Every head coach has his roots on one side of the ball or the other. Tommy Tuberville, Chuck Amato, Ed Orgeron and Dave Wannstedt are all guys who came from the defensive side of the ball. They were/are defensive guys as head coach. They also shared a preference for conservative offenses.

[As an aside, it has been a source of consternation for me that coaches that have displayed innovation and creativity in defense, can be so glacially conservative about how an offense should be run. It seems that they think the only way to beat any defense is to do so only with brute force and with little risk.]

I am doing my best to keep an open mind about Noel Mazzone, as he appears poised to be the next offensive coordinator at Pitt.  To that end, I was looking at his offenses in previous stints as the OC. Of course, Pittengineer75, saved me the effort of having to put together any chart. If you don’t feel like clicking it, trust me, it isn’t inspiring.

Suffice to say, the numbers are underwhelming. Backing up to my first paragraph about defensive-minded coaches views towards offense. Obviously, I was listing coaches that have employed Noel Mazzone as their OC. Tuberville, especially, since he employed Mazzone the longest, is a classic example of a head coach that also closely resembles Coach Dave Wannstedt’s philosophy on offense: ball control, run first, minimal mistakes, limit risks.

Now, let’s just say that no fanbase that had Noel Mazzone as an OC has shed a tear at his departure. Not at Ole Miss, where he got good money to leave. Defnitely not at NC State, where a year after he was gone they celebrated his firing at Ole Miss — oh and we learn his nickname by Wolfpack fans was “NoRedZone,” and not inspiring confidence.

His play-calling was bewildering, to say the least. He frequently called high-risk, low-reward passes (most notably the out pattern that travels all the way across the field, but only 2-3 yards DOWNFIELD – you know, the direction you have to go in order to get first downs and ultimately score) that his QB simply could not throw well. Defensive lineman made game changing plays twice this year on such predictable high-risk throws (the tipped pass at UNC that was returned to the NC State 2, and the Clemson DL that took the INT in for the score). These DL’s clearly dropped back in anticipation of such a throw. That would not happen if we weren’t so predictable.

And that was part of a post actually saying the problems on the offense, weren’t all Mazzone’s fault.

And for the more literate, well stop by your local library or bookstore and page through Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side” (which you can also take a look at online at Amazon). Around page 251 is this gem.

First came hope: five plays into the game the Ole Miss quarterback, Ethan Flatt, hit his fastest receiver, Taye Biddle, for a 41-yard touchdown pass. But Biddle, one of the seniors who would quit school immediately after the game, might as well have kept on running out the back of the end zone and into his car. Ole Miss never called that play again. Instead, their offensive brain trust decided to use their unbelievably slow, fifth-string running back to test the strong interior of the Mississippi State defense. In the press box before the game, the Ole Miss offensive coordinator, Noel Mazzone, happened to walk past a TV on which was playing a North Carolina State football game. Six months earlier, Mazzone had left his job running the North Carolina State ofense to take the job of running the Ole Miss offense. Seeing his former team on TV he snorted and said, loudly enough for journalists to overhear, “Should have stayed there, at least they had some players.”

Bill Walsh had shown how much an imaginative coach might achieve even with mediocre talent; Noel Mazzone was demonstrating how little could be achieved by a coach who did not admit any role for the imagination. The next five times Ole Miss had the ball Mazzone used the opportunity to prove that his slow, fifth-string running back couldn’t run through a giant pile of bodies in the middle of the field.

…

The frantic search for the right combination of players reflected their more general football worldview: they believed in talent rather than strategy. They placed less emphasis on how players were used than who they were. Whoever had the best players won: it was as simple as that.

It was a bleak and determinist worldview, implying, as it did that there was little a strategist could do to raise the value of his players. More to the point, it was a false view, at least for running a football offense. The beauty of the football offense was that it allowed for a smart strategist to compensate for his players’ limitations. He might find better ways to use players, to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. He might even change the players sense of themselves. But Ole Miss not only lacked a smart strategist: it lacked a coach who understood the importance of strategy. The genius of Bill Walsh was missing; so for that matter was the genius of Leigh Anne Tuohy. There wasn’t a soul on the Ole Miss Sidelines thinking seriously how to make the most of what another person could do. They were all stuck dwelling on what other people couldn’t do.

I have to admit, I’m starting to really worry.