For all the talk of more pro-sets and and putting Tebow under-center, the biggest change the Florida Gators may installed on offense is a new “bonsai” (or “bonzai”?) package: a no-huddle look they got from Oklahoma whereby they can use multiple tempos — i.e. line up and call the play right away, or line up, get a look at the defense, and call a play. Specifically:
Word from Gator Country ($) is that the Gators’ no-huddle package, deployed sparingly in the steamrolling of Charleston Souther, is called either “banzai” or “bonzai” or “bansai” or something. (Gator Bytes confirms this.) . . . .
The idea is stolen from Oklahoma’s hurry-up, which helped power their near-unstoppable 2008 offense. . . .
There are many reasons to use this scheme, but one of them is that Florida simply has better talent than most (all?) of its opponents. And if you have more talent than your opponents then you want to get as many “trials” as possible to maximize your chance of winning. Conversely, an optimal game for an underdog would be where they managed to get lucky, score early, and end the game right there. In other words, the underdog wants a high variance strategy. The hurry-up no-huddle for Florida (I know they will use different tempos) is a way to get more of these trials. Think of it this way. There is very little chance of Kentucky beating Florida this year. It’s not impossible; we could think of what would have to happen. Tebow would have to play awful, Florida would have to turn it over, blow some coverages, fumble a kickoff or punt or two, and Kentucky would have to take advantage of all of those mistakes. In other words, they’d have to be very, very lucky. Unless you are a partisan or don’t understand statistics, you have to admit that if Florida and Kentucky played 1,000 times Kentucky might win at least one of them. If Florida runs more plays than usual (Oklahoma ran more plays than any team in college football last season), then this is like factoring in extra games into a single one — the Gators would have more opportunity to smooth out instances of the other team getting lucky.
Of course I’ve previously discussed this dynamic of underdog and favorite (or “David” and “Goliath” strategies):
Going extreme hurry-up to get as many plays as possible — other than endurance, I suppose — is a Goliath strategy: it decreases variance by increasing the number of trials. The chance of getting only heads and no tails in five coin flips is much higher than it is in a hundred — i.e. the impact of the law of large numbers or regression to the mean. If Oklahoma has significantly more talent, better schemes, and everything else than the underdog, then the more plays it run the more likely it is to exhibit its raw dominance over the underdog; the underdog is less likely to “steal” a few good plays and get the heck out of dodge. The principle is the same as the difference between an underdog winning a game in a single-elimination tournament and trying to win a seven-game series: the seven-game series is far less likely to produce upsets.
The logic runs exactly opposite for Florida’s opponents this year, all of whom are likely to be considered underdogs:
As explained above, the higher variance and thus David-favoring strategy is to reduce the number of “trials” — i.e. plays. This is where a passing strategy and a strategy that involves “shortening the game and keeping it close” might run counter to each other. Incomplete passes typically stop the clock (I can’t keep the college clock rules in my brain anymore), as do plays where the ballcarrier goes out of bounds, which is more common on passes (same with the clock rules). If an underdog were to get an early lead, they obviously would love it if the game effectively ended right there. Yes, there is much to say about the problems inherent in not playing to lose and all that, but those are means questions, not ends. And all can agree that an underdog would love to get an early lead in a game against a favorite and have the clock run out as fast as possible.
Whether or not Meyer had stochastic reasoning in mind when he went to this, this kind of strategy should benefit his team overall, but especially against overmatched opponents; it’s kind of like upset-repellent. Even if the Gators got down and played poorly, they would always have the option of lengthening the game and evening out the probabilities.
(Ht EDSBS.)