 12.0% ABOVE UNR's Defensive PER.

Against UW, Hill's PER was 12.4% below UW's Defensive PER.

stuckinbig10country wrote:
The biggest problem in the red zone for this team is the OL. When the field shrinks, you have to be able to get hard yards, and the OL just didn't give the offense the chance to get those hard yards. It also makes the play caller and the QB look bad.



Anae isn't great, but if he had a decent OL, the red zone plays aren't a bunch of misdirection runs and fades.



Hill does have to produce better, but again, it's hard in compressed space with coverage rolled to your best receiving option and all 11 guys that close to the LOS.

The reason I will disagree some with this is: BYU doesn't typically spread the field (vertically) very much this year. As a result, it seems to me that the shorter field should not affect them as much ... they should just continue running what moved them there in the first place.



In Anae 1.0, BYU was one of the leading teams in the nation for blue zone scoring. So it is reasonable to believe that ANAE knows how to call plays to score. BUT in Anae 2.0, BYU is one of the worst blue-zone offenses in the nation.



What is the change? Anae 1.0 went vertical a lot more than Anae 2.0. Is the difference REALLY just Beck and Hall being willing to audible out (therefore assuming they were smarter than Anae)?

mtnradio wrote:

The biggest problem in the red zone for this team is the OL. When the field shrinks, you have to be able to get hard yards, and the OL just didn't give the offense the chance to get those hard yards. It also makes the play caller and the QB look bad.



Anae isn't great, but if he had a decent OL, the red zone plays aren't a bunch of misdirection runs and fades.



Hill does have to produce better, but again, it's hard in compressed space with coverage rolled to your best receiving option and all 11 guys that close to the LOS.

The reason I will disagree some with this is: BYU doesn't typically spread the field (vertically) very much this year. As a result, it seems to me that the shorter field should not affect them as much ... they should just continue running what moved them there in the first place.



In Anae 1.0, BYU was one of the leading teams in the nation for blue zone scoring. So it is reasonable to believe that ANAE knows how to call plays to score. BUT in Anae 2.0, BYU is one of the worst blue-zone offenses in the nation.



What is the change? Anae 1.0 went vertical a lot more than Anae 2.0. Is the difference REALLY just Beck and Hall being willing to audible out (therefore assuming they were smarter than Anae)?

The OL was better for most of Anae's first run with the team. If you go back and watch, at some point during the 2005 season, they changed what they were doing in the red zone. That whole year, they were strong between the 20s, but early on in the year, they bogged down in the red zone. Eventually, there was a shift in how they operated in the red zone. Part of it was having awesome TE's to use, but part of it was they went smash mouth and drove people off the LOS and scored.



Can they do that with the offense they are running now? I guess we'll find out.

How about using the TE next year. Bring back the bootleg. Couldn't they run the same play on TH very first play against WSU? He threw a TD and could have run it in for a TD.

mtnradio wrote:

The biggest problem in the red zone for this team is the OL. When the field shrinks, you have to be able to get hard yards, and the OL just didn't give the offense the chance to get those hard yards. It also makes the play caller and the QB look bad.



Anae isn't great, but if he had a decent OL, the red zone plays aren't a bunch of misdirection runs and fades.



Hill does have to produce better, but again, it's hard in compressed space with coverage rolled to your best receiving option and all 11 guys that close to the LOS.

The reason I will disagree some with this is: BYU doesn't typically spread the field (vertically) very much this year. As a result, it seems to me that the shorter field should not affect them as much ... they should just continue running what moved them there in the first place.



In Anae 1.0, BYU was one of the leading teams in the nation for blue zone scoring. So it is reasonable to believe that ANAE knows how to call plays to score. BUT in Anae 2.0, BYU is one of the worst blue-zone offenses in the nation.



What is the change? Anae 1.0 went vertical a lot more than Anae 2.0. Is the difference REALLY just Beck and Hall being willing to audible out (therefore assuming they were smarter than Anae)?

Anae 1.0 had a legit OL and Harline/Pitta/Coats/George. That's the only difference.



Our best offense was QB runs in the red zone this season. How did we get our only TD vs UW? Taysom kept running down there until he got in. Throwing almost never worked, and runs to JWill were a 50/50 proposition because the line got blown up so often.

mtnradio wrote:

The biggest problem in the red zone for this team is the OL. When the field shrinks, you have to be able to get hard yards, and the OL just didn't give the offense the chance to get those hard yards. It also makes the play caller and the QB look bad.



Anae isn't great, but if he had a decent OL, the red zone plays aren't a bunch of misdirection runs and fades.



Hill does have to produce better, but again, it's hard in compressed space with coverage rolled to your best receiving option and all 11 guys that close to the LOS.

The reason I will disagree some with this is: BYU doesn't typically spread the field (vertically) very much this year. As a result, it seems to me that the shorter field should not affect them as much ... they should just continue running what moved them there in the first place.



In Anae 1.0, BYU was one of the leading teams in the nation for blue zone scoring. So it is reasonable to believe that ANAE knows how to call plays to score. BUT in Anae 2.0, BYU is one of the worst blue-zone offenses in the nation.



What is the change? Anae 1.0 went vertical a lot more than Anae 2.0. Is the difference REALLY just Beck and Hall being willing to audible out (therefore assuming they were smarter than Anae)?

This is 1+1=10. The difference between beck, hall and now is Beck and hall had an offensive line trained by Jeff Grimes. Taysom Hill is just a sophomore so yes he needs to get better, if he doesn't he will not get us where we want to go. Having said that this years offensive woe's inside and outside of the red zone were 80% offensive line and the other 20% is because we had 1 receiver who was a threat to the defense, especially after Mitch Matthews and JD falslev went down.

Can we please stop calling it the blue zone? It was borderline stupid when they started it, and now that we are not even in the top 100 of college teams with redzone touchdown percentage... it just makes us look like a bunch of jackyewts.

mtnradio wrote:

What is the change? Anae 1.0 went vertical a lot more than Anae 2.0. Is the difference REALLY just Beck and Hall being willing to audible out (therefore assuming they were smarter than Anae)?

Yes, that is the difference. They had more than a couple fights about it on the sidelines. Max practically called all the plays his senior year. He was regularly audibling out.



Anae 1.0 had two great tight ends. He went away from that to something gimmicky because he didn't get along with the tight ends and abandoned them, and he is reaping what he has sown.

BlueIsBetter wrote:
Can we please stop calling it the blue zone? It was borderline stupid when they started it, and now that we are not even in the top 100 of college teams with redzone touchdown percentage... it just makes us look like a bunch of jackyewts.

But Blue is Better

Hill is Sean Covey with better running skills. In fact, I'm not even sure if he measures up to Covey's ability to pass the ball. Hill is fine on any short to intermediate drag routes. However, if he is forced to throw the ball deep, BYU loses the games. Period. I have seen nothing to make me think he can beat teams with throws over the top. While his deep accuracy has not been good, the O-line doesn't give him time and the receivers do not have the breakaway speed to get open deep. That makes it all the tougher for a QB that is not very accurate on the deep ball. Hence, I will expect Sean Covey type results for Hill until we figure out how to stretch the field. Note, Covey wasn't a terrible QB--he just wasn't going to lead BYU to a special season. I think Hill's passing deficiencies will likewise inhibit BYU's ability for a special season while he is the starting QB. I hope I am wrong.