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the deficiency here is brought up by a lot of you who know a lot more about this than me

1. maybe its time to go out and hire an offensive line coach with offensive line coaching experience

2. is this a recruiting issue? weren't guys like toth and holland ellerson recruits (those are the guys that keep getting mentioned)?

maybe recruiting is connected to not having someone with offensive line experience coaching the position?

does anybody know what ali villanueva is doing these days?

Couldn’t agree more about having a dedicated, experienced O line coach in staff. In 2018, BD was OC and O line coach. There was another guy, Patrick Tresey that was an assistant for the O line as well. That same duo was in place in 2019. In 2020 it was BD with Saga Tuitele as assistant for the O line. That same duo is listed for 2021. In 2022, BD is just listed as OC and Viti is listed for the O line. This year it is Viti and Drinkall.

We seemed to have regressed since BD moved away from the O line. Perhaps that was his strength or perhaps Viti and Drinkall don’t have that magic or perhaps they are still adjusting to the new offense.

Whatever the reason, we won’t make much progress until the O line is working.

Read Coach Wyatt's opinion, posted in a separate video...

The lack of O line play is littered on the film over the last two years. The Navy Game from last year, to me, was the most telling for a few simple reasons.

1. We had all year to develop and build and work as an O line.
2. We were playing a team with similar size and talent and basic military requirements (level playing field)
3. We also had time to build out the scheme and get guys healthy.
4. Navy was not a stellar team so there were guys we could compete with

What we saw in the first three series of the game was an Army team trying to run out of the shotgun. Our first three series were 3 and out. Of those 9 plays we ran 7 out of the gun and they were unsuccessful because the O line couldn't block the Navy defenders and because we couldn't throw and catch. Ballard was at QB so we had a functional thrower.

2022 Army Navy Full Game You Tube

This isn't lack of creativity or play calling it's first and foremost an execution and coaching problem.

Same kinds of issues we are seeing this year. Watch the film.

PD

Dong Fong '09 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 1:27 pm the deficiency here is brought up by a lot of you who know a lot more about this than me

1. maybe its time to go out and hire an offensive line coach with offensive line coaching experience

2. is this a recruiting issue? weren't guys like toth and holland ellerson recruits (those are the guys that keep getting mentioned)?

maybe recruiting is connected to not having someone with offensive line experience coaching the position?

does anybody know what ali villanueva is doing these days?

Look you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to look at resumes and piece it together.

Air Force has an O line coach that played under Deberry at Air Force and in 3 liberty bowls, when bowls mattered, was a GA under Deberry, then went to Ohio U and then to Wake Forest and worked under another good coach in Jim Grobe and had success at both those programs before coming back to Air Force to coach O line.
Steed Lobotzke: AFA O Line Coach Bio

Army has Mike Viti as O line coach. Viti played on 4 losing Army teams under Bobby Ross and Stan Brock. His combined record as a player from '04-'07 is 12-34. They had three seasons where they lost 9 games and we had gone back to being Independent in '05. He was a really tough player and good fullback. But they didn't run the option and they weren't good teams with tons of good coaching. That's important. He was not a GA. He served very honorably in the Army and has done some outstanding volunteer work. I believe he is a great leader and a good man. However, he has zero experience outside of West Point. He's no real college coaching mentoring other than Jeff Monken. What exactly qualifies him to coach the O line? Honestly not sure what qualifies him to be an Associate Head Coach. Don't get me wrong. I like have a grad on staff. I like the idea of him with the fullbacks. He did a really good job with the fullbacks I thought. I like the idea of him getting different experiences and advancing his coaching career. And I think he's a good person and I know he works hard as a Coach and has the respect of his peers. However, through last year and now half of this year the O line has been a failure. And he has to own that. At this point so does Drinkall. These guys will have to make major major improvements to get me to believe they are capable.

Mike Viti: Army O Line Coach Bio

One thing that worries me is there is no one on the offensive staff that played O line. Or anyone who played in a successful triple option scheme. Or anyone who has coached or coordinated a triple scheme successfully at the FBS level. So who has that expertise? Who is going to help these guys??? I'm not saying you have to play the position to coach it. I'm not saying that you can't learn to coach other positions. What I am saying is that when you collectively have guys with limited experience and limited expertise, and limited documented experience at the FBS level that collectively they could really really struggle. Again all good guys that I"m certain are giving it all they have. However all they have might not be good enough.

PD

I completely agree with PD. I respect MV a lot, but I don't think he's ready for this job (and I think that's pretty evident in the results over the past two years). Coach Wyatt's video was also spot on.

One would think that is armchair coaches (Coach Wyatt excluded) can see this, JM can see it, no?

I used to get up for games against P5 teams because (1) we had a unique offense that they don't see and (2) our unique offense would control the clock and limit possessions. If we could score, and get a stop or two, we had a legit shot at winning.

Now, we are going 3 and out, not eating the clock, and not getting stops.

And maybe our receivers can just block outside the box? They don't need to cut block on the outside, do they? Just coach them better. I don't see other programs having to cut block corners in order for their running plays to work. The alleged reason for the need to change offenses seems somewhat contrived.

It's going to be painful on Saturday night.

I am a Viti fan, but I don’t think he is the right guy for this job right now. I would like to see an O line expert coaching our guys.

FWIW, Navy’s O line coach has been doing that job for 16 years.