[HoustonFrog]

Originally Posted by erod

These kinds of scenarios happen all the time.

Jason Garrett calls a five-yard slant to Dez Bryant. Demarco Murray is running a flare into the flat, and Witten is going to goes in motion to the far side of the slant.

Romo surveys the defense and notices the outside linebacker is dropping off into coverage, right in the zone where Dez' slant is supposed to be run. Both Romo and Dez should read this, and Dez should instead run a hitch.

Romo looks at the playclock and still has 10 seconds, so he decides to "Kill! Kill!" the play, which audibles it into an off-tackle run to Murray on the right side. The defense then audibles because they believe it to be an actual play change from Romo, and the strong safety steps into the box.

Free doesn't seal the inside edge, and Bernadeau gets stood up. Murray slashes outside, then cuts upfield and gets tackled by the safety for a two-yard gain.

[View Full Quote]Then Cowboys fans here and yon scream collective bloody murder, "GARRETT, THROW THE DAMN BALL! WHY ARE YOU RUNNING INTO A BLITZ?"

Such is the idiocracy of us football fans. We think there's a magic playcall sequence, and if the calculus is figured properly in the gameplan, and the head coach properly weighs the statistical trends, 40 points should rain down from the scoreboard like confetti in Times Square.

Experts fly onto the message boards detailing their acute and studied knowledge of what should have been called. Their storied high school playing career, coupled with their ranking status in Madden online, reinforces their strange belief that, in fact, most of these 32 coaches won a job lottery and have no idea what they're doing.

Especially Garrett.

The fact is, every play is designed to score, and has produced, touchdowns. Every one of them. And every team pretty much runs the same plays, weighted by personnel and talent. There hasn't been an original thought in a good long while in this copycat league. They've been running the read-option in high school for 20+ years.

But what never seems to get properly considered (mostly because we don't know for sure and won't admit it) is that the play called isn't necessarily the play run, and plays that don't work are 90 percent the result of a missed block, bad read, or poorly thrown ball or route run.

Basics still decide football games.

I want Garrett to turn over the playcalling duties, too, but not because I don't think the guy can call plays. I want him to free up his time and energy so he can better manage all three phases of the game on Sunday, and simply run the sideline. That's what Jimmy and Parcells did. Landry called offensive and defensive plays at one time, but he had a whole staff of future head coaches, and players were more self-disciplined in those days.

Way too much attention is being payed to this right now. The much greater matter at hand is getting the line of scrimmage tilted back to 0 degrees, instead of the 30-degree uphill angle it's currently on.

Garrett and Romo are hamstrung. New plays aren't needed as much as new people to run them with.

No offense, because its a very well laid out post, but then why does a team like the Ravens fire their OC and when the new guy comes in he clicks? The reason is that some OC's can play call better than others given the personnel they have. Its why teams like GB with a bad Oline run a semi-hurry up and get the ball out of Rodgers hands quickly. It's why some teams keep RBs in to chip when they know they have trouble blocking one guy. You can't just say that OC doesn't matter because everyone calls the same plays so we need more talent. Then why even have an OC? The Ravens showed that some guys can take the same team and turn the exact same personnel into a different machine. We didn't take advantage of the plusses we had...Romo and our WRs and instead kept trying to fit a round peg into a square hole running the ball behind a bad oline just to try and establish something.