that happen last saturday…outside of Trents big run that is

good for the soul.

…on pretty much every 3rd and long and almost always made it. That Arkansas defense never caught on. I doubt we’ll be able to do that as much against a more competent defense, but there’s no problem with doing it until somebody figures it out. Then we’ll beat them deep.

…and I agree. We never intend these snapshots to be perfect measures of success, but just an attempt at trying to look deeper and at a more complete picture. It’s like OTS talking about the wildcat serving the purpose of keeping the VaTech defense honest even though it didn’t achieve much statistically on its own. Furthermore, in the first post of this type this season I made the “20 rushes for 100 yard example” of one 81 yard rush and 19 1 yard rushes. That 81 yarder can be the game changer, but it can also be an outlier that unfairly skews results anyd might not achieve much of anything. Basically, everything is contextually dependent. A 2 yard carry for a TD is wild success a 2 yard rush for a first down a success and a 2 yard rush on 3rd and 5 doesn’t get much accomplished. All two yards aren’t the same, and two yard success can be of different values.

 I completely agree with this:

Sometimes one (outstanding, statistically aberrant) play can skew a whole performance in a massive fashion.

I think we’re on the same page in this discussion, just saying it different ways. I’m not a purely quantitative analysis guy, nor a purely qualitative guy. I see the merits of both.

when talking about the win/loss figures, but the purpose of this type of thing is to understand where the team is with regard to the running game as a whole. When we play small D-lines, the running game can’t be beat, but when we face a D-line that is true SEC caliber, yes, we may break a few big runs, but we can’t really game plan to run 65% of the time either. And, ironically enough, breakdowns like this actually help me enjoy the big breaks more – if I understand that when we face Tennessee, for example, that we should not have a big day on the ground due to size differences, etc., and we bust a huge play on them, I’m twice as pumped knowing that somebody really did their job right on the play (and someone on the other side did something horribly wrong – i.e. Trent’s TD run last game). Great points all around, and thanks, Nico and gorjus for the posts.

…but I did mean to mention that bad numbers can be due to a variety of factors (or a combo), for instance:

a) bad running
b) bad run blocking
c) defense stacking the box
etc.

I think Ark knew they couldn’t stop both the run and the pass, so chose to stop the run thinking a few big plays might allow them to pull off an upset. A truly great running offense would be successful despite this, but the Tide is not a truly great running team.

The onus was on G Mac to have an outstanding game, which he did. I think we’ll see a similar game plan going forward, with teams stacking the box and hoping that Mac throws up a stinker sooner or later. It’s what I would do.

…the genesis.