If it was easy everyone would do it right? I actually don't dislike Fleck, he is a little about himself, whatever, but he has always been respectful of his opponents and us and he is a really good coach. Do you really think coaches like him and KF don't want to pass? Like somehow they could just change their philosophies overnight, change the scheme and then start slinging it around with great success? It is not that easy.
Why? There are a lot of great defenses in the B1G. Just think about it like this; how many times have you seen a pass heavy team from the MAC or a non-P5 come play a B1G team with a good defense and they just throw all over them? Look at us, we play a team like Kent St. or Utah St. that throws for a billion yards against everyone else but then against us they get shut down. Because we have better dudes than they have and we are well coached. Why do you think Penn St. with an offense scoring 38 points per game scores only 12 and 15 against OSU and Michigan? Franklin can fire the OC all he wants, he is a really good OC, but those other 2 teams' defenses are elite. The passing game takes so many elements to work, really all of them. When they do it is a beautiful thing, but when they don't it can look really bad. For a great reference of that go back and look at Brady's last two years with the Bucs. One where he has Gronk, one where he doesn't. Any injury at the WR position. Any injury in the oline or two. Brady didn't forget how to play, his play was elite both years. He still had weapons. But the first year they could do no wrong on offense and won the Super Bowl, the second year they looked like they were running in mud and were close to the bottom.
Modern football doesn't mean it is better football, it is an adaptation to talent and rules. Its not like coaches 30, 40, 50 years ago weren't smart. Of course they were. The fundamentals of football are still sound. You have to block. You have to be able to run the football because most defenses can scheme against a one-dimensional offense and great defenses, like a lot of what we see in the B1G, can scheme against balanced attacks too making everything hard.
This is not Tecmo Bowl or Madden. Most of these coaches know what they are doing, they just don't have all the tools to do it. In Fleck's case and in KF's case and any other development program, you are limited by the ebb and flow of the player turnover that you have. If Fleck had a Justin Fields, Joe Burrow or Tua Tagaviola sitting on the bench, sure, he probably would go to a guy like that and see what he can do. But he doesn't and he is stuck playing Kaliakmanus and KF is stuck playing Deacon Hill and having to live through the growing pains.
This is why it makes it so difficult for a development program to be competitive every year. There is a huge difference, huge, between being good once every 4 or 5 years and being good every year. This is what so many people do not appreciate with KF and they won't realize it until after he is gone.
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