Coaching Carousel 2024

[Coach D]

DeBoer's offense don't hand the ball off much as far as I can tell, plenty of games where the quarterback kept the ball 75% of the time and if you check that happened this season as well (12 hand offs in the Michigan game for example). So, this seems to be as much a feature of his offense he learned from DeBoer as much as anything else.

This is one reason I kind of hope that they bring in an outside person (and why I threw a bit of a fit when another buddy was hired before any offensive staff was replaced) who can establish a balanced offense. Having said that though, Grubb is his guy, if we want to see what a DeBoer offense is supposed to look like then that's who should be the offensive coordinator. So I'm alright with Grubb, just not a huge fan of Sheridan who was brought in to be the tight ends coach but is also a DeBoer disciple, as he is just the less accomplished of the two.

You basically said it. It’s CKD’s offense kind of like it was Saban’s defense. I’m ok with Grubb but don’t care about him. I would like someone to bring in different experience as that’s how you grow and improve. But 100% want at least one new offense coach and hoping it’s an OC.

 

[JDCrimson]

Mike Leach could not challenge for the SEC running his version of the the Air Raid somewhat because he didn't have a strong enough commitment to the running game. And think about it some of CPG's best performances were against CML and MSU.

I do believe that CKD will have to bend toward a more physical version of his Air Raid offense.

 

[bamadwain]

Vrabel or BoB.

I believe it's Vrabel, plus it's being floated around Josh McDaniel would come back as OC

 

[KrAzY3]

Grubb does need to balance it though..................else, why would good RBs come to Bama?

I've been preaching the need to develop a strong running game, but that isn't what Alabama was looking for when they hired DeBoer. They wanted DeBoer and Grubb's style offense and it is absolutely centered around the quarterback, no doubt about that. The issue is that Sheridan is also running DeBoer's offense and Milroe was also allowed to keep the ball in his hands most of the times. Sheridan isn't running a balanced offense either, he's just not nearly as accomplished as Grubb. So, if we have to choose between Sheridan and Grubb, the question is do we want the one that had success or the one that didn't have success?

You basically said it. It’s CKD’s offense kind of like it was Saban’s defense. I’m ok with Grubb but don’t care about him. I would like someone to bring in different experience as that’s how you grow and improve. But 100% want at least one new offense coach and hoping it’s an OC.

I'm with you on that, and if I could just make it so it would be someone that had run a successful balanced offense. But, if the question is keep Sheridan or add Grubb, then I'll go with not just DeBoer's first choice, but the only one of the two that actually ran a top 20 offense.

Grubb's offenses ranked as follows:
2019: 58th
2020: 36th
2021: 26th
2022: 7th
2023: 13th

Sheridan:
2020: 59th
2021: 109th
2024: 23rd

There's only one offensive coordinator that both DeBoer and Saban wanted at Alabama and it darn sure wasn't Sheridan. So my mentality is it doesn't have to be Grubb, but it really shouldn't be Sheridan. He in my opinion is the worse version of the same basic thing.

 

[AlexanderFan]

Seahawks won, scored a good bit of points, no turnovers, two sacks.

Wonder if that is enough to keep the jobs.

 

[JohnD]

DeBoer's offense don't hand the ball off much as far as I can tell, plenty of games where the quarterback kept the ball 75% of the time and if you check that happened this season as well (12 hand offs in the Michigan game for example). So, this seems to be as much a feature of his offense he learned from DeBoer as much as anything else.

This is one reason I kind of hope that they bring in an outside person (and why I threw a bit of a fit when another buddy was hired before any offensive staff was replaced) who can establish a balanced offense. Having said that though, Grubb is his guy, if we want to see what a DeBoer offense is supposed to look like then that's who should be the offensive coordinator. So I'm alright with Grubb, just not a huge fan of Sheridan who was brought in to be the tight ends coach but is also a DeBoer disciple, as he is just the less accomplished of the two.

It was Milroe.
This year was an anomaly for DeBoer. But normal for Milroe.

Milroe had 168 carries this year out of 488 for the team. 34%. Last year Milroe had 29% of the carries.

Last year, Penix had 35 carries out of 411 at Washington. 8.5 %. Almost identical to 2022 carries for him.

 

[AlexanderFan]

It was Milroe.
This year was an anomaly for DeBoer. But normal for Milroe.

Milroe had 168 carries this year out of 488 for the team. 34%. Last year Milroe had 29% of the carries.

Last year, Penix had 35 carries out of 411 at Washington. 0.085 %. Almost identical to 2022 carries for him.

You can keep talking until you’re blue in the face, people can’t grasp that one player could handicap a coach to the degree that a quarterback with slow processing skills can.

 

[KrAzY3]

It was Milroe.
This year was an anomaly for DeBoer. But normal for Milroe.

Milroe had 168 carries out of 488 this year for the team. 34%. Last year Milroe had 29% of the carries.

Last year, Penix had 35 carries out of 411 at Washington. 0.085 %. Almost identical to 2022 carries for him.

To reiterate, DeBoer's offense is QB centric. It relies heavily on the QB, you mention Penix only had 35 carries right? Well, that still only put him 9 carries behind the #2 rusher.

Once you bake those 35 carries into the 391 rushing attempts (that's the number I get) you come up with this. The quarterback (almost entirely Penix) kept the ball on 63% of the plays. That aligns almost perfectly with the 35% number we saw from the NFL, correct? Well may you said it's Milroe and was an anomaly, let's check it out and see.

So, we do the same thing with Alabama this year and what do we get? We get the quarterback keeping the ball exactly 63% of the time, again. It's DeBoer's offense. It's not Grubb, it's not Milroe, it's the offense.

You can keep talking until you’re blue in the face, people can’t grasp that one player could handicap a coach to the degree that a quarterback with slow processing skills can.

Milroe's ineffectiveness doesn't change the fact that DeBoer's system is QB centric. Grubb carries that system to the NFL and it does the same thing, Sheridan used it and it does the same thing. That's how it works.

Edit: Just for fun let's do it one more time. How about DeBoer and Grubb's first year at Frenso State. Quarterback kept the ball on 67% of the plays. It's the system...

 

[bamaltc]

Deboer and Sheridan on the field together at the Falcons game today…. Hmmm…

 

[JohnD]

To reiterate, DeBoer's offense is QB centric. It relies heavily on the QB, you mention Penix only had 35 carries right? Well, that still only put him 9 carries behind the #2 rusher.

Once you bake those 35 carries into the 391 rushing attempts (that's the number I get) you come up with this. The quarterback (almost entirely Penix) kept the ball on 63% of the plays. That aligns almost perfectly with the 35% number we saw from the NFL, correct? Well may you said it's Milroe and was an anomaly, let's check it out and see.

So, we do the same thing with Alabama this year and what do we get? We get the quarterback keeping the ball exactly 63% of the time, again. It's DeBoer's offense. It's not Grubb, it's not Milroe, it's the offense.

Milroe's ineffectiveness doesn't change the fact that DeBoer's system is QB centric. Grubb carries that system to the NFL and it does the same thing, Sheridan used it and it does the same thing. That's how it works.

Edit: Just for fun let's do it one more time. How about DeBoer and Grubb's first year at Frenso State. Quarterback kept the ball on 67% of the plays. It's the system...

You said " DeBoer's offense don't hand the ball off much as far as I can tell, plenty of games where the quarterback kept the ball..."

The stats at Washington the past 2 years don't agree with that. That's all I was saying.

 

[KrAzY3]

You said " DeBoer's offense don't hand the ball off much as far as I can tell, plenty of games where the quarterback kept the ball..."

The stats at Washington the past 2 years don't agree with that. That's all I was saying.

I don't think 37% is much but perhaps I wasn't explaining myself well enough.

To be clear, when I said kept the ball the context was didn't hand it off. Whether he runs or he throws, he's not handing the ball off, it's based on something I've been saying for some time so perhaps I didn't clarify enough. This tracks with Fresno St. where their QB ran (scrambled?) more, it also shows up with Washington where he threw more and Alabama where he ran more. It even shows up in the NFL. The key there is the running backs are relegated to a far lesser role, getting the ball less than 40% of the time.

Mind you, my initial point was just that Grubb isn't doing anything wrong, he's just running DeBoer's offense. If you like his offense why not get the guy that's best at it running it? I prefer balance but Grubb is the most successful OC DeBoer has had.

As a final note to my earlier point, I should add that Penix did far better under Grubb than he did under Sheridan. There were other factors there, but Penix's three best years were with DeBoer and then Grubb as his OC and struggled much more under Sheridan. Both Penix and Milroe became worse passers under Sheridan, in fact if we were to evaluate Penix solely on his last season with Sheridan he'd be considered trash (4 TDs, 7 INTs).

 

[AlexanderFan]

I don't think 37% is much but perhaps I wasn't explaining myself well enough.

To be clear, when I said kept the ball the context was didn't hand it off. Whether he runs or he throws, he's not handing the ball off, it's based on something I've been saying for some time so perhaps I didn't clarify enough. This tracks with Fresno St. where their QB ran (scrambled?) more, it also shows up with Washington where he threw more and Alabama where he ran more. It even shows up in the NFL. The key there is the running backs are relegated to a far lesser role, getting the ball less than 40% of the time.

Mind you, my initial point was just that Grubb isn't doing anything wrong, he's just running DeBoer's offense. If you like his offense why not get the guy that's best at it running it? I prefer balance but Grubb is the most successful OC DeBoer has had.

As a final note to my earlier point, I should add that Penix did far better under Grubb than he did under Sheridan. There were other factors there, but Penix's three best years were with DeBoer and then Grubb as his OC and struggled much more under Sheridan. Both Penix and Milroe became worse passers under Sheridan, in fact if we were to evaluate Penix solely on his last season with Sheridan he'd be considered trash (4 TDs, 7 INTs).

How are you accounting for RPOs? Plays where the quarterback can skew your metrics by keeping the ball when it should’ve been handed off or thrown.

 

[KrAzY3]

How are you accounting for RPOs? Plays where the quarterback can skew your metrics by keeping the ball when it should’ve been handed off or thrown.

I have alluded to that a lot in the past..

Basically, and to my understanding this was done at times with Milroe in 2023, you have to tie the quarterbacks hands if they are calling their own number too often. Now, to be clear we're having kind of two parallel discussions.

One is that I think Grubb is better than Sheridan and a far better fit to run the offense.
The other is that despite this I would prefer a balanced offense. I just think that anyone being critical of Grubb for running DeBoer's offense needs to keep in mind that it's a feature, not a bug.

So... yes I see this as a problem that needs to be solved, but the solution for DeBoer is to just let it happen. Every time I look at the numbers, no matter which team or which quarterback I keep seeing that they are responsible for a vast majority of the offense. For instance his one year as OC for Indiana (2019) the QBs accounted for 64.9% of the plays, which is right in line with what we've seen from his offense.

However, I think there should be more designed (non-QB) runs especially once it becomes clear the quarterback is taking too much into his hands. Even with Penix, they lost to a team that only 2 other wins and Penix is struggling in the passing game but still throwing passes on 75% of the plays, despite the team running the ball well! They only lost because he was allowed to keep calling his own number.

So, I think the solution is to draw up more plays that are not RPO once things start to skew, for instance I think that successful reverse against Michigan couldn't have been an RPO. So I think if things start to go too far, the coordinator needs to pull them back.

Having said that though, I just think Grubb is far better at running DeBoer's offense than Sheridan is so if we're going to do this anyway might as well do it better.

 

[BamaInBham]

I've been preaching the need to develop a strong running game, but that isn't what Alabama was looking for when they hired DeBoer. They wanted DeBoer and Grubb's style offense and it is absolutely centered around the quarterback, no doubt about that. The issue is that Sheridan is also running DeBoer's offense and Milroe was also allowed to keep the ball in his hands most of the times. Sheridan isn't running a balanced offense either, he's just not nearly as accomplished as Grubb. So, if we have to choose between Sheridan and Grubb, the question is do we want the one that had success or the one that didn't have success?


I'm with you on that, and if I could just make it so it would be someone that had run a successful balanced offense. But, if the question is keep Sheridan or add Grubb, then I'll go with not just DeBoer's first choice, but the only one of the two that actually ran a top 20 offense.

Grubb's offenses ranked as follows:
2019: 58th
2020: 36th
2021: 26th
2022: 7th
2023: 13th

Sheridan:
2020: 59th
2021: 109th
2024: 23rd

There's only one offensive coordinator that both DeBoer and Saban wanted at Alabama and it darn sure wasn't Sheridan. So my mentality is it doesn't have to be Grubb, but it really shouldn't be Sheridan. He in my opinion is the worse version of the same basic thing.

Why don’t you tell us how well Sheridan’s O was doing with the starting QB and contrast that with how things went with the backups he had to use at a program like Indiana? It’s a surprise when Indiana has a decent starting QB, a shock, if it has ever happened, when a backup QB is good. Please provide the context. Thanks

 

[KrAzY3]

Why don’t you tell us how well Sheridan’s O was doing with the starting QB and contrast that with how things went with the backups he had to use at a program like Indiana? It’s a surprise when Indiana has a decent starting QB, a shock, if it has ever happened, when a backup QB is good. Please provide the context. Thanks

I have to admit I'm not that motivated but we actually can just look at Penix and there is something there:
2019 (DeBoer as OC): 157.6 rating
2020 (Sheridan as OC): 136.5 rating
2021 (Sheridan as OC) 101.9 rating
2022 (Grubb as OC) 151.3 rating
2023 (Grubb as OC) 157.1 rating

Now we have all sorts of sample size issues and so on so forth but nevertheless there is something to look at there. Likewise, the Indiana scoring rank went from 43 under DeBoer to 59 under Sheridan and finally to 109.

These is an observable correlation in my opinion, but I'm making the argument DeBoer himself made when he initially hired Grubb over Sheridan to be his OC. So while I've been critical of him at times, I'm basically saying look Grubb is his guy so if we want his offense to succeed it should be his first choice, shouldn't it?

 

[BamaInBham]

I have to admit I'm not that motivated but we actually can just look at Penix and there is something there:
2019 (DeBoer as OC): 157.6 rating
2020 (Sheridan as OC): 136.5 rating
2021 (Sheridan as OC) 101.9 rating
2022 (Grubb as OC) 151.3 rating
2023 (Grubb as OC) 157.1 rating

Now we have all sorts of sample size issues and so on so forth but nevertheless there is something to look at there. Likewise, the Indiana scoring rank went from 43 under DeBoer to 59 under Sheridan and finally to 109.

These is an observable correlation in my opinion, but I'm making the argument DeBoer himself made when he initially hired Grubb over Sheridan to be his OC. So while I've been critical of him at times, I'm basically saying look Grubb is his guy so if we want his offense to succeed it should be his first choice, shouldn't it?

Thanks for the info.

Btw, there was never a question of Sheridan vs Grubb. Someone else posted the offensive numbers from that period and they were very good till Penix got hurt. (I have no idea even what board it was on.)

Keep in mind that Sheridan vs Grubb here is also Indiana vs Washington which is a big mismatch.

 

[BamaMoon]

To reiterate, DeBoer's offense is QB centric. It relies heavily on the QB, you mention Penix only had 35 carries right? Well, that still only put him 9 carries behind the #2 rusher.

Once you bake those 35 carries into the 391 rushing attempts (that's the number I get) you come up with this. The quarterback (almost entirely Penix) kept the ball on 63% of the plays. That aligns almost perfectly with the 35% number we saw from the NFL, correct? Well may you said it's Milroe and was an anomaly, let's check it out and see.

So, we do the same thing with Alabama this year and what do we get? We get the quarterback keeping the ball exactly 63% of the time, again. It's DeBoer's offense. It's not Grubb, it's not Milroe, it's the offense.

Milroe's ineffectiveness doesn't change the fact that DeBoer's system is QB centric. Grubb carries that system to the NFL and it does the same thing, Sheridan used it and it does the same thing. That's how it works.

Edit: Just for fun let's do it one more time. How about DeBoer and Grubb's first year at Frenso State. Quarterback kept the ball on 67% of the plays. It's the system...

Aren't you comparing apples to orangutans when saying Penix "kept" the ball the same as JM? I mean Penix "kept" it after the snap and then threw it to receivers who moved the offense down the field. JM "kept" other players from touching the ball.

To use a CNS analogy: Penix was a point guard who distributed the ball. JM was a point guard who was a ball hog.

 

[CB4]

Doug Pederson fired by the Jacksonville Jaguars after three years.

 

[AlexanderFan]

Jaguars fired Doug Pederson this morning.

Lots of chafe and dross to shift through before things settle down.

 

[BamaMoon]

Jaguars fired Doug Pederson this morning.

Lots of chafe and dross to shift through before things settle down.

Non-related to his firing, but wondering out loud if Mac will possibly get picked up as a starter. What's his contract status with Jacksonville?