I didn’t suggest. I stated. You can run an offense when your OL can’t block. Simple as that. If OL play doesn’t improve, it’ll be another long year.
What, I think, you guys miss.. or comepletely ignore or discount, is that.. just like an RB's performance can be affected by the OL.. the OL's performance can be affected by other factors.
Now, it is arguable whether the passing game was crap because of Cruicksank going down or QB play or OC not making adjusments to talent level... or you just just say it was the OL not providing time. But we all saw cases where, with ample time, we still failed in the pass game.
To me, it was like a scale tipping.. even a minor issue in passing can be leveraged to make it a HUGE issue... and it was. No fear of the passing game meant lots of blitzes.. no fear of having DBs in man coverage.. lots of room to get creative with stunts and blitzes... which resulted in stuffed runs and QB pressure and sacks.
We failed to address that the entire year and it got WORSE as the year wore on. And while you can blame the OL for not being good enough, I think their job was made much harder because of other factors. No.. they were not good enough to overcome that.
There are plenty of games between non-P5 teams and P5 teams where the OL is overmatched.. but some of them execute a quick passing game well enough to keep the D guessing so they cannot just load up and stuff them on every down. Then again.. we also see games like this where the inferior team cannot move the ball at all. But it is not on the OL alone.
And if we do not take steps to get around talent disparities on the OL or elsewhere, yeah, it will be a long season because there is a lot of talent in the B1G TEN.. especially in the East. Gameplanning.. Xs and Os.. and practice of plays that can work vs superior talent... execution must be perfect. That CAN be done... but will it?
On a side note (this whole line of discussion is a side not not about Pacheco).. every time we look to change coaches we all think about those guys at top schools.. DC, OC, etc... maybe we should start by looking at teh coaches from lesser schools who overcame talent disparities to beat the big guys... because it will be a long while.. if ever.. where we have equal or superior talent to the top teams.