Thanks for this, appreciative that greatly from a great mind like yours.
And as down as I am on BOB, I'd take him over Matt Patricia.
That said, let's talk about BOB, what I saw from him at Alabama every snap last year. Because I think it conveys personal experience, stats, and also a more macro feel that people can make their own judgments. I saw lots of curl concepts, (if you look at Tide tape and see the Indianapolis Colts horseshoe logo play card sign, that was the cue!) some Y stick, and the occasional Portland Concepts. Way too often stuck on inside draws, and didn't develop the outside zone and boundary run, although this improved as they used Jase McClellan more as the season went along, as opposed to Jahmyr Gibbs (great home run guy, reminds me a bit of Kenneth Walker, but was rather boom/bust metrically). BOB would almost never run inside the 10. Averse to play action. This was an offense stuck when Chip Kelly's spread circa 2011-12 was innovative.
Because I want to talk success rate a ton below here as for my concerns, here's a brief primer to anyone who needs one from FO: Success Rate (college football): Our (FO's) Varsity Numbers column calculates Success Rate for teams, not just running backs, using a set of baselines that differ slightly from our NFL Success Rates: 50% of needed yards on first down, 70% of needed yards on second down, or 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down.
Let's look at the 5 most common Alabama plays by the percentage of overall usage and as a percentage of yards:
Usage; the percentage listed is the percentage of all play calls gained by Alabama in 2022:
1) Inside Zone Read, 129 usages, 14.4%, 47.29% Success Rate.
2) Flood Variations, 67 attempts, 7.48% usage, 47.76% Success Rate
3) Inside Power, 58 attempts, 6.47%, 51.72% Success Rate
4) Outside Zone Read, ran 54 times, 6.03% of all play calls, 48.15% Success Rate
5) Outside Zone (no read), 52 uses, 5.8% usage, 40.38% Success Rate
Yards; the percentage is the percentage of all yards:
1) Inside Zone Read, 10.76% of all yards, 670 yards, 5.19 yards/play
2) Flood Variations, 551 yards, 8.85%, 8.22 yards/play
3) Outside Zone Read, 7.95%, 495 yards, 9.17 yards/play
4) Texas Concepts (HB Option)/Clearouts/Checkdowns 5.84%, 364 yards, 10.11 yards/play
5) Stick, 4.99% of all yards at 311 yards, at 8.64 yards/play
This to me isn't ideal. Like, let's talk about the fact that BOB's trail concepts were ran 27 times last year for Alabama. T-10th (with all screens, combined) most usage, yet had a 59.26 success rate. This and inside power were 1 of only 2 concepts in BOB's most 10 called concepts with a success rate over 50% (not including exactly at 50%).