The problem on offense is we have an offensive coordinator who shares the same philosophy of James Franklin and has proven incapable of adjusting his offensive philosophy (inherited from Mike Gundy) which was perfected in the no-defense Big XII Conference to match the talent on hand. On defense, Franklin is unrealistic and we have had so many whiffs on the recruiting trail we are left with a roster of players in the front seven that are significantly undersized.
1. We run a spread gap blocking scheme. The upperclassmen were all recruited an developed to run JoeMo's MAP hybrid leaving us with a roster of square pegs for round holes. Big strong man blocking linemen have a history of struggling to adapt to this type of blocking scheme. See Michigan under Rich Rodriguez, Michigan State under John L Smith, Nebraska under Mike Riley etc.
2. We run a passing scheme predicated on facing 5 man fronts. One, we don't have the receivers to do this. We haven't had a legit #1 for this type of offense since Chris Godwin. None currently exist on the roster. Even if he did, Clifford is not the type of QB needed to run this offense, Allar is. I am not calling for Allar to get thrown into this mess of an offense against top defenses for fear of Franklin ruining another five star QB's career like he did with Hackenberg who was less developed when he departed Happy Valley then when he arrived. That takes a special kind of incompetence.
3. We run a rigid and uber aggressive 4-3 defense. We have 3-4 talent up front due to years of failures on the recruiting trail. We should have PJ in as a 0/1 nose tackle flanked by Izzard and Ellies as the starting front with Beamon coming in on passing downs. Isaac and Robinson should be playing outside linebacker with Jacobs and Abdul in the middle.
I can keep going. There are many other issues with this team. Again, no team is perfect but Franklin's hiring practices and overarching philosophy need to change.