The Sophomore Jinx?

A lot is being written right now about whether or not Sam Bradford will experiance the sophmore jinx in 2011. I'll give you my short answer and I will give you a longer answer. The short answer is: It can't be avoided, but it won't be as bad you think, and it probably won't last long. Now I will give you a longer answer unpacking that conclusion.

There are a number of factors conspiring against Sam's 2nd tour of duty in the league:

1. Pat Shurmur has moved on to Cleveland
2. Josh McDaniels in the new Ram-OC.
3. This means moving from the West Coast Offense to the NFL Spread.
4. There will be new rookie receivers to play with.
5. There will be new offensive guards to play with.
6. We have this little labor strife over the collective bargaining agreement going on right now. As a result of this fact, here may not be any OTAs or Mini-Camp. If so, Josh McDaniels will have precious little time to install his new system.
7. If worse comes to worse, and the lockout wears long, it could delete all of training camp and the first few games.

As far as the Rams' specific problems are concerned, I don't think things are nearly as bad as some portray them. When people say that there is a great deal of difference between the WCO and the NFL Spread, they are quite correct. Still, what is the value and importance of that fact? I think it is fairly low. I don't think this is particularly important point.

Sam was in the WCO for exactly one year. He was in the Spread for most of his high school and college years. The pertinent question is this: How different is Josh McDaniel's Spread from Bob Stoops's Spread? In truth, I do not know the answer to that question. I suppose assesments would vary. I can only tell you that they look somewhat similar to me. I can't tell you how much difference there is in language and terminology under the hood, in the playbook.

Until proven otherwise, I still believe that moving to Josh McDaniels's Spread will be more like a home-comming at Oklahoma than learning an entirely new system. In 2010, Sam was learning an entirely different system. In 2011, I don't think so. I think he'll be learning a slightly different variety of a system he already knows well.

However, all our vets will be learning a new system... That could spell some trouble. The brand new receivers and guards will create some initial problems in timing and cohesian, but if we chose our people well, this should pay big dividends a few games down the road in 2011... assuming there is a 2011.

There are adverse circumstances facing Sam, the whole roster, and everyone else in the league this year. We could throw in the media people also. Everyone is in danger of being compromised by the labor strife and lockout looming on the horizon. That's why both parties involved better compromise soon and sign that new CBA.

Andrew Brandt of the National Football Post seems to believe these problems are not so bad as I think they are. He claims that negotiations always saunter along at a lazy pace until the drop-dead date looms large. When the deal has to get done, it gets done. He says he was a party to a hundred different negotiations and the deal never got done until it had to be finished. That's just how the game is played. He seems to believe that we will have a new CBA in March.

Now on the other hand, you have the absolutely fabulous "in a state of war" rhetoric thrown around by DeMaurice Smith, the boss of the player's union. This sort of rhetoric only seems to strengthen rumors I heard early-on about DeMaurice Smith being a wrecklass adventurer on quest to prove himself stronger than Upshaw in fiery crucible of battle. Right now, DeMaurice Smith does resemble those remarks. He's also making Roger Goodell look pretty damn good. Trust me, you don't want to do that to your opponent.

Let us hope they will resolve all this bullshit so the millionairs can contine being paid by the billionaires.

Anyway... I hope I have made my point. Given the confligration of events coming together in 2011, a sophmore slump of some kind probably cannot be avoid. The worst factors in this function aren't even under Rams' control. These things have to be settled at the league level.

I also don't expect the sophmore slump to be that bad, or last that long. A move to the NFL spread may hurt offensive cohesian in the first couple of weeks, but it will help Sam and the whole offense perform a lot better down the road.

The Rams, The Browns, Pat Shurmur and Josh McDaniels

If you are tracking the comings and goings of coaches in this early off-season {for teams not in the playoffs} you may be aware that Pat Shurmur is looking like the likely HC of the Cleveland Browns. The Dawg Pound doesn't seem to thrilled about it. I wish I could give you guys some cold comfort, but it would sound more like a cold slap.

Sheeesh... It used to be that only a Super Bowl winning OC/DC, or a national championship College Coach would qualify as a new HC in the NFL. That's how Coach Spags got his job. Whatever happened to that high-achievement requirement?

I fully understand why Mike Holmgren would be enamored with Shurmur's offensive game plan. It is the closest thing to Bill Walsh's original system currently flying in the NFL. Holmgren and Shurmur would be of one mind on many subjects. They are clearly from the same school of thought. Still... don't you consider this a reach, Mike?

Readers of this blog will know that I am thrilled to be done with Shurmur. I've been after his scalp for some time. I didn't get it, but this is next best thing to being there. I have never been a fan of the WCO. I like Gillman-Coryell. It's the replacement part of the equation that bothers me.

Unless you track the Rams, you probably won't know that the name Josh McDaniels is being circulated as the front-runner in the Rams' quest for a new OC. These are words that hit like a steel ax handle to the face. Do you want to talk about a massive disturbance in the force as if billions of souls suddenly cried out in terror and were silenced?

Josh McDaniels has been on my shit-list for some two years now. Recently he became a figure of some ambivalence.

How do I hate him? Let me count the ways. I hate the coaching tree he comes from. Bellichick has no coaching tree. He has a twig of failures. McDaniels replaced Shanahan. That in itself is a bad thing. He did an all-out systematic demolition job on the Denver Broncos, leaving the team in ruins. He traded away my favorite passing combo in Cutler-Marshall. He fired a great defensive coordinator in Dick Nolan for no better reason than the fact that he desired a "Patriot way" guy on his staff.

How do I love the guy? Well... love is a very strong word that really shouldn't... I let McDaniels off the hook (slightly) when he drafted Tim Tebow. Any guy who likes Tebow as a QB can't be all bad. Not all bad, but 90% bad. Well... maybe not 90%... 85%. McDaniels also loves the Spread offense, which happens to be a particular passion of mine. This also happens to be Sam Bradford's strong point. Also, when push comes to shove, you must admit that the little bastard calls a mean game. There is a quirky play-calling genius locked in there somewhere.

You are reading the blog of a man who is literally ripped to shreds at the moment. I am eaten up wih internal controversy.

On the one hand, I don't want any infection of the Patriot-way virus near my team. This absolute bullshit hasn't worked for anyone, anywhere other than Bellichick in New England. It has destroyed much more than it has created. I don't want a failed coach off the Bellichick coaching twig to enter our staff. I don't want the little bastard to subvert Coach Spagnuolo's position as HC either.

On the other hand, this is an opportunity for my Rams to move to the Spread offense. That's something I've been advocating for more than a year now. This is a way to make Sam more productive. This is a way to introduce aggressive play-calling back into our team's repertoire. I have some confidence that McDaniels would not call stupid plays in key situations, or put our offense to sleep with a conservative running game when we need to score and put it away.

They often say that you *_DO_* want to be the man who first a guy immediately after he gets fired. Usually, once a coach's Man-Card has been revoked, he gets up off the carpet fighting twice as hard as he did before. This means you get his very best shot. Witness the job Linehan has done in Detroit for good evidence. A wiser, double-motivated McDaniels could be good for us.

It may be GM Billy Devaney is considering a move to the spread, but he is unwilling to trust a disgraced college coach like Mike Leach with the job. I think this unfortunate, because Leach is a legit offensive genius. At the same time, I can understand why Devaney would gravitate to a version of the Spread that has been proven effective inside the NFL. This case does have some real merit.

Ultimately, I am very ambivalent about all of this.

Some quick thoughts about Ram-fan anger at Pat Shurmur

I've been doing some much focused reading on-line during the past 48 hours. The focus has been this: Just what precisely are Ram-fans saying about Pat Shurmur? I would generalize our conversations by saying the following:

• Pat Shurmur doesn't know how to call a game
• He's way to conservative.
• We ran too much
• We didn't run enough
• Way too much dink-n-dunk passing
• He has a tendency to call bad plays in key situations
• We could have scored more points.
• We need to unleash Sam and throw it deep.

9 out of 10 blogs and posts say these things over and over:

Before I analyze this, I want you to know my organizational politics. I hated Pat Shurmur last year. I was the leader of the Comanche scalping party during the off-season of 2010. I was going to personally scalp Shurmur and hang his hair on wigwam post. Needless to say, we did not get it done. I would still like to see a change here, and I am still calling for his scalp.

With that said, there seems to be a misplaced focus of anger among most Ram-fans. Specifically, they seem to think the problem is that Shurmur is not running the West Coast Offense (WCO) properly. In the year 2009, that was absolutely true. In the year 2010... well... let's just say that Shurmur is running a version of the WCO that is reasonably close to the one Walsh himself ran in SF back in 1981. Walsh ran slightly deeper routes than Shurmur did in 2010, but not that much deeper. Add 3 to 6 yards of depth to each pattern and there you have it: Walsh's offense in 1981.

For the record, we should do a quick review of 2009. In 2009 the Rams were a run-first and run-second team. We threw only as a matter of last resort. If you compare Marc Bulger's numbers last season with Sam Bradford's numbers this season, the difference is like night and day. For instance, Marc Bulger threw for a total 1469 yards and 5 touchdowns, finishing 29^th in the league. Sam threw for 3,512 and 18 touchdowns, finishing 12^th in the league. That isn't entire Marc's fault, as I have said many times.

In 2010, the Rams' ran a pass-first offense. Just about all the patterns were horizontal. Very few were vertical. The throws were short, not long. We played a dink-n-dunk, nickel & dime, ball-control short passing game. Small-ball was the name of the game in 2010. By the end of the season, Ram fans were fed up with it.

You and I may well be fed up with it, but one thing we can't say (with truth) is that Shurmur is running the WCO incorrectly. No, he is indeed running the scheme. The WCO is a horizontal, ball-control passing offense. The name of the game is dink-n-dunk, nickle & dime, small-ball. It can be run better, but he is certainly running a version of the system. This is what you get when you run the WCO. When you order a taco, you get a taco. You shouldn't expect a T-Bone.

Young folks today are under the misapprehension that the big-play circus Andy Reid is running with the Eagles is the ultimate example of the West Coast Offense. Perish the thought! Reid may be using WCO terminology in his playbook, but the big-play circus he is running has little or nothing to do with the offense Bill Walsh invented for the Bengals and perfected with the 49ers. The Eagles do not run the WCO. The Rams do.

As you well know, our results in 2010 were far better than in 2009. We scored 289 points vis-a-vis 175 points. We won 7 games, not 1. This is why I shut up for most of the season and stopped swinging on Shurmur's nuts like Tarzan. I started again when Shurmur made key strategic blunders in crucial moments down the stretch. I am not talking about Bradford errors. I'm speaking of putting the offense to sleep with a conservative running game in key moments when we could have slain our enemy by putting points on the board. This happened several times down the stretch.

Two points have to be made clearly:

1. We can fire Shurmur, or let him move to Cleveland (whichever comes first), but unless we take advantage of this critical moment to dump the WCO, we are going to continue to dink-n-dunk. This is what you get with the WCO. When you order a taco, you get a taco. Don't expect a Porterhouse T-Bone.

2. Sam was clearly more effective in the shotgun with receivers spread wide. He was even more effective in a quick-time offense with 3 receivers, a tight end, and a running back next to him. This is what we call the NFL-Spread. It is a version of the College Spread, modified for better protection and support of a better running game in the NFL environment. Most of us were calling for this scheme by the end of the season. I want to remind you that before the 2010 season began, I was advocating a move to this system. Anyone who has watched Oklahoma football over the past 5 or 6 years knows why Sam is more effective in this scheme. Its home for him.

This is why I continue to say that we need to reach out to Mike Leach, one of the few legit Spread-Geniuses currently unemployed on the open market. He's ready to interview tomorrow. Let's get him in and hire him.

Just to give Shurmur and even break, I should say the following things:

• It’s tough to call for vertical shots down field when you have two poor guards and no vertical-threat receivers. You have neither the pass protection nor the hands down field necessary to make the play work.
• If Shurmur had called for more vertical shots, our sack & hit totals would have been higher. Sam might not have finished the season healthy, and we are all very happy that Sam finished the season healthy. Keeping Sam healthy through all 16 games this season was substantial achievement.
• Shurmur called two key vertical shots downfield during the game in Seattle, and Denario Alexander dropped both passes. This happened many other times during 2010 with many other receivers. Basically, none of our guys proved they could go downfield and catch the deep ball in 2010. Alexander is actually the best of our deep receivers right now.
• There are allegations that our offensive conservatism comes from the top. Some think HC Steve Spagnuolo set a “go slow, go safe” policy at the start of the season. Ostensibly, his policy never changed. While this is plausible, I do not know if it is true or not. I never heard any official source proclaim that Spagnuolo wanted a 'go safe go slow' policy at any point during the 2010 season. If you know of such a report, drop me a line with a URL.
• The ball-control nature of the WCO did help our defense quite substantially. The WCO usually produces good time of possession numbers. 12 play drives give your own defense time to reorganize and adjust as well as rest. WCO offenses usually help out their defenses. If we had taken hard vertical shots all the time, we might have scored a bit more, but we would have put our defense on the field quite a bit faster.

Ultimately, I am really pulling for the hiring of Mike Leach in 2011. Those who fear that it will set Sam Back should remember that the Leach’s spread isn’t all that different from the Bob Stoops spread Sam ran in Oklahoma. It will be more like a return home than a new scheme.

Shurmur needs a dose of Jacob's Ladder

Intro

Well, my Rams got their 7^th win of the 2010 season against San Francisco 49ers this past weekend. As a special added bonus, we knocked the 49ers out of the playoff picture (if you can believe that). As double bonus, we sunk their battleship. The 49ers responded by firing Coach Mike Singletary, a questionable move that does not strike at the heart of their problems.

Let’s not be too full of malicious glee, because we still have a lot of work to do.

Great improvements but…

During the draft, I completely scoffed at all notions of the Rams pulling turn a turn-around and making the playoffs. Many sanguine Ram fans declared that a Miami/Atlanta type turn-around was possible. I scoffed at that, declaring that we were a lot further away from victory than Miami in 2008 or Atlanta in 2007. I was just hoping we could win a game. Forget about the playoffs.

At the beginning of this season, I scoffed at the notion that we were “poised for a great leap forward.” I felt we had made nowhere near the amount of progress we needed to see a “great leap forward.” We had a highly suspect and unproven offensive line, a surgically repaired rookie quarterback, no receivers and a few upgrades to our decent defense. That’s not enough, or so I thought.

Well we have made a hell of a lot of progress; surprising and unexpected progress. Most experts are calling the Rams the greatest surprise story of the year. We have a 6 game turn around in hand, with the possibility of a 7^th and a playoff spot. Winning the NFC West means going from worst to first inside our division. In a certain sort of way, this can be considered a great leap forward.

Let’s not be too full of ourselves. There is still a hell of a lot of home improvement we need to make before we can start talking about a Super Bowl run.

We’re still not playing good football

The Rams of 2010 are drastically better than the Rams of 2009. As I have observed many times, the Rams offense of 2009 looked like keystone cops at a Chinese fire drill. The defense was a work in progress that didn’t start to look sharp until the end of the season. Improvement was evident through the season defensively, but we still only fielded half a football team. The Rams of 2010 look more like a complete team, with both offense and defensive sides contributing to victory. This is the reason for the six additional victories we have had so far, and the highly competitive games we have lost.

With that said, we still aren’t playing good football. At the moment, we cannot compete with the likes of the Eagles, Falcons and Saints for supremacy in the NFC. We don’t have much chance of beating the Saints when and if they come to visit us in the playoff tournament. Granted, we never expected to be in the tournament in the first place, so we have a moral victory in hand. I am sure you and I will want and expect a lot more next season.

What do we have to do to get there?

In a nut shell, these are the things that must happen in order for the Rams to improve:

1. We need a deadly receiver. As I mentioned in a past blog, I am not speaking of a Pro-Bowl, or even All-Pro receiver. I am speaking of a historical figure who will blaze a path to the Hall of Fame and the Top 100 in NFL history. I am talking about a deadly threat that will give all the other 31 defensive coordinators in the NFL maddening nightmares before the game. I am talking about a game-changing playmaker who turns the tide of battle when everything is going against us.

2. We need a pair of behemoth offensive guards. Two copies of Carl Nicks (#77 for the Saints) will do very nicely. If I can get one Larry Allen and one John Hannah, I will be happy to take that as well.

3. We need a franchise defensive tackle. Although the selection of Sam Bradford has turned out to be the correct one, it breaks my heart that we just passed on the best defensive lineman since Mean Joe Greene. Ndamukong Suh would have fit the need perfectly.

4. We need to get Pat Shurmur some aggression training courses. Perhaps a trip through Marine Corp boot camp and Infantry school will do it for him. He must hone his killer instinct, or he will become a dead Marine.

Why do I say this?

First, the need for receivers is pretty obvious. I don’t think any Ram fan will contest this point. We all know we are going to pretty well flush and clean our receiver corp next season. If I were running the show, the only two guys I would bring back for sure would be Danny Amendola and Danario Alexander. Every other man better row for his life or lose it.

Second, although we now have a great center and two rapidly improving young tackles, our guards are pretty terrible. Anyone who has watched the past three games knows that the offensive line has allowed pressure from the middle, and failed to open any sort of running holes in between the tackles. When Steven Jackson has gained yardage, it has been off-tackle. I have been one of the foremost detractors of our offensive line. They have turned out to be quite a bit better than I thought, but this is damning with faint praise. If we want to take steps in the playoffs, we need to make sure we have devastating offensive guards who drive-block and slide-block. How the 49ers’ three man defensive line managed to dominate our offensive line is utterly beyond me. What a disgrace! If you observe what they did, they constantly pinched in, going after the guard gap.

Third, anyone who watched the game against the 49ers saw the 49er offensive line gashing holes in the middle of our defensive line. This wasn’t the first time either. Teams such as Cardinals have been able to run between our tackles with shocking efficiency. All of this points the finger at our suspect defensive tackles. Fred Robbins is a very nice pass rusher, but he is not the equal of Williams brothers in Minnesota. Of course, we know Ndamukong Suh would have been the perfect candidate… Perhaps we can acquire Albert Haynesworth cheap next season.

Shurmur needs Jacob’s Ladder

Some have accused the Rams of calling a very conservative offensive game. I deny that. Rather, Shurmur is simply calling a stupid offensive game. We are passing more than we did last season, and we are looking more like a West Coast Offense, but Shurmur is not off the hook just yet.

Going to sleep offensively when you have a 9 point lead and chance to go up by 16 is stupid football. It’s not conservative, it’s stupid. It’s reminiscent of the worst aspects of Marty-ball. Some call this “playing it safe” and “playing conservative”. No, it’s being stupid. Call a spade a spade. This is stupid football. Shurmur is still calling a stupid football game offensively.

No lead is safe in this league, especially if you are playing a team like the Eagles in the Playoffs. When you have the lead, you attack to destroy and demolish. Fuck all that stupid shit about running up the score. You kill the enemy. When you have your opponent down on the carpet, you do not allow him to get up off the carpet. You put your pistol to his forehead and you pull the trigger. You blow his brains out. You burry your opponent. You finish your opponent.

Shurmur needs aggression training courses. He must hone his killer instinct. He has passed on several moments of truth when we could have killed our enemies and finished them good. How I wish I could give Shurmur a dose of Jacob’s Ladder before the game. For those of you who don’t remember the movie, Jacob’s Ladder was the code name for a hyper-aggression drug developed by the U.S. Military to motivate soldiers to extreme carnage in combat. A single dose would turn an ordinary home-town boy into an enraged psychopath, frothing at the mouth and ready to kill everything.

How I wish I could give Shurmur a dose of Jacob’s Ladder before the game against the Seahawks.

Sam Bradford's report card

I was going to publish this report card on Sam Bradford at the three-quarter mark of the season. I decided to postpone until after the Saint game for several reasons. I was expecting that to be a bad loss. The Saints are beginning to peak, and the Rams have lost several key players on defense. I expected them to put a lot of points on the board, more than they actually did, thus leading to considerable down turn in Ram-fan moral.

Having a look at the accomplishments of this season should snap them out of it in time to make this stretch run through the final three games. We have good reason to be optimistic about these final three regular season games of the 2010 season.

Does anybody remember Edwards' Law?

Months ago, I wrote a piece laying down a framework for grading Sam Bradford's rookie year. I quoted Herman Edwards liberally in that entry. Edwards' law says that a franchise Quarterback is worth 4 more victories than you would have had without him.

Under that principle, we would project the Cardinals 6-10 football team in 2010 due to the retirement of Kurt Warner. I said 5-11 due to other loses. If the Rams actually acquired a franchise QB in the 2010 draft, we would expect the Rams to finish +4 at 5-11 in 2010.

What actually happened this year? Sure enough, the Cardinals have fallen hard, and worse than expected. At this point it seems unlikely they will reach 6-10. 5-11 might be difficult as well. On the other hand, the Rams are already 6-7, hold first place in the NFC West. Further, many believe they can win out against Kansas City, San Francisco and Seattle. The Rams continue to be the projected eventual winner of the NFC West.

The Rams are already +5 over last season with three more shots at victory; three shots in which we will be favored to win. You have to admit, that looks awfully good. What would you say to an 8 game turn around for the Rams? How does a 9-7 winning record and an NFC West title look on that resume? I would have to vote for Spags as the coach of the year, and Sam Bradford for AP Offensive Rookie of the year.

Even if this turns out to be a 7 game turn around, I would still favor Spags for coach of the year and Bradford for AP Offensive Rookie of the year.

Herm Edwards law is looking pretty good, and maybe even better than expected. In truth we shouldn't give all the credit for these changing records to the presence of a franchise QB, or lack thereof. The Cardinals lost Anquan Bolden, Karlos Dansby, and Antrell Rolle. The Rams also acquired Rodger Saffold, Barret Robbins, N'ail Diggs, and Michael Hoomanawanui.

Much depends on how the Rams finish, but I can tell you this: Herm Edwards' Law is looking pretty good, and Sam Bradford is looking pretty good according to Herm Edwards' Law.

How does Sam compare to Marc Bulger?

If you look at some game film of 2009 and 2010, you see quite a stark contrast in the Rams' offense in these two seasons. Under Bulger et al, the Rams were a run first and run second team. We threw the forward pass only as a last resort. In 2010 the Rams are very much a pass-first team, with counter-punch alternatives provided by the running game. Last year we were nominally a West Coast Offense team, but much more a grind 'em out running team. This year, you can actually say--with some intellectual integrity--that the Rams run a version of the West Coast offense.

Does that show up in the stats? Yep, you bet it does.

In 2009 Bulger completed 140 of 247 passes for a paltry 1469 yards, 5 TDs and 6 ints. In just 13 weeks, Sam has completed 286 of 474 passes for 2,884, 17 TDs and 12 Ints. Marc Bulger finished 2009 with a QB efficiency rating of 70.7. After 13 games, Sam Bradford has an NFL passer rating of 79.123. It was higher before the Saint game, nearly 81.

Most importantly, Bulger et al managed to produced a total of 175 points last season, an average of 10.9 points per game. This year, Bradford's offense has managed 245 points in just 13 games, or an average of 18.85 points per game. We are on pace to score 302 points in 2010.

Remember, Sam still has three games to pad his margins.

The conclusion is pretty clear cut. In slightly less than twice the number of attempts, Badford has more than doubled completions and yardage. He has more than tripled our number of touchdown passes, whilst only doubling the number of interceptions. As a result, point production has nearly doubled.

Last year, the Rams were dead-last (32nd) in points scored. This year, we are 25th in the league. Whilst a 25th in the league ranking is nothing to boast about , it is much better than last year, and better than I expected.

During the deep off season, I set down some goals for the Rams, and I hoped that we could nearly double our scoring from 10.9 to 20 points per game, for a total of 320 points. We are close to achieving this goal. If we win-out during this stretch run, we could very well make the 320 point goal.

A few words about the Playoffs

Some guys are ridiculing the notion of the Rams in the playoffs, detesting the fact that good team like the Packers may be left out because the NFC West gets an automatic bid. The same thing was said the Cardinals two years ago. Don't think I am predicting a Super Bowl, I am simply saying that those locked out of the playoffs always find a way to complain about their outcome.

Should we win-out and take the NFC West, We may well become road-kill for another team in the playoffs, but I wouldn't count on it. If we should happen to get a team like the Bucs, which is still hypothetically possible, we could and should be favored to win. It is more likely that the Giants and the Saints will be the NFC's two WC teams. Either would be a very difficult opponent.

Ultimately, the outcome of the playoffs is of no importance. The 2010 season will be a very memorable one indeed if we just get to 9-7 and make the playoffs. Most of us did not expect anything like this sudden turn around. Most of us didn't think the club had made anywhere near this level of progress during the off-season. No one in his right mind was talking about us contending--even for the NFC West--this season. Even the most sanguine among us believe the team needs one more super-strong off season before we can compete seriously in the NFC.

Just remember, if the 2010 season proves anything, it proves this: One more super-strong off season in 2011 will put us in position to dominate the NFC West and contend in a serious way.

The Okie-Doke Offense

Last weekend, I heard Phil Simms say it best. Phil is still one of the best analysts of the game, and he hit the nail on the head. Regarding offensive philosophies, Phil said something like this:

"Run first, pass second. Run to win, pass to score. Pass to setup the run. Dink and Dunk. All of these sayings represent false ideas we choose to confuse our minds with. The real objective of good offense is always the same: do exactly the opposite of what the defense expects you to do."

Amen brother. I would only add to that two more phrases:

1. Get to the line of scrimmage quickly so the QB can read the defense and check off. This allows him to hit it where they ain't.

2. Use motion and formation to isolate your best playmakers against the defense's weakest sister.

If you implement these three elements of offense, you cannot be stopped. I like to call this the Okie Doke offense. Okie Doke is football jargon for showing them one thing and giving them another. You get the defense to buy something you aren't selling. You employ constant trickeration, negative influence traps, misdirection, play action, draws, option reads, option routes. Nothing is ridged. The ultimate goal is to just hit it where they ain't. Incidentally, that final pharse is baseball philosophy. This saying is frequently mis-attributed to Yogi Berra, but most historians give the credit to an ancient 19th century baseball player named Wee Willie Keeler. Wee Willie may be the greatest philosopher of football offense we have ever seen. Sun Szu frequently said "attack emptiness, avoid fullness". This is a simple way of saying don't go into the teeth of the defense. Just hit it where they ain't. Find the weakness and penetrate it.

If the defense has 9 men in the box and zero safeties, you would be stupid not to throw it intermediate or deep. You would be stupid to run the football into the teeth of the defense. If the defense is in a dime with three deep safeties, you would be stupid not to run the shotgun draw. Just hit it where they ain't. Attack emptiness. Avoid fullness. Do exactly the opposite of what the defense has set themselves to stop.

If you do this enough times, uncertainty, indecision, doubt, and finally a lack of confidence begins to take over a defense. Everybody sits and reads, instead of shooting the gaps and attacking, because they don't know what you are going to do next. This is the moment when the defensive gameplan has completely broken down, and the defense is on its heels. The offense has won.

Right now, Peyton Manning is running the NFL's foremost Okie Doke offense, with the Saints in a close 2nd place. You might say that Mike Martz is the NFL's foremost coaching authority on the subject, with Sean Payton in a close 2nd place. These are the offenses that are currently doing the greatest damage around the league, with the Philadelphia Eagles starting an assault on the top rankings.

Incidentally, I have praised Michael Vick's style as being a night at the improv. When he is in the game, the defense has no clue what he is going to do next. Even if you steal the Eagles' signals, you still don't know what Vick is going to do next. He is quite likely to throw away the play call and do something totally unexpected on any given play. Believe me, that is a serious Okie-Doke situation. Vick will find the emptiness and avoid the fullness, and he'll do it dynamically in real-time.

Being radical and unpredictable makes you dangerous offensively. Attacking the empty spots in the defense makes you really, really dangerous. Doing this dynamically in real-time makes you deadly.

This is the ultimate reason why I utterly hate ridged system guys, and in particular, rigidly constructed West Coast Offenses. The WCO has been played for some 30 years now. We now know its structure and its philosophy. We know what these OCs are trying to achieve. We have studied their methodology. If you enter the game with one of those ridged 15 play scripts, the defense is going to hammer your ass. It's all fairly routine, stock, off-the-shelf, cliche, predictable screenplay stuff nowadays. We defenders know what you want to do, and we know how to defended it. Unless you have incredible stallions, who can simply beat defenders 1-on-1, you are in big trouble if you run a ridged WCO script.

Of course, the true WCO coreligionists will never, never, never listen to this criticism. Those who are ardent and fervent WCO fundamentalist will speak of the wonders done by Bill Walsh in much the same tone that Born-Again Christians speak of the miracles of Jesus. They will tell you about what Bill Walsh, the founder of their feast, has done for them. You cannot reason with these people about what Bill Bellichick has done to them. Those who have been raised in a faith, and hold to a blind faith, cannot be persuaded otherwise.

Just remember, you can never convince anybody of anything at anytime for any reason, so don't even bother to try. They will simply say "Don't confuse me with the facts" and stubbornly move along there merry West Coast way.

Rams v Cardinals post-mortem

Sam Bradford completed 32 of 55 passes for 253 yards with 1 TD and 3 Ints. This gives him an NFL passer rating of 53.068. His NCAA rating would be 91.912.

33 QBs in the NFL threw enough to qualify for a passer rating on week one of the 2010 season. Sam is currently the 30th ranked QB in the league. Alex Smith (49ers), Shaun Hill (Lions) and Matt Moore (Panthers) are below him.

Sam can take some comfort that Mark Sanchez is only about 3 points higher than he is, and Joe Flacco is less than 10 points ahead of him. Brett Favre is less than 20 points ahead of Sam. As you can surmise, this was a tough weekend for QBs.

It should be noted that Vince Young is crushing everyone with a QB rating of 142.8. I knew he was good. That's why I own a copy of his jersey. Still, it's not all that impressive when you consider that he only shot 13/17 for 153 yards.

There are 5 variables required to compute an NFL or NCAA passer rating. Those five variables are:

1. Attempts

2. Completions

3. Yards

4. Touchdowns

5. Interceptions

Having written a simple little WPF Passer-rating calculator in C#, I think I understand this formula fairly well. I sat around fiddle-faddling with Sam's numbers trying to understand where things went wrong.

So the interceptions killed Sam, right? Not exactly. Subtract all three interceptions, and his rating only rises 75.795 (NCAA=102.821). Those are not particularly high ratings.

So he didn't throw enough touchdowns? Not exactly. Tossing another touchdown only tacks on 6 or so points, in the best case scenario. Tossing two more touchdowns only adds about 12 points.

The fundamental issue is Sam's yardage per attempt and yardage per completion. Sam only had 4.6 yards per attempt (253/55 = 4.6). Sam only got 7.9 yards per completion (253/32 = 7.9). His passer rating is only going to rise if these two figures heads north in a hurry.

Strictly speaking, Sam' stats on Sunday indicates that the Rams will come up short attempting to convert a simple 3rd and 8 situation, even the pass is complete. That completion will only happens 58% of the time. Those kinds of probabilities don't deliver a good passer rating.

What is missing? I'll tell you what is missing: the vertical offense. The Rams ran precious few vertical routes on Sunday. I saw lots of horizontal crossing shit; very few 999 all-goes. I would settle for a few 69 Razors. Even if you check down to Steven Jackson from 69 Razor, Jackson will have room to rumble because you stretched the field.

So what went wrong?

1. The WCO

2. Too many short routes (WCO).

3. No vertical 8 and 9 routes (WCO)

4. Too many horizontal crossing patterns inside 15 yards (WCO)

5. Pathologically conservative pass routes (WCO and Shurmur)

6. No vertical stretch (WCO).

7. Too many throws to Mark Clayton.

8. Mardy Gilyard was not in the lineup enough

9. Not enough throws to Mardy Gilyard

10. Poor pass protection

Notice that I list poor pass protection last? That's a new world order for me. I normally put that first on my lists.

As you can see, I am laying the corpse at the WCO's doorstep. Most of what went wrong with the Rams offense on Sunday has everything to do with the design and implementation details of the West Coast Offense, one of my least favorite offensive schemes in football.

Folks, this is what you get with the West Coast Offense. That dog had its day, and that day is now over. If you run the WCO, properly, this is the outcome you should expect. You get what you pay for. Once in a while, the WCO has a good Sunday, but that isn't most Sundays. As the famous New Orleans Bluesman once sang: Even the sun shines on a dog's ass some days.

In case you didn't get the take home message from the former paragraphs: I really, really, really, really, really don't like the WCO. If you do, show proof that it still works in its kosher form. I'll bet you real money you can't do that.

For further evidence of this fact, have a good look at what Kevin Kobb did in Philly before getting knocked out. Andy Reid truly experienced a retro moment there. He was trying to run a fully Kosher WCO for the first time in a long time. The battle did not go well, until Kobb was knocked out of the game, and Vick shreaded the WCO playbook.

Vick always plays sandlot ball. It is always a night at the improv with Michael Vick. Better a night at the improv-sandlot than a night with the WCO, I always say.

For some benighted people, the WCO means a highly sophisticated, organized, systematic, high-percentage, scientific approach to football. That perception is almost entirely faulty and off-point. What it is a stodgy, predictable, inflexible, easily countered offense. A well organized defense need not fear the WCO.

So what would be the correct solution for the Rams at this stage of the Season? Well it's simple really. You have to stretch the defense both horizontally and vertically. "Stretching" a defense horizontally alone doesn't stretch them at all these days.

A combined vertical and horizontal stretch is the signature and Hallmark of the Spread offense. The Spread is an offense Bradford knows well, and an offense which is mathematically sound. Mike Leach, the world's foremost authority on the Spread, is available on the market now. Ergo sum, you fire Shurmur, you hire Mike Leach. You run the vertical and horizontal stretch plays from the Spread, and you rip teams up.

Bottom line folks: I feel profoundly disconnected from the Rams.

The Rams executed a draft strategy this year I would never have pursued. None of the guys on my hit list were drafted by the Rams. All of the guys drafted by the Rams were either in my no-fly zone, or were complete unknowns. I would have changed offensive coordinators, Devaney did not. The lesson is plain: Devaney has a plan, and it doesn't look anything like my plan.

That would be fine if he also had a good plan. The problem is I don't like his plan. It involves ultra-high risk strategies such as (a) drafting wounded passers, (b) providing inadequate protection schemes, and (c) using an outdated, outmoded, systematically defeated offense (the WCO) that is certain to produce poor results.

Did I mention Pat Shurmur? I'd cut his head off. Get out the guillotine. Awe forget it...

Let me ask you straight-up: Do you think Devaney's plan is a good plan?

The whole team is headed in a direction I don't like, as I knew it would.

Time to dump the West Coast Offense in St. Louis

It is time for the Rams to dump the West Coast Offense and adopt a more spread-like offense. Our experiment with the West Coast Offense has been a complete and unmitigated catastrophe. I don't mean maybe either.

The West Coast allegedly came to St. Louis in the form of Scott Linehan on January 19th of 2006. He was fired after game 4 of the 2008 regular season. Linehan will be forever known as the man who destroyed the Greatest Show on Turf. He destroyed it by getting rid of the Martz offense, which was little more a collection of plays custom tailored to the exact strengths of our offensive players. Linehan jammed our players into his edition of the West Coast system, a complex ball-control passing system based on flexible and adaptive routes. The players, particularly Torry Holt, Issac Bruce and Marc Bulger absolutely hated the system. They made a lot of mistakes. They were used to running exact routes, tailored to their strengths, and they loved it.

Linehan's solution was to get rid of Issac Bruce, try to unload Torry Holt, and stick with Bulger because of his cap number. That failed miserably.

Two years ago, the Rams drafted #2 overall, signifying that we were the 2nd worst team in football. Two years ago we did the same thing. This year are drafting number 1, signifying that we are the worst team in professional football. As I have stated many times on this blog, we are the worst team in professional football for 1 reason: We finished dead last in scoring. This indicates we have the worst offense in the league. So much for the West Coast in St. Louis.

Make no mistake, a large reason for our lack of point production is the West Coast Offensive system. The West Coast is outdated, outmoded and obsolete. It does not work well anymore. As coach Brian Billick says, nobody plays the West Coast offense as Walsh once did. Everybody has absorbed some components of the system, but nobody plays it as the 49ers did. This is because your can't play it as the 49ers did and enjoy success.

The 49er offense worked for a brief period of time and for just two historical reasons. In 1981 we were only 3 years removed from the 1978 rules changes which opened up the passing game. Teams were absolutely bomb-happy. Defenses were deathly afraid of the bomb. Second, we were only really 1 year removed from the epoch of the Steel Curtain defense. Everybody was still emulating the Steeler model of defense. This system was very much like the Tampa-2, dropping safeties back deep to stop big plays. They used their big and bad 4 down linemen to attack the quarterback, without much recourse to the blitz.

The epoch of 1981 to 1990 was just about perfect for dink-n-dunk scheme that Mr. Walsh invented. Most defenses would surrender the short pass to you, not believing that you could march down the field on a collection of mistake-free short passes. To his credit, Bill Belichick was
one of the first guys to realize that this program was lethal if left unchecked.

Belichick's response to the West Coast was simple and beautiful. He decided he would only defend 40 yards of ground from the line of scrimmage. He knew most of the action would occur in the first 15-20 yards from scrimmage. He called this first 20 yards the redzone. This turf would be defended with a hard man-on press coverage. The next 20 yards was called the yellow zone, and it was defended with a soft-zone coverage; a scheme notorious for generating vicious hits. His linebackers were instructed to smother running backs (like Roger Craig) circling out of the backfield. He knew full well that the 49ers had no thought of going deep down the field on a typical play. He understood Joe Montana did not have the arm to throw the football 50 yards down field with accuracy.

When confronted with the Belichick-Box, the only solution is for the Quarterback to (A) Run with the football (B) wait for the deep pass to open up. For a receiver to clear coverage more than 40 yards down field in full pads, more than 5 seconds of good pass-protection is needed. This was tough to come by as Lawrence Taylor and Leonard Marshall were rushing from the same or different sides of the line. Montana tried to hold the ball for more than 5 seconds in the NFC championship game of 1990/1991. Leonard Marshall effectively terminated his career with the 49ers on that day.

The Belichick Box defeats the West Coast offense. It is now the default defensive position for all teams about to play West Coast opponent. If you don't have an All-Pro offensive line, you won't break the box. If you don't have a super-mobile QB, you won't break the box. If you don't have world-class sprinters at the WR position, you won't break the box. This is why the West Coast Offense doesn't work anymore. Too much talent is required to defeat a relatively simple defensive scheme.

Guess what? The dirty little secret the NFL keeps in the closet is that a modified version of the Spread Offense is now the king of all passing attacks in Pro Football. This is the system the New England Patriots have been running since 2007. This is the system that allowed Tom Brady to break the touchdown record with 51. This is the system Ben Rothlisberger has been working in for the past two years. Both participants in this year's Super Bowl also use plenty of spread in their weekly play list.

The Spread Offense has aspects of the West Coast and aspects of the Air Coryell offense embedded with in it. This is a pass-first offense, where you establish the passing game, and then run later. You control the football and gain the lead by passing. Unlike these schemes, it is run out of the Shotgun. You line up with 3, 4 and even 5 wide receivers. Unlike these schemes, it almost always employs the quick-time, or no-huddle offense. Many plays are called at the line of scrimmage. The Spread most resembles what used to be called the Run-N-Shoot offense.

Interestingly enough, the Spread is considered a very QB and Wide Receiver friendly offense. It is flexible and adaptable to the strengths of your players. It is considered simple enough to implement in the short college season with relatively young and inexperienced players.

If this is a Copycat League, teams should emulate success, and anti-imitate failure. One of the most stubbornly run biased teams in the league has been my Rams, and we are officially the worst team in football. The most run biased team in Football is the Jets. They barely made the playoffs at 9-7. The Colts are dead last in rushing (#32) and yet they are the favorite to win this year's Super Bowl.

What does all this tell you?

1. 1-15 up to 9-7 is the victory range for run biased teams.
2. 9-7 up to 16-0 is the victory range for Spread teams.
   
3. Dump the Run First approach.
4. Adopt the Pass First approach.
5. Do not force players into a ridged and complex system like the West Coast.
6. Adopt a simple and flexible passing scheme like the Spread.
7. Tailor the system to fit the strengths of the players, as Mike Martz did.
   

The difference between West Coast and Air Coryell

So, one of the most persistent peeves I have as a football fan is the East Coast notion that Bill Walsh and Don Coryell were doing more or less the same thing. Not so. These are two different offensive philosophies. They have many things in common, but in the end, they are at loggerheads.

Let's start with commonalities

1. You throw to setup the run, you don't run to setup the pass.
2. You establish your passing game first. You don't establish your running game first.
3. You will substitute a short passing attack with your running backs for a standard conventional running attack.
4. You never attempt to run through a brick wall. You throw a short pass to go around the brick wall.
5. You pass early and often to get the lead. You defend that lead in the second half with a running attack that eats the clock in garbage time.
6. You use all 5 eligible receivers in the passing game. Every back on your team must have good to excellent hands.
7. There is a tendency to go with lighter, leaner, faster, more athletic offensive linemen
8. Receivers run complementary routes to clear defenders out of zones, and to create collisions between defensive players.
9. There is a strong focus on timing of routes. Both offenses expect receivers to be in a specific location within a specific interval of time. Both offenses require the QB to throw to a specific spot before the receiver is out of his break.

In the West Coast (Bill Walsh) offense, you will see the following things:

1. Short 3 step drops by the QB. Very few 7 step drops.
2. An East-West passing game rather than a North-South passing game.
3. The QB often throws the football before his receivers are finished with their breaks.
4. The offensive line must provide excellent protection for the QB, but not for long.
5. The Quarterback frequently has a specific (low) time limit in which he must throw the football. This is most often a three count. It can be longer.
6. There is always an outlet or dump-off receiver that the quarterback can throw to if he is under pressure. This is frequently a running back to his throwing-arm side.
7. The terminal point for most routes is within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage.
8. The favorite routes are quick slants, shallow crosses, dump-offs, half-back screens up the middle, flanker screens,
9. Receivers have a route tree which determines the routes they can run based on their position in the formation.
10. Receivers and Quarterbacks are expected to read and identify coverages. Receivers can adjust both depth of the pattern and the pattern itself based on the defensive coverage they are facing. The quarterback must read according to the same set of rules and correctly predict where the receiver will go.
11. The absolute idea is a ball-control passing attack, which advances slowly through the air. It chews up yards and minutes. You create many one-on-one collisions between running backs and defensive backs. You beat up the secondary with this form of short passing so you can throw deep later if necessary.
12. There are a few key phrases that have been used to describe Walsh's offense. Nick & Dime. Dink & Dunk. Continuation of the run by other means. Pass-first. Conservative pass-first. Low-risk passing attack. Ball-control passing attack. High efficiency passing attack.

The Gilman/Coryell/Martz style of offense is different in a number of ways.

1. The first element of Air Coryell is the bomb. You go deep, break off large chunks of yardage, and stab the defense in the heart.
2. You throw Noth and South, not East and West.
3. It not about ball control. Its about explosive plays gaining more than 25 yards per pop.
4. An ideal Air Coryell drive is no more than 3 plays long, and will cover 80 to 90 yards.
5. You force the safeties to drop deep and prevent the big pass.
6. You use motion and formation to construct mismatches.
7. The objective is to put your biggest play makers against the weakest links of the defense.
8. In the final analysis the objective is to put the ball in the hands of your biggest play makers, and let them run with the ball.
9. The system is extremely player-centric. What you do is going to be predicated on the players you have.
10. There are a lot of 5 and 7 step drops.
11. What you like to do is highly predicated on the sort of players you have, the sort of mismatches you think you can create.

In the final analysis, I would tell you that Walsh's system is much more an organized system of football that is very formulaic. A West Coast offense team will play week after week with basically the same offensive game plan. Because the passing plays themselves are loaded with adaptive option routes, the change per coverage and adjustment to defense should always happen automatically... unless the defense has something really special in mind for you.

Air Coryell is much less an organized system of football, and much more an offensive philosophy explaining how you should make aggressive use of absolutely fantastic play makers, and exploit weaknesses in the enemy defenses. In the West Coast system, you take absolutely fantastic playmakers like Jerry Rice, Sterling Sharp, Shannon Sharp, John Taylor, Rod Smith, Terrel Davis, Terrel Owens, Roger Craig, Ricky Waters, etc. and you do almost the same things with them. The system rules. The system dictates to the players. The better the players, the better the results the system produces, but they must execute according to the system. Air Coryell is different. The system is rubbery, and plasticy, and will change to maximally exploit the skills of different groups play makers. The more devastating the group of play makers, the aggressive the attack shots get.

Consider the Rams the Chargers. The Greatest Show on Turf and Air Coryell are the two greatest implementations of the system we have seen {unless you want to talk about the 1950s Rams under UCLA Bruin & Hall of Famer Bobby Waterfield}. While they were brothers under the skin, they were different in many ways. I think it is reasonable to say that Kellen Winslow was Dan Foutes' biggest play maker, and his favorite target. As such, the tight end was an absolutely massive factor in the Don Coryell's scheme. On the other hand, the tight end was not such an important factor in Mike Martz's scheme in St. Louis. Roland Williams was a nice tight end, but he was not Kellen Winslow. Rather, much of the focus was on Marshall Faulk, as he was the biggest play maker on a team loaded with lethal weapons. Muncie and Brooks combined output never matched the 2,429 yards that Marshall Faulk produced in 1999.

There are some other system-oriented things. Martz's playbook relies on a Numbers System for nomenclature. The West Coast relies on code names for formations and route numbers for receivers. So you have Base, Tiger, Zebra, Eagle describing the personnel on the field. You use colors like Brown, Blue and Green to describe variations of formation. You use numbers like 69 or 54 to describe the routes your primary and secondary receivers should run. Each route has a number. The larger the number, the deeper the route. Even numbers go out of bounds towards the sidelines. Odd numbers go in towards the center of the field. So, the key point is the language of the play is different.