Nors
06-21-2004, 02:19 PM
Play-calling is all about preparation
06/21/2004
Dan Pompei
Sporting News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Hang with Matt Kenseth and the SMIRNOFF ICE TRIPLE BLACK(tm) Racing Team
Enter for a chance to win the "Hang With Matt & The Crew" SMIRNOFF ICE TRIPLE BLACK(tm) sweepstakes. One lucky fan and a guest will hang with Matt Kenseth and the Roush Racing car No.17 crew. Enter at SMIRNOFFICE.COM.
Click thru --
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6132986;8403452;m?http://www.smirnoffice.com/hangwithmatt/?s=848
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There may be no more convenient punching bag than the play-caller of a struggling offense. We call for his head, make him the butt of our jokes and scrutinize everything from his cockeyed headset to his pattern of speech. But the truth is the play-call has a lot less to do with the success of a play than the preparation.
Play-calling is ridiculously overrated.
"In pressure situations, play-calling can be critical -- third downs, fourth and 1s, red zone," says Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil. "But the specific play that is called may not be as critical as the American fan thinks it is. When I used to call them all myself, I can't tell you how many times the guy signaled in the wrong play and the play they ran was better than the one I was going to call."
Months of planning, thinking and training goes into every call transmitted from a coach's microphone to a quarterback's ear piece. Even now, in the quietest days on the NFL calendar, future play-calls are being shaped in darkened meeting rooms and on sunny practice fields.
Panthers coach John Fox talks about using this time to teach players to "customize" the Panthers' play-calls. "When you make the (defensive) call, all you know is the down and distance, the (opponent's) tendency and the personnel group," Fox says. "From there, you have to teach your player how to customize the call based on formation, receiver location, stances, a lot of things. They have to be schooled to recognize those things. Laying the foundation is critical."
Even more critical is assessing the opponent during the week and putting together a game plan that can take advantage of weaknesses, offset strengths and prepare for most reasonable possibilities. The crux of game-planning is anticipating what an opponent will do. If the coaching staff anticipates poorly, the play-caller isn't left with enough options to call the right plays at the right time.
"It isn't just what you call and when you call it, but the time you put into it during the week of trying to be on the money of how you think they're going to play you," Patriots coach Bill Belichick says. "If you are game-planning something that they don't do, and they do something else and execute it well, they have you in a box. You're in trouble. You have a bunch of bad plays that don't work well against what they're doing. You'd have been better off not practicing that week rather than practicing and being so tied up in a bunch of stuff that never even came to pass."
A good example came in the Patriots' ballyhooed Sunday night meeting against the Cowboys last November. It was billed as a matchup between Belichick and the man he worked under for 16 years, Cowboys coach Bill Parcells. The Patriots figured Parcells would blitz liberally. Much of their offensive preparation that week focused on beating various blitz packages. The preparation paid off in the first half. On a third-and-9 play, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady beat the blitz by throwing to Deion Branch for a 46-yard completion that set up a field goal. The Patriots went up by nine after another blitz-beating third-down play, this one a 57-yard pass to David Givens.
But after that play in the second quarter, the Cowboys abandoned the blitz. The Patriots, who game-plan as well as any team in the NFL, were left without many sound play-calling options because they could not prepare for every possibility, and the Cowboys found the answer. "We had not worked enough on our pass offense against coverage," Belichick says. "Then we're trying to throw our blitz routes, and keeping everybody in, when they had everybody in coverage."
With a compromised ability to play-call, the Patriots scored only three more points the rest of the game. Luckily for them, their defense pitched a shutout, and New England won, 12-0.
When a play-caller is caught with a game plan that doesn't work, he isn't going to draw up a play in the FieldTurf. But he often will call plays from a recent game plan. "In that case, you might not have had five reps on it in practice that week, but it won't be totally foreign to them if you ran it a couple weeks ago," Fox says.
Many play-callers rely more on a "precall" system than intuition. Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, for instance, typically has five to seven plays ready to be called, in order, before the start of the game for every conceivable down and distance and from every location on the field.
After the first 20 plays or so, Weis might start to deviate from the script based on how an opponent is playing the Patriots. Then again, he might stick with the precall sheet if it's going well.
Either way, what he does on the sideline won't influence the outcome as much as what he has done in the days and months preceding the game.
Senior writer Dan Pompei covers the NFL for Sporting News. Email him at pompei@sportingnews.com.
06/21/2004
Dan Pompei
Sporting News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Hang with Matt Kenseth and the SMIRNOFF ICE TRIPLE BLACK(tm) Racing Team
Enter for a chance to win the "Hang With Matt & The Crew" SMIRNOFF ICE TRIPLE BLACK(tm) sweepstakes. One lucky fan and a guest will hang with Matt Kenseth and the Roush Racing car No.17 crew. Enter at SMIRNOFFICE.COM.
Click thru --
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;6132986;8403452;m?http://www.smirnoffice.com/hangwithmatt/?s=848
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There may be no more convenient punching bag than the play-caller of a struggling offense. We call for his head, make him the butt of our jokes and scrutinize everything from his cockeyed headset to his pattern of speech. But the truth is the play-call has a lot less to do with the success of a play than the preparation.
Play-calling is ridiculously overrated.
"In pressure situations, play-calling can be critical -- third downs, fourth and 1s, red zone," says Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil. "But the specific play that is called may not be as critical as the American fan thinks it is. When I used to call them all myself, I can't tell you how many times the guy signaled in the wrong play and the play they ran was better than the one I was going to call."
Months of planning, thinking and training goes into every call transmitted from a coach's microphone to a quarterback's ear piece. Even now, in the quietest days on the NFL calendar, future play-calls are being shaped in darkened meeting rooms and on sunny practice fields.
Panthers coach John Fox talks about using this time to teach players to "customize" the Panthers' play-calls. "When you make the (defensive) call, all you know is the down and distance, the (opponent's) tendency and the personnel group," Fox says. "From there, you have to teach your player how to customize the call based on formation, receiver location, stances, a lot of things. They have to be schooled to recognize those things. Laying the foundation is critical."
Even more critical is assessing the opponent during the week and putting together a game plan that can take advantage of weaknesses, offset strengths and prepare for most reasonable possibilities. The crux of game-planning is anticipating what an opponent will do. If the coaching staff anticipates poorly, the play-caller isn't left with enough options to call the right plays at the right time.
"It isn't just what you call and when you call it, but the time you put into it during the week of trying to be on the money of how you think they're going to play you," Patriots coach Bill Belichick says. "If you are game-planning something that they don't do, and they do something else and execute it well, they have you in a box. You're in trouble. You have a bunch of bad plays that don't work well against what they're doing. You'd have been better off not practicing that week rather than practicing and being so tied up in a bunch of stuff that never even came to pass."
A good example came in the Patriots' ballyhooed Sunday night meeting against the Cowboys last November. It was billed as a matchup between Belichick and the man he worked under for 16 years, Cowboys coach Bill Parcells. The Patriots figured Parcells would blitz liberally. Much of their offensive preparation that week focused on beating various blitz packages. The preparation paid off in the first half. On a third-and-9 play, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady beat the blitz by throwing to Deion Branch for a 46-yard completion that set up a field goal. The Patriots went up by nine after another blitz-beating third-down play, this one a 57-yard pass to David Givens.
But after that play in the second quarter, the Cowboys abandoned the blitz. The Patriots, who game-plan as well as any team in the NFL, were left without many sound play-calling options because they could not prepare for every possibility, and the Cowboys found the answer. "We had not worked enough on our pass offense against coverage," Belichick says. "Then we're trying to throw our blitz routes, and keeping everybody in, when they had everybody in coverage."
With a compromised ability to play-call, the Patriots scored only three more points the rest of the game. Luckily for them, their defense pitched a shutout, and New England won, 12-0.
When a play-caller is caught with a game plan that doesn't work, he isn't going to draw up a play in the FieldTurf. But he often will call plays from a recent game plan. "In that case, you might not have had five reps on it in practice that week, but it won't be totally foreign to them if you ran it a couple weeks ago," Fox says.
Many play-callers rely more on a "precall" system than intuition. Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, for instance, typically has five to seven plays ready to be called, in order, before the start of the game for every conceivable down and distance and from every location on the field.
After the first 20 plays or so, Weis might start to deviate from the script based on how an opponent is playing the Patriots. Then again, he might stick with the precall sheet if it's going well.
Either way, what he does on the sideline won't influence the outcome as much as what he has done in the days and months preceding the game.
Senior writer Dan Pompei covers the NFL for Sporting News. Email him at pompei@sportingnews.com.