Offense wins games, Defense wins championships

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I think talent wins championships more than anything else

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I was coming in this thread to post that.

It drives me NUTS when (mostly older) Aggies say something like "we used to be so good at defense, why don't we just do that again?" Like we can just decide one day to be good at defense and it happens.

Every team in football that is really good at defense recruits like crazy. Hell RC was good at defense because at the point he took over we had first pick in the state thanks to a down Texas. The second Mack Brown came around RC's defense lost its NFL talent through no fault (or merit) of his own. Mack Brown is also why Fran's defenses sucked, and why the Wrecking Crew died.

To be good at defense is to be part of the college football upper caste that can get highly recruited five stars to come every year without going full Ole Miss. Most of the time you can spot a five star DL in Junior High, as they have a freak combo of talent and ability. There simply isn't a harder position to recruit.

In fact the whole reason why college football has become so offensive focused isn't because of new rules or new schemes. Most of it had been done before. It became offensive focused because more teams than ever want a piece of the limelight, and there isn't enough of that elite defensive talent to go around. There are plenty of offensive guys that get passed up, or can stay on the field with that elite defensive talent in the right system. Hence we see programs like Baylor making the best of it.

Same thing with "why can't we run the ball more?" or "why don't we get short yardage runs when we need them?" That too requires elite talent that only a few programs in the country have access to.

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What Slocum also did was put his best athletes on the defensive side of the ball.

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Which again comes down to how attractive you are to recruits. ESPECIALLY in today's recruiting world.

Nick Saban has the cache to tell a five star WR that he will play LB for him and still get that five star to sign. If Sumlin told one of those ego-maniac five star offensive recruits they were going on defense then he simply wouldn't sign with us. And if we just did it after he signed he would bitch about it on social media ensuring we don't get future elite WRs. The RC system is broken, never again to be repaired (unless we ever have a Nick Saban).

Brandon Williams is a rare case of forced humility. He was a five star RB but with the worst offer list you have ever seen a five star have. He couldn't make it somehow at OU and then had to transfer here. Then he couldn't get the starting job here and had to ride the pine. Converting to defense was his last hope of playing in the NFL, a dream I am sure the 18 year old him thought was a slam dunk.

We can't wait around for these kids like Kyler to go through a humility gauntlet just so they will be the team players we need them to be senior year. Hell a kid like Kyler simply won't stick around to take that medicine. The grass is always greener.

The solution is simple: either we pay elite players to come to A&M in position like Ole Miss or we lower our expectations. I think the last couple of years showed us our ceiling in the SEC when neither our coaching nor our talent is best in the league.

I have exactly 0 moral barriers to us paying players more. I honestly see no downside.

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I think it's safe to say that the old formula just doesn't always hold, and that the game is different these days.

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don't think the game is a bit different. It's just a stupid cliche.

Bill Walsh, Mike Shanahan, Joe Gibbs - offensive coaches. Spurrier, Bowden, Urban - offensive.

You can't really go back beyond modern times because most coaches were not side specific til the mid 60 to early 70s.

But there have always been offensive coaches winning. You just can't win with a shitty defense. You also can't win with a shitty offense. See 21-0.

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don't think the game is a bit different. It's just a stupid cliche.

Bill Walsh, Mike Shanahan, Joe Gibbs - offensive coaches. Spurrier, Bowden, Urban - offensive.

You can't really go back beyond modern times because most coaches were not side specific til the mid 60 to early 70s.

But there have always been offensive coaches winning. You just can't win with a shitty defense. You also can't win with a shitty offense. See 21-0.

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Precisely.