There are two kinds of errors football players make.
One drives coaches absolutely jump up and down crazy. The other they view as, well, we can get that fixed.
Committing errors due to over-excitement, just flat blowing an assignment or even getting a holding call to keep the quarterback in one piece are the type errors all coaches think they can fix.
Those are errors of commission, I was told by a coach some 35 years or so ago. He quickly added he could fix that.
The other kind are errors of omission that coaches often don’t even try to fix. They’ll either just run the player off or put him on the bench forever.
Those are the errors of doing nothing or, as another coaching said, “thinking about doing something is the same as doing nothing.”
I’ve heard coaches yell for their players to do something — even it’s wrong — as opposed to thinking about things too much and, in effect, doing nothing.
Is that the problem Chad Morris is having right now on offense?
For that matter, is it the same problem John Chavis is having on defense in some areas?
There may not have been a more complex defense in the history of football than Tom Landry’s Flex defense, but Buddy Ryan’s fabled 46 Defense in the 1980’s with Chicago came close.
Rather than use instincts to chase the ball, players were required to control their area in Landry’s system.
Players from Bob Lilly to Randy White talked about how hard it was to quit thinking about what to do and just play. It’s part of the reason Landry would almost go with a veteran less talented than a rookie at times.
It was the same thing with Ryan’s legendary defense. When Mike Singletary finally talked Ryan into eliminating about 75 percent of the playbook, Chicago’s defense terrorized the entire NFL for a few seasons.
That’s why Morris is simplifying things. Going back to the basics, he told us Monday.
Obviously, the players are spending too much time thinking about what to do than just playing. Oh, there are a few attitude issues and Morris reportedly addressed those Sunday night, but the biggest problem is they’re thinking too much and playing too little.
The new systems on both sides of the ball are completely different than what the players here before had been doing. It’s not hard to see them thinking too much before reacting.
What Morris is doing is nothing new.
When Bear Bryant took over at Alabama, he got tired of getting his teeth kicked in. At one point during a game, the president of the university stood up behind the Crimson Tide’s bench and yelled, “Hell’s bells, we done hired an idiot!”
Bryant cut the Crimson Tide’s playbook down to four plays and they didn’t win many, but at least got things headed in a different direction.
Frank Broyles had similar problems early in that same year at Arkansas. He wanted to run the Delaware Wing-T, but discovered he didn’t have the players to do that and cut out stuff down to where they could execute just a few plays.
They lost their first six before figuring it out in 1958 and winning the last four, starting a 38-10 run before a dip, then a 29-3 three-year run and a national title.
When Texas went to the Wishbone in 1968, Emory Bellard had a grand total of four plays in the offense as they started 0-1-1, then ripped off 30 straight wins.
Barry Switzer struggled his first year with the Wishbone, then Oklahoma launched a 54-3-2 run as they kept putting more things into the offense with some really good players.
That’s not say Morris is going to have that kind of success at Arkansas getting his system in place, but it’s likely you won’t see the mess Hog fans have endured the last two weeks.
But everybody struggles with a new system and when that happens, coaches cut it back to what they can do well, even if it’s just a few plays.
Expect the Razorbacks’ offense to be much less complicated for the players against Auburn. Every play will likely still have options, but it’s likely the reads will be less complex and the blocking more basic for their system.
Producing a win over an Auburn team that is likely still ticked by a loss at home to LSU last week probably is out of the question.
In fact, this team could be out of bowl consideration by the time things turn around. That’s due to a schedule not exactly set up for a team learning a new system literally on the fly.
But it’s about the only possible route for Morris to take. It’s the way coaches have eliminated those errors of omission, by reducing the thinking and increasing the playing.
And it’s one that’s worked for other coaches for a long, long time.
