Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

[stinkubus]

It's funny to me because this is totally a "life imitates art" situation. Madden foreshadowed the rise in prominence of the 11 and nickel personnel groups.

[tg88forHOF]

Quote: Originally Posted by stinkubus

It's funny to me because this is totally a "life imitates art" situation. Madden foreshadowed the rise in prominence of the 11 and nickel personnel groups.

Word.

It feels weird to say that coordinators still expect passes out of 11, runs out of 22 and 13, and so forth, when we've all been used to running out of 11s and using 13 sets as passing formations for as many years as we have.

But we don't all get paid millions to do it...makes us way less risk-averse.

[Radiant1]

The Rams have one of the best playbooks in the game, in my opinion. I also like how certain playbooks work better with certain teams. Like running the Rams playbook with say a team like the Lions, for example — who have a mediocre O-line, run game and possession receivers — does not produce the same potent attack as it does with Rams personnel, who have x-factor and superstar players all over the field. This is the first madden where I feel scheme actually matters in gameplay now.

As for the Rams scheme itself, their playbook is very small in real life and McVay has kind of married Gruden’s west coast scheme with the old Peyton Manning/Tom Moore, “less is more” approach to offense. Peyton only ran a handful of concepts out of 11 and 12 personnel. They made every play look the same and attacked defenses with 2x2 and 3x1 splits. Very rarely moved their receivers around and had most pass sets start with a vertical stem where they either attacked deep or ran in-breaking routes at different depths. Their play action was based almost exclusively around their stretch zone run, and looked almost identical in execution.

Simple concepts but hard to stop because Moore understood that it’s harder to read formation tendencies when you run everything out of 2 or 3 looks where the play designs complement each other. McVay understands this as well, which is why he’s considered the next offensive genius

[stinkubus]

This approach goes all the way back to the offense Ken Anderson ran in Cincinnati. They were the only 70s era AFC team who enjoyed consistent offensive success against PIT, FWIW.

The Bills used it in their 90s Super Bowl runs, as stated the Colts during the 00s. Bruce Arians teams use a similar approach, but he's more willing to test you downfield and doesn't give his QBs as much freedom at the LOS. So PIT, IND even after Moore left, ARI have all done this in the recent past, and now probably Tampa will be using something very similar.

Going this route is what enables no-huddle and muddle-huddle offenses. Those tactics were non-existent until this type of scheming came in vogue. So every team uses at least some of these tactics in certain situations.

[SFNiners816]

Concepts wise.....Kyle Shanahan and McVay's offenses are very similar. The differences lie in the choice of personnel grouping. As it been stated here, McVay has used 11 pers over 90% of the time. Kyle on the other hand runs the most 21 pers (40%) and uses 11 pers about 40% and 12 pers 10% of the time. Kyle's ran a little more 12 in Atl in 2016 (21 pers:30%, 12 pers:20%, 11 pers:39%).



Both ways are very effective and have produced great offenses (I'm still waiting for a healthy edition here in SF with Kyle but even in our injured diminished state we've still seen yearly offensive production that I would argue exceed the talent level when you factor in the injuries). Personally I am a fan of multiple formation and a nice distribution of personnel groupings. Bill Walsh is kinda my end-all-be-all when it comes to offensive football and I use to just absolutely love watching the formations we used to run with all the shifts and motion during the dynasty days (I'm also including in the Holmgren, Elder Shanny and even Mooch led offenses). We'd run 21 pers out of split, Far, Near, Strong, Weak and I form all with various wideout splits. That why usually when a madden comes out my first stop is with the generic WCO book. I really like this years version but it does kinda bum me out that they removed the split back sets after patching them back in last year.

[tg88forHOF]

Basically, modern offensive innovation is converging on two paths:

The Andy Reid philosophy, which is "always look different", and the McVay philosophy, which is "always look the same".

Really, Reid and his tree (especially Pederson and Nagy) are doing the same thing McVay is...assemble extremely flexible personnel, get the defense off-balance, confused, and guessing, then use your flexible personnel to run the same basic concepts many different ways.

The biggest difference is that the Reid tree achieves the "confusing the defense" part by always looking different....the same basic play is run out of every conceivable personnel package, set, alignment, and with constant motions and actions (play action, jet, orbit, etc...often multiple or all on the same play).

McVay gets there by always looking the same.

[Radiant1]

Quote: Originally Posted by tg88forHOF

Basically, modern offensive innovation is converging on two paths: The Andy Reid philosophy, which is "always look different", and the McVay philosophy, which is "always look the same". Really, Reid and his tree (especially Pederson and Nagy) are doing the same thing McVay is...assemble extremely flexible personnel, get the defense off-balance, confused, and guessing, then use your flexible personnel to run the same basic concepts many different ways. The biggest difference is that the Reid tree achieves the "confusing the defense" part by always looking different....the same basic play is run out of every conceivable personnel package, set, alignment, and with constant motions and actions (play action, jet, orbit, etc...often multiple or all on the same play). McVay gets there by always looking the same.

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

[tg88forHOF]

Quote: Originally Posted by Radiant1

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.