This is a subject that I meant to bring up last football season, but just never took the time. As I'm currently sitting at Discount Tire awaiting a tire repair, I figured that I had nothing better to do.
Whenever I hear someone complain about how Dimel's boring offense is keeping fans away I think back to a conversation I had years ago about a different Miner sport. In the early 90s, when I was working in San Diego, a new coworker discovered that I was a UTEP alumnus. She asked if Don Haskins was still coaching. When I assured her that he was, she started talking about the time she had spent in El Paso, and complaining about how boring Haskins' style of play was. I looked at her as if she was speaking another language. The Miners had just recently finished their stretch of playing in the NCAA Tournament for 8 out of 9 years, and the upset of Kansas was still fresh on my mind. Sure, we didn't play a fast break, run and gun style game, but we won - a lot. And I find winning to be exciting. I'm personally much more excited watching the Miner hoops team win a game 53-48 than I am watching the Miners lose 93-91. Winning trumps style of play every time in my book.
Which brings me back to the football team. I do realize that I'm different, but I don't care if our offense is four yards and a cloud of dust or if we're passing for over 400 yards every game - I just want to win. Does this mean that I'm defending our offense? Not at all. I definitely have issues with our offense, but it's not because I find it to be "boring."
Probably my biggest complaint about our offense is the way we played when having a lead. There were several situations during those seven games we won where we had a lead either early or mid way through the 4th quarter, and a score would have put the game away. Usually, at least in my perception last year, we seemed to fail almost every time, often going three and out. Then there were times, typically in the same games, when it was late in the 4th quarter and all we needed was a first down or two to put the game away, and again going three and out seemed to be the norm. Fortunately our defense was up to the task in these games, propelling us to our 7 wins.
Now I know in the situations above that the players on the other side of the ball also have college scholarships, and the other coaches also get paid, and it's their job to stop us. So I don't expect to get those early 4th quarter scores every time, nor do I always expect to get those late game 1st downs every time we need them. But I do expect the offense to produce some of those times, and it rarely did.
The most frustrating part for me is that in every game the offense went through a period where it really clicked and was able to move the ball, either on the ground, through the air, or both. If we got a lead, however, Dimel would go super conservative, with no imagination in either his running or passing games, and we would stagnate. Thankfully our defense played well.
So there's my problem with our offense. It's not that it's boring, it just doesn't produce after acquiring a lead. Well that and the fact that the red zone play calling often sucks, but that horse has been beaten into glue.
Whenever I hear someone complain about how Dimel's boring offense is keeping fans away I think back to a conversation I had years ago about a different Miner sport. In the early 90s, when I was working in San Diego, a new coworker discovered that I was a UTEP alumnus. She asked if Don Haskins was still coaching. When I assured her that he was, she started talking about the time she had spent in El Paso, and complaining about how boring Haskins' style of play was. I looked at her as if she was speaking another language. The Miners had just recently finished their stretch of playing in the NCAA Tournament for 8 out of 9 years, and the upset of Kansas was still fresh on my mind. Sure, we didn't play a fast break, run and gun style game, but we won - a lot. And I find winning to be exciting. I'm personally much more excited watching the Miner hoops team win a game 53-48 than I am watching the Miners lose 93-91. Winning trumps style of play every time in my book.
Which brings me back to the football team. I do realize that I'm different, but I don't care if our offense is four yards and a cloud of dust or if we're passing for over 400 yards every game - I just want to win. Does this mean that I'm defending our offense? Not at all. I definitely have issues with our offense, but it's not because I find it to be "boring."
Probably my biggest complaint about our offense is the way we played when having a lead. There were several situations during those seven games we won where we had a lead either early or mid way through the 4th quarter, and a score would have put the game away. Usually, at least in my perception last year, we seemed to fail almost every time, often going three and out. Then there were times, typically in the same games, when it was late in the 4th quarter and all we needed was a first down or two to put the game away, and again going three and out seemed to be the norm. Fortunately our defense was up to the task in these games, propelling us to our 7 wins.
Now I know in the situations above that the players on the other side of the ball also have college scholarships, and the other coaches also get paid, and it's their job to stop us. So I don't expect to get those early 4th quarter scores every time, nor do I always expect to get those late game 1st downs every time we need them. But I do expect the offense to produce some of those times, and it rarely did.
The most frustrating part for me is that in every game the offense went through a period where it really clicked and was able to move the ball, either on the ground, through the air, or both. If we got a lead, however, Dimel would go super conservative, with no imagination in either his running or passing games, and we would stagnate. Thankfully our defense played well.
So there's my problem with our offense. It's not that it's boring, it just doesn't produce after acquiring a lead. Well that and the fact that the red zone play calling often sucks, but that horse has been beaten into glue.