A must read - an inside look at how a game plan is developed

Every now and then we get to see Peter King write something worthwhile. It's the kind of thing he is actually good at. What we see is the complexity and structure of how the Arizona Cardinals create a game plan for their game with Cleveland. There is LOTS on interesting tidbits on the the weekly grind of getting an offensive game plan together. Bruce Ariens is one of the better HC's in the game and I assume a lot of what we will read will be similar to what Josh and Tom go through each week. I'm sure there are differences, but the shear amount of information that needs to be digested is the same.

BTW- Most of this narrative is seen through Carson Palmer's eyes. It is even more compelling since AZ could very well be our Superbowl opponent if we both get there. ENJOY. I know I did.

Warning: this is a long story in 2 parts, and goes into great detail. Those of you with short attention spans will need to avoid this.

Arizona Cardinals' Carson Palmer goes inside a game plan for MMQB | The MMQB with Peter King

patfanken said:

Every now and then we get to see Peter King write something worthwhile. It's the kind of thing he is actually good at. What we see is the complexity and structure of how the Arizona Cardinals create a game plan for their game with Cleveland. There is LOTS on interesting tidbits on the the weekly grind of getting an offensive game plan together. Bruce Ariens is one of the better HC's in the game and I assume a lot of what we will read will be similar to what Josh and Tom go through each week. I'm sure there are differences, but the shear amount of information that needs to be digested is the same.

BTW- Most of this narrative is seen through Carson Palmer's eyes. It is even more compelling since AZ could very well be our Superbowl opponent if we both get there. ENJOY. I know I did.

Warning: this is a long story in 2 parts, and goes into great detail. Those of you with short attention spans will need to avoid this.

Arizona Cardinals' Carson Palmer goes inside a game plan for MMQB | The MMQB with Peter King

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Ken, those with short attention spans have you on ignore.

Not true! I find Ken's insights to be short to the point and very relevant. I used to be able to jump into the real heavy reading and have no problem, but as I have aged, sadly we all do I have not been able to focus on longer articles or even books.

This is one of my great losses as I was a voracious reader reading about a book every day or two, now it takes me as much as a month to digest a book and I still will have lost some of the good parts.

Keep up the idle thoughts Ken, I love them and almost all of your threads. I try to follow them as much as I can.

Another great example to provide ignorant people who think football players are just big dumb animals chasing a ball

patfanken said:

AZ could very well be our Superbowl opponent if we both get there.

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It's pretty dang certain they'll be our opponents if we both get there.

turkeyneck said:

It's pretty dang certain they'll be our opponents if we both get there.

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well, them and the NYFL.

I usually hate Peter king with a passion but I gotta admit that was a Damn good article with many fasinating insights. I would love to see a similar piece on the pats. I also want to see what the virtual reality machine looks like, it would be so cool to watch yourself throw and see how mechanics affect every pass. A typical game has what 70-80 offensive snaps yet they have 171 plays to choice from? All chosen based on the opponent and what they like to do based on weeks of film study. Kind of amazing when you think about the time effort and money that goes into a game every week

A classic article we'll be reading and re-reading for years. Fantastic! Thanks for posting, Ken.

Ivan said:

Ken, those with short attention spans have you on ignore.

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When Ken says a story is going to be long it's akin to Bill Belichick telling us he'll be brief. I believe them.

There is so much to the game that we don't get to understand as we watch the plays unfold. I'd love to understand the play design, the variations based on the various reads, as we watch it unfold. You could then spend an hour on each play, analyzing each player's execution and how the other side reacted. Even not having that inside understanding, knowing the complexity and the individual tasks that have to be executed is what makes football such a compelling game. It is truly a team sport.

An amazingly good article. Unfortunately while reading through it I kept asking myself, "how was 0.2 psi evert allowed to become such an irresponsibly overblown issue?". This article describes what it takes to be a great QB. It takes a great coaching staff, film watching, game planning, studying etc.. and a QB who can put it all together and make the right decision within 2 seconds after the snap.

Anyways, great article. I had an idea what they went through each week but had never read anything this detailed before.

Thanks for posting it.

raduray said:

There is so much to the game that we don't get to understand as we watch the plays unfold. I'd love to understand the play design, the variations based on the various reads, as we watch it unfold. You could then spend an hour on each play, analyzing each player's execution and how the other side reacted. Even not having that inside understanding, knowing the complexity and the individual tasks that have to be executed is what makes football such a compelling game. It is truly a team sport.

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The fact is there aren't that many running plays given that there are only 9 "holes" to direct them to. Where the creativity comes in is in the various formations and motions you can use to disguise them. The same thing for a basic pass offense. On any pass play you are using 3-5 people in some pattern designed to either create an open receiver, or to create 3 levels of options for the QB to attack the defense.

In other words its taking a simple concept, then creating a dozen different ways to do the same thing. What makes the game so beautiful is that you could do the same thing on the defensive side. All defenses have the same basic theme to start, and THEN you get creative in order to keep the offense from knowing what you are doing.

Think about it. Regardless of what alignment the defense shows, when the ball is snapped, the DC has to make sure that he has covered (to some degree) every area the offense can attack. Just as the offense has to know that when a team aligns in some sort of overload, where a wide gap seems to be available, when the ball is snapped THAT gap will be filled by someone.

This can be a topic of another thread, but when you think about it, the biggest development over the last 30 years has been in the development of the language skills that allows QB's to literally move players wholesale right at the LOS. Back in the day, QB's could change things a bit, but it was fairly primitive compared to what QB's can do now. Again, the same goes for defensive changes. More and more on both sides of the ball, the origninal call, is NOT what winds up being actually what's run. There is SO much that goes on now at the LOS.

,.....and I'm now officially rambling

Actually that was one of your shorter posts. (just kidding... a little LOL.. hey, I read them!)

I think I can give you one reason why you'd never see BB give a reporter that much access for an article like this (* for being aware of Michael Holley and Patriots Reign but that didn't focus on play calling per se). Look at the photo of the plays and formations on the hotel bed.. Save the image and enlarge it..Yup unlike the white board of Arians' plays, they didn't blur it out and you can read all the plays.....I imagine if I can figure that out, so can other people and teams that might play Arizona....

Great find, Ken.

That article is definitely one of the better ones I've read this year. Only two things I disagree with: The Cards are not the best coached team in this league, and yes there is a guy that outworks Carson, and his name is Tom Brady.

These articles make you realize how big the gap must be between being a quarterback in college and in the professional game. Whatever you might learn in college about the QB's arm strength, accuracy and general athleticism, you really don't know his ability to learn and run an offense like this.

Drafting a player in the first round then throwing him into the fire straight away looks like the wrong way to go. It may work, but, as like as not, the poor guy needs to learn on the job for three or four years, by which time his contract is nearly up and the coach who drafted him has been fired. It makes me appreciate the wisdom of Bill Walsh who advised that you should draft a quarterback EVERY year.

Patsfanin Philly said:

I think I can give you one reason why you'd never see BB give a reporter that much access for an article like this (* for being aware of Michael Holley and Patriots Reign but that didn't focus on play calling per se). Look at the photo of the plays and formations on the hotel bed.. Save the image and enlarge it..Yup unlike the white board of Arians' plays, they didn't blur it out and you can read all the plays.....I imagine if I can figure that out, so can other people and teams that might play Arizona....

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So what if you could get all 171 plays. What good would it do you. Even if you KNEW what play Josh called into Brady and adjusted your defense to stop it, Brady would only audible away from it.

Now I agree (sadly) that it is unlikely he'd allow much more of a look inside than he did in "do your job". But even then we can see the differences between he and Ariens. Brady meets with BB at least twice a week to talk about the offense, and that doesn't count the time he spends with Josh.

sturmrider said:

Not true! I find Ken's insights to be short to the point and very relevant. I used to be able to jump into the real heavy reading and have no problem, but as I have aged, sadly we all do I have not been able to focus on longer articles or even books.

This is one of my great losses as I was a voracious reader reading about a book every day or two, now it takes me as much as a month to digest a book and I still will have lost some of the good parts.

Keep up the idle thoughts Ken, I love them and almost all of your threads. I try to follow them as much as I can.

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It's not age sturm, it's the interwebs. It's full of brainpiders that capture your attention and poison your mind against deeper pursuits.