David Blough and the Offensive Staffing Thread

Voice_of_Reason said:

Can I just say I really wish we weren't telling everybody we're going to be under center a bunch and use heavy play action? I mean, play action is by it's very nature intended to show the defense one thing and then do another. Why are we so insistent on telling people the overall plan? Assuming it's not a lie.

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It is strange and sacrifices the early surprise factor completely but after that it would be obvious. Why sacrifice the potential early surprise, I don’t know, but anyone paying attention to practices and preseason may pick it up? Not sure.

A well run offensive scheme like that doesn’t care if they know, because they don’t know when you actually running and in theory you threaten them well enough with both run and pass.

Do some of you guys really think that the team talking about running a more traditional offense is giving away state secrets or giving opposing defenses an advantage? Really?

Chris said:

Do some of you guys really think that the team talking about running a more traditional offense is giving away state secrets or giving opposing defenses an advantage? Really?

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No.

But there are coaches who are more tight lipped. It is not as sensationalist as you seem you seem to paint it here.

SkinsNumberOne said:

No.

But there are coaches who are more tight lipped. It is not as sensationalist as you seem you seem to paint it here.

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I don’t think that I’m the one being ‘sensationalist’ on the subject. I think it’s much to do about nothing.

SkinsNumberOne said:

No.

But there are coaches who are more tight lipped. It is not as sensationalist as you seem you seem to paint it here.

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Pretty much everyone (including many coaches) still think that for play action to be effective you have to first establish the run. The statistics show that there is no correlation on the success of play action with the success - or even frequency - of your run game. If the effectiveness of play action is not correlated with the success or volume of your run game I doubt there is any correlation with coaches press conferences during OTAs.

SkinsNumberOne said:

It is strange and sacrifices the early surprise factor completely but after that it would be obvious. Why sacrifice the potential early surprise, I don’t know, but anyone paying attention to practices and preseason may pick it up? Not sure.

A well run offensive scheme like that doesn’t care if they know, because they don’t know when you actually running and in theory you threaten them well enough with both run and pass.

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If I'm Vic Fangio, who is notoriously good at his job anyway, and I've been hearing "under center, emphasis on run game and heavy play action" you know what type of drills I'm running for 3 months prior to the opener? Drills which focus on that.

All of these type of schemes are intended to get defenders moving in one direction and then go against the grain to where they were.

I would have been really happy if we had just said nothing. Let the beat guys and the guys watching practice say whatever they want to say but don't make any comments to confirm or deny anything they say.

Maybe it helps, maybe not. But why provide information on offensive philosophy when you don't have to?

Same with the defense, but I haven't really heard the coaches talk about philosophy much. I've heard some players make comments about it, but not really in detail. Though I might have missed something...

MartinC said:

Pretty much everyone (including many coaches) still think that for play action to be effective you have to first establish the run. The statistics show that there is no correlation on the success of play action with the success - or even frequency - of your run game. If the effectiveness of play action is not correlated with the success or volume of your run game I doubt there is any correlation with coaches press conferences during OTAs.

The play-action pass is the best play in football - Weekly Spiral

The play-action pass is, flat out, the best play in football on a per-attempt basis and there's data to prove it.

weeklyspiral.com

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I tend to agree and I think I said as much in the post you didn’t quote.

I doubt it is a big deal but the original post seemed like a thought/simple query and not some crazy statement that the sky was falling.

I do think there are coaches who don’t say much generally because it can only hurt, I don’t see how it is helpful. Even a 0.01% chance to hurt… why?

Not a big deal to me, though.

I think one of the reasons they have perhaps been a bit forthright about it (and that IS good) is to push forward how the scheme will differ. That can be good because this is a new OC, so in that case, Blough may feel a need to establish some credibility.

Most “tight-lipped” coaches are also significantly more established.

MartinC said:

Pretty much everyone (including many coaches) still think that for play action to be effective you have to first establish the run. The statistics show that there is no correlation on the success of play action with the success - or even frequency - of your run game. If the effectiveness of play action is not correlated with the success or volume of your run game I doubt there is any correlation with coaches press conferences during OTAs.

The play-action pass is the best play in football - Weekly Spiral

The play-action pass is, flat out, the best play in football on a per-attempt basis and there's data to prove it.

weeklyspiral.com

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I like that article a lot. Nice.

I am not sure he did a good job of backing up the “no difference even running at all” part- maybe I need to look again at those graphs - but yes it makes sense you don’t need to run much. You get value from hesitation. It will be a nice thing to see this offense, in my opinion, “mature.” KK’s offense had its successes but it was overall limited. Should be good to see something different. Hope it is successful!

Chris said:

Do some of you guys really think that the team talking about running a more traditional offense is giving away state secrets or giving opposing defenses an advantage? Really?

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I don’t think it’s a big deal but when surprise early in the season is in your side, why minimize that in any way?

It’s not just that they’ve said they are going to run a more traditional offense, but they are openly talking about the percentage of snaps in hurry up, the type of offense they want to run, etc.

My question is, why? Why say anything? What does it buy you?

Maybe it doesn’t hurt anything substantial but it certainly doesn’t help anything either

I think it’s really because rhey are low key trying to defend/justify moving on from Kliff. Which is fine but I don’t think they need to.

For me it’s more of an observation and question why they are doing it than it is a real problem. I don’t think they should say boo. I prefer the Gibbs/Belichick approach where they say literally nothing.

Is it going to cost them games? No. But why?

Voice_of_Reason said:

If I'm Vic Fangio, who is notoriously good at his job anyway, and I've been hearing "under center, emphasis on run game and heavy play action" you know what type of drills I'm running for 3 months prior to the opener? Drills which focus on that.

All of these type of schemes are intended to get defenders moving in one direction and then go against the grain to where they were.

I would have been really happy if we had just said nothing. Let the beat guys and the guys watching practice say whatever they want to say but don't make any comments to confirm or deny anything they say.

Maybe it helps, maybe not. But why provide information on offensive philosophy when you don't have to?

Same with the defense, but I haven't really heard the coaches talk about philosophy much. I've heard some players make comments about it, but not really in detail. Though I might have missed something...

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None of this matters or impacts anything. Every coach in the league can easily get to know every other coach’s surface-level influences and preferences through their coaching history. Anything you can dial in on specifically for gameplanning purposes comes from what’s on relevant tape, of which there won’t be any yet, there will just be tape from Blough’s obvious influences. So instead Fangio will be watching Bevell + Johnson Lions tape, Kliff Washington tape, possibly some cut-ups of Blough’s Purdue tape, probably some Anthony Lynn Lions tape, and maybe some Chargers too since he’s still an important influence in that offensive meeting room.

Until there’s NFL tape of Blough’s offense in action, even just vanilla preseason tape, tracing his coaching lineage is all you can really do, and where Blough’s been and what his influences are, mixed with what Daniels has been good at and preferred so far through his playing career…on a surface level it’s not a mystery. How it’ll actually play out and function, playcalling tendencies and specific schematic quirks, rules in the system that opposing coordinators will try to identify and break to confuse the QB…none of that can be known.

What’s said off-hand in interviews and at the podium means nothing and gives away nothing. It’s really nothing to stress about, even at a low level. Every team in the league is complying with their media availability requirements and saying the same sort of empty, generic shit about their schemes, you’re just locked in on information about this team. Nothing has been given away, DC’s have no head start on their work. And teams don’t spend the offseason prepping for their week 1 opponents, even division rivals that they’ll play multiple times.

I really don’t mean this in a condescending way here because we’re all on the same level and we’re all on the outside of things, and we all get overly paranoid about different things, but this is a good example of a classic “fan concern” that isn’t actually real. The type of information that would actually help an opposing DC prepare for your offense is never uttered in a presser or on a podcast, and most fans couldn’t parse it well if it was. This stuff is generic. It might help you in Madden, if Madden was more realistic.

Voice_of_Reason said:

Those Peyton offenses, mostly at the Colts but also the Broncos, were just so good at doing so much stuff.

However, they also utilized something which Kliff got criticized for: they didn't motion or switch outside WRs. Like, ever. Marvin Harrison lined up on the right, Wayne on the left. Literally every single snap. And they didn't do a heck of a lot of motion with them. (ESPN Article which goes into some detail on this.) Also, those offenses were primarily no-huddle. Also something Kliff got criticized for.

The motion they did was with TEs and RBs, and sometime slot WRs. But they just left the outside guys exactly where they were. However, it helps to have a HOF QB (Manning), HOF WR (Harrison) and a should-be HOF WR in Wayne. I'm not sure why he's not in. And for the time James was the RB, a HOF RB as well. Dallas Clark was also a hell of a good TE, and really underappreciated. He always seemed to come up with a critical catch when they needed it. That level of talent really allows you to do just about anything offensively and have it work.

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Yeah, Peyton was an oddball there. His playbook had very few plays for WR's in comparison to most. And all of them basically had the same stem, he thought giving the safeties an even more delayed look at what the WRs were doing would help him throw with anticipation.

So he was big on maximizing when he saw the CB didn't have the right leverage for what the route would become. And throwing it earlier than most would.

His first season on the Broncos he struggled a bit as the OC tried to implement a broader playbook. Then eventually Peyton convinced him to change it to his usual Colts stuff and the Broncos offense exploded.

If advertising plans to use play action passing hindered it's success rate, it would have long since been rendered ineffective already. The key is always going to be the ability to actually establish the run game and also have enough balance in the play calling itself.

Really nice humanizing interview. Not all the way through, but it was fun enough that I thought I should share.

burgold said:

Really nice humanizing interview. Not all the way through, but it was fun enough that I thought I should share.

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That was well worth taking the time to listen to! Gives a really good feel for Blough.

It also gives some nice insight into the way DQ tries working on developing coaches. (hopefully is doing this with others and it will work well for us and everyone isn't WHitt).