This isn't about practice prep time before the season when you're installing your system. It's about adjusting when a key player is out (which having a key player out at any given time this year was pretty much a guarantee everyone knew after seeing how football went.)
Further, any respectable D1 offense system is fungible enough to be adapted for a "if we don't have Kofi" scenario (even within game, it's not like Kofi was ever going to play every minute of every game.) So we're not talking about "to have developed and really gotten good at an offense that wasn’t this season’s planned offense."
Your service academy analogy is also about systems like triple option, wishbone offenses. Totally different than adjusting for a player being out. A better analogy would have been having your QB1 out, albeit a Heisman candidate level QB1. And my point was that we've already been there and done that for 3 games this year. So yes, "adjusting on the fly" to not having Kofi sucks but not like Brad had to reinvent the proverbial wheel for one game.
He specifically talked about the difficulties of designing the team vs adjusting on the fly to a full game (or more) absence. You said you didn’t buy it and the reasons were COVID/Kofi’s suspension. (I won’t reference the “Kofi taking a breather/Kofi in foul trouble because they probably do practice that.)
Designing the team would have been done in the pre-season, Sep/Oct (Nov finishing touches) and there is no way he could have had the foresight of the Omicron variant while building the team/designing offensive sets.
My response to your debate, however, was more aimed at the 2nd reason. By your logic, BU should have already installed a better “Kofi is out” contingency plan that we could adjust to quickly since Kofi had a suspension to serve, which I argued meant he would have to be using those valuable hours of the pre-season prep.
Also, we found out Kofi had a 3 game suspension only like a week before the season started. Not a lot of time to install anything even if he wanted to. Again, spending precious time preparing for something in Sep/Oct that may not happen (and may be minimal if it does happen) was a calculated risk that normally pays off. (Which is why I likened it to the service academy analogy. Not an exact replica of this situation but more of an analogy to show how coaches take calculated risks)
The other part about adjusting on the fly that I think Brad is trying to articulate is the game prep in the days leading up to a game. I think it was the Michigan postgame where BU said something like “UM not having Hunter Dickinson threw off a TON of the game plan, making it tough to adjust”. If you read articles from Illiniboard, one of the writers (a former Illini walkon) talks to the frustrations of prepping for one thing and then having to switch to something else quickly. It’s VERY difficult.
Kofi played Monday, and would have traveled Thursday meaning the team only had 2 practices in between. I’m not sure when they tested him for the concussion and if he practiced at all, but BU seemed frustrated like he was expecting to have Kofi back and had been prepping as such. So again, not a lot of time to adjust on the fly and probably bungled up his whole game plan.
BU also has that “next man up” philosophy. So while Kofi is out, he expects Payne to be at least serviceable in his place. That’s the real kicker here. In my opinion, BU is more at fault for not recruiting a serviceable (yet anyway) backup to Kofi. We thought Payne would be ready, but he’s not, and that’s on BU.