is Evan Berry. JayVols has been doing awesome work in the film session thread explaining why our offense doesn't work like it should. That's not in my skill set, so I took an advanced stats look at what (in a global sense--think "big plays" or "staying ahead of the chains" or "red zone," rather than the position group that stands out) our offense actually does well. The link, for those so inclined: http://www.rockytoptalk.com/2016/9/14/12890392/calling-card-tennessee-vols-offense
I know, I'm a genius. The thing that I thought was interesting is that, along with avoiding turnovers and three-and-outs, it was one of the only things the offense was actually good at. I knew it had flaws, but I figured there was going to be something the offense was doing that was semi-consistently driving yards and points. And the answer might be "whatever we were doing in the first quarter and then stopped doing," but that doesn't come out in full-game metrics because we stopped doing it. But over full games, the answer is pretty much just that our drives were decently successful because we had great field position and didn't turn it over, not because the offense was particularly good at explosive plays or staying ahead of the chains or any of that.
It would take forever but I wonder what our playcalling looks like on the shorter drives compared to the longer ones. Or what our yards per play looks like with a short field.
Recall the sort of mixed-purpose back that transferred into TN from Cincy (last year?) - wouldn't Berry be a significant upgrade from what Jones must know that he needs, and what he must have been looking for that guy to provide? Why isn't Berry playing on offense as TV suggests?
One thing that was pointed out in the comments that I probably should've mentioned: we were actually pretty good at third downs last season. Whereas we were average-to-bad at first and second downs. Which means we had a lot of drives that kept going despite the fact that we were behind the chains. Now I'm not sure how far behind the chains we were (it could've been lots of 3rd and 4s, which are behind but not terrible), but converting third downs from behind the chains is something I'm not convinced we sustain
Dobbs was a pretty good passer, statistically, on 3rd downs last year. He also did a lot of houdini stuff with his legs
Honestly our throw game strategy should just be for Dobbs to run around in circles and the receivers just find open space.
3rd and long is an athletes down. We're pretty talented so it isn't surprising that we have some success in those situations. The red flag is our offense getting off schedule so much and having to be bailed out by playmakers. Defensive coordinators have made the adjustment to drop 8 and rush 3 on third and long plays.
