A few things that need to be explained to some people in this thread:
1) The Air Raid offense is NOT a Run N Shoot system.
2) The only thing apparent to me after watching the TT/OU game was the disparity between talent levels. Face it, TT is basically a Mississippi State when it comes to the B12. Texas, OU, OkSt, A&M, Mizzou, Nebraska, and even Kansas now will all compete for the top tier talent in that conference, not to mention teams like TCU and Houston that are in-state. Mississippi is an extremely talent-laden state, much like Texas (although the size alone makes Texas much richer) but how many of those 4 and 5 stars does Croom pull out of his home state?
It's extremely hard to recruit a young man to a school that really has ZERO athletic tradition, is about 500 miles away from the nearest metropolitan area, and is basically one huge dirt desert.
If YOU were an 18-year-old highly touted WR, would YOU wanna go to Tech?
3) The spread offense was DESIGNED to be used against a big, fast, physical defense. If I hear that argument about the SEC defenses blah blah blah won't work in this conference blah blah blah...
The spread worked for Urban at Utah with inferior talent because it was a good, proven system. Now he's employing it at UF with superior talent and you all shouldn't be so blind to see how dangerous it really is. The worst thing you can do with a big, physical, fast defense is to bunch them all up in the middle of the field and run right at them. The whole theory behind the spread is to stretch the defense and find holes and seams in their coverage, take what they give you, and force them to tackle in the open field.
If you think the spread is a gimmick, let me arrange for you to talk to the New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs, and all the other NFL teams who are using the spread these days. Last year's Pats team ran out of the spread almost exclusively. Think about all the times you saw Brady in the gun last season?
4) While Leach clearly prefers to pass, he is NOT against running the ball. In fact, in an interview before the Texas game (in which they ran the ball successfully, mind you), Leach stated that he was actively scheming to involve the running game more because he had two capable backs and it would be a waste to not use them.
Leach is no fool; and dare I say he knows more about coaching the game than anyone on this board unless the corpse of Bo Schembechler has broadband and is posting under an alias.
5) Do you really, honestly, truly think Leach doesn't care that his defense is subpar? I mean it's not like he $%!-canned his DC last season after a pitiful performance mid-season.
He knows he's at a disadvantage right off the bat trying to get a 2* corner to match up against a 5* WR, but Leach also knows that his only chance for success is to suck teams into a shootout and hope that his offense is schemed and disciplined enough to have more bullets than the opposing team, or to hope that somehow the D can force a turnover.
Leach has long stated that his philosophy is to use his best athletes on O. IF he were at UT, first of all, not only would he have better talent, but I'm sure he would have access to better DCs.
Sorry for the long post; I've just been reading 150+ pages of the same regurgitated horsecrap for so long that my brain is toast and I had to say something.
Deuces.
