Thanks for the breakdown. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Maybe worth a full post, but do you have any high level thoughts on EB's year? I feel like that would be helpful to answer the question of offensive genius (Shanahan) vs leader (Campbell).
As a brief summary. I think EB's offense is one that works, but it requires really efficient QB play from a QB that can process information quickly pre and post snap. That's not typically what you get from young QBs, bar maybe Brock Purdy. I think there wasn't enough flexibility in the system to build packages around specific players like I highlighted in this post with Ben Johnson building things around Gibbs and St. Brown etc. His philosophy was more along the lines of believing they have so many weapons, they can just run concepts and be fine with whoever gets the ball. There is some merit to that, but again it relies on efficient QB play. Howell had that for spells this year but not consistently enough.
If EB and Howell got a second year, and EB was able to fully hire his own staff, instead of having to hold over a bunch of Rivera's staff, it would probably be a lot smoother and be more efficient. But there was still a lack of run game, which meant the play-action stuff was almost non-existant and again, became overly reliant on extremely efficient QB play without providing him much help.
Choice routes are all run with that little arc release to get the RB/WR into the seam and create space for him to cut inside or outside. Then you'll see the player reading the coverage and the QB reading the receiver waiting for him to make his break before he throws the ball instead of anticipating it. The receiver will then use a little stutter or basketball crossover move to juke the defender and make his cut.
Hello Mark. Great right-up on a great candidate. Would it be possible to include more on the running game that the candidates use and the efficiency of their run schemes. Both the Niners and Ravens make great use of the run game and we have two good backs - three if we retain Gibson - so it would be good to understand how potential HC candidates might use them.
Yeah, my initial thing with Johnson was going to be about looking at the run scheme and how he uses more gap stuff than we've seen here recently, but also incorporates plenty of zone. I felt like the other things I talked about were more important to his overall philosophy of how he sets things up to be successful and tailors things to his personnel, so the run game would probably follow in that fashion. The Lions use more gap scheme stuff but if Johnson arrives here and feels the personnel suits more zone, he certainly has zone stuff in his playbook.
But I will certainly keep that in mind in the future, and if we get say a second round of interviews or if Johnson is the guy hired, then I will certainly be going into more detail about specific schemes, how Washington's personnel fit/don't fit those schemes and that will go into the details I think you're looking for.
Let me ask you this question, and it will apply to every other HC candidate you review
How complex/difficult/forgiving is this person's scheme?
Does it have so many moving parts that if one part breaks down, the play is going to fail?
Does the scheme require a very rare skillset that is hard to acquire ( ie, super accurate qb, very mobile qb, or qb who can read a defense exceptionally well , or receiver with a special skill set), or can it be run with most pro level talent ?
Can it be run against most/all defensive schemes? Or, do you have to "catch" the defense in a certain look in order for it to succeed?
How applicable is it to all locations/weather? Is it going to be very tough to run in cold/rainy conditions that you get on the East Coast late in the season?
How QB friendly is it? We are going to have a young qb (Rookie or Sam ??) is he going to have to bring in one of his former Qb's to teach the system? And is the system difficult/complex to the point that results (at least good ones) arent going to begin to consistently show up until year 2 or longer in the system?
How do his former players feel about his ability to teach and his ability to respond to failure?
There's a lot to unpack here and a lot of it I can't really answer because I don't have access to how he teaches things or the playbook he uses etc. But I'll try to answer what I can with regards to Johnson.
With regards to complexity, I'd need to to be more specific, but I assume you mean in regards to how tough is it to learn? Not how complex it appears to opposing defense? If that's the case, I couldn't really answer that because I haven't seen his playbook or been in meetings where he's teaching it. But the key is how well he teaches the system. Even the most complex systems can appear easy if taught well. I believe he uses the west coast offense as his base of terminology, but even in the west coast system theres a lot of variance. Sean Payton and Kyle Shanahan both run versions of the west coast offense, but the terminology within that core foundation of a system.
The point I made about the system being tailored to the personnel and individual player packages being intertwined sort of answers your second/third question. The idea there is that if one part fails, there should be a plan B (but that is the case in most systems, including EB's system right now). It shouldn't require rare skillsets, it's tailored to fit the guys that it has.
For your fourth question, it's very rare a system is good against most/all defensive schemes. Coaches will draw up individual plays that they'll call "good vs all" which have outs against most types of coverages. That's the kinda stuff EB has been running this year but Howell has been inconsistent with processing and getting the ball out quickly enough. But every coach in the league will build a game plan around what coverages/fronts/looks they're expecting in certain situations and design plays to beat those looks. That's not irregular, and the defense is doing the same thing, so sometimes the defense just wins a rep.
Johnson isn't shy about running the ball, certainly he wasn't with the Lions under Dan Campbell, so he should be fine playing in any weather.
It looks pretty QB friendly to me, but any system is always going to look better in year 2/3 in the system. Even Kyle Shanahan, who has one of the most QB friendly systems in the league, says it takes 3 years to master the system.
No idea about how his former players feel about him. Haven't done any research in that regard. That's the kinda thing the beat reporters will do if/when he gets hired.
One of the highlight fan experiences of the old Redskins was reading the comments of J Bostic after a Redskin victory over the Cowboys in which he leaned over and told Randy White they were coming over him about 4 or 5 straight times and there was nothing he could do about it.
Also, the old Packers under Lombardi had only a few plays, but the individual skill and group precision was such that no one could stop them
Yeah, nowadays defenses have figured out individual schemes well enough that offenses had to evolve beyond just a handful of plays and come up with hundreds of different plays/fomations etc. Those Lombardi plays were an entire offense back then, but would just be a small package of plays in a modern offense now.
There are certain things you can keep very simple and limit the number of schemes, like how Shanahan used to use exclusively outside and inside zone with very few variations. He'd have his OL run it so much that they'd master it to the point where they knew how defenses would try and attack it, what stunts they'd use to disrupt it, and the OL would anticipate them coming and pass them off easily. But at a certain point, teams will just stop something and you need to have a change up. That's why Kyle Shanahan incorporates a bunch of gap scheme stuff in his offense now, for when teams commit to certain fronts and schemes that are known to be strong against zone runs
Time to segue to the offseason, that time of the year when we BNG fans usually find a lot more faith & hope in the team than we end up with in the regular season! YAY!😜
Now that said annually disappointing regular season is mercifully over, I’m sure we all look forward to the knowledge you will be imparting to us on the top HC candidates. I’m again hearing a lot of buzz that the Commanders gig may actually be one of the most desirable ones! Who knew?! Hopefully that’s true, & the Harris Group can attract the candidate that ends up at the top of their wish list.
It is altogether fitting & proper that you should lead off with Ben (NOT Brian!😜) Johnson - this year’s HC golden boy. Appreciate your interesting breakdowns on the way he puts his twist on tried & true offensive practices.
I’m also interested in how much you feel Johnson has had to do with Jared Goff’s reemergence as effective NFL QB. After his early success, JG16’s career seemed to go into an eclipse, to the point where he was kinda considered a castoff - someone the Lions almost HAD to take off the Rams hands if they wanted to complete the Stafford trade. Have you seen evidence that BJ is a QB whisperer who revived a flagging career, or did Goff just need a change of scenery, a few good weapons, & a little time to get himself going again?
Goff was never a bad QB, he just had a limited ceiling. McVay felt like he hit that ceiling and had given him as many layups as he could (remember missing that deep shot in the super bowl vs the Pats that would have been a wide open TD?) and that to put the Rams over the top, he needed to upgrade. Stafford was that upgrade and they transitioned from the run game/play-action attack they needed to support Goff into a more pure drop back passing attack that suited Stafford, which won them a super bowl. Now McVay has evolved again, but that's a whole other topic.
So Goff was always good at the type of things Ben Johnson has asked him to do, which I thinks speaks to Johnson's ability as a coach to identify his strengths and play to them. For example, they use plenty of the same play-action stuff McVay used with Goff in LA because Goff was really good at that. They also use a lot of similar routes and passing concepts. I don't know if Johnson has a link to the Shanahan tree at all, I don't think he does, but it is very similar stylistically, so it would make sense that he could replicate a ton of the stuff Goff did well in LA and help him continue to be productive.
I dunno if you can call anyone a QB whisperer when they've only called plays for 1 QB though
Awesome answer MB! Glad to hear that Johnson seems to be the kind of coach that discovers a player’s strengths & then coaches to enhance them. Seems to make so much sense, right? Especially after 4 years of seeing pretty much the opposite method inflicted on our players! I like him already.
And speaking of Super Bowl LIII , the few things I remember about it was what I could glean from watching a a bit of it after finding it televised at an “American-style” pizza joint in Auckland while a New Zealand vacation. (What else so clearly screams “American!”) Two things stand out about it; 1) it was showing on MONDAY AFTERNOON, NZ time, & b) the people working there had ZERO idea about what they were looking at! Pretty funny.
The time differences are tough to handle if you aren't in the US. For me in the UK, we're 5 hours ahead of the US (or when I'm with my partner in Sweden, it's 6 hours ahead). So a regular Sunday 1pm kick off is fine, that starts at 6pm UK/7pm Sweden. Even the late afternoon sunday kick offs at 4/4:30pm US time are manageable. Start at 9/9:30pm UK, 10/10:30pm Sweden and finish at about 12/12:30 UK or 1/1:30am Sweden.
But when it comes to prime time games, it's a real battle. Those 8pm kick offs don't start until 1am UK, 2am Sweden time. I'll be lucky if they finish at 4am UK/5am Sweden time. I always have to try and adjust my body clock to live on US time during the season, but it's tough.
Thanks for sharing that info Mark. (your time zone situation actually crossed my mind when I wrote about my NZ experience.) Enjoy hearing your personal stories - especially those dealing with what’s it like to be an NFL expert living across the pond. It’s nice to get to know a bit more about you.
And now I’m gonna dig for more!😄 The 2nd part of my anecdote dealt with the Kiwis mystification with the American sporting event (SB53) they were showing in their establishment. I causes me to wonder if your friends & acquaintances in the UK (& Sweden) question why the heck you’ve decided to make a living from a sport that must be pretty obscure to most of them. Or has the NFL established enough of a bridgehead in Europe that it’s much more popular than I assume it is?
I have a handful of friends that are quite big sports fans and I’ve gotten 2 or 3 of them into the NFL over the years. One of my closest friends is a Texans fan (who I picked for him as an up and coming team YEARS ago when they had Kubiak as HC and Kyle Shanahan as OC, funnily enough). Another is a Bucs fa, so I chat with those two quite a lot about the NFL. But generally my friends are all quite jealous that I’ve managed to make a living out of this while they all have to do fairly normal jobs. (Though, they aren’t quite as jealous when they hear how much I’m making compared to them. Here’s hoping a strong ownership with a great offseason will boost some subscriptions!).
The awkwardness comes at things like going to get a haircut or grabbing a taxi or something. You sit down and they go “so what do you do?”. For the random average person, they don’t know what the NFL is or much about it, so occasionally I’ll try and explain but a lot of the time I can’t be bothered to go through all that for a 15 min hair cut or taxi ride or whatever, so I’ll make up some other story about what I do
I am happy to see the crowds that turn out Wembley (which I had the pleasure of attending during the London Olympics! I still remember looong walk from the stadium to the tube stop as being a crowded madhouse after the women’s soccer finals!!) & at Tottenham (a town I got to know during that trip) are so well received by sport fans in England. I have little doubt that a Commanders’ game in one of those 2 venues will go right to the top of my must-do list. (Both my sons studied in London - UCL & City, University of London - & I’ve developed quite an affinity for the old town!) It would be great to run into some of the BNG fans who subscribe here when that event happens. Who knows?!
And as far as your subscriptions go, I’m sure all here wish you the very best with that! Here’s hoping that a successful new Commanders regime sparks more interest. After all, a high tide does raise all ships!😃
Thanks for the breakdown. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Maybe worth a full post, but do you have any high level thoughts on EB's year? I feel like that would be helpful to answer the question of offensive genius (Shanahan) vs leader (Campbell).
Also, how do you identify choice routes?
I did a post a few weeks ago looking at some of the criticisms of EB, which still stands. If you wanna take a look at that, here's the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/markbullock/p/examining-if-criticisms-of-eric-bieniemys?r=fd8sn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As a brief summary. I think EB's offense is one that works, but it requires really efficient QB play from a QB that can process information quickly pre and post snap. That's not typically what you get from young QBs, bar maybe Brock Purdy. I think there wasn't enough flexibility in the system to build packages around specific players like I highlighted in this post with Ben Johnson building things around Gibbs and St. Brown etc. His philosophy was more along the lines of believing they have so many weapons, they can just run concepts and be fine with whoever gets the ball. There is some merit to that, but again it relies on efficient QB play. Howell had that for spells this year but not consistently enough.
If EB and Howell got a second year, and EB was able to fully hire his own staff, instead of having to hold over a bunch of Rivera's staff, it would probably be a lot smoother and be more efficient. But there was still a lack of run game, which meant the play-action stuff was almost non-existant and again, became overly reliant on extremely efficient QB play without providing him much help.
Choice routes are all run with that little arc release to get the RB/WR into the seam and create space for him to cut inside or outside. Then you'll see the player reading the coverage and the QB reading the receiver waiting for him to make his break before he throws the ball instead of anticipating it. The receiver will then use a little stutter or basketball crossover move to juke the defender and make his cut.
Thanks for the breakdown on EB and choice routes.
Hello Mark. Great right-up on a great candidate. Would it be possible to include more on the running game that the candidates use and the efficiency of their run schemes. Both the Niners and Ravens make great use of the run game and we have two good backs - three if we retain Gibson - so it would be good to understand how potential HC candidates might use them.
Yeah, my initial thing with Johnson was going to be about looking at the run scheme and how he uses more gap stuff than we've seen here recently, but also incorporates plenty of zone. I felt like the other things I talked about were more important to his overall philosophy of how he sets things up to be successful and tailors things to his personnel, so the run game would probably follow in that fashion. The Lions use more gap scheme stuff but if Johnson arrives here and feels the personnel suits more zone, he certainly has zone stuff in his playbook.
But I will certainly keep that in mind in the future, and if we get say a second round of interviews or if Johnson is the guy hired, then I will certainly be going into more detail about specific schemes, how Washington's personnel fit/don't fit those schemes and that will go into the details I think you're looking for.
Let me ask you this question, and it will apply to every other HC candidate you review
How complex/difficult/forgiving is this person's scheme?
Does it have so many moving parts that if one part breaks down, the play is going to fail?
Does the scheme require a very rare skillset that is hard to acquire ( ie, super accurate qb, very mobile qb, or qb who can read a defense exceptionally well , or receiver with a special skill set), or can it be run with most pro level talent ?
Can it be run against most/all defensive schemes? Or, do you have to "catch" the defense in a certain look in order for it to succeed?
How applicable is it to all locations/weather? Is it going to be very tough to run in cold/rainy conditions that you get on the East Coast late in the season?
How QB friendly is it? We are going to have a young qb (Rookie or Sam ??) is he going to have to bring in one of his former Qb's to teach the system? And is the system difficult/complex to the point that results (at least good ones) arent going to begin to consistently show up until year 2 or longer in the system?
How do his former players feel about his ability to teach and his ability to respond to failure?
Thanks
Shal
There's a lot to unpack here and a lot of it I can't really answer because I don't have access to how he teaches things or the playbook he uses etc. But I'll try to answer what I can with regards to Johnson.
With regards to complexity, I'd need to to be more specific, but I assume you mean in regards to how tough is it to learn? Not how complex it appears to opposing defense? If that's the case, I couldn't really answer that because I haven't seen his playbook or been in meetings where he's teaching it. But the key is how well he teaches the system. Even the most complex systems can appear easy if taught well. I believe he uses the west coast offense as his base of terminology, but even in the west coast system theres a lot of variance. Sean Payton and Kyle Shanahan both run versions of the west coast offense, but the terminology within that core foundation of a system.
The point I made about the system being tailored to the personnel and individual player packages being intertwined sort of answers your second/third question. The idea there is that if one part fails, there should be a plan B (but that is the case in most systems, including EB's system right now). It shouldn't require rare skillsets, it's tailored to fit the guys that it has.
For your fourth question, it's very rare a system is good against most/all defensive schemes. Coaches will draw up individual plays that they'll call "good vs all" which have outs against most types of coverages. That's the kinda stuff EB has been running this year but Howell has been inconsistent with processing and getting the ball out quickly enough. But every coach in the league will build a game plan around what coverages/fronts/looks they're expecting in certain situations and design plays to beat those looks. That's not irregular, and the defense is doing the same thing, so sometimes the defense just wins a rep.
Johnson isn't shy about running the ball, certainly he wasn't with the Lions under Dan Campbell, so he should be fine playing in any weather.
It looks pretty QB friendly to me, but any system is always going to look better in year 2/3 in the system. Even Kyle Shanahan, who has one of the most QB friendly systems in the league, says it takes 3 years to master the system.
No idea about how his former players feel about him. Haven't done any research in that regard. That's the kinda thing the beat reporters will do if/when he gets hired.
Hope that answers most of your questions.
Thanks for taking time to respond
One of the highlight fan experiences of the old Redskins was reading the comments of J Bostic after a Redskin victory over the Cowboys in which he leaned over and told Randy White they were coming over him about 4 or 5 straight times and there was nothing he could do about it.
Also, the old Packers under Lombardi had only a few plays, but the individual skill and group precision was such that no one could stop them
Individual excellence obviously matters as well
Yeah, nowadays defenses have figured out individual schemes well enough that offenses had to evolve beyond just a handful of plays and come up with hundreds of different plays/fomations etc. Those Lombardi plays were an entire offense back then, but would just be a small package of plays in a modern offense now.
There are certain things you can keep very simple and limit the number of schemes, like how Shanahan used to use exclusively outside and inside zone with very few variations. He'd have his OL run it so much that they'd master it to the point where they knew how defenses would try and attack it, what stunts they'd use to disrupt it, and the OL would anticipate them coming and pass them off easily. But at a certain point, teams will just stop something and you need to have a change up. That's why Kyle Shanahan incorporates a bunch of gap scheme stuff in his offense now, for when teams commit to certain fronts and schemes that are known to be strong against zone runs
Time to segue to the offseason, that time of the year when we BNG fans usually find a lot more faith & hope in the team than we end up with in the regular season! YAY!😜
Now that said annually disappointing regular season is mercifully over, I’m sure we all look forward to the knowledge you will be imparting to us on the top HC candidates. I’m again hearing a lot of buzz that the Commanders gig may actually be one of the most desirable ones! Who knew?! Hopefully that’s true, & the Harris Group can attract the candidate that ends up at the top of their wish list.
It is altogether fitting & proper that you should lead off with Ben (NOT Brian!😜) Johnson - this year’s HC golden boy. Appreciate your interesting breakdowns on the way he puts his twist on tried & true offensive practices.
I’m also interested in how much you feel Johnson has had to do with Jared Goff’s reemergence as effective NFL QB. After his early success, JG16’s career seemed to go into an eclipse, to the point where he was kinda considered a castoff - someone the Lions almost HAD to take off the Rams hands if they wanted to complete the Stafford trade. Have you seen evidence that BJ is a QB whisperer who revived a flagging career, or did Goff just need a change of scenery, a few good weapons, & a little time to get himself going again?
Cheers
Goff was never a bad QB, he just had a limited ceiling. McVay felt like he hit that ceiling and had given him as many layups as he could (remember missing that deep shot in the super bowl vs the Pats that would have been a wide open TD?) and that to put the Rams over the top, he needed to upgrade. Stafford was that upgrade and they transitioned from the run game/play-action attack they needed to support Goff into a more pure drop back passing attack that suited Stafford, which won them a super bowl. Now McVay has evolved again, but that's a whole other topic.
So Goff was always good at the type of things Ben Johnson has asked him to do, which I thinks speaks to Johnson's ability as a coach to identify his strengths and play to them. For example, they use plenty of the same play-action stuff McVay used with Goff in LA because Goff was really good at that. They also use a lot of similar routes and passing concepts. I don't know if Johnson has a link to the Shanahan tree at all, I don't think he does, but it is very similar stylistically, so it would make sense that he could replicate a ton of the stuff Goff did well in LA and help him continue to be productive.
I dunno if you can call anyone a QB whisperer when they've only called plays for 1 QB though
Awesome answer MB! Glad to hear that Johnson seems to be the kind of coach that discovers a player’s strengths & then coaches to enhance them. Seems to make so much sense, right? Especially after 4 years of seeing pretty much the opposite method inflicted on our players! I like him already.
And speaking of Super Bowl LIII , the few things I remember about it was what I could glean from watching a a bit of it after finding it televised at an “American-style” pizza joint in Auckland while a New Zealand vacation. (What else so clearly screams “American!”) Two things stand out about it; 1) it was showing on MONDAY AFTERNOON, NZ time, & b) the people working there had ZERO idea about what they were looking at! Pretty funny.
The time differences are tough to handle if you aren't in the US. For me in the UK, we're 5 hours ahead of the US (or when I'm with my partner in Sweden, it's 6 hours ahead). So a regular Sunday 1pm kick off is fine, that starts at 6pm UK/7pm Sweden. Even the late afternoon sunday kick offs at 4/4:30pm US time are manageable. Start at 9/9:30pm UK, 10/10:30pm Sweden and finish at about 12/12:30 UK or 1/1:30am Sweden.
But when it comes to prime time games, it's a real battle. Those 8pm kick offs don't start until 1am UK, 2am Sweden time. I'll be lucky if they finish at 4am UK/5am Sweden time. I always have to try and adjust my body clock to live on US time during the season, but it's tough.
Thanks for sharing that info Mark. (your time zone situation actually crossed my mind when I wrote about my NZ experience.) Enjoy hearing your personal stories - especially those dealing with what’s it like to be an NFL expert living across the pond. It’s nice to get to know a bit more about you.
And now I’m gonna dig for more!😄 The 2nd part of my anecdote dealt with the Kiwis mystification with the American sporting event (SB53) they were showing in their establishment. I causes me to wonder if your friends & acquaintances in the UK (& Sweden) question why the heck you’ve decided to make a living from a sport that must be pretty obscure to most of them. Or has the NFL established enough of a bridgehead in Europe that it’s much more popular than I assume it is?
I have a handful of friends that are quite big sports fans and I’ve gotten 2 or 3 of them into the NFL over the years. One of my closest friends is a Texans fan (who I picked for him as an up and coming team YEARS ago when they had Kubiak as HC and Kyle Shanahan as OC, funnily enough). Another is a Bucs fa, so I chat with those two quite a lot about the NFL. But generally my friends are all quite jealous that I’ve managed to make a living out of this while they all have to do fairly normal jobs. (Though, they aren’t quite as jealous when they hear how much I’m making compared to them. Here’s hoping a strong ownership with a great offseason will boost some subscriptions!).
The awkwardness comes at things like going to get a haircut or grabbing a taxi or something. You sit down and they go “so what do you do?”. For the random average person, they don’t know what the NFL is or much about it, so occasionally I’ll try and explain but a lot of the time I can’t be bothered to go through all that for a 15 min hair cut or taxi ride or whatever, so I’ll make up some other story about what I do
Haha! Great stories. Thanks for sharing them.
I am happy to see the crowds that turn out Wembley (which I had the pleasure of attending during the London Olympics! I still remember looong walk from the stadium to the tube stop as being a crowded madhouse after the women’s soccer finals!!) & at Tottenham (a town I got to know during that trip) are so well received by sport fans in England. I have little doubt that a Commanders’ game in one of those 2 venues will go right to the top of my must-do list. (Both my sons studied in London - UCL & City, University of London - & I’ve developed quite an affinity for the old town!) It would be great to run into some of the BNG fans who subscribe here when that event happens. Who knows?!
And as far as your subscriptions go, I’m sure all here wish you the very best with that! Here’s hoping that a successful new Commanders regime sparks more interest. After all, a high tide does raise all ships!😃
Cheers!
How would you describe his scheme? Would you say it is a mix of the Shanahan system, West Coast (from his time with Mike Sherman), or what else?