Rams offensive playbook is small as hell...

[BIGROC]

I played online with the Rams, first time playing with them. The playbook for the team is only singleback, gun, and goaline. It's insanely small. If it weren't for a poor opponent, I'd have gotten killed with no real play diversity, and only able to run Gurley out of the single back set...

Smallest playbook I've seen for any team in YEARS of Madden.

[cheddabob7502]

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

I played online with the Rams, first time playing with them. The playbook for the team is only singleback, gun, and goaline. It's insanely small. If it weren't for a poor opponent, I'd have gotten killed with no real play diversity, and only able to run Gurley out of the single back set...

Smallest playbook I've seen for any team in YEARS of Madden.

Thats how I felt about the 49ers Playbook. They took out some formations and playaction plays from there that were real (life) staples in the 49ers Plays (during the season) last year. I don't get it. They had quite a big variation of formations but I don't understand why they neutered them. But I can feel your pain, although I never used the Rams playbook but it must be stressful to not have the plays your use to having in your arsenal.

[justcallmedaddy]

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

Well that's how the Rams run in real life. They don't have a fullback on the roster, so they don't run any Iform or offset I formations whatsoever.


I believe they ran over 80% of their plays from 13 personnel (1 RB 3 WR), and they led the league in number of plays called from singleback formation.

[PGaither84]

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

How many varriations do they have out of that? How different is that from real life. Do they ever really use a FB outside of short yardage situations?

Real playbooks are thick, but they do not have as many plays as you might think. Formations are just window dressing to create match ups, where the plays in a playbook are really just diagrams of how a single play works against different defensive fronts and alingments and from different offensive alingments. For example, if a defense shows you a certain look, a QB will sometimes just shift the formation to something more advantageous, kill the play or obviously fake it. What makes a QB great is more than how well they can "spin it"... but rather by being a field general who will get your offense out of a bad look and into a good one.

The 90's Broncos won two Super Bowls by using a lot of Weak I and single back with motion and changing where a 3rd WR or 2nd TE lined up while using the same 15 or so plays: inside zone, outside zone, FB dive, and about 12 passes, some of which were play action based on the runs.

The Rams, to my understanding, are very similar as they also use zone as their base run scheme and build off of it. They call wide zone, play action off of wide zone, and the play action HB screen based off of that as their "rock paper scissors" scheme. Sure, they have other plays, but as a user in Madden, I suggest you get good at the zone run and the various play action boot leg plays based off of it. Get the defense comitted to stopping your zone run and hit them with PA boots, if they load up the box but drop into zone to stop the PA, then you go to the PA screen game and chew them up for being passive.

Also, the zone run philosophy is to pass on first down, run on 2nd and 5+ to set up 3rd and short and play the situation.

2nd and short is almost always play action (including the screen if they see it coming).

3rd and long, do not be afraid to check it down and just get a completion and try to pick up the first with RAC yards.

Furthermore, come out with a pass play on 1st down, but count the box and be ready to kill to run if you have the numbers and leverage advantage and just grind out 4 yards between the tackles. It keeps the clock running and rests your defense.

Coach Alex Gibbs, the godfather of the Zone Run, taught the scheme as a "no negatives" concept. Do not try to bounce everything outside. No power runs. No counters. Be willing to grind out 3 or 4 and take the offense to 3rd and manageable where even a 5 yard dink and dunk pass can move the chains.

3rd down passes should stretch the defense vertically with a runner underneath as the check down, but not simply a swing pass to the sideline. Something as simple as the 4 verts concept with the HB curl under it to move the chains or go big. Anthing shy of cover 4 will get killed by 4 verts and cover 4 crumbles to that HB curl. Against man, your QB shoukd be able to tuck it and get 5 on his own.

[jfsolo]

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

Well that's how the Rams run in real life. They don't have a fullback on the roster, so they don't run any Iform or offset I formations whatsoever.


I believe they ran over 80% of their plays from 13 personnel (1 RB 3 WR), and they led the league in number of plays called from singleback formation.

You mean 11 personnel, but yes, last year it was up to 90%. Their pre snap motion, jet motion, putting all the skill guys in all the positions on the field, and their play action create the variety needed to keep teams off balance. In Madden the lack of true effectiveness of play action doesn't let the Rams or any team really, show the real strength of their schemes.

[BTG]

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

How many varriations do they have out of that? How different is that from real life. Do they ever really use a FB outside of short yardage situations?

Real playbooks are thick, but they do not have as many plays as you might think. Formations are just window dressing to create match ups, where the plays in a playbook are really just diagrams of how a single play works against different defensive fronts and alingments and from different offensive alingments. For example, if a defense shows you a certain look, a QB will sometimes just shift the formation to something more advantageous, kill the play or obviously fake it. What makes a QB great is more than how well they can throw the rock or spin it... but simply being a field general who will gwt your offense out of a bad look and into a good one.

The 90's Broncos won two Super Bowls by using a lot of Weak I and single back with motion and changing where a 3rd WR or 2nd TE lined up while using the same 15 or so plays: Inside zone, putside zone, FB dive, and about 12 passes, some of which were play action based on the runs.

The Rams, to my understanding, are very similar as they also use zone as their base run scheme and build off of it. They call wide zone, play action off of wide zone, and the play action HB screen based off of that as their "rock paper scissors" scheme. Sure, they have ther plays, but as a user in Madden, I suggest you get good at the zone run and the various play action boot leg plays based off of it. Get the defense comitted to stopping you zone run and hit them with PA boots, if the load up the box but drop into zone to stop the PA, then you go to the PA screen game and chew them up for being passive.

Also, a zone run philosophy is to pass on first down, run on 2nd and 5+ to set up 3rd and short and play the situation.

2nd and short is almost always play action (including the screen if they see it coming).

3rd and long, do not be afraid to check it down and just get a completion and try to pick up the first with RAC yards.

Furthermore, come out with a pass play on 1st down, but count the box and be ready to kill to run if you have numbers and leverage and just grind out 4 between the tackles.

Coach Alex Gibbs, the godfather of the Zone Run, taugh the scheme as a "no negatives" concept. Do not try to bounce everything outside. No power runs. No counters. Be willing to grind out 3 or 4 and take the offense to 3rd and manageable where even a 5 yard dink and dunk pass can move the chains.

3rd down passes should stretch the defense vertically with a runner underneath as the check down, but not simply a swing pass to the sideline. Something as simple as 4 verts with the HB curl under it to move the chains or go big. Anthing shy of cover 4 will get killed by 4 verts and cover 4 crumbles to that HB curl. Against man, your QB shoukd be able to tuck it and get 5 on his own.

Everyone should read this. Great post.

[PGaither84]

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

I wanted to share a quote about Yomi.

Yomi
In competitive games, there is little more valuable than knowing the mind of the opponent, which the Japanese call “yomi.” All the complicated decisions in game theory go away if you know exactly what the opponent will do next. Sun Tzu says that reading minds is for the spirit world, and on that I cannot comment, but I have witnessed firsthand the ability of some players to “achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men” through eerily powerful yomi. Perhaps these players are simply adept at “studying the details of the enemy,” but it seems to go far beyond that in some. There is one player who I would even say has a supernatural ability to spy on the minds of others, knowing which moves they will next make—if it weren’t such an absurd thing to say. But believe me, those who have witnessed Japan’s fighting game player Daigo Umehara do speak of these things in hushed tones, fancying that they might be true.

As a side note, I would even argue that the “strategic depth” of a game should be defined almost entirely on its ability to support and reward yomi. For a silly example, consider tic-tac-toe. There are only nine opening moves, and only three of them are functionally different. Even if through some witchcraft you know the move the opponent will make next, it doesn’t really matter. The game is so constrained that the opponent is forced to make certain moves, so the novice player along with the master of divination will be on basically the same footing. There is no room to develop “tendencies” or a certain “personality” or style of play in tic-tac-toe. There is only a simple algorithm at work and no room for yomi at all.

Yomi Layers
Any decent competitive game needs to allow you to counter the opponent if you know what he will do. What happens, though, when your enemy knows that you know what he will do? He needs a way to counter you. He’s said to be on another level than you, or another “yomi layer.” You knew what he would do (yomi), but he knew that you knew (yomi layer 2). What happens when you know that he knows that you know what he will do (yomi layer 3)? You’ll need a way to counter his counter. And what happens when he knows that you know . . .

I’ll nip that in the bud: there need only be support up to yomi layer 3, as yomi layer 4 loops back around to layer 0. Let’s say I have a move (we’ll call it “m”) that’s really, really good. I want to do it all the time. (Here’s where the inequality of risk/reward comes in. If all my moves are equally good, this whole thing falls apart.) The “level 0” case here is discovering how good that move is and doing it all the time. Then, you will catch on and know that I’m likely to do that move a lot (yomi layer 1), so you’ll need a counter move (we’ll call it “c1”). You’ve stopped me from doing m. You’ve shut me down. I need a way to stop you from doing c1. I need a counter to your counter, or “c2.”

Now you don’t know what to expect from me anymore. I might do m or I might do c2. Interestingly, I probably want to do m, but I just do c2 to scare you into not doing c1 anymore. Then I can sneak in more m.

You don’t have adequate choices yet. I can alternate between m and c2, but all you have is c1. You need a counter to c2, which we’ll call c3. Now we each have two moves.

Me: m, c2
You: c1, c3.

Now I need a counter to c3. The tendency for game designers might be to create a c4 move, but it’s not necessary. The move m can serve as my c4. Basically, if you expect me to do my counter to your counter (rather than my original good move m), then I don’t need a counter for that; I can just do go ahead and do the original move—if the game is designed that way. Basically, supporting moves up to yomi layer 3 is the minimum set of counters needed to have a complete set of options, assuming yomi layer 4 wraps around back to layer 0.

I did a quick search for the Rams playbook, which took me to this page:

https://www.madden-school.com/madden-20-los-angeles-rams-playbook/amp/

The very start of the video shows 13 varriations of the singleback formation.

The very first page of the first formation shows three plays which are tied together. You have Jet Sweep, Jet motion with backside inside zone, and a jet motion play action pass. This is just the kind of thing Yomi is all about. The Jet Sweet is M. Jet motion handoff backside is your C1 to counter how they contain/stop your Jet Sweet. Your play action pass is the C2 when you fake jet motion, fake the hand off and pass the ball.

This is why you see those plays out of Wing Tight, then th same plays out of ACE, ACE Close, DUCE Close and so on.

There are some route combinations which are unique to a specofic formation, but that Jet Sweep, Jet Motion and Play action show up so often. They really are your core offense and you need to master them and what to look for against different defensive fronts and how they are executed.

[tg88forHOF]

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

Adding on to the people who're confirming that the Rams run 90% of their plays out of 11 personnel in real life...

The part I haven't seen anybody mention yet is that, just like in Madden, real life coordinators have to call plays and set personnel based on the personnel in the offense's huddle. That's what the Rams are exploiting.

First, a lot of coordinators are old, inflexible, or both. Whether it's at a conscious level or not, the majority still see 3 WR in the huddle, think pass, and come out in a sub formation of some kind (nickel at least). They're kind of forced to; even if they're wrong, defending a run out of nickel personnel is way lower risk than, say, trying to cover Verts with base 43 or 34.

Building on that, if every play is from 11 personnel, and you've proven that you can run successfully out of it, now they can't trust what they're seeing in the huddle, and you've taken a strategic tool away from the other team.

If you can get them unsettled to that degree, now you can really screw with them. If you've been both running and passing out of 11 all game, what are they going to think/do if you suddenly show a 2nd tight end in the huddle...especially if both TEs are legitimate passing threats?

It doesn't work for everybody...you have to have a back and line that's able to legitimately run out of 11s to start with, and having a back that's as solid a receiver as Gurley is a big plus. But if you can make it go, it's way more disruptive than casual fans realize, and it's a big factor in why McVay is considered such an offensive genius.

[stinkubus]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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