Does Switching to Fast Paced Offense Mess Up Your Defense?

Especially if the fast paced offense scores quickly, or has a lot of 3 and outs.

I would guess yes.  1st, your defense is on the field for more possessions/plays.  And as evidenced by the Rich Rod years, a 3 and out in a fast paced offense puts yoru defense on the field less than 5 minutes (of real time) and 1 minute (of game time) after coming off.  3 or 4 3 and outs per game, can really take it's toll.

On how well the offensive is at moving the ball. Chip Kelly tried his hurry up offense in Philly and it failed largely due to this. As a result, his defenses were on the field for way too long and were gassed by the 4th quarter. 

 

I think a hurry up offense can work if they are able to effectively move the ball. While time of possession might favor the other team, the edge goes to the hurry-up team as they will gas the defense far sooner. Also in the NFL, players have more of a choice as to where they play and I'm guessing that defensive free agents are likely to avoid playing under such a system. 

I was thinking about creating a post about this. It does seem like every fast-paced offense has a bad defense. I do agree that it must be in part to having a gassed defense being on the field too often. However, you would think over time, some defense with depth could overcome such issues. Then again, time of possession limits opponent possessions - which is why MSU for many years could get so many wins. 

If you look at all the high powered up-temp teams, especially in the Big 12 and Pac-12 there is a severe lack of defense. The best defenses are always the more traditional teams like Stanford.

Its not like scout team is running tempo to prepare for, say, us.

 

The Big 12 prohibits defense.

It isn't a question of whether a defense is good or not good, but perhaps style and fit.

A methodical ball control offense would work well with most defenses and could work with both a bend and don't break defense and an aggressive take-chance-in-hopes-of-creating-a-huge-loss defense. The logic is simple - your offense keeps your defense off of the field and keeps them fresh. A fresh defense that faces only a few drives will probably do better.

For the faster pace offense, it would seem one should have an aggressive defense and take chances. Why? If the gamble pays off, your offense is right back on the field, often in good position and can send the opposition reeling - it is very demoralizing to give up a big sack or TFL and then the other team breaks a big play.

And if the gamble doesn't pay off and the opponents score, your offense is back on the field and hopefully can equalize - possibly making it into a shootout game - the type of game that favors the team used to fast tempo. 

Also since some players recruited for offense can end up on the defensive side, having an aggressive risk taking style might be easier to teach to converted offensive players.

not so much this year, where they are worse on offense than they have been in the past and somehow worse on defense as well. I digress, I don't recall a year where Oregon's defense was particularly strong. They seem to put the majority of their emphasis on the offensive side of the ball and settle for an at least "average" defense. Sometimes, 4-5 stops a game and a couple field goals was enough to have Oregon winning a lot of their games. 

Although, if your team has a great defense, I don't buy that they would struggle just becasue the offense was so fast paced. Look at our defense for example, do you think running a faster offense would affect our defense who are consistently causing 3 and outs....? Now, if this was the bend and try not to break defense's of the Hoke era, then I can totally see a decline on defense if Michigan were running a no huddle offense. 

I was listening to West Virginia sports radio yesterday and they were talking about what's behind the Mountaineer's turnaround this season.  Answer: "A 180-degree change in philosophy from up-tempo spread to more of a power running approach that controls possession and keeps your defense off the field." 

I'm convinced Harbaugh was ahead of the curve at Stanford, and now he's showing the game what the "new" offensive approach looks like.  It's not Woody Hayes, and hit's not Mike Leach ... it's a little of both, and a whole lot of other things thrown in as well.  Dana Holgerson took note.

(Time of Possession may not correlate to victories, but it is not, itself, a bad thing.  The key assumption is that points are made at the end of a possession.  Thus: protect the ball, make first downs, capitalize on red zone opportunities.)

To put it simply, you're defense is on the field more when you score quickly.  Using yards per play is a better metric to determine if the increased points and yards given up is actually due to a decrease in the quality of the defense.

that a fast tempo offense is incompatable with a shut down defense.  When you go Oregon style up tempo you are betting you can outscore the other guy, leading to a defensive philosophy of taking gambles to get the ball back to your offense.  If that means the other guy scores alot so be it because you have confidence you will continue to score.

By th way, I hate that kind of game-a regular dose of 50-42 games aren't that interesting to me.

Yes it abosultely does. Not just in college but NFL as well. Typically your great defenses will have a ball control offense and thats not just coincidence.

Installing a HUNH is not without implementation costs. It takes practice time, it takes practice focus, it takes time in the meeting room to go over how it is done. So there is a cost associated with everything, and even if that cost is mostly on the offense, the team as a whole is also impacted.

A second point is a focus on how you practice. I think a large part of the HUNH approach is the concept of working and thinking fast, and in order to maximize the impact, it requires practicing extremely fast. But I think with this, there is often a loss of focus on the details. They claim to correct issues in the film room, but that also means a guy just ran a number of reps (an increased number of reps at that) doing something wrong before it got corrected somewhat significantly later. The defense doesn't see the benefit of the HUNH practice method and only seems one of the negative impacts such as that.

Combine that with what many people referenced above about the defense being gased, and there are negative impacts. Everything has an impementation cost. The tricky part is weighing the cost and benefit and getting the most out of implementation. That may not be going full crazy HUNH like Indiana a few years ago, it also probably isn't 2013 Michigan go extremely slow all the time. There are valid reasons for leaning in both directions, neither is just fully stupid, but finding the tipping point is the difficult part.

That correlation looks pretty weak to me, though they don't give us numbers.  And even assuming it's not just noise, it's hard to infer the causal direction.  Maybe teams increase their pace because they think their defense will be bad.  I'm skeptical about the traditional arguments (going fast doesn't give the defense time to rest!).

Here is a list of confounds I just thought up:

Implements of the HUNH have more often than not been offensive specialists, not defensive specialists. They will likely be more biased to allocating resources to offense and will have greater offensive coaching talent. 

Since the HUNH has the potential to put points on the board more rapidly than conventional offenses, leading opponents run up the score to a higher degree when taking the lead (sitting on a 17 point lead against a conventional offense = sitting on a 24 point lead against a HUNH)

Programs with strong offense generally change the way that opponents gameplan on offense, causing them to take more risks in the interest of generating more points as opposed to playing more conservatively against a team with an offense they know they will almost certainly stop. 

HUNH teams are not distributed at random. Coaches that run a HUNH are more likely to have one or more people from their coaching tree in the same conference, which multiplies the effects listed above. 

As a HS DC I've noticed it a bit before in the past. I have always been for having the ability to go uptempo. Just like anything it has it's time and place. Some games I love it. Others you just want to eat clock or help out your own D by slowing down.

I've found that at the HS level when you implement an uptempo offense, particularly a spread uptempo offense, you end up spending more and more practice time on O. Naturally that means less time for D, unless of course you are fortunate enough to have the numbers to have both sides work autonomously from one another. Less work on D means less variation and ultimately less options. I'm sure that is just one of many reasons. In my experience this has certainly been a factor.

A fast-paced offense forces the defense to run a 3-3-5.

New England has a good defense and often runs an up tempo no huddle offense.  I think this is a case where correlation does not equal causation.  Often coaches who get the most exposure for running up tempo offenses are more offensively minded coaches to begin with.  That is why their defense suffers.  A team with good coaches on both sides of the ball will overcome most challenges thrown its way.

It definitely does. You better have a great coaching staff to defend a hurry up offense. I remember playing DL against Olentangy (in central Ohio); right after every play I'd run to where the ball was spotted, then look at the sideline for the call, put my hand down on the turf and get hit instantly. If the team is fast past enough it can force you to stay in your base D and the offense can capitalize off of that, especially if they don't sub in/out any players.

The more snaps your defense plays, the greater the possibility for a busted plays, the more defenders get worn down chasing the ball in pursuit or in coverage. Rarely are defenses going to be physically stronger or mentally more alert after an additional 20 snaps. Offenders get worn down too, but except for QBs and RBs taking hits, relatively not as much.

It typically takes a while to get HUNH practices operating smoothly, and that diminishes time and focus on other things.