QB To Run Less Under Dawson

[Smashcat]

Quarterbacks to run less, chuck it more. Towles had 145 rushing attempts last season. Top tailback Stanley "Boom" Williams had 74. Even excluding sacks, the 6-foot-5, 241-pound Towles was the Wildcats' most frequent runner in 2014. He won't be this fall.


"We'll do it a little bit, but it's not something we'll major in," Dawson said. "We'll do it more so to keep the defense honest. If the defense is just not giving us any credit right there, we'll let him keep it. We're not going to sit there and run the quarterback 15 times a game. That's not going to happen."
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/kentucky/2015/04/13/kentucky-football-notes-towles-shines-qb-decision-looms-freshman-safeties-show-promise/25739147/
This post was edited on 4/13 7:02 PM by Smashcat

 

[Devils58]

 

[BlueTick2]

Towels was running for his life because of the poor play of the O-Line most of the time.
If Dawson wants to throw further down the field the O-Line better improve big time.

How many times last season did the snap of the ball and the defender arrive at the QB about the same time?

 

[Deeeefense]

Originally posted by BlueTick2:


How many times last season did the snap of the ball and the defender arrive at the QB about the same time?

There were also a lot of times PT took of running, usually to the sideline when in fact he had decent protection. Other times he had time but either could not find open receivers or none were open.
It's not all on the O-line.

 

[GridCats]

Towles will be a much better QB if he can just focus on getting the ball to one of his receivers or one of the backs. He takes enough hit's just doing that.

 

[9FFrodo]

The easy answer is that everything on O needs to improve.
OL needs to block better.
RBs need to be better w vision and making decisive cuts. (and used in the passing game more - including blocking)
WRs need to get open more - and make plays when they do.
TEs...well, they need to exist in the O! (Conrad will be huge)
and the QB ( presumably Towles) needs to go through his reads, make quick decisions, and get rid of the ball accurately.

Most of the above (all?) did not happen frequently last year.

To focus solely on PT, too often, if his first read wasn't open, he would tuck and run. Sometimes due to pressure, other times due to feeling non-existent pressure - leaving a good pocket without reason. There were times when WRs were open downfield and he just didn't see them.

But ya know what, it was his first real action as an SEC QB - fairly normal. At places blessed w great talent, it is easier to hide the flaws of a young QB. Without great/experienced WRs and OL, the young QBs mistakes are magnified.

The good news? All those positions listed above should be better. It is possible that there is considerable improvement in some of them. And PT is a year older w more experience who will feel more comfortable. AND, I think the tweaks in Dawson's O seem to play to his strengths as well.

Lots to be optimistic about for a much improved O.

 

[BlueRaider22]

Bluetick is right. Towles ran it out of necessity. The personnel was poor enough that the team had to use whatever they had at their disposal to gain ground.

 

[UKWildcats#8]

This makes me very happy, and hopefully the personnel around Towles is such improved so he does not feel he has to run as much anyways.

 

[jrburt]

Towels has a bad habit of bailing unnecessarily, usually straight into a rushing end that was perfectly blocked. It is my hope he starts to step up instead of bailing out.

Dave

 

[highlysuspicious]

the switch to a zone blocking scheme is going to pay major dividends for this football team. thats the scheme brooks and company used and they always managed to get some semblance of a running game even when they didnt have great talent.

this will allow us to establish the run and not have to rely on qb draws to keep defenses honest.

 

[johnnyrockets]

He definitely scrambled a bit, but we also definitely ran a lot of read option last year.

 

[jnewc2]

I'm almost positive NB didn't plan to run PT as much as he did last season, but he found that with the ineptitude of our line's run blocking, running Towles was one of the only semi-sure ways to gain yards on the ground because the defense would be caught off guard.

As far as the unplanned runs, the problem is two prong.

One, the offensive line was really, really, really terrible last year. One of the worst units, if not the worst I've ever seen wearing the blue and white (which is quite a statement). PT hung in there as much as he could for the first 2/3 of the season, but by season's end he was bailing a little bit early, and who can blame him as a sophomore playing his first full year as a starter? In actuality, if you look at all of the circumstances surrounding PT's first year, I thought he played DAMN good when you take all things into consideration.

Was he perfect?

No, not by a longshot. Did he bail too early a lot of times? Sure. Would EVERY SINGLE OTHER QB IN THE NATION HAVE DONE THE EXACT SAME THING UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES IN THEIR FIRST YEAR AS A STARTER? Absolutely. Would those QB's have went on to actually be one of the top passers in the SEC? No way. 99.9% of first year college starting QB's would've been so rattled by all of the pressure Towles was under that there confidence and body wouldn't have made it halfway through the season.

Taking all of those things into consideration, from his complete inexperience, to lack of supporting cast, to taking over a team coming off back to back two win seasons and having that team a couple plays away from having 8 wins, I honestly could not have been much happier if you would've told me before last season started Towles would've done what he did.

I mean I wasn't expecting our offense to go from crawling to a full sprint like some of you apparently were. I think some of you were forgetting just how horribly, horribly bad our offense was the year before Towles took over. I mean we struggled to even get a single first down against anybody, and last year we could move the ball on anyone at anytime outside of one or two games. Was it perfect? No, far from it. But we still had one of, if not the most improved offense in the entire nation last year. You can't go from being what we were with Max Smith losing games to WKU to being Andre Woodson '07 in one offseason. You have to take steps.

That being said, THIS year is the year I expect Towles to really shine. I would be shocked if he isn't 2nd or 3rd team All-SEC (at worst) at season's end, barring some kind of injury. As long as Stoops let's Towles be Towles, and doesn't try to force too much of a running game like he did last year towards the end, I expect Towles to be one of, if not the best QB in the SEC. You can write it down now if you'd like. I can't even imagine what Towles will look like if the offensive line makes some dramatic improvement (fingers crossed). If that were the case, he would be SCARY, scary good after experiencing a season with no time to throw the ball, it's only going to make his reaction time that much better when/if he finally does have some time (not to mention the running game that would come along with a strong line which would open up the pass that much more).

 

[Gary4UK]

Originally posted by BlueTick2:

Towels was running for his life because of the poor play of the O-Line most of the time.
If Dawson wants to throw further down the field the O-Line better improve big time.

How many times last season did the snap of the ball and the defender arrive at the QB about the same time?

True, but there were way too many running plays called that the defense knew as well as our offense did that our QB was going to run the ball..... We've given away so many downs by telling the defense what we were going to do..... We're not Alabama that can say, here it is, stop it!

 

[Grumpyolddawg]

Towles biggest weakness was him being impatient, if he isn't UK's starter and I think he will be, it will be because he hasn't improved enough in that area. Now again all of that can't be put on Towles, first half of the season the OL wasn't exposed like it was the last half of the season, maybe Towles felt he didn't have time to run through his progressions and in many cases he was right. Going to the back as an outlet is the usual way a qb gets rid of the ball under a big rush, other than just throwing it away. That doesn't normally produce a big play, maybe he felt like he could gain as much by just tucking and running as he could on that little release pass. Physically he is very gifted, big guy, huge arm, potentially UK doesn't have a better qb on campus and I am not sure anyone else in the SEC does either. The big things for him is gaining confidence in his supporting cast and learning to trust them and learning to be more patient. I don't know if he can learn to do that or not, but I do know you can't teach someone to be 6'5" and have a rocket for an arm.

 

[BlueTick2]

Strange thread, everybody that replied was correct..........

 

[Blue Decade]

Originally posted by Smashcat:

Quarterbacks to run less, chuck it more. Towles had 145 rushing attempts last season. Top tailback Stanley "Boom" Williams had 74. Even excluding sacks, the 6-foot-5, 241-pound Towles was the Wildcats' most frequent runner in 2014. He won't be this fall.


"We'll do it a little bit, but it's not something we'll major in," Dawson said. "We'll do it more so to keep the defense honest. If the defense is just not giving us any credit right there, we'll let him keep it. We're not going to sit there and run the quarterback 15 times a game. That's not going to happen."

Good. For a lot of reasons.

 

[bigblueinsanity]

Trying to turn Towles into a designed runner was about the time I started questioning whether Brown was the best fit.

It was somewhat productive, but resulted in Towles taking slot of unnecessary hits, when you consider he was, at best, our 4th best option as a ball carrier.

And don't get me started on the qb draws in the 2 minute drill versus Louisville.

 

[UKani]

Guys you have to understand at Neal Brown's other spots he only ran his QB about 3 or 4 times a game. At UK Patrick Towles had some combo plays where they read the LBs and Towles would run it or pass it depending on what the LBs does, the other thing is Towles would run it out of necessity on passing plays. So they all weren't designed running plays.

I think the only difference between Shannon Dawson and Neal Brown is the fact that Shannon Dawson will call almost no combo plays.

 

[Deeeefense]

Originally posted by highlysuspicious:
the switch to a zone blocking scheme is going to pay major dividends for this football team. thats the scheme brooks and company used and they always managed to get some semblance of a running game even when they didnt have great talent.

this will allow us to establish the run and not have to rely on qb draws to keep defenses honest.

That's the first I have heard that they will start doing some zone blocking, if so I like it. Yea, I can still remember Derrick Locke gashing quality defenses on those stretch plays. I would love to see that type of scheme for Boom Williams to run behind.

 

[WildCard]

Originally posted by johnnyrockets:
He definitely scrambled a bit, but we also definitely ran a lot of read option last year.

As well as a bunch of inside zone stuff for the QB. And when pressured, Towles was often too quick to abandon the pocket. By my recollection, there were considerably more planned runs and "unforced" scrambles than "forced" scrambles.

Peace

 

[UKani]

Originally posted by Deeeefense:

Originally posted by highlysuspicious:
the switch to a zone blocking scheme is going to pay major dividends for this football team. thats the scheme brooks and company used and they always managed to get some semblance of a running game even when they didnt have great talent.

this will allow us to establish the run and not have to rely on qb draws to keep defenses honest.

That's the first I have heard that they will start doing some zone blocking, if so I like it. Yea, I can still remember Derrick Locke gashing quality defenses on those stretch plays. I would love to see that type of scheme for Boom Williams to run behind.

yeah during the open practice I could tell that the difference is having an effect on the DLine. The interior guys were slowed down a bit wondering where the block was coming from. Its important to note that a couple of years ago Dana Holgerson said that they made that change because the OLine weren't blocking very well. So he needed something that would help those guys out. part #1 was putting the guards in a 3point stance and part#2 was the blocking schemes.

 

[JHB4UK]

read option hell, if all the runs by Towles last season were read options then 100% of the time he read the defense as stuffing the running back around the end so he kept it and ran up in-between the tackles. Honesty I cannot even recall any play where we had a read option look and he gave it to the back rather than keep it.

as to why he ran it so much, I dunno, lack of confidence in the running back stable......too many fumbles or guys who didnt hit the right hole when they were given the ball. and part of why his number running it was called so often was because Patrick is a damned good athlete; go back and look at that long run against Miss St.

a quarterback who matures and gains experience along with confidence in his teammates will rely on his arm more than his legs. think Troy Smith at Ohio St.

 

[johnnyrockets]

Originally posted by UKani:
Guys you have to understand at Neal Brown's other spots he only ran his QB about 3 or 4 times a game. At UK Patrick Towles had some combo plays where they read the LBs and Towles would run it or pass it depending on what the LBs does, the other thing is Towles would run it out of necessity on passing plays. So they all weren't designed running plays.

I think the only difference between Shannon Dawson and Neal Brown is the fact that Shannon Dawson will call almost no combo plays.

The difference between a designed QB run and a "combo play" that results in a read for "QB run" is pretty semantic. At the end of the day, a lot of people thought PT ran the ball too much. Some of that was probably because of real QB pressure. Some (a minority) was probably due to perceived pressure. Some (a plurality? majority?) was probably due to play calling.

 

[WildCard]

Originally posted by JHB4UK:
read option hell, if all the runs by Towles last season were read options then 100% of the time he read the defense as stuffing the running back around the end so he kept it and ran up in-between the tackles...

This is true. The basic "read option" is a play designed to attack a DE who crashes down the line too hard; it is an outside run by the QB. Many of Towles runs were between the OTs after what appeared to be nothing more than a fake handoff to the RB, i.e., no read, no option.

Peace

 

[Poetax]

I still believe success from the TE position can help a QB in many ways. Lots of receivers do not like to go over the middle to catch balls yet its the shortest pass that can be completed easily. Conrad may be the key to this offense this year.

 

[jauk11]

Originally posted by Poetax:
I still believe success from the TE position can help a QB in many ways. Lots of receivers do not like to go over the middle to catch balls yet its the shortest pass that can be completed easily. Conrad may be the key to this offense this year.

Don't forget Long.

 

[CB3UK]

Smart decision coach. Towles can scoot when necessary, but when you abuse it as an option like Brown did, it becomes totally ineffective in the SEC. And we damn sure need to keep Towles upright and clean whenever possible.