Vanilla play-calling by design

[BradyManny]

Reiss speculates:

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2007/12/24/win_wasnt_showy_maybe_by_design/

Makes a lot of sense. I think BB is using the "blueprint" idea to his advantage. If you know how teams "think" they can beat you, then you know what their likely approach to beating you will be, and then you can figure out to adjust.

I've been saying for a couple weeks I think we'll see a lot less 4-wide spread in the playoffs, and revert back to 3-wide, 1 TE, 1 RB once our TEs are healthy. I'm more convinced after yesterday that this will be the case. They're just biding their time now until playoff time.

 

[xmarkd400x]

It makes sense. What did Minnesota run in '98 with a similar personnel package? 3 WR 1 TE 1 RB. So, who knows.

 

[njpatsfan]

There may be an element of truth to this. But the fact that we had not a single TE playing that started the season with the team probably had a bigger effect on playcalling.

R

 

[BradyManny]

I wish Reiss - or rather, some intern of his - would delve into the stats and effectiveness of each personnel grouping.

I think the reason they ran the 4-wide almost entirely all game yesterday was two-fold: 1) they don't have enough TEs to employ other groupings 2) teams already have a scheme in mind to combat this formation. Why bother bringing out something else against the Dolphins in a completely meaningless game?

Put game planning on the back burner, just run the spread, and it comes down to execution, in the first half they executed, in the second half they didn't. They end up winning the game, and the Jags scout wasted a Sunday afternoon and airfare to Boston.

 

[DaedalusX]

I posted this very same article earlier.

 

[shirtsleeve]

I've been saying this for a while now, too. The line I find funniest from this article is here:

Veteran Dolphins quarterback Trent Green, now in his 14th season, detailed how teams generally scout the opposition.

"Normally, you study the previous four games. You break down the four games, and you also want to go back and look at the teams which run a similar offense or defense to you, depending on what side of the ball you're scouting. Then you might get some tendencies there," said Green, who traveled with the Dolphins yesterday despite being on the injured reserve list.

"In New England's case, you'd probably go back and review the games that are the most meaningful games, prior to them having everything sewn up, as far as home-field, byes, division, those kind of things, and you evaluate those. Obviously, there is a little more weight on those at that time."

That would mean October!:singing: