Quote Originally Posted by Bucs2016 View Post
Yeah but that IS the feature of triple option. Most teams who face triple option and had close games probably have a similar stat. CSU played Citadel 4x, Wofford 1x and Kennessaw St 2x over the last few years, all close games. It was the same. 99% of the plays went for small gains if any. Then bam...we get hit. Its like a boxer setting up a knockout punch with jabs and rope a dopes.

When Citadel beat South Carolina in 2015 it was the same. The Gamecocks handled them pretty much the entire game. But they broke 2 long ass TD runs. Thats it. 2 runs. But the grinding kept USC offense off the field and it wore down and bored their defense. And then the knockout blow came. That's how TO works, its a brilliant and beautiful offense.

I may never get over Wofford beating CSU in the playoffs last year haha. So frustrating defending them!
I am not disputing the point you have been making but you either didn't watch the game or forgot and the USC game is not a perfect example to prove your point. They did a lot of things, but handle the TO? No they did not. We had one drive where we had 8, 9 10, 11 yard runs over and over again all the way down the field. That is not handling us. They had some serious problems stopping us, to the tune of 350 yards. We did have a couple big plays, but lots of medium yard ones as well. Take away the big TD runs (56 and 59 yards) and Renew is still over 5 Yds a run and Jackson is over 4.

But to get back to your point, I agree with it pretty much. A defense can either be effective against the run every play, or not. If they are effective, they can either give up the odd big play or not. All depends on how good their concentration, conditioning and depth are.