The only thing I thought the varied tempo would bring was that we could go 3 and out at different speeds!
Varied tempo only works when you're moving the ball....and it's pretty easy to adjust too. Sadly, its something we spend time on and emphasized when we probably knew we weren't good enough to sustain drives to use it anyhow.
I think we needed to work more on multiple sets. Being comfortable and competent going 5 wide, 4 wide with a RB, 3 wide with 2 RBs to give them an option look, 2 wide pro style with FB, TE and RB. Being able to switch up like this helps you vastly more than running the same old plays at different speeds. Especially in games where the D adjusts well to you spreading it out but is having problems running power plays.
I'm no football genius, but I could see that we had the potential to make an offense like this go in the preseason (using Blough), but our own OC wanted to run the read option with Appleby. Silly.
As much as I disliked Gary Nord for being hyper conservative, his offense had some success by adhering to this formula and even being competent to run the same basic play call out of power and spread formations, just with different personnel. I think that strategy, if we aren't going to run a true spread is the best chance this team has to win and is why we somehow eeeked out 6 wins in 11 and 12. Now, if we had ran and recruited for a spread those teams could have been much better IMO and beaten ND, OSU and most likely have been a pretty great 2012 season.
