re: SCRooster - have you met Roper?

I have no issues with Roper currently. Too many times this season I have watched a WR run wide open and not get the ball. Why is that you asked? well because either a DL was jiu jitsuing our QB or the QB just didnt look at him (Bmac).
We had to manufacture sweeps, screens, and outside runs with our speed guys because our interior OL couldnt hold a block for 3 secs or more ofyen than not even put hands on a damned defensive player at all.


EVERYTHING in this league and in the entire sport in general starts at the lines. You could have coach Bill Belichick, Barry Sanders, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Tom Rathman on the offensive side of the ball but without any sort of decent line play... the entire system is mute, maybe with the exception of Barry Sanders, that guy was fricking money with no OL. I posted some earlier in the season about Roper's system. Players were open, guys were in the right place, but the execution wasnt there. Either the QB or the OL doomed the play from the start.

So IMO he gets a pass until we have OL not whiffing fricking blocks all game long. As far as Hurst's play IMO he is athletic and can play but he is not a complete player. He either feels he is a far superior athlete than the defender he tries and fails to jump over or his effort isnt there if he isnt getting the ball. (missed blocks, not laying out for a pass on his fingertips, etc..)

Sinister - I saw the same with regard to receivers and all your other points are valid as well.

I think any OC who has reached a level in their career to make the money Roper is making has the X's and O's knowledge needed to run an offense that can create open receivers. I'm not really questioning Roper's knowledge or ability to call a play that will work whenever everything goes like it should.

I'm concerned because good OC's tend to show up and find their OL is undersized or slow and RB can't protect or whatever....obviously if the new OC was hired because the offense sucked the previous year then there are going to be problems the new OC has to deal with......and yet in spite of the problems and the obvious excuses that could be used for a failing offense, good OC's manufacture yards and points in year 1. We didn't get anything close to that...we got worse.

I think it's a bad omen when a new OC can't improve on a previously horrid offense, but in spite of that I want to give Roper a pass as well and excuse the results of 2016 due to lack of talent, etc. because his history shows he's a good OC, but that's the other issue....what in his history gives us reason to think he is a good OC?

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CIYE? Help me out.....Contract something In Year Extension?

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I thought Roper was done in Dec '17, but SCRooster is right, he has a 3 year deal, so his contract doesn't expire until Dec '18.

Yeah - after SCRooster's post I went back and looked at Roper's UF deal and he had a 3 year deal there as well making $600k, so Roper could afford to work with the Browns for free if he wanted. I guess that makes me feel a bit better about Roper taking the UF job with Muschamp on hot seat.

Lung and ATL:
I've never said there wasn't talent problems or that I expected a huge jump in our offensive stats from those of 2015. It's the fact that we went backwards stat-wise after being SO BAD in 2015 that just really concerns me about 2017.

We didn't improve offensively as the season went along. We had more wins and that seems like we improved but I've given stats that show those wins were a product of the schedule and even in those home wins we were one of the best games defensively those opponents had for the season.

So my concern is more about the fact we didn't show any offensive improvement from 2015 and we didn't (arguably) show improvement from the beginning of this season to the end. Our defense improved from 2015 and had a big improvement in the stats until the Clem game, but even with that game the defensive stats are better than 2015. Why couldn't the offense be at least "not as bad" as last year?

I'm hopeful like the rest of you that our offense will improve, but like I said, because we dropped to a 122 ranked offense we could improve 30 spots and still have a really bad offense next year. Roper should have shown more progress this year and not gone backwards, and because he did we're now looking at 2017 as a likely make or break year for Roper to keep his job. That's not what I expected (a repeat of Muschamp's OC woes at UF) when Muschamp was hired, yet here we are.

Now as far as my take on the offense as a whole... here is my 2 cents.

I don't think that Roper is a bad OC per se. Yes he is hamstrung a little by talent, but I don't think that tells the whole story. I have held the belief this year, just by watching/being at the games that our offensive philosophy is different than Ropers was at Duke. Duke had little to no defense to speak of. Roper's offense would go out and sling it all over the place because, simply, if they didn't put up a lot of points they had not chance to win.

I don't think that even if we have a roster full of offensive talent that we are going to go out and throw up the same numbers as Mizzou did this year or whatever other powerhouse offense one would like to look at. I think the general philosophy is to have a stout Defense and to use that defense to create turnovers. It seems to me that when we have a special teams play or a turnover that gives us positive field position, Roper is much more likely to open up the gas and go for it. Barring this situation, again this is just my opinion, Roper is simply taking what their defense gives us and tries to get our defense in the best situation for the next series. Yes, he will take a shot every now and then to try and flip the field himself, I just don't get the feeling that is necessarily the main objective.

88- thanks for reply. I really am interested as to how other GC fans are staying positive about Roper. I was, or at least had not formed a negative opinion, until looking at hard numbers.

I think these stats below show that 2016 may have been our easiest schedule since we joined the SEC. Here are total defense rankings for some of the teams we played. Remember there are only 128 FBS teams.
94 - UK
98 - UMass
99 - ECU
100 - TAMU
116 - UT
122 - Mizzou

Four of our five FBS wins came from that group above, Vandy was the other win. An SEC team could hardly hope for that many poor defenses on a schedule but we were lucky enough to draw those teams as opponents. Even with the youth of our offense I just can't understand how we went backwards statistically.

Consider that last year our offense was stastically better but the only teams we played with total defense ranking greater than 90 was UNC and UCF. We had 6 opponents this year with 90+ total defense ranking and we got worse.

I would like to be positive but almost every stat I look at says we may have an OC problem.

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