A Michigan Man on Tommy Amaker

The biggest issue I have with Tommy Amaker was his mediocre tenure at Michigan. As an outsider, it always seemed like he underachieved. But to get a more informed opinion on his time in Ann Arbor, I asked blogging pioneer Brian Cook of MgoBlog his thoughts on Amaker. Brian's two cents follow:

"Amaker walked into a disaster area at Michigan and did make things better pretty much from the drop. Brian Ellerbe had filled the roster with ne'er-do-wells and many of them left either on Amaker's hiring or once they discovered that Amaker had a problem with them, say, jacking contested threes from halfcourt on the regular.

Amaker came in, nailed down a top-50 point guard from Texas named Daniel Horton, and made Michigan generally competitive except for one year where his team was destroyed by injury.

Unfortunately, that's where the improvement stopped. Michigan was perpetually on the bubble under Amaker and never got over the hump. His teams continually turned the ball over and he never got over .500 in the Big Ten except for one year where Michigan started out 0-6 with losses to Central and Western Michigan. His recruiting was wildly erratic; he was capable of getting kids to Michigan that few others would have managed but he also made crazy early offers to guys who had no business at a D-I school--a couple in fact transferred to D-II Saginaw Valley State, where they were bench players. Beilein inherited a mess comparable to the one Amaker did, without NCAA sanctions hanging over the program.

It does seem that Amaker's figured a few things out at Harvard he never did at Michigan. His time at M was seven years ago, as hard as that is to believe. He's built the Crimson into the most impressive Ivy program in 50 years. You would get an instant and real recruiting bump and he would get BC to a level where they're at least on the bubble. It's a defensible hire."

We've been doing it all wrong [UPDATED]

[WARNING: Wonky football analysis post] [UPDATED: I had the percentages transposed for BC. Thanks to Mod34b for the heads up.]

Mgoblog has a contributor who does a lot of interesting work on football analysis. His latest post explains how the traditional down and distance philosophy is outdated. Wisconsin -- with their very successful QB and RB combo -- is the test case, but there is a lot that BC could apply. A quick summary is that a passing play from a QB has a better upside than one from an elite RB and that a premier running back is overrated.

Now even without great players like Russell Wilson and Montee Ball, balance on offense is outdated. BC needs to be more aggressive and make our passing game more explosive.

I know Spaz doesn't call the plays, but his selections of Coordinators and his endorsement of their approaches, shows he's more comfortable with a "balanced" attack. I would hope that Doug Martin would open things up, but his one year at New Mexico State was also very run heavy. Below are some reference points. And what does it say about BC, when Wisconsin -- the Big Ten team used as an example an of old school approach on offense -- looks pass happy compared to BC and New Mexico State.

Run/Pass mix
BC 2011 -- 57.42% run, 42.58% pass
BC 2010 -- 56.93% run, 43.07% pass
BC 2009 -- 57.35% run, 42.65% pass
New Mexico State 2011 -- 49.72% run, 50.28% pass
Wisconsin 2011 -- 35.01% run, 64.99% pass

Martin has said the right things about next season. He runs a West Coast, single back offense but is less about scheme and more about taking advantage of the team's best players. I don't know enough about New Mexico State to judge if a heavy dose of run made sense. Let's hope he does want to take advantage of our best players because that would mean plenty of passing from Rettig to Larmond and Pantale.