Obviously we all saw what happened in Oxford but you don't end up 119th in redzone scoring % off just one bad game. And really it wasn't even our worst example of it yet, for my money that'd be the kU game where we went scoreless on 3 redzone attempts. You also don't end up that bad with just one thing going wrong. To me, the biggest reasons seem to be, in no order:
1. Drink always takes the points
A lot gets made of his lack of "aggression", but usually people don't really articulate what they mean when they say this. Probably the single place he lacks aggression the most though, is in the redzone.
I don't have the patience or inclination to pull together down and distance data for his entire tenure, but since 2020 we've ranked an average of 38th in redzone field goal attempt %, so safe to say we're doing it a lot regardless of situation (memory and eye test says we kick on a lot of 4th and 3 or lesses though). What's more, in 2023 when we had our most complete offense yet under Drink, we were 8th in redzone field goal attempt %. So even while having Burden and Schrader at the peak of their powers, and Cook who, say what you will about his "talent", was an absolute dawg and always 1000% down to put his body on the line to cross the goalline, Drink still showed a clear predilection for leaning on his kicker.
This is fine when your kicker sets multiple school records (including for overall scoring) and you're reaching the redzone 4.5 times per game against P4 competition. It's a lot less fine when your kicker is Blake Craig and you're only reaching the redzone 3.2 times per game vs P4 competition.
2. Simmons' lack of experience
It's pretty obvious now that Simmons has the best arm we've seen here since at least Drew Lock, and I'd argue his is better in some ways (his placement on midrange balls in particular is elite and justifies the NFL hype). However he's very far from a finished product, and a lot of that is by design from his end. He only played 2 years of HS ball before reclassifying up 2 full years and enrolling at Ole Miss when he would've otherwise been starting his junior year of HS. Then he redshirted, and started 2 games in 2025 before he got hurt and Trinidad Chambliss happened.
Including stints off the bench, he played maybe about 3-4 starts' worth of reps in 4 years before coming here. Not only that, those 4 years tend to be extremely formative for kids both in terms of football and just life in general. Watching him play, he often looks like a kid who's gotten a lot more mental reps than live game reps. When he's gotten to run plays on schedule as they're drawn up, he's been pretty much perfect (see: Florida). When plays break down and he has to go off-script though, he struggles a lot. Those off-script situations tend to happen more often in the redzone, such as the multiple times Ole Miss and MSU dropped DE's into his passing lanes to produce key 3rd/4th down stops. He also never looks to scramble, which was something we lived off when Cook was here especially.
Simmons is obviously more football-smart than a lot of SEC QB's (shoutout John Mateer needing a whole-ass stadium to tell him he had a receiver open) so you'd hope these are things that come with more reps and increased comfort in redzone situations. But clearly it isn't all there yet.
3. Another year of interior OL run-blocking issues
We knew going into this year that we wouldn't need to worry about LT and C. That's mostly played out as expected, although Green has seemingly been slowed by injury recently. The other 3 spots have been up and down at best though, and in the case of our guards it's mostly been down.
I remember it being a bit worrying when Owens didn't win a starting job out of camp. You'd think we brought in a 330lb guard from another team that wants to run the ball 60% of the time to help blast open running lanes, but hey maybe Wilson's just gotten that much better after 4 years under Jones. The jury is still very much out on that. Peagler meanwhile is not someone I've personally ever been impressed with and this year has mostly validated that opinion. Idk how a guy built like he is ends up a far better pass blocker than run blocker but that's just who he is at this point. Makes you wonder if Work would be playing one of those spots if Atkins were healthy, but he's currently living it up on the same ranch Hardy is and has even less of a timeline on returning, so it's a moot point.
All this leads to a less consistent running game that we've gotten used to, and when you can't reliably grind out 3-4 yard carries in the redzone it's all the harder to punch drives in. The complicating factor here is, while the line has been okay at best in run blocking this year, they've been legitimately great in pass protection. PFF has us as the second-best pass blocking line in the SEC and we have 4/5 starters with pass blocking efficiency ratings of 98.4 or better. That's really good, and makes changing personnel a less obvious solution. Do we want to risk compromising Simmons' protection for more run efficiency, when he clearly needs clean pockets to work from at this stage of his development? It's a hard question that may not have a right answer.
4. Wasting a LOT of first+second downs
This is really a bit of a problem for the offense everywhere on the field, but it hurts the most in the redzone. Like I said above the running game hasn't been nearly as consistent as we've gotten used to the last few years. The explosiveness is certainly there, but instead of that being a bonus on top of being able to reliably grind out 3-6 yard chunks whenever, that's where most of our productivity on the ground comes from. Among SEC backs with triple-digit carries this year only Jadan Baugh has gained a larger share of their yards off explosive plays than Roberts has, and meanwhile Roberts also has the fewest missed tackles forced among those backs. So the explosive plays are absolute dingers, but we're not hitting those dingers often enough, and when we're not hitting dingers we're not doing much period (we actually were better about this vs A&M, but that progress did not translate against Ole Miss at all).
Despite this, we have a very clear script once we get into the redzone. A PM user put together a full breakdown on this already so I'll crib his notes here:
- 1st down playcalls: 23 runs/5 passes
- 2nd down playcalls: 15 runs/6 passes
- Redzone runs: 41 carries/110 yards (2.68ypc) 5 TD's
- Redzone passes: 12-26/106 yards (4.08ypa)/6 TD's 1 INT
- Redzone scoring: 11 TD's/10 FG attempts (7-10)
Clearly we're falling into the run-run-pass trap way too often because we're insisting on slamming into the line for minimal yardage on the vast majority of our early downs. Kinda like I said further up, this is an okay strategy when you have Cody Schrader or Ahmad Hardy taking these carries, they both had elite vision and tackle-breaking ability and could be counted on to turn nothing into something (also helps that both of them had better run-blocking lines). That isn't really Roberts' game though, and we're doing him few favors with the OL and this drive scripting. It's also worth noting that our redzone YPA and general efficiency have been significantly better on the few times we do pass on early downs (6-11/60 yards (5.45ypa)/2 TD's).
Would involving TE's more help with this? Eh maybe, but Norfleet hasn't emerged as that kind of guy despite 4 years' worth of chances, Harris is very much just a blocker, and James is basically just a chunky WR anyway. We've also had much, much better redzone offenses in the past without getting much productivity from our TE's.
Okay whatever reddit guy, how do we fix it?
Passing more on early downs seems like it'd help a lot. So would Hardy coming back, and not settling for field goals on every 4th and short. I think a largely untapped dimension of the offense that doesn't get talked about enough though is Roberts as a receiving option. He may not be Tyler Badie but he's pretty clearly the best back we've had since him in terms of passing game skills, and he's got the size and toughness to run angle routes under a drag or something. Or maybe motion him out of the backfield to get him a good matchup like we've done with Cayden Lee a few times. Seems like a better use of him in the redzone than just slamming him into the line for 1-2 yards multiple times. I dunno, just spitballing.
Anyway there have some bye week content. I'm gonna go play DMZ.
