Nice analysis. Black Monday can't come soon enough. Hopefully Harris goes the traditional way (chooses the GM, who hires the HC, who assembles his staff) and finds the right guy.
Yeah, will be interesting to see how Harris goes about it. You’d think to attract the best GM candidates, Harris would offer them full control, but others have speculated he might hire an experienced football guy in a “president of football ops” role that then hires a GM and HC that report to him. I’d rather they just go down the GM route.
Great article Mark. As fans it’s always hard for us to judge how effective play-callers really are. Analysis like this helps us much better understand where are play callers struggle and not. Seems like we’re getting a new offensive play caller so I look forward to seeing you break down other OCs and teams schemes. A potential HC candidate and play caller you could perhaps add to the list of potential breakdowns this offseason is Todd Monken. He’s really made the Ravens offense better this season and into a serious a SB contender.
Oh yeah, Monken is a good one. I’ll add him to the list of candidates I have currently to break down. I dont know exactly how many I’ll manage to get through because the search could take a week or two, it could take a month or it could be over in a matter of days, we don’t know. If the hires are quick then I might not get the chance to get to all the guys on my list. But I’ll definitely add Monken to it, think he could get some interviews.
Great breakdown, Mark. Regarding the criticism of Bienemy, like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. However, you alluded to it at the beginning of your piece, when looking the big, overall picture, the approach with Howell was completely f'd up. First year QB's shouldn't lead the league in pass attempts. Bring him along slowly, rely more on the run game, work the RPO's, etc.
Regarding Bienemy and creativity, you have to delineate b/w the run and the pass game. There was some creativity here and there in the passing game as you mentioned (too little, too late, however) but virtually none in the run game. We didn't see misdirection, counters, reverses, runs from unique formations, etc. As anyone who's played or coached football, we all know that OL want to pound people and get momentum going in the run game. It fires everybody up. This rarely happened. It was the same thing with Scott Turner.
I actually think they’ve run quite a diverse set of run schemes. They’ve obviously used a lot of zone runs from the gun, but they’ve also mixed in plenty of gap scheme stuff. Seen Duo, Power, Counter, Trap etc. Both from under center and from the gun. Also done some same side gun gap stuff, where they run the ball to the side of the RB to break that tendency of the run always going away from the alignment of the back in the gun.
What they’ve lacked is the setting stuff up with the run game. If we use Kyle Shanahan as an example, he will often show a certain personnel group, formation and motion to a defense to run a basic zone run scheme. Then later in the series or maybe on the next drive or two, he’ll show the same look, same motion and fake that run and use some form of play-action off it. Then later they’ll circle back to that same look and run a different play off it, building layers off the same look. The Commanders don’t do that with the running game, in part because they just don’t run often enough for it to work that well and be worthwhile planning and putting it all together.
Scott Turner’s issue, in my eyes, was that the run game and passing game were completely separate from each other. Individually, the runs were solid, as were a lot of the passes. But they were completely unrelated to each other. It’s like he had one person design the run game each week, someone else design a passing game, and then he’d just pick those calls out of a hat without considering how to try and mesh them all together nicely.
No consistent running game, pass protection rules not working, poor spacing on route concepts and little feel for the in-game pace...EB has been a bust.
Our Coaching staff proved that this a young man's game in the NFL.
Tough crowd! But I can’t totally disagree with any harsh assessments of the Commanders’ offense. Much of what EB has tried has not paid off substantially.
But while that will probably doom his head coaching chances, I think he may get another shot at an OC job. (May get another shot at OC??? Has this gamble at coming to Washington been that much of disaster for him?!)
I’m wondering though if the Chiefs drop-off in several offensive categories has anything to do with his absence, or is just a coincidence. Would he be welcome back there in his old capacity?
Nice analysis. Black Monday can't come soon enough. Hopefully Harris goes the traditional way (chooses the GM, who hires the HC, who assembles his staff) and finds the right guy.
Yeah, will be interesting to see how Harris goes about it. You’d think to attract the best GM candidates, Harris would offer them full control, but others have speculated he might hire an experienced football guy in a “president of football ops” role that then hires a GM and HC that report to him. I’d rather they just go down the GM route.
Great article Mark. As fans it’s always hard for us to judge how effective play-callers really are. Analysis like this helps us much better understand where are play callers struggle and not. Seems like we’re getting a new offensive play caller so I look forward to seeing you break down other OCs and teams schemes. A potential HC candidate and play caller you could perhaps add to the list of potential breakdowns this offseason is Todd Monken. He’s really made the Ravens offense better this season and into a serious a SB contender.
Oh yeah, Monken is a good one. I’ll add him to the list of candidates I have currently to break down. I dont know exactly how many I’ll manage to get through because the search could take a week or two, it could take a month or it could be over in a matter of days, we don’t know. If the hires are quick then I might not get the chance to get to all the guys on my list. But I’ll definitely add Monken to it, think he could get some interviews.
Great breakdown, Mark. Regarding the criticism of Bienemy, like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. However, you alluded to it at the beginning of your piece, when looking the big, overall picture, the approach with Howell was completely f'd up. First year QB's shouldn't lead the league in pass attempts. Bring him along slowly, rely more on the run game, work the RPO's, etc.
Regarding Bienemy and creativity, you have to delineate b/w the run and the pass game. There was some creativity here and there in the passing game as you mentioned (too little, too late, however) but virtually none in the run game. We didn't see misdirection, counters, reverses, runs from unique formations, etc. As anyone who's played or coached football, we all know that OL want to pound people and get momentum going in the run game. It fires everybody up. This rarely happened. It was the same thing with Scott Turner.
Just my take.
I actually think they’ve run quite a diverse set of run schemes. They’ve obviously used a lot of zone runs from the gun, but they’ve also mixed in plenty of gap scheme stuff. Seen Duo, Power, Counter, Trap etc. Both from under center and from the gun. Also done some same side gun gap stuff, where they run the ball to the side of the RB to break that tendency of the run always going away from the alignment of the back in the gun.
What they’ve lacked is the setting stuff up with the run game. If we use Kyle Shanahan as an example, he will often show a certain personnel group, formation and motion to a defense to run a basic zone run scheme. Then later in the series or maybe on the next drive or two, he’ll show the same look, same motion and fake that run and use some form of play-action off it. Then later they’ll circle back to that same look and run a different play off it, building layers off the same look. The Commanders don’t do that with the running game, in part because they just don’t run often enough for it to work that well and be worthwhile planning and putting it all together.
Scott Turner’s issue, in my eyes, was that the run game and passing game were completely separate from each other. Individually, the runs were solid, as were a lot of the passes. But they were completely unrelated to each other. It’s like he had one person design the run game each week, someone else design a passing game, and then he’d just pick those calls out of a hat without considering how to try and mesh them all together nicely.
No consistent running game, pass protection rules not working, poor spacing on route concepts and little feel for the in-game pace...EB has been a bust.
Our Coaching staff proved that this a young man's game in the NFL.
Tough crowd! But I can’t totally disagree with any harsh assessments of the Commanders’ offense. Much of what EB has tried has not paid off substantially.
But while that will probably doom his head coaching chances, I think he may get another shot at an OC job. (May get another shot at OC??? Has this gamble at coming to Washington been that much of disaster for him?!)
I’m wondering though if the Chiefs drop-off in several offensive categories has anything to do with his absence, or is just a coincidence. Would he be welcome back there in his old capacity?