How to fix the passing game

It's pretty simple in my opinion. If it is 3rd down and longer than 5 yards to go, keep your RB in to help pass block. Tell Jake that he is going to have an extra 0.5 second as a result of the RB staying to help. He better find a receiver down field to throw to. Until he has a 6 pick performance like Max did, force him to learn that there are spaces you can fit the ball in man coverage and the receive might look like he is covered but you need to let them make a play sometimes. Take away the security blanket of being able to dump it down to the flats after one second.



I'd love to see Jake throw more interceptions versus throwing a two yard pass all the time. Give Apo a jump ball against some of the corners and see what he can do.



I wonder if the reason that Jake doesn't have more of the gunslinger mentality that some of our great QB's did is he has in the back of his mind that Riley is waiting on the sidelines and if he turns the ball over he might get benched like last year.

Maybe, but he has thrown 3 interceptions including a pick six where he didn't even try to tackle the guy and when Riley comes in to run the Wild Cougar - option plays only. So until Doman has Riley throw a few passes more than ten yards and sees him complete them - wouldn't that be nice - I don't think he should worry about Riley seeing the field very much.



It has been so long since I have seen Riley throw a pass, that I would be nervous about having him throw one when the game is on the line until I see him throw a few and remember that he actually was reasonably good at it.



Jake is the guy if he just settles down and goes for it on every play.



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This offense needs to come unhinged and go for it. They have so constrained it that it can hardly breath the "life" a passing game should. And I dont really know that its all Doman and Heaps. I think Bronco has mandated "no turnovers" so we're back to dink and dunk, and a desperate pass downfield occassionally.

Detmer had a bunch of INT's until he figured it out. But, figure it out he did! I'm not blaming Bronco, but I do think that his "no pressure" campaign might be back-firing a little.

But the more immediate problem if the lack of a run game to help set up the pass. plain and simple. If we had an Unga or TOnga or Pritchard (presumably) this offense would be further ahead.

Cougarbib2 wrote:
Maybe, but he has thrown 3 interceptions including a pick six where he didn't even try to tackle the guy and when Riley comes in to run the Wild Cougar - option plays only. So until Doman has Riley throw a few passes more than ten yards and sees him complete them - wouldn't that be nice - I don't think he should worry about Riley seeing the field very much.



It has been so long since I have seen Riley throw a pass, that I would be nervous about having him throw one when the game is on the line until I see him throw a few and remember that he actually was reasonably good at it.



Jake is the guy if he just settles down and goes for it on every play.

The only thing I've seen Riley do is run for 2-3 yards and call 2 timeouts (1 in the Ole Miss game and the other in the Texas game). It sure would have been nice to have a 3rd timeout at the end of the Texas game. Not sure if it would have helped, but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD RILEY!!! You're sitting on the bench for the entire game, you get asked to come in for 1 play...you know it's going to be a run option and you CALL TIME OUT!!! That is frustrating. It's almost as bad as your kicker calling a timeout on the extra point attempt. JUST RUN THE FREAKING PLAY! If you don't like it CALL AN AUDIBLE and throw it 9 1/2 yards! :evil:

Ball4 wrote:



The only thing I've seen Riley do is run for 2-3 yards and call 2 timeouts (1 in the Ole Miss game and the other in the Texas game). It sure would have been nice to have a 3rd timeout at the end of the Texas game. Not sure if it would have helped, but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD RILEY!!! You're sitting on the bench for the entire game, you get asked to come in for 1 play...you know it's going to be a run option and you CALL TIME OUT!!! That is frustrating. It's almost as bad as your kicker calling a timeout on the extra point attempt. JUST RUN THE FREAKING PLAY! If you don't like it CALL AN AUDIBLE and throw it 9 1/2 yards! :evil:

The timeout in the Texas game was all on Doman. There was less than 10 seconds on the play clock and Doman was just barely making substitutions. The prior play ended and Jake ran off the field and Riley ran on. It took Doman an additional 30 seconds to make the rest of the substitutions. If you watch it again you will see at least four players run to the huddle right before the timeout was called. There was no way the play was going to get off in time. By calling the time out we actually got the first down (even though Riley fumbled...).

Leaving the backs in to block encourages more pressure because the LB doesn't have to account for the back going out for a pass.



If we want to get more of a down field passing game, we need to use our tight ends over the middle more (we were successful doing so, not sure why we didn't do more of it), our receivers on crossing routes (a staple of BYU offenses of the past), and our backs on wheel routes (Alisa had some nice gains on wheel routes v. Ole Miss).



Oh, and throw it to Apo or Hoffman any time they have one on one coverage. Sometimes you have to trust your receiver to go up and get the ball. I'm not sure anyone beats Apo to the ball.



Also, what happened to the 10 yard curl routes for receivers? Do we have any timing routes in this offense? Those should be virtually indefensible if properly run.

The even more simple fix for fixing the passing offense is playing worse defenses. You guys are going to be amazed at how good our offense looks when we play SJSU, IDaho and Idaho State.

frdbtr wrote:
The even more simple fix for fixing the passing offense is playing worse defenses. You guys are going to be amazed at how good our offense looks when we play SJSU, IDaho and Idaho State.

That too. We'll look like world beaters then.



I'm more worried about getting the offense fixed in time for this weekend, UCF, and TCU. The rest of the games could be won running the ewte offense.

Cougarfan87 wrote:

The even more simple fix for fixing the passing offense is playing worse defenses. You guys are going to be amazed at how good our offense looks when we play SJSU, IDaho and Idaho State.

That too. We'll look like world beaters then.



I'm more worried about getting the offense fixed in time for this weekend, UCF, and TCU. The rest of the games could be won running the ewte offense.

The thing is, we don't really know enough about anyone's defense yet to make assumptions on how good they are going to be. UCF sure looks good but who have they played. utah's defense was really tested by Montana state and USC who looks like their offense isn't very good either. Our offense has not looked that good but Ole Miss' defense looked pretty good and so did Texas'. Texas is LOADED with talent, probably has more 5 star recruits on its roster then BYU has 4 stars and maybe 3 stars as well. I think that our coaches and players know what is going on and will get things fixed. I think BYU's defense is good enough to beat utah this weekend as well. Our offense is going to come around. We had to expect that there would be growing pains with a new Ocoordinator who had never called plays before in his life. Anae looked horrible for his first few games but got better as the season went on. We just need to give it some time.

I agree that part of it is working out the kinks. But some of those kinks that need to be worked out are the bread and butter plays I mentioned earlier that should not be forgotten.



I think we are saying the same thing from different perspectives. Without any improvement at all we have a toss up with Utah and UCF. I would be worried about TCU. But, we would win all of the other games simply because their defenses would not hold down our offense as well as Texas and Ole Miss did and our defense looks pretty stellar.



I am hopeful significant improvement gets here by Saturday because Utah always fields a formidable defense.

Go watch the '88 Colorado game. Watch the boots that they run with detmer. The routes associated with the boots are the kind of routes that doman needs to use, most of them have tight ends from the backside running corner routes, or just dragging across the middle allowing them to pass through the Windows in the zone. you even see receivers running arrow routes, or post and corner routes away from the qb. The bootleg are a good idea, we just need to get different and deeper route combinations involved.



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Wickchad84087 wrote:

The only thing I've seen Riley do is run for 2-3 yards and call 2 timeouts (1 in the Ole Miss game and the other in the Texas game). It sure would have been nice to have a 3rd timeout at the end of the Texas game. Not sure if it would have helped, but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD RILEY!!! You're sitting on the bench for the entire game, you get asked to come in for 1 play...you know it's going to be a run option and you CALL TIME OUT!!! That is frustrating. It's almost as bad as your kicker calling a timeout on the extra point attempt. JUST RUN THE FREAKING PLAY! If you don't like it CALL AN AUDIBLE and throw it 9 1/2 yards! :evil:

The timeout in the Texas game was all on Doman. There was less than 10 seconds on the play clock and Doman was just barely making substitutions. The prior play ended and Jake ran off the field and Riley ran on. It took Doman an additional 30 seconds to make the rest of the substitutions. If you watch it again you will see at least four players run to the huddle right before the timeout was called. There was no way the play was going to get off in time. By calling the time out we actually got the first down (even though Riley fumbled...).

Understood...however, doesn't Riley know the play when they send him in? They can't just look and say "oh no...Riley just went in...we need a play." or "Jake just sat down...hey Riley, I guess you're in." I mean...come on! Doman sent Riley in on purpose for 1 play and you don't know what play he is going to run?



Rediculous on both parts. It's not ALL Doman.

Ball4 wrote:

Ball4 wrote:



The only thing I've seen Riley do is run for 2-3 yards and call 2 timeouts (1 in the Ole Miss game and the other in the Texas game). It sure would have been nice to have a 3rd timeout at the end of the Texas game. Not sure if it would have helped, but FOR CRYING OUT LOUD RILEY!!! You're sitting on the bench for the entire game, you get asked to come in for 1 play...you know it's going to be a run option and you CALL TIME OUT!!! That is frustrating. It's almost as bad as your kicker calling a timeout on the extra point attempt. JUST RUN THE FREAKING PLAY! If you don't like it CALL AN AUDIBLE and throw it 9 1/2 yards! :evil:

The timeout in the Texas game was all on Doman. There was less than 10 seconds on the play clock and Doman was just barely making substitutions. The prior play ended and Jake ran off the field and Riley ran on. It took Doman an additional 30 seconds to make the rest of the substitutions. If you watch it again you will see at least four players run to the huddle right before the timeout was called. There was no way the play was going to get off in time. By calling the time out we actually got the first down (even though Riley fumbled...).

Understood...however, doesn't Riley know the play when they send him in? They can't just look and say "oh no...Riley just went in...we need a play." or "Jake just sat down...hey Riley, I guess you're in." I mean...come on! Doman sent Riley in on purpose for 1 play and you don't know what play he is going to run?



Rediculous on both parts. It's not ALL Doman.

Actually I would say that is actually 100% Doman. If it were the case that Riley went in without knowing what play he was supposed to run (which it isn't, as has been pointed out, Doman fails time and again to get the right personnel on the field in time), that's a failure on Doman's fault for not having that worked out with him before hand. But since the true problem is that Doman sends Nelson out on the field with a play, they go into a huddle and then Nelson realizes that the wrong personnel are out on the field, it takes Doman until near the snap to get the right people out, Nelson can't break the snap during substitutions (penalty) and he needs to get the play to the guys rushing out onto the field at the last second anyway.



100% Doman EPIC FAIL.

Maybe Doman should move up to the box. Get some distance and perspective. Get some emotional distance and avoid some of the distraction of being field level.

SpiffCoug wrote:
Maybe Doman should move up to the box. Get some distance and perspective. Get some emotional distance and avoid some of the distraction of being field level.

Who is in the box?



I would agree with you, but I think Heaps needs all the hand-holding he can get.

Gunk wrote:

Maybe Doman should move up to the box. Get some distance and perspective. Get some emotional distance and avoid some of the distraction of being field level.

Who is in the box?



I would agree with you, but I think Heaps needs all the hand-holding he can get.

I think it is time we took the training wheels off and saw what we really have here. And not waiting until we play weak sisters that are no challenge, we saw how that played out last year. Let's see if he can swim in the deep end this week. Time to play aggressively, and throw some caution to the wind of offense.

Gunk wrote:

Maybe Doman should move up to the box. Get some distance and perspective. Get some emotional distance and avoid some of the distraction of being field level.

Who is in the box?



I would agree with you, but I think Heaps needs all the hand-holding he can get.

Right now its Reynolds in the box.

The biggest problem with the passing game against Texas wasn't the snaps(sorry I had to throw that in!) Most of the second half Texas did a great job of blitzing a lot and bringing guys from different places, almost like Bronco likes to do.



One of the biggest things with a team that blitzes is there is a hole in the defense where either the LB or the DB left to blitz. The QB and the WR are suppose recognize this and the hot read is to that zone the defensive player just vacated, so if neither of them or only one of them do not recognize this the offense will usually struggle. It is hard to see on TV what is happening because you usually can't see the WR in the picture to see if they are running to the correct spot. We should get a better understanding of this when we are able to see the games in person and see what the receivers are doing on the field.



So the big question is it both the QB and WR not recognizing the blitz to begin with or is it just one or the other. My guess it is probably both. If Heaps and the receivers get that figured out the offense will work better, if not Utah will keep blitzing just like Texas, because what is the saying, just keep doing it over and over until they prove they can stop you and BYU has shown they can't stop it.

Lawboy wrote:
I think it is time we took the training wheels off and saw what we really have here. And not waiting until we play weak sisters that are no challenge, we saw how that played out last year. Let's see if he can swim in the deep end this week. Time to play aggressively, and throw some caution to the wind of offense.

I agree. Detmer won the Heisman throwing 28 INT's (along with 41 TD's and 5,188 yds, of course). It would be nice to see a hint of that aggressiveness.

loonmj wrote:

I think it is time we took the training wheels off and saw what we really have here. And not waiting until we play weak sisters that are no challenge, we saw how that played out last year. Let's see if he can swim in the deep end this week. Time to play aggressively, and throw some caution to the wind of offense.

I agree. Detmer won the Heisman throwing 28 INT's (along with 41 TD's and 5,188 yds, of course). It would be nice to see a hint of that aggressiveness.

I wouldn't mind this either. Though BYU will have to work a lot faster to get in enough offensive plays in to make up for throwing caution into the wind. None of this breaking huddle with 10 left on the play clock...