Seriously?! Was his play calling "mentally challenged" (very PI BTW) this weekend? He can only choose from the plays he has installed and gotten the team to run well. He has finally installed enough that he has more choices to pick from beyond bare basics. Did you really expect a new staff and new system to be completely ready in less than one year?
The entire purpose of play calling and play designing is putting your team in the best position to succeed. Having a run first team, where you run it on 95% of your first down plays(analytics tell you that's a stupid decision even if you're a great running team. you need more variety on first down than that, much less when you're one of the worst running teams in the FBS) and a lot of the times even on 2nd down behind this bad of an offensive line is foolish. Then when they do pass it's largely long developing routes that cause the offensive line to have to hold up against a pass rush. A pass rush that can just pin it's ears back because more than likely we're running these long developing routes on a 3rd and 9 because we ran it twice in a row. The offensive line is not good enough to do that on a consistent basis(even if they were, this kind of play calling is stupid).
The strength of this offense is it's skill position players. JG has proven to be a solid enough QB this year and has a good arm. So what do you do when you have a solid QB and the strength of your offense is at the skill positions? Well, you run things like quick slants, outs, crossers, screens and the like. What does this accomplish? Not only are these effective plays that can pick you up 4-6 yards( a nice first down play, especially compared to running it up the gut for no gain like Helton loves to do), but this has the added benefit of slowing down blitzes because teams are then more likely to drop their LBs in coverage to pick up the shorter routes. So what does that do for you? It opens up the longer developing routes because of two things. Number one, instead of our garbage o-line trying to block 6 guys, it only has to block 3 or 4 now. Number two, the corners are likely to be trying to jump the shorter routes, so stop and go routes and the like would certainly have some effect. And what do the long developing routes allow for? Easier defenses to run against because the safeties aren't creeping up towards the line of scrimmage because of the threat of those long routes.
This **** isn't rocket science.
On top of these terrible play calling tendencies that Helton possesses, the thing where JG wiggles his fingers behind his back and we run it 100% of the time after that happens needs to go. Far away. Never to be seen again.
It's dumbfounding how stubborn and idiotic Helton and play callers like him are. It's either fit his system or nothing. Completely ignore the fact that this team can't run his system effectively, he's gonna make them do it anyway.
The day CFB and the NFL are rid of these stubborn coaches and instead full of coaches like Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan that know how adapt to their offensive skill set and adapt their offense on a weekly basis based on what defense they're playing will be a wonderful day.
And no, I was not happy with the play calling vs Auburn. We scored vs Auburn because we won a lot of 50/50 balls/JG making some great back shoulder throws, on top of thankfully Auburn being awful and giving us multiple turnovers. You go try and do that week in and week out and see how often that wins games for you. It's not a sustainable way to play offense.
