OnlyU/Ghost Thoughts

Yeah, the “Ludwig’s offense is too complex” theory seems to have been borne from comments Whitt has made. We hear so often about individual players that they don’t know the playbook so that’s why they aren’t playing.

I think the reason Rising is able to run it so well is the time he was afforded in 2019 when he got to sit in the booth during games. That’s a perspective few people ever get and he should have been able to ask about and see for himself what Ludwig was hoping to accomplish in real time. Add all of that knowledge to his intangibles and you get high performance.

I’ve always said that Ludwig doesn’t run a QB friendly offense. The easiest to learn are Air Raid or Run & Shoot because those are based off standard route trees with known options depending on the defense. You can line up in the same formation with the same play call 5 times in a row and it will look like 5 different plays.

But what I believe Ludwig does is throw a lot of window dressing in that confuses his own QB. On his standard 5 receiver route, it never seems to me like more than 3 are actually options. Everyone else is just a decoy. So if the D successful covers the right 2 or 3 receivers, the QB has to make something happen with his legs because he’s been trained never to look at the decoys. And being decoys, they’ve been trained to not continue their routes after the first fake. Add that to his penchant for calling routes short of the sticks which depend on the receiver catching the ball in a tight window and then making a play, you put a lot of pressure on the QB to make the great decision every time instead of just a lot of good ones.