The Football Laundromat: Washington Redskins Edition

Hello, readers. TC Fleming here. This is the area on Bob's Blog where I normally make an effort at explaining at least some element of the opposing team's offense. After nearly a season of doing this, I think I've already hit on quite a bit of what the Redskins do.

Mike Shanahan does some pretty distinct stuff for the most part. Watching the Redskins, they run a tremendously high percentage of their offense from under center with a running back, a fullback and two receivers. Unless they're in a clear passing situation, you're going to see a ton of them being lined up like this.

As far as the plays they run, it's a lot of zone running, and it's a good amount of bootleg passing. Zone running is pretty ubiquitous these days, but it's been What Mike Shanahan Does for his entire career, even back before it was big. Being one of the first on the zone running scene is one of the ways one coaxes an 1,100-yard season out of Olandis Gary. Or a 1,400-yard season out of Mike Anderson. Things like that.

And if I could go off on a little bit of a tangent, I think it's the zone run going from odd province of the Broncos and people who directly knew Shanahan or Alex Gibbs to the most-called running play in the league that accounts somewhat for the downfall of Mike Shanahan (to the extent he's had a downfall, it's hard to win Super Bowls, guys. He made the playoffs a lot, and was no worse than .500 in his last two Broncos seasons before going onto this no-depth, questionable-talent-level Redskins team). And it's not even so much that the league has become used to seeing the play and knows how to defend it. It's a little bit that, but it's more that they run a system that utilizes players with certain kinds of skills, namely linemen who are more quick than big (though still plenty big, to be sure) and running backs who can be committed to the one-cut running style. The Broncos under Shanahan were a team looking for a type of player that other teams simply didn't need. It's not that they picked players that other teams missed on. Those teams didn't miss on these small-er, quick linemen and one-cut runningbacks, they wouldn't have had any use for them. But now that zone running is as commonplace as it is, every team has great use for those players. Plenty of teams (ie the Cowboys) still prioritize size and strength in their linemen, but it's less than the late 90's. So Shanahan no longer has his pick of his kind of guys, and it makes success that much harder to attain.

Also big in Shanahan's system is the mobile quarterback. As is harped on in the post I'm about to link to, a lot of what Shanahan does is have the quarterback fake to the running back and roll out with the ball himself. On those plays, the quarterback has to be adept at throwing on the run while also presenting the defense with the threat that he'll just take off and keep the ball himself. So the trade for McNabb makes a lot of sense. Good, mobile quarterbacks on the NFL level are a special bunch who are not easily acquired, and to run his system the way he wants to Shanahan had to find the the best one available.

Okay, so here are the two previous posts. In this post about the Giants, I get into zone running and link to an article that explains it even further. The first two disgrammed plays are the ones relevant to the Redskins. You're going to see those plays a bunch this weekend.

And in this post about the Texans--whose coach, Gary Kubiak, was Shanahan's offensive coordinator for many, many years in Denver--I get into the bootleg pass that's a big compliment to the zone run game.

So yeah. Between those two concepts, that's a lot of the ideas that go into what the Redskins seek to do on offense. Hopefully this all contributes some to your enjoyment of the game Sunday.

The Football Laundromat: Philadelphia Eagles Edition

As-salamu alaykum, readers. TC Fleming here. This Eagles team is pretty awesome. They've been exceptional at creating the big play for some years now, really since DeSean Jackson showed up. But between the maturation of Jackson, Jeremy Maclin and Brent Celek and the addition of Michael Vick, they've gone from pretty good at it to totally fearsome. Let's take a look at a couple ways that they generate the 40-, 50-yard gains like they do.

There's one constant in their big plays: a lot of time for Vick. Be it by strong protection from the offensive line, Vick's swift moves ducking away from rushers or a nice combination of the two, the receivers are allowed a sizable amount of time to dart around the secondary. Another football truism present throughout these plays is Vick and his receivers' unspoken understanding of which direction they're darting in. A good many times, the receivers' given route is enough to get them open deep. When it's not, they'll start to improvise, and how often the receivers and Vick stay on the same page throughout this process is impressive. The need for this sort of football happened a lot when Vick was in Atlanta. Consistent success with this type of football, not so much.

Anyways, the most common way the Eagles get explosive plays in the passing game is by some variation of the "four verticals" play, which we looked at a little bit when talking about the Packers. It's the simplest play design in all of football, with the receivers just running in more or less a straight line down the field.

The particular play in question happened against the Colts with the Eagles on a third down from just outside their own end zone (making this an admirably ballsy play-call). Vick started out flanked in the shotgun by fullback Owen Schmitt and running back LeSean McCoy before both of them motioned out to the outside hip of the offensive tackles on either side.

The Football Laundromat: Indianapolis Colts Edition

Happy Chanukah, readers. TC Fleming here. The Cowboys will travel to play the Indianapolis Colts this week.

The Colts do a lot of fun stuff on offense. One place to start is that they don't employ a fullback. Every once in awhile they'll deploy two tight ends, but most of the time it's some arrangement of three wide receivers, one running back and a tight end. In key situations (your two-minute drills, your trailing-late-in-a-game situations, etc.), they switch almost exclusively to their regular three-wide formation with wide receivers on either side, the tight end either on the line or just off it with a receiver in the slot on whatever side the tight end is not. This helps them operate faster in the no-huddle since everyone already has an idea of where to line up immediately after the play finishes, and it increases to a degree the precision with which they operate since everyone is so familiar with their spot on the field and things of that nature.

For the rest of the game, however, they mix it up a little more. One of the ways they do that--the way we're going to look at today--is with the bunch formation. That consists of taking three wide receivers (or two wide receivers and a tight end who's being split out) and putting them all right next to each other. Bunching them up, if you will. This puts the defense in a bind that can be exploited in a number of ways. Let's illustrate three of them now.

This first play came in a goal-line situation against Philadelphia. The bunch is a very nice concept for use in goal-line situations. It allows for picks and screens and such for the wide receivers, which is useful anywhere on the field but all the more so when a team only needs a few yards.

The Football Laundromat: Detroit Lions Edition

Hiya, readers. TC Fleming here. With the Cowboys back on their Super Bowl track, I thought it might be nice to look at a fun aspect of the Lions' offense.

This particular wrinkle is the sort of thing that this series exists to talk about. It's an offensive formation/concept that the Lions roll out on a relatively limited basis but one that represents what my small football brain thinks is an exciting football innovation. I'm talking about the Pistol. The formation/offense was first used by the Nevada Wolfpack for the 2005 season. In every season since then, they've made a bowl game (if that doesn't seem sufficiently impressive, remember that they're Nevada) and had some pretty lofty offensive rankings. The Chiefs, Dolphins and Bills have all fiddled with it at some point, but the Lions are the team running it most often this season.

According to the narrative, Scott Linehan, the Lions' offensive coordinator, was speaking at a coaching clinic held by the University of Alabama. His connection to the university would appear to be Crimson Tide offensive coordinator Jim McElwain, who worked on the same staff as Linehan at Louisville. Linehan's flight out of town after the clinic was cancelled, and with the extra day, Linehan spent the time watching film of Alabama running out of the pitsol (a formation that, incidentally, McElwain says he scrapped because he was "bored with it") and talking with McElwain about how the plays worked. Linehan, apparently, is not bored with the pistol and used it in all four of the games of theirs that I watched (Bears, Giants, Redskins and Bills).

The pistol itself is a formation where the quarterback is lined up about four yards deep in the backfield with the running back behind him at about seven yards. It's designed with the intention of getting some of the benefits of the shotgun formation (the ability for the quarterback to more easily survey the field) without losing the benefits of the I-formation (downhill running). It also has its own unique advantages. The quarterback somewhat obscures the linebackers' ability to see the running back. The running back gets the ball so quickly and deep in the backfield that he has more time to pick his holes and watch the blocks develop. It also allows for the sort of play fakes that happen under center but aren't available from the shotgun. Handoffs happen so quickly in the shotgun that there isn't an extended motion by the quarterback. In the pistol--and the I-formation--there's the motion of going backwards to hand off the ball and such that do a lot more to sell the threat of the run. In the games I watched, the Lions passed 16 times and ran only 7. Still, it's a run-minded formation. The play action is a big player, and even without it, it does more to suggest a run pre-snap than the regular shotgun.

The Football Laundromat: New York Giants Edition II

Hola, readers. TC Fleming here. With the Cowboys playing the New York Giants for the second time this season on Sunday, I thought it might be nice to take a look at another aspect of the Giants' offense. I say another because just a couple weeks ago, we looked at some of the Giants' favorite running plays in anticipation of their first game against the Cowboys.

This week let's go more to the passing side. There are two neat little wrinkles in the passing game that stood out to me when watching their games. I don't want to overstate this, but it seems that these are plays especially tailored to the skills of their two big-time receivers, Hakeem Nicks and Steve Smith. They're both incredibly effective play-makers but do so in totally different ways. Smith is more of a polished route-runner who has a great knack for finding openings in the zones and such, whereas Nicks is more physical and can body up to a cornerback and catch a ball against tough coverage. Both sets of skills are incredibly valuable, and these two plays illustrate two ways to highlight those skills.

The first play is one that, in my opinion, favors Smith a little more. That isn't to say Nicks can't or doesn't run it (he does), just that Smith is perfect for it. The idea is not too different from one of the plays we looked at last week with the Packers. It's about using other receivers to open things up for the slant route. What the Giants do is take a receiver, usually a bigger guy, usually one of their tight ends, and have him running down the seam. Then they have a receiver run a bit of a slower-developing slant route, timing it such that their route cuts just in front of that large man running down the field. It's like a pick in basketball. As the defender has to pick his way around the body of the tight end, the receiver has a little space to catch the ball and make a move.

The Football Laundromat: Green Bay Packers Edition

Pack power

What it is, readers. TC Fleming here. With this Cowboys season really winning over the fans and generating interest in the team, I figured now would be an excellent time to write 2,000 words about an element of their upcoming opponent, the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers don't really run the ball anymore. They've gone over 100 yards on the ground twice in their eight games. And with Ryan Grant going down eight carries into the season, that's probably just as well. They wouldn't be that good at it anyway.

And if you're going to drop any pretense of running the ball, you might as well just go shotgun. It lets the quarterback see the field better and gives him a little more time to react to the rush and stuff like that, and its primary downside is that it can negatively affect the dynamics of the run game. Since the Packers don't run anyways, they favor the shotgun pretty heavily. 75% of the pass plays in the two games I looked at (the ones against the Bears and Vikings) were from the shotgun. According to Football Outsiders, there are only four teams in the league that go to the shotgun more (For trivia, those teams in order: Lions, Broncos, Colts and Cowboys). And it works for them. When under center, they're the 19th-most efficient offense. Once into the shotgun, they become the third-most efficient.

When operating from the shotgun, they do lots of stuff. They run just about their whole offense. I can't explain all of it here, some because of space and even more because I'm not sure I could give you the full scoop on how it all works. Because I'm just a beginner giving this stuff a shot. But I thought I might talk about three passing plays that illustrate some of the stuff the Packers are doing to present defenses with difficult choices.

The Football Laundromat: Jacksonville Jaguars Edition

Dziękuję, Readers. TC Fleming here. With the city buzzing about the impending arrival of the Jacksonville Jaguars for their game with the Cowboys, I figured it would be a great time to look at one aspect of the Jaguars offense.

It's kind of tough to talk about something concerning the Jaguars' offense, mainly because they don't have much of one. Maurice Jones-Drew is really awesome, but with defenses keying on him, his yards per carry has dipped to 3.8 this year. As for the passing element, they have had some reasonably efficient performances (In three of Garrard's six games, he has had a passer rating over 100). They are not willing, however, to rely on passing overly much. Garrard has averaged 21 attempts a game with a season high of 30. Garrard has missed a little time, but he has about 80 fewer throws this season than Romo, over 100 fewer than the league leader in the category, Drew Brees. Watching those attempts, they tend to be short and safe. There's not too much down-the-field passing in the Jaguars' offense. Given all that, I think we have a pretty clear case of the coaches not trusting the quarterback.

So what does a team do when they have a running game that draws the attention of the defense but a quarterback you don't trust to make opponents pay for it? Well, the first answer is that you suck, and the Jaguars do. Another answer is that you can make the quarterback a threat to run. If the opposing team becomes worried about the quarterback picking up yards with his feet, they are a little more hesitant to jump at the running back in the run game and a little more hesitant to just turn and run after receivers in the passing game.

Now, Garrard's not going to run for 100 yard or rush 10 or more times or anything like that. He's pretty consistently been a good bet to run four or five times for about 20 yards. Never more than 9 rushes for 60 yards or so. Garrard's rushing is not about moving the ball. They aren't going to string drives together based on his legs. It's about giving the defense something else to consider. It's a matter of getting the defense guessing when he's going to take off. Garrard is not necessarily fast, he has just enough speed to get this done. What he does have though is a little bit of wiggle to him. He doesn't have jukes or anything, but he makes guys miss. I think you'll be able to see what I'm talking about in the videos below.

The first way that Garrard runs from the quarterback position is the very conventional scramble when no passing options open up. For formations, the Jaguars seem to be very one thing or the other. They're either lined up in the I from 21 personnel or they're in the shotgun with three wide receivers. On this play, it's the former. The tight end, Marcedes Lewis, and both wide receivers, Mike Sims-Walker and Mike Thomas, go deep.

The Football Laundromat: New York Giants Edition

Hiya, readers. TC Fleming here. With the Cowboys taking aim at the Giants this Monday night, I thought it might be real neat if we could take a look at the fundamental elements of their run game.

Now, this exercise is even more dicey than normal. And I'd like to re-emphasize how dicey an exercise it is that we're already working with. These are poorly-educated guesses passed off as fact. I just read about football on the internet and then watch plays over and over. I am not qualified to coach a middle school football team. To the extent that I have football knowledge, though, it leans heavily towards the passing side of things. Running games and blocking schemes and stuff seem like there's a lot of things going on, and I'm in constant fear that most of it is passing me by. That said, let's give this a shot.

So far as I have the ability to tell, more than half of the Giants' runs are two plays: the inside zone and the outside zone. Most of what I know about those two plays I learned from this article. Here's a little from that on how both of those zone runs:

There is only so much “zoning” in a zone — much of it is still just blocking the guy in front of you. On all zone runs, the linemen must ask, “Am I ‘covered’ (is there a guy directly in front of me, aside from a linebacker set back a few years)? Or am I ‘uncovered’ (there is no one directly in front of me)?”

If “covered,” there is very little “zoning” at all: The lineman’s job is to block the guy in front of them. Fans, commentators, and even coaches often overcomplicate things. The “zone” aspect comes in with “uncovered” linemen. If “uncovered,” the lineman must step “playside” — i.e. the side the run is going to — and help double-team the defensive linemen along with his “covered” cohort. Once the two of them control that down defensive lineman, one of the offensive linemen slides off to hit a linebacker. It’s not that complicated. Indeed, let’s say the five offensive linemen are covered by five defensive linemen. In that case, each guy (save for maybe the backside offensive tackle) will just block the guy in front of them — there is no “zoning” at all.

The Football Laundromat: Minnesota Vikings Edition

What up, readers. TC Fleming here. Time now to look at a specific element of what the Minnesota Vikings do on offense with the goal of adding another little wrinkle to your Cowboys-watching experience.

I was listening to the afternoon drive program on Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket, and they said something in regard to the Monday night game between Minnesota and the New York Jets that kind of stuck in my head. I shall reproduce it here:



The gist of the audio, if you can't be bothered to click on it, is that Corby's thinks that the addition of Moss has the Vikings offense making sense again, with someone big on the outside to make plays and allow Percy Harvin to reclaim his slot/matchup guy role that he flourished in last year. The Harvin part was what stuck with me. How did the Vikings use him last year? Did we see a return to that against the Jets?

Looking at how they used him last year, he did a lot of your normal stuff slot receivers do. He does a lot of running up the seam or doing a square-in behind the linebackers, and he's good at it. But in addition to that, they'll motion him into the backfield and use him as a runningback. Or they'll just plain line him up at running back to give Peterson a breather. Other times they'll start with him as a running back and motion him out in an effort to create confusion for the defense or generate a favorable matchup for him. And since he's in the slot usually being covered by a nickel corner, he almost always has a favorable matchup. That's the thing: he's not ready to beat the 2009 Darelle Revis every down, and if there's no Sidney Rice or Randy Moss around to guarantee he doesn't have to, he's in trouble. But when he's in the slot squaring off against a team's third corner, he wins that every time. On paper, Percy Harvin is much better than Orlando Scandrick.

To give an example of Harvin as a rushing threat, one play from their game against the Giants last year was particularly exciting to me. Harvin only rushed 15 times last year, and he's on about the same pace this year. When he rushed, however, it presented a very real problem for the defense. He's averaged over eight yards a carry for his career, a number way above what you find with about any running back. Part of that is the element of surprise that comes with a receiver running the ball, but the most significant reason his numbers are so sterling is that he's amazingly fast and a really good runner. That really shows up in this play. The Vikings start with Peterson in the backfield but not really in a position to run traditional running plays. Harvin motions to the tailback spot.

The Football Laundromat: Tennessee Titans Edition

Hoy, hoy. TC Fleming here. With the Cowboys emerging from the bye week, let's take a look at an element of what the Titans do on offense so that we might better be able to watch their game against the Cowboys this weekend.

Vince Young confuses me. Several years into his career, it's still quite unclear to me whether or not he is a starting-caliber quarterback. Since returning to the starting lineup last year, his stats are pretty acceptable. On a per-play basis, everything is sort of good-not-great. He shows he's accurate enough with a completion percentage around 60. He shows he's not terrible at moving the offense with a yards per attempt figure a little over 7. His touchdown-to-interception ratio is acceptable. Especially for someone who gives you the scrambling ability he does, this is reasonable quarterback play. You can win with this. Vince Young is pretty good (though his two--TWO--Pro Bowl appearances still make him the cautionary case for these over-inflated Pro Bowl rosters).

But I'm still confused. In part because I saw those picks in the Pittsburgh game this year where he entirely misread the coverage. In part because wen I watch him I get the feeling the wheels are begging to come off. But mostly because it seems like Jeff Fisher doesn't think Young is any good. Of the quarterbacks who have started all four games this year, Young has the fewest attempts. Passing plays were called at the same frequency last year, too. He only has 70 more passing attempts than Marion Barber.

The lack of attempts is one thing that indicates to me that Fisher doesn't trust Young. Another is the nature of those attempts. A lot of the Titans' pass plays look like their primary design is not to challenge the defense or to create winnable match-ups downfield but to find an easy completion for Young. Now, I guess those goals aren't exclusive of each other. You can have plays that create good match-ups AND easy completions. But watching the Titans and diagramming their plays, there's so many crossing routes and hitch routes designed to just create easy five-yard gains at the expense of stretching out the defense.

The Football Laundromat: Dez Bryant Edition

Have you seen this child?

Aloha, readers. TC Fleming here. During the Cowboys season, I write each week about a wrinkle in the offense of the opposing team. With no opposing team due to the bye week, I'd like to use this space to reveal some research I've done into a topic I've done some thinking on.

The impetus for all this is Johnny Knox. I was born just outside Chicago and am a Bears fan, so I wanted to get a gauge on what Knox's 500-yard rookie season might portend for the rest of his career. How do receivers who go on to quality careers perform in their rookie seasons? How long does it take them to get to the high level of play they maintain for most of their careers?

Of course, Cowboys fans have more stake in these questions than anyone. What is a reasonable expectation of how good Dez Bryant can be this year? What does it mean if Bryant keeps up this pace and finishes around 800 yards? Were he to live up to expectations, what could we expect his career arc to look like?

To start, I made a list of players who made the All-Pro team at wide receiver from 1999 to 2008 (the site I used for this didn't have the 2009 roster, and trying to determine if another site's list matched the definition of "All-Pro" we're rolling with just seemed like a hassle. Sue me.) Here is that list:

Derrick Mason
Randy Moss
Terrell Owens
Rod Smith
David Boston
Troy Brown
Eric Moulds

The Football Laundromat: Houston Texans Edition

Salutations, readers. TC Fleming here. This is the second in a series of articles published each Thursday concerning a specific strategic wrinkle in the offense of the Cowboy's upcoming opponent.

This week that opponent is Houston whose coach, Gary Kubiak, comes to the team after ten full years spent with Mike Shanahan as Shanahan's offensive coordinator when he was in Denver. While in Denver, they carved out a pretty distinct sort of identity. The idea, if I could simplify way down, is to use their zone blocking system to get Terrell Davis going on the ground. Then with the defense keying on him, have John Elway fake the handoff to Davis and roll to the opposite side where he had the option to either throw to a receiver whose defender had bit on the fake to Davis or run it himself into the areas voided by the over-pursuing defense. That's why Shanahan and Kubiak worked so hard to get Jake Plummer as a free agent and why they traded up to get Jay Cutler in the draft: the general system is predicated on having a quarterback who can throw well on the run, pick up yards himself when needed and just generally execute this style of play-action pass known as the bootleg.

After determining in his first year as the Houston head coach that David Carr did, in fact, suck, Kubiak acquired Matt Schaub to be the player to run his offense with, among other things, its bootleg passes. While I went into watching his two games this season without a real idea of what I wanted to write about, it quickly became apparent that his execution on those bootleg passes demanded attention. While he is not the threat to run that Elway, Plummer and Cutler are, Schaub is as good as anyone at running the bootleg. He shows the patience allowed for the longer routes that these passes feature to open up, but he rarely forced it when those routes weren't there. When he needed to go to one of the secondary options, he showed great chemistry with his receivers and communicated well with them to make surprising completions.

The Football Laundromat: Chicago Bears Edition

Hi there, readers. TC Fleming here. Each week I think it'd be nice to watch the Cowboys' upcoming opponents' previous week's game and target a specific wrinkle in that team's offense as something to watch for when they play the Cowboys.

The Bears are one of the worst pass-protecting teams in football. Their right tackle couldn't hold down the left guard spot last year. The right guard is a second-year player thought of so highly coming out of college that he fell to the seventh round. The left tackle is a former first-round pick who in his first two years couldn't beat out the indomitable John St. Clair and a nearly-retired, definitely done Orlando Pace for the left tackle job. And their best lineman, Olin Kreutz, ended his string of six straight Pro Bowl selections a full four seasons ago. The first job of any coordinator overseeing this offense is to find ways to distract from the fact their line cannot block.

The obvious, bread-and-butter way to do this is via the screen pass. While it still requires the linemen to do blocking, they are now taking on linebackers and defensive backs rather than defensive ends and tackles. It's just really tough to design a play where your linemen do no blocking whatsoever, so this is the best they could do.