And the skillset of the opponents and the coverages they are playing. This is really worth printing out for the numbnuts hereabouts who know nothing about anything other than wailing for the deep ball to Moss:
Q: In your opinion as the play caller why wasn’t the ball going down the field more in that game?
JM: The first thing you have to understand or take into consideration when you’re trying to get the ball down the field against any team is how much time you need to throw it. The Colts obviously have a significant pass rush, very good pass rushers and so you have to make a determination whether that’s a big part of your game plan or not. The way that they played - they’re a zone team, they’ve got a lot of defensive backs and linebackers looking at the quarterback on most snaps. They are very rarely in man coverage so when you have a lot of people back deep trying to make you throw it in front of them and they’re looking at the quarterback trying to read where the ball is going to be thrown and then they’re all trying to get to the ball at the same time that’s sometimes a little bit more difficult. They were rolling the coverage to Randy [Moss] most of the night - putting a corner up near him, putting a safety up high behind him and in past years against the Colts, again you have to really pick your spots. Last year we hit one on them to Randy in the game in ’07 but had two others that we were trying to force down the field picked off. In ’06 it was very similar we tried to throw the ball down the field a few times and didn’t have very good success doing it either. It’s a combination of the pass rush, how much time you need to hold it to throw the ball down there, what they’re playing to try to take a certain player away and how much success you think you’re going to have throwing it when there are people that are always significantly in the deep part of the field. We had a shot later in the game where we put Randy in the slot and the safety happened to over play inside and had a chance to hit [Jabar] Gaffney up the sideline and it just didn’t work out. Every game is different. You have to gauge how much time you have to protect, what openings they give you based on the coverages they play and how smart it is to take those risks and those chances in the type of game that it may be.