their offense to the players they inherit instead of forcing players into their system immediately.

You never articulated what you meant by "data," so I did not discuss that. I assumed you meant wins or losses.

I provided one counter example. My datum was based on Rodriguez at WVU. Many fans thought he was a bad hire. He did not win during those early years. Yet, he made a commitment to his philosophy and that proved to be the right decision. His offense became a machine.

What data points are you using? Stoops changed his offense at Oklahoma. Zook changed Spurrier's offense. Meyer changed Zook's offense at FU. Weis changed offenses at ND from the Brady Quinn Poop Squat Offense. The Pirate will change the offense at WSU. The former Navy coach changed offenses at GT a few years ago.

I would not be surprised if a lot of data showed that more coaches implemented their systems immediately. Probably half succeeded where the other half failed.

But that wasn't a 10-1 team that caught some bad breaks, and a lot of people view it through the lens of the 88-93 run and talk it up like it was some great precursor of things to come - when in fact it was more like 2008 to 1985's 2007. A big improvement, but nowhere near where we needed to be.

This wouldn't bother me, except frequently the same people will use words like "suck", "failure", or "disaster" to describe last year's team, which actually was a 10-win team that caught some bad breaks.

Two by 1, two by 2, and one by 5. That team wasn't far off from being a 7 or 8 win team.

RR force-fed his offense at WVa and they sucked for a few years. Fortunately for him, the fans and school were patient enough to wait him out.

Even if WVa-RR is viewed as the success, I think the data will still support adapting.

What Bill says below, regarding the playbook. And in the grander scheme, the changes in his organizational approach year to year. Whether it be shuffling of coaches, or hitting in practice. There just wasn't a uniformity to much. Perhaps that's a bit beyond the scope of the original post, but I think it applies to the offensive system as well.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1065232/index.htm

Indeed, it was that team. Michigan sneaked past Notre Dame 24-23 in South Bend last Saturday and then blew out of town before anybody could change the score. Luck of the Irish? Hah. Notre Dame suffered two lost fumbles, an interception in the end zone, a kickoff it could not field, a dropped touchdown pass, a missed extra point, an apparent go-ahead touchdown reception in the fourth quarter that was ruled incomplete and a last-second field goal attempt that was tipped and barely missed winning the game. If any one of those misfortunes had gone the other way, new coach Lou Holtz would probably have a Notre Dame winning percentage 119 points higher than Knute Rockne's.

All the hallmarks of a very well-coached football team, huh?

But I suspect fans that wanted to see more running than they saw with Rees would have seen more with Denard. But much of it might have been as a result of 'extending the play'. We definitely would have seen a lot of read option.

Year One might have been the low point in Kelly's tenure.

Rodriguez inherited a power running, pro-style offense. He immediately switched to a high-paced, spread offense.

The result? Absolute shitty seasons in the early part of his tenure.
He stuck with his system, recruited to fit his system, and develop players in his system. He sold early playing to his earliest recruits. Recruits and players bought into his system, and he changed the offensive identity of the team.

Kelly has been following the Rodriguez plan. Tear down the existing structures of the program. Create a new foundation, and then build on that.

Kelly went with Crist and Rees. Neither guys were the answer. If EG or AH are starters, then Kelly is back to square one.

Rodriguez had to survive some lean QB years as well before Pat White started.

Their only offense all night was Denard scrambling, him finding open receivers when our defense was afraid of him scrambling, and ridiculous lobs that heavily guarded receivers kept coming down with.

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Tough to tell. Its certainly an interesting question. Given the available alternatives on hand (ie, Devin Gardner and a whole lot of nothing), he might chosen to keep him at QB.

As others have noted here, its interesting that Borges and Co. kept trying to shove Denard into the pro-style sets in spring practice and early in the season, only to realize that he's at his best when basically going free-lance. The results could have been drastically different if Michigan had opened with a tougher slate last season.

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the schedule was OMG SO HARD. Also, you could just tell how much better we were during the blowout loss to Alabama and the home loss to a 5-5-1 Pitt team - and in the 5 glorious wins against Purdue, Navy, Air Force, SMU, and a 7-5 SC team.

In all seriousness, we did lose a bunch of close games that year, some to very good teams. But the way some people talk about that season, you'd think we were just a few plays away from winning the national title.

from an offense that had ranked in the nation's top 10 in 2010. No matter what scheme he was running, that's a significant advantage.

UM last year that you brushed upon that, in my humble opinion, directly contradicts the Hoke/Borges did a great job coaching in "developing" UM's offense last year.

Like Texas when Young was there playing under OC Greg Davis, UM's offense with Denard actually preformed better with less (coaching) structure and more reliance on his QB's natural ability to run, extend plays and cause defensive breakdowns by putting pressure on the defense.

In contrast when Borges employed a structured system that offense went absolutely nowhere against every halfway good defense it faced (see 1st half of ND game). It went nowhere because structure contains Robinson and doesn't allow him to play with the dynamism that is his strength.

I might be wrong about this but I think Rodriguez's 2010 offense probability statistically performed better than Hoke's 2011 offense. All that said Borges is an excellent coach and will in time cobble together a very good offensive unit at UM.

I think his plan was to move to the option with Rice in the third year, which got accelerated when Andrysiak got hurt in '87. Buerlein probably ran it a couple of times in '86, but it wasn't the focus of the offense. Mirer also ran it after Rice left, but it wasn't the focal point of the offense.

Sometimes it was "throw it up to Floyd".

...and dance around.
Oh Touchdown Tree, oh Touchdown Tree,
We love you more than field goals.

That's Wide Receiver (Emeritus) Golden Tate to you, bub.

At UM, Hoke inherited the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and one of the most dynamic players in all of college football. What brilliant plan did Hoke and Borges concoct? Why, they spent most of the off season trying to fit Robinson into the pro style system. Ultimately, they wound up splitting time between a spread set and a pro style set. Interestingly, Hoke really didn't inherit much other offensive talent, aside from perhaps Molk.

Constrast that to ND where Kelly inherited an established tight end and an established wide receiver, but really not much else. In that case, building to Kelly's spec was probably wise.

Now, where it would hurt you is you're so unadaptable that you
a) chase off half the roster (a la Edsell)
b) do poorly and lose recruiting mojo
c) can't recruit appropriate athletes to run your system at the school you're at for whatever reason
or
d) get fired.

out of his playbook when they didn't work, instead of getting his team to properly execute the play. By the end of his tenure, little worked other than the 'Jimmy throw the ball up in the air to Golden and let him get it' play.

At least offensively? Sure there was the "we'll cast Demetrius Jones as Pat White" fiasco, but I felt like Weis was pretty consistent on offense. I think his biggest issues in 2008 and 2009 were related to diversity, which stemmed from the inability to keep a healthy second tight end (lolwoops @ Ragone over Gronk).

But with ND's situation, I support Kelly's approach. Coming off of Scattershot Charlie, a defined, constant system is what the program needed.

While the data might suggest that adapting is the better option, Kelly's past experience, particularly at Cincy, suggested that his system could be implemented on the fly without too much trouble.

and my mind has been failing me miserably. In my googling for an answer, I did turn up a Sports Illustrated article on the 1986 game against Michigan, which we lost. It references Holtz running his 'wishbone' attack with Steve Buerlein at QB and with Tim Brown getting 10 or so carries. I can't imagine that running the wishbone was the best use of Steve's talents and I often wonder why that team was 5-6 with a QB who would go on to play 10 years in the NFL and a future Heisman winning WR. I'd appreciate a recap of that year from an offensive scheme perspective if anybody's memory is better than mine.

Every coach adapts their offense to their personnel, especially in their early years at a new school. Anyone who thinks Brian Kelly didn't do that is a fool.

Now, Kelly did trend more toward the "stick to my system" side of the spectrum, while Hoke trended more toward the "adapt to the talent" side, but the difference between Michigan's season and ours had nothing to do with that last year. Frankly, the difference in our records came down mostly to them recovering a large majority of the fumbles in their games, while we had two fumbles returned for 99 yard TDs (and other things of that nature).

The only coach I can think of that installed their system without any regard for the current talent was Tyrone Willingham - and even he leaned heavily on a power run game in 2002.

Especially in the first year or two, a coach is wiser to adapt his system to the talent he has, but recruit for his system. By the third year or so, he can transition to his preferred scheme. Forcing a square peg into a round hole only leads to short-term losses, difficulty recruiting, and a shorter leash from the fan base.

BTW, I do think that Kelly adapted relatively well, but he didn't have an effective base system to start with. Hoke certainly did a better job, but choosing to adapt is a lot easier with a guy like Robinson on the team. Their offense took a couple of baby steps towards Hoke's scheme, but still probably resembles RR's offense more than Hoke's.

Following some of these "Brady Hoke is the man!" and "Brian Kelly is an idiot" threads elsewhere with the theme that Hoke apparently adapted his offensive scheme to the talent around him, whereas Brian Kelly did not brings up an interesting debate, I think.

Is it wise to sacrifice the long term goals of a football program to make short term gains?

Let's put aside the question of whether Kelly would have won more games by "playing to ND's strengths" with the running game (because quite frankly, I don't believe we had great strengths in those areas to play to) and assume that we could have bested our record by a win or two and gone 10-3 instead of 8-5 by moving away from a spread offense and instead using a pro-style, running game centric style based on inherited talent.

Is that a wise thing to do even if you believe that ND's best chance to win a national championship down the road is to utilize a spread offensive philosophy?