I've long been a fan of "use what everyone else ignores." The whole point of Moneyball v1 was that the whole league was undervaluing OBP and offensive contributions of guys like Scott Hatteberg because they thought that other metrics were what counted. A few years later, the entire NFL had gone away from anything involving tight ends, and Belichick realized there were lots of very talented tight ends that nobody wanted, so he grabbed some and made an offense around them.
The current NFL is all about passing. But if you can run for 4 yards a carry, why not run a lot more? OK, it takes longer to score, but if you keep the ball and generate points eventually, who cares how long it takes? And that also means that while defenses are so busy getting leaner and faster to cover spread offenses, you can build attacks that maintain edge-to-edge pressure to keep the DBs on the field but simply overpower smaller defenders when you run it.
I bet there are great power-blocking offensive linemen (and decent-catching-great-blocking TEs) out there who are going unnoticed, and Brian Robinson sure is built to run people over. Adding that to your offense is a lot cheaper than playing another lottery ticket looking for the next Tom Brady.
There's definitely some logic in what you're saying, but the issue with just going for a 4ypc run average and slowly working your way down the field is it leaves very little margin for error. Washington essentially did that this year with Howell and quick game passing. When he was extremely efficient, offense worked. But if he made mistake, or if the offense had a false start/holding penalty and got backed up, it was very very tough for that style to overcome it.
I'm not saying don't build a team around the run game, I'm just saying you need to do stuff off of it. Why Johnson and the Lions are so good, just like why Shanahan and the 49ers or any of the Shanahan tree are so good, is that they build their play-action game off the run game and can create explosives that way as a complement to the run game, which in turn then makes it easier to run the ball as teams sit back to protect against the play-action stuff.
The other thing you have to be careful of with that style of being run heavy and eating tons of time off the clock is if you fall behind. If your offense has a few bad run looks, get stuff and goes 3-and-out on the opening 2 drives, which is entirely plausible, they could well be down 10/14-0 by the time they get the ball back for the 3rd drive. At that point, it becomes very hard to win while taking so long to score because you're playing catch up. If you rely purely on that style of play, you'll almost never catch up unless you get a big turnover from the defense or a score from special teams or something like that.
So I absolutely see what you're saying and there's definitely some merit in taking a zig while everyone else is zagging approach, but you need to make sure you have some balance to it too
Oh definitely. I'm not saying "wishbone!". But power running is undervalued these days., and making it a bigger piece of the offense than "sometimes I hand it off before throwing" is an opportunity to do something well at a time when nobody else pays it any attention.
You're right that by running more, you're less good at the comeback-offense. On the other hand, it also means that you can get the ball with the lead and 8 minutes left and just finish the game with 5 first downs. The Redskins of old could run when everyone knew they were running and still keep making first downs. Maybe they'd have to throw it a little more now, but "building a team around the run game" is basically what I'm suggesting, rather than returning to the 1940's.
Yeah, I assumed that's more where you were at, I just wanted to caution against going too far with it as I've seen quite a few people suggest they need to go back to the run-heavy, time of possession style of old.
The fun part about Ben Johnson's scheme is that while the Lions do use more gap scheme, they still use a ton of zone. The OL is just that versatile. You'll see in my post on Johnson vs Tampa Bay in the playoffs that Johnson's game plan was very much leaning into the zone scheme rather than the gap scheme elements. Shows he can be very flexible and fit his scheme to the personnel and specific opponent each week.
Nice article Mark. What do you think happened in the second half of that game where the Lions only scored one field goal? Was it simply down to good defensive adjustments by the Rams?
I really like him as a HC candidate, but my preference is still MacDonald.
I've had a few people ask that, so lets break it down. It feels like a really bad result after such a strong first half, but actually it's not as bad as it might have looked.
First drive out of the half, they get the FG.
Then they had a 4 play drive. First play was a 10 yard catch by St.Brown. Then they had back to back 2 yard runs to set up 3rd&6. On that 3rd&6, Goff missed a wide open shallow cross that would have been a first down, attempted to step up in the pocket and scramble to open field for what could well have also been a first down, but ended up tripping over his teammates foot and falling over before being tapped down for a sack.
Next drive was a 3 and out. 1st play, attempted to take a shot on play-action, wasn't there and Goff had to throw it away. 2nd play was a 6-yard run to set up 3rd&4. On 3rd down, Goff tried to hit a Garcon/McLaurin-style 3rd and short hitch route to Josh Reynolds. Reynolds was there, but Goff sailed the throw over his head.
After that, the Lions only other drive in the second half was the one where they ran out the clock and won the game. So really, they only had 2 bad drives in the game and even then, on both third downs there were clear options to convert and Goff just missed them both. So I'm not overly worried about that second half performance.
I've long been a fan of "use what everyone else ignores." The whole point of Moneyball v1 was that the whole league was undervaluing OBP and offensive contributions of guys like Scott Hatteberg because they thought that other metrics were what counted. A few years later, the entire NFL had gone away from anything involving tight ends, and Belichick realized there were lots of very talented tight ends that nobody wanted, so he grabbed some and made an offense around them.
The current NFL is all about passing. But if you can run for 4 yards a carry, why not run a lot more? OK, it takes longer to score, but if you keep the ball and generate points eventually, who cares how long it takes? And that also means that while defenses are so busy getting leaner and faster to cover spread offenses, you can build attacks that maintain edge-to-edge pressure to keep the DBs on the field but simply overpower smaller defenders when you run it.
I bet there are great power-blocking offensive linemen (and decent-catching-great-blocking TEs) out there who are going unnoticed, and Brian Robinson sure is built to run people over. Adding that to your offense is a lot cheaper than playing another lottery ticket looking for the next Tom Brady.
There's definitely some logic in what you're saying, but the issue with just going for a 4ypc run average and slowly working your way down the field is it leaves very little margin for error. Washington essentially did that this year with Howell and quick game passing. When he was extremely efficient, offense worked. But if he made mistake, or if the offense had a false start/holding penalty and got backed up, it was very very tough for that style to overcome it.
I'm not saying don't build a team around the run game, I'm just saying you need to do stuff off of it. Why Johnson and the Lions are so good, just like why Shanahan and the 49ers or any of the Shanahan tree are so good, is that they build their play-action game off the run game and can create explosives that way as a complement to the run game, which in turn then makes it easier to run the ball as teams sit back to protect against the play-action stuff.
The other thing you have to be careful of with that style of being run heavy and eating tons of time off the clock is if you fall behind. If your offense has a few bad run looks, get stuff and goes 3-and-out on the opening 2 drives, which is entirely plausible, they could well be down 10/14-0 by the time they get the ball back for the 3rd drive. At that point, it becomes very hard to win while taking so long to score because you're playing catch up. If you rely purely on that style of play, you'll almost never catch up unless you get a big turnover from the defense or a score from special teams or something like that.
So I absolutely see what you're saying and there's definitely some merit in taking a zig while everyone else is zagging approach, but you need to make sure you have some balance to it too
Oh definitely. I'm not saying "wishbone!". But power running is undervalued these days., and making it a bigger piece of the offense than "sometimes I hand it off before throwing" is an opportunity to do something well at a time when nobody else pays it any attention.
You're right that by running more, you're less good at the comeback-offense. On the other hand, it also means that you can get the ball with the lead and 8 minutes left and just finish the game with 5 first downs. The Redskins of old could run when everyone knew they were running and still keep making first downs. Maybe they'd have to throw it a little more now, but "building a team around the run game" is basically what I'm suggesting, rather than returning to the 1940's.
Yeah, I assumed that's more where you were at, I just wanted to caution against going too far with it as I've seen quite a few people suggest they need to go back to the run-heavy, time of possession style of old.
The fun part about Ben Johnson's scheme is that while the Lions do use more gap scheme, they still use a ton of zone. The OL is just that versatile. You'll see in my post on Johnson vs Tampa Bay in the playoffs that Johnson's game plan was very much leaning into the zone scheme rather than the gap scheme elements. Shows he can be very flexible and fit his scheme to the personnel and specific opponent each week.
Nice article Mark. What do you think happened in the second half of that game where the Lions only scored one field goal? Was it simply down to good defensive adjustments by the Rams?
I really like him as a HC candidate, but my preference is still MacDonald.
I've had a few people ask that, so lets break it down. It feels like a really bad result after such a strong first half, but actually it's not as bad as it might have looked.
First drive out of the half, they get the FG.
Then they had a 4 play drive. First play was a 10 yard catch by St.Brown. Then they had back to back 2 yard runs to set up 3rd&6. On that 3rd&6, Goff missed a wide open shallow cross that would have been a first down, attempted to step up in the pocket and scramble to open field for what could well have also been a first down, but ended up tripping over his teammates foot and falling over before being tapped down for a sack.
Next drive was a 3 and out. 1st play, attempted to take a shot on play-action, wasn't there and Goff had to throw it away. 2nd play was a 6-yard run to set up 3rd&4. On 3rd down, Goff tried to hit a Garcon/McLaurin-style 3rd and short hitch route to Josh Reynolds. Reynolds was there, but Goff sailed the throw over his head.
After that, the Lions only other drive in the second half was the one where they ran out the clock and won the game. So really, they only had 2 bad drives in the game and even then, on both third downs there were clear options to convert and Goff just missed them both. So I'm not overly worried about that second half performance.
Thanks for the reply Mark.
Of course!