Earlier on in training camp I had identified Yeatman as someone who stood out pretty well and seemed to have an excellent grasp of the offense and I was very surprised to see him get cut because we just did not have a viable backup for Gronk in the event of an injury and at the time Yeatman was cut, I thought that it would come back to bite us, and it did.
I was shocked when they kept Tarpinian over Yeatman (and others) - and on the active roster, no less, even though he missed most of camp with injuries (I thought for sure he would be redshirted). The guy must TRULY be something special. In fairness, he posted some pretty fine ProDay workout numbers for a 6'2"/238 LB:
4.56/40, 1.54/10yd - 16 reps - 37.0 vert - 1005 brd - 4.10 ss - 6.78 3c
For comparison, these were just a hair short of Von Miller's Combine numbers and just a hair short of Aaron Williams' numbers as a CB.
I am of the opinion that we should minimize the use of the empty formation unless we are able to obtain a threat (or two) that can legitimately stretch the field and prevent the D from playing so compressed.
Another thing that may help is Ridley.
BGE can power for his 4-6 yards between the tackles literally over 90% of the time (and sometimes quite a bit more than 6 yds), but he doesn't have the burst or second cut to break one to the outside for a long gainer very often and he's not much of a receiving threat. Woodhead, OTOH, is a legitimate, though underused, threat to catch a pass, has a good burst to the outside and decent wiggle, but not a lot of power between the tackles. And defenses, I'd have to guess, are pretty well aware of these limitations for both of them.
Ridley, however, appears like he may embody the best of both (assuming he fixes his ball-carrying technique in the off-season). He may not have quite the LB-carrying power of BGE or the ankle-breaking shiftiness that Woody often exhibits, but pretty close. And he's demonstrated that he can run a route and make a catch.
Anyway, if Ridley develops well enough in the off-season, the Pats could have a guy in that formation who the defense can't really count on to do one thing. The parallel, of course, is the deep-threat WR who can run other routes just as well. And play-action becomes inherently more effective.
I am not a stats geek but I believe the majority of our biggest gains have come out of the one back ace formation; especially out of the play-action.
You may well be dead-on about this, but I'm not aware of any source for stats that would prove or disprove the hypothesis (play-by-play doesn't consistently note formations or personnel substitutions). Maybe Reiss would have something, or ESPN Stats & Info. The alternative would be re-watching every game closely. Which sounds like fun, but, believe it or not, I actually DO have a Life outside all this.
In any case, along about Week-2, I believe I remarked here (or maybe at PatriotsPlanet or on Reiss' blog) that Brady and BGE/Woody had greatly improved their play-action technique from 2010 - that they were all consistently "selling it" like I'd rarely seen before. However, I also noted (and posted) later in the season, that they seemed to have backslid into a more "token" fakery that wasn't quite as consistently effective. Fortunately, the great progress of both Gronk and Ahern in their dual roles more than made up for this.
But, again, Ridley plus more consistent discipline on the play-action selling job plus Ahern and Gronk staying healthy (and, hopefully, with a decent backup) plus a well-rounded deep threat = immense profit for the offense.
