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Post being replied to

Not really, no by HTownND

I stopped here
"This breaks down quickly because against elite teams in 2020 the goal has to be to outscore your opponent and nothing else. In six years of the College Football Playoff, the winner of the championship game has scored over forty points four times and under thirty points just once. The best teams are no longer playing a run-heavy offense, and unless you score on every drive and take at least 8 minutes off the clock each time, ball control will not work."

The idea that a run heavy offense only has to eat clock and reduce possesions is idiotic. Hell, my HS was running a shit ton out of no huddle, with tempo, over 25 years ago. You can run a lot, and do it at tempo, and score a shit load of points.

But let's dig in on this specific point:

"In six years of the College Football Playoff, the winner of the championship game has scored over forty points four times and under thirty points just once."

2015 - OSU won the first title, against Oregon, scoring 42 points
OSU had 84 plays and 538 yards of offense.

84 Plays
Of those 84, 23 were passes. They ran the ball 61 times in that game, including 36 by Zeke Elliott and over 20 by Cardale Jones.

I mean, we can disprove that statement with the first game on the god damned list. Ezekiel Elliot had 36 carries for 246 yards in that game.

2016
Alabama beat Clemson 45-40

Here are some numbers from both teams
Bama - 71 plays for 473 yards
Clemson - 85 plays for 550 yards
Both scored at least 40 points

Bama 46 rushes
Clemson 38 rushes

For Bama, the winner, that was running on 65% of their plays. Clemson, the loser, had 47 passing attempts.

Bama, the winner, scored 45 points with a run heavy offense.

So far OFD is 0-2 here

2017
Clemson beat Alabama in a rematch, neither team scored 40 points

Clemson aired it out. 99 plays, 511 yards. 57 passes for 420 of those 511.

Interestingly enough, one of the 2 times it was below 40 points, the team had aired it out and didn't try to establish the run.

As an aside, Bama kept it close with a balanced attack that scored 31 points to Clemson's 35.

2018
Here is the sub 30 point game
Bama beat UGA 26-23
Both teams ran over 70 plays
Bama - 71 plays for 371 yards
UGA - 77 plays for 365 yards

Bama had 39 rushes (55%), and UGA had 45 rushes (58%)
Bama ran the ball less than they did in their prior victory in winning this game

2019
Clemson smoked the Tide scoring 44 points, and holding Bama to 16
Clemson had 63 plays for 482 yards
With a balance of 31 rushes and 32 passes


So what does this all tell us
Here are the rankings for number of plays for the victor (a proxy for tempo), and the percentages of runs in those plays

99 - Clemson 2017 (42%) - 35 points
84 - OSU 2015 (73%) - 42 points
71 - Bama 2016 (65%) - 45 points
71 - Bama 2018 (55%) - 26 points
63 - Clemson 2019 (49%) - 44 points


What that tells me is there are a ton of ways to skin the cat, but a team can absolutely be effective with a run heavy offense and even a balanced offense that leans run. See the 2015 OSU and 2016 Bama teams, that had a ton of plays, points, and were run heavy. The contrast between Bama 2016 and Bama 2018 is stark. Same number of plays, but when they were more balanced, and threw the ball more, they had fewer yards and fewer points than the 2016 team.

As an aside, it's not shocking that the lowest play total was for the game that was the biggest blowout.




I stop reading when I see garbage like this, because I question if the person is only good at stats, and has never played a down of organized football at any sort of high level. The binary view that running is bad and has no place is fucking dumb. You can run the ball, and run it at tempo, and pile up a ton of yards and points. Being run heavy absolutely works in today's game.