And let's just focus on offense to illustrate the point, but obviously it only compounds when you add defense, transition and situational work. On offense let's say your playbook consists of 10 sets (thats a low number, but to keep it simple, let's say 10). Out of those 10 sets let's say you have 5 plays. So in all thats 50 plays. I came from the same coaching tree as that Duquesne staff. (I lived with one of their current assistants for a month while I was looking for housing in Akron). They taught me a lot of what I know about play design and building your playbook. You have to have at least 2 counters for every play you have. Your opponents watch film and if you arent able to adjust in-game then your plays are useless no matter how good you run them. So now you have 50 plays and (at least) 2 counters for each play...so 150 different looks/actions. When you are prepping for the season you cant move on to any counters until they learn how to run the play it originates from. So already that cuts your playbook down to 1/3 of what theyll eventually be capable of doing. Let's say you have an even 100 hours available for just offensive development. Setting aside the largest portion of that should be for skill development, let's say you put it all into play development. If you gave equal time to all 10 sets, you would have 10 total hours to teach 5 plays. 2 hours per play. Obviously this is ove we the course of the last 3 weeks so we are talking about ~7 minutes per practice. If you go the route of choosing to give them all 50 plays, theyre not going to run them very well with only 7 minutes of practice each day for 3 weeks. So then let's say you decide to cut out half the plays because you rarely call them (mostly situational). Now youre up to a whole ~15 min. Not bad, but not great with just 3 weeks of work. So now you get to this exhibition game. You have about 15% of your playbook and the team runs those plays probably inconsistent at best. You could choose to only run the plays you know that they run well. That gives you the best chance of winning right? Well, what it doesnt give you is what is most important...film to show how defenses that vary from your own will expose tendencies you've had in practice. So you want to get as much film in as possible against those looks that youve put in. Whats the best way to get in a lot of film in a game that is maxed out at 40 min? Run a lot of plays. Dont back it out when the game is close. Dont think about what needs to be done to counter what the defense is doing. Just run plays. Data. You need data. The game was 82.5 possessions. That's not only WILDLY above the pace that MY normally plays, but its also above the pace that any team played last season. That is by design, but also goes against your own philosophy. Chris mentioned below but they also werent making substitutions and lineups based on game-ready situations. There were a few times where a PG came in for a post, or a post for a wing, but they didnt change their style of play when making those subs...they just wanted to see what that lineup looks like. Making this team the most ready it can possibly be IS taking this game seriously. That does not mean they cared even a tiny bit about the score or the situation other than to give them the data they need to continue teaching.