Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

[tg88forHOF]

Re: Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

Agreed. My personal preference would be towards looking the same, if I were a coach at least. Easier to teach, not to mention, if you’re going to go the route of showing multiple looks, you better be a damn good play-caller to avoid astute defensive coaching picking up on your situational tendencies based on formation.
McVay has to call solid plays as well to avoid tendency reading, but D coordinators could only focus on actual concepts called in different situations rather than concepts AND formations.

The Colts (before Reich was hired) tried to be a multiple attack as well, but they had predictable coordinators who couldn’t hide or buck their formational tendencies in certain situations, which is why they often failed in crucial situations against superior defensive coaching. You should only run a multiple offense if you actually know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’ll likely just outsmart yourself

Agree with all of that, but I'd add one caveat: call it the Belichick Factor.

Belichick is, in my opinion, the finest defensive game planner in the history of the game (among other things) and it's because he can reconfigure his defense to seize the initiative and dictate an offense right off whatever plan they had coming in. He does it via a really odd mix of flexibility and discipline; it's predicated on taking away your best option(s) and refusing to get spooked off whatever it is he wants to do, but he's willing to be endlessly flexible in how he gets there...no idea is too crazy if it works, but once he finds it, you can't confuse him out of it.

The way the playoffs worked out last year, we had a chance to see both philosophies tested against that approach back-to-back. NE absolutely stonewalled KC through the first half, but KC was still able to make up all that ground and force OT in the second half. In the Super Bowl, LA's offense never did end up proving effective.

That's one of the scenarios where I think the Reid approach is more effective. As McVay learned, you can't confuse Belichick with similar looks. Reid learned that you can't really confuse him with multiple looks either, but if you keep trying literally everything, sooner or later something will break through, and now you have an opening you can exploit.

All your points about the benefits of McVay's approach are accurate, and there are situations where it's better than Reid's. This just happened to be an easy example of one where it goes the other way.

If anything, it supports your central point: McVay's approach is more resilient...personally, I think the only playcallers that can really have sustained success with Reid's system are Reid himself, and Pederson.

[Radiant1]

Re: Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

Agree with all of that, but I'd add one caveat: call it the Belichick Factor.

Belichick is, in my opinion, the finest defensive game planner in the history of the game (among other things) and it's because he can reconfigure his defense to seize the initiative and dictate an offense right off whatever plan they had coming in. He does it via a really odd mix of flexibility and discipline; it's predicated on taking away your best option(s) and refusing to get spooked off whatever it is he wants to do, but he's willing to be endlessly flexible in how he gets there...no idea is too crazy if it works, but once he finds it, you can't confuse him out of it.

The way the playoffs worked out last year, we had a chance to see both philosophies tested against that approach back-to-back. NE absolutely stonewalled KC through the first half, but KC was still able to make up all that ground and force OT in the second half. In the Super Bowl, LA's offense never did end up proving effective.

That's one of the scenarios where I think the Reid approach is more effective. As McVay learned, you can't confuse Belichick with similar looks. Reid learned that you can't really confuse him with multiple looks either, but if you keep trying literally everything, sooner or later something will break through, and now you have an opening you can exploit.

All your points about the benefits of McVay's approach are accurate, and there are situations where it's better than Reid's. This just happened to be an easy example of one where it goes the other way.

If anything, it supports your central point: McVay's approach is more resilient...personally, I think the only playcallers that can really have sustained success with Reid's system are Reid himself, and Pederson.

Great post. I agree, completely. But I will say that I think the one major difference between McVay and Reid’s results against Belichick was the quality of QB play. Jared Goff is a fine QB but I think most everyone knew Belichick would probably exploit his deficiencies in reading the field at an elite level. He also gets impatient when he can’t get to the plays he likes and forces bad throws/reads into tight coverage. We saw the Bears absolutely rattle him in much the same fashion earlier in the year and I don’t doubt that New England probably put on tape from that game while game planning for the Super Bowl.

Goff will improve, obviously, but I think New England was fortunate that LA didn’t have a veteran field general at QB that could get them into the right plays despite what’s called in on the sideline, because that’s really where the chess match begins when facing a coach the caliber of Belichick. I think once McVay is able to take the training wheels off completely from Goff, we’ll be seeing video game numbers out of that offense consistently

[tg88forHOF]

Re: Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

Yeah, I thought about that, just didn't mention it because I was already going pretty long. Personnel matters.

By all accounts, Mahomes is way further ahead in his mental processing than anybody hoped he could be at this point, and obviously his physical tools are on a whole different level than Goff's.

The rest of the offense matters, too; KC's skill positions are simply better, by and large. Higbee's a fine TE, but he's simply not Kelce, either athletically or in terms of processing/flexibility. The maturation of Hill's route running and release last year elevated the WRs as an overall group past LA's.

LA has a better overall line, and Gurley at his healthiest was simply more dangerous than Hunt, let alone Williams, so that fits McVay's approach too.

It'd be fascinating to see what McVay could do with LA's line transplanted into the rest of KC's defense. But we're not in a hurry to show Big Red the door any time soon, and he's in no hurry to leave, what with his shiny new toy and all.

[Executor]

Re: Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

Fantastic thread!