It was a pretty openly discussed topic during the first three games that KW and AL were keeping most of the offense under wraps until the game against USC.
While there might have been some benefit to that in many of the things that went right for the offense during that game, I wonder if there was some downside that also bit the Utes in the butt.
Thinking specifically of the couple short goal line plays where there was confusion in the blocking assignments for the TEs. One in particular likely cost a pretty easy 7 points that might have made the difference in the outcome of the game.
With a team as talented as this version of the Utes appears to be, my opinion is it might have been better in retrospect to just run the offense as it was created and allow players live reps to learn from against the lower level non conference teams so they’d be ready for prime time once they took the field at USC.
I listened to a podcast for the past several weeks that emphasized (i) we kept running the straght ahead goal line play the first few weeks because the offensive line needed the reps–we knew we would need that play later on, and had to try to get it down, even though it was stopped several times; and (2) we went away from it against USC and went to the RPO because Ludwig realized the o line was not getting the push necessary for a straight ahead dive play under center to work.
One says you open the playbook and swamp the opposition with things they have to scheme for. It works if your players know how to not “tip your hand” on the play calls. It also works if you have crazy athletic players to run the plays and can create on the fly if something goes wrong (calling Michael Pittman Jr.). Not that SC opened their book much against us.
KW comes from the other side of the coin - only use what you need to win; and only show the wrinkles when the other plays aren’t working at all. There are a lot of plays schemed that are high risk, meaning if they don’t work you’re probably going to lose yardage. Ball control teams like Utah are only going to open this door if they are confident of some success. Against a Wazzu defense that was keying the RB and over pursuing, it made those plays available and a lower risk.
Opening the playbook allowed us to get the monkey off our backs against Leach.