"At that moment, Davis was in the middle of his 38th year as a football coach, the last 13 of them at Texas with Brown. Until that moment, I had never seen so much as a flicker of his temper.
But when I asked him about his fundamental football truths — those principles embedded in the heart of a football coach — Davis reached under his desk. A book materialized. Davis called it his "quality control" manual. He opened it to the first page.
"I could give you a thousand numbers," he said.
Instead, he pointed to one.
His data showed that a category called "scoring offense" determines whether a team wins or loses. Davis had arrived at this conclusion by studying the top college football teams from the past 10 seasons. He motioned me closer to see.
"I know what causes winning and losing," he said, his pitch rising. "Don't talk to me about running the ball, throwing the ball. That's the No. 1 factor."
He composed himself. "It's not opinion," he said. "It's fact. If at some point that's not good enough, then that's not good enough."
Source - Excerpt from The Statesman / Austin, TX interview with Coach Davis on 12/2010: http://www.statesman.com/news/sport...ilt-a-career-molding-offenses-moving-1/nRTks/
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So correct me here if I'm wrong but this seems to be at odds with some of the key components of the Kirk Ferentz philosophy of building strong defenses and controlling the game with a run oriented balanced offense. The article was written in Dec./2010 (shortly after his firing) and Davis was hired at Iowa in Feb./2012.
Seems like some significant differences between the two in what it takes to win games unless Ferentz believed with the Davis hire that were going to be better off at Iowa by converting to a passing "scoring offense" which I would find very hard to believe. So maybe we are now left with a hybrid offense and play calling that's not sure what it wants to be or what it is designed to be.
But when I asked him about his fundamental football truths — those principles embedded in the heart of a football coach — Davis reached under his desk. A book materialized. Davis called it his "quality control" manual. He opened it to the first page.
"I could give you a thousand numbers," he said.
Instead, he pointed to one.
His data showed that a category called "scoring offense" determines whether a team wins or loses. Davis had arrived at this conclusion by studying the top college football teams from the past 10 seasons. He motioned me closer to see.
"I know what causes winning and losing," he said, his pitch rising. "Don't talk to me about running the ball, throwing the ball. That's the No. 1 factor."
He composed himself. "It's not opinion," he said. "It's fact. If at some point that's not good enough, then that's not good enough."
Source - Excerpt from The Statesman / Austin, TX interview with Coach Davis on 12/2010: http://www.statesman.com/news/sport...ilt-a-career-molding-offenses-moving-1/nRTks/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So correct me here if I'm wrong but this seems to be at odds with some of the key components of the Kirk Ferentz philosophy of building strong defenses and controlling the game with a run oriented balanced offense. The article was written in Dec./2010 (shortly after his firing) and Davis was hired at Iowa in Feb./2012.
Seems like some significant differences between the two in what it takes to win games unless Ferentz believed with the Davis hire that were going to be better off at Iowa by converting to a passing "scoring offense" which I would find very hard to believe. So maybe we are now left with a hybrid offense and play calling that's not sure what it wants to be or what it is designed to be.
