If Snyder continues winning while continuing to be constantly out gained by a lot game after game, he should be burnt as a witch.
Also, this is why I think we won't be as successful this season. That kind of stuff catches up to you, especially if any key positions graduate talent for lesser talent.
Just losing Guidry could lose us half our games.
It doesn't "catch up with you." That's garbage and it's not true.
We might lose some games next season. It has nothing to do with last year, though.
I agree that last year has nothing to do with this year.
I disagree that putting up fewer yards than your opponent game after game doesn't catch up with you. Odds tells you that doing what we did last year, given the yards stat, is not sustainable. I mean, how many times has that happened before?
I don't want to say that we gave up a lot of yards "by design" last season, because obviously, we would've liked to have given up fewer yards. However, our defense was all "bend don't break" which is actually a really good strategy against today's spread offenses, for two reasons.
1. When (if) teams get down inside the 30 yard line, their spreads don't work as well because there is less field to run around. I bet if you look at our red zone defense from last year, it was near the top in the Big 12. So, outside of the 30 yard line, playing super tight and being committed to sell out to stop 7 yard pass routes is stupid, because if you get beat over the top, it's a TD. So rope a dope them into the 30 yard line. If you stop them, great, but them getting to the 30 isn't fatal. Point is, all yardage isn't created equal for spread offenses and I consider the yards from their 20 to our 30 to be a bit emptier.
2. When teams pass 50-60 times a game, they're going to turn it over. Let them throw it all over the field. That's risky.
So these teams that play against us can gobble up tons of yards, but as long as those yards don't come inside of our 30 yard line, we're in great shape. In addition, if the yards they do gobble up are done through 60 passes, those are very risky yards.
I don't think we were overly lucky last season.