Dax,
Most offenses have difficulties against defenses with superior speed and athletes. go figure?
Either you are highly skilled in an area that can exploit a defense with superior speed and athleticism or they will own you. OU and Texas had some holes in their coverage...but only the more skilled passing offenses took advantage (see Tech).
KSU, in particular, had difficulty with the pass rushers for OU. Their defensive ends ate us alive. Too slow footed along the offensive line last year and the OU, Texas, and Arkansas games were a good demonstration of that. Mizzou had much of their way with our offensive line but they had enough holes elsewhere and were not good enough on offense last year to overcome mistakes.
Defensively...if you can't get a pass rush and are not really athletic in the secondary = bad news.
That and OU was awfully focused in that game. They made some plays offensively they didn't make the remainder of the year. That and the Texas game were easily their best performances offensively. They had no rythm and chemistry offensively after Broyles went down.
Are you agreeing with or arguing against Dax? It seems you're agreeing with Dax, only providing more detail. However, the smart ass comment "Most offenses have difficulties against defenses with superior speed and athletes. go figure?" makes me think you are arguing with him.
I agree with him for the most part. It was the comment that Snyder always has trouble with Oklahoma or something similar. Well, yes, most offenses do have difficulty with teams that possess superior speed and athleticism on defense. It's not an enlightenment.
It is sort of like those who rip on Snyder's record vs. top 20 teams. Well, if you look at it history wise most top 10 programs have average records against top 10 teams. So, go figure on that one as well.
The only thing I worry about this coming year with the offense is whether the offensive line will be tenacious enough. Hanson and Aufner, despite their shortcomings as pass blockers, worked their butts off in the run game. Freeze, while a below average athlete, worked and made few mistakes. We have better athletes on the offensive line this year but are they really tough guys willing to mix it up in the run game? There is no doubt we should get better pass protection. The biggest issue for us last year is that we simply couldn't protect the quarterback.
To illustrate just how dreadful we were at pass protection we had 200 fewer pass attempts than Iowa State last season but gave up 16 more sacks. Part of that could be attributed to Klein being one of the few QBs who would eat the ball rather than force things...but very few. We were horrendous giving the QB any time. Knock off about 15 sacks in 100 more passing attempts this year and we'll move the ball that much better.
Team attempts sacks attempts/sack
Texas A&M 537 9 59.67
Oklahoma 583 11 53.00
Oklahoma State 596 12 49.67
Texas Tech 600 19 31.58
Missouri 383 18 21.28
Iowa State 484 27 17.93
Baylor 424 29 14.62
Texas 358 28 12.79
Kansas 301 31 9.71
Kansas State 290 43 6.74