OSU takes that philosophy to the next level: they run a huge number of plays out of the same formations, they love play-action passes (especially after running the ball down a team’s throat), and they love misdirection- is it a handoff to the running back, is it a pitch to the receiver on the jet sweep the other direction, is it a quarterback run out of the bootleg, or is it a play-action pass deep down the field? The defense might cheat up to defend the run, but they flow to one side of the field with the running back when the ball is actually in the hands of a receiver who took the ball on the jet sweep in the opposite direction. Teams have trouble making defensive play-calls against the Rams when each play could be 50-50 run or pass, so when the Rams get their running game going and defenses starting cheating up to defend the run, all of a sudden they take a deep shot down the field and hit you with a huge passing play. One of the things that makes McVay’s Rams so dangerous is that run plays look identical to pass plays. I know that current Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch was an offensive assistant under LA Rams coach Sean McVay, but it’s OSU Offensive Coordinator Brian Lindgren that is drawing up plays reminiscent of the Rams’ high-powered attack. Oregon State is a team that is much better than the sum of its parts they have fantastic gameplans each week, and they execute those gameplans at a very high level. Make no mistake, Jonathan Smith is a fantastic coach and the clear frontrunner for 2021 Pac-12 Coach of the Year. If you take a closer look at that OSU record, it would show that Oregon State is on a clear upward trajectory Smith took over a team that went 1-11 in 2017, and OSU is sitting at the top of the Pac-12 North standings alongside Oregon, both of whom currently hold a 3-1 conference record.
Obviously 14-24 isn’t the greatest record over a 4-year span, but it shows how well Jonathan Smith is doing with a whole lot less than his peers in Southern California.
I don’t know if this would be considered a compliment or an insult these days, but I wanted to open with a surprising fact about Pac-12 coaches: if you were to rank the Pac-12 coaches by their record over the past 4 years, you would see that OSU coach Jonathan Smith (14-24) is sitting just half a game behind UCLA’s Chip Kelly (15-24).