The balance fallacy (aka Why Doug Nussmeier sucks)

You hear coaches talk about it, you hear the media bobbleheads spout it

"Balance, gotta be balanced, it's good to be balanced, want to have a balanced offense! blah blah blah"

Balance purely for balance's sake is stupid and completely misses the point.

Take what the defense gives you and do what works.

The balance part comes in when you need to adjust. If you're one dimensional the defense might sell out to stop that one thing. At that point, you do something else.

Having the ability to do many different things is what's important.

The goal of an offense is to score points (which is primarily done by gaining yardage). If you can easily do that being one dimensional, that's fine.

As Auburn proved this year (and many other teams have proven in the past) if what you're doing works, that's fine. It's accomplishing the purpose. What if Auburn had decided "Hmmm we're not balanced enough, we should throw more" at some point this year? Throwing it purely for the sake of throwing it.

Nussmeier is obsessed with mixing things up purely for the sake of mixing things up. A defense can have a weakness that is exploitable but he refuses to hammer at it with repeated similar play calls, because that's not "balanced" enough.

It's a ridiculous way to think.

Like I said, you want your team to have the ability to do lots of different things, that makes you dangerous. Doing everything purely for the sake of doing everything doesn't accomplish anything productive.