When we let Brad slip away, I was on-board with the thought of getting rid of the Wildcat all together and letting Mark take the extra snaps and make plays. With our offense sputtering to get any sort of momentum early in games, would re-introducing the Wildcat formation bring any sort of spark to our offense? Granted, Shotty has a hard enough time calling effective conventional plays, but why not set up in the wildcat for a play in the first or second series and see what happens. I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that the Wildcat was a major contributor to the whole "Ground and Pound" philosophy. Brad was good for 30 to 40+ yards a game on the ground and every so often he broke one open for a big gain or even a touchdown. McKnight has been the only spark so far this season, let's put him to use in a different way.
We've used the Wildcat already, with McKnight involved. Kerley takes over the Smith role. It was largely ineffective.
We've used it once in the regular season. It worked pretty damn well in the preseason. Granted it's preseason, I think Kerley showed enough to trust him to run it a few times a game. But as someone said in the McKnight thread, why mess with perfection?
Although I don't believe the wildcat should be an indispensable part of our offensive, it hasn't been tried enough to give up on it completely yet. You could say that most of our offense has been largely ineffective.
If you're lined up in the Wildcat, it's a Wildcat play. That's the point. It leaves a skill position player uncovered which makes the defense adjust on the fly. No matter what they do with it, the Wildcat is the Wildcat. And I don't see how it could hurt us right now considering how stagnant our offense is.
Ok but he wasn't always lined up in the WC formation. He ran a bunch of end arounds including the long TD vs. Cincy on Thanksgiving. the WC had lost effectiveness and let's not forget he was hurt in the playoffs yer we managed to reach the title game again.
i dont think the point was Brad was superman, and that the WC was the reason we were so good last year. It was more of a we suck offensively for 3/4 of games, so we should try changing something up.
There are bigger issues then the type of plays being called, not the least of which is the lack of good offensive line play. I agree, the Wildcat regressed as the year went on last year. I don't disagree with the idea that there has to be some new wrinkles in the gameplan, ones specifically designed to address the lack of time Mark has in the pocket.
I get that, my point is the WC lost effectiveness and we made the title game w/o it plus people need to realize our offensive struggles have been all about the OL. As Mangold gets healthy again and Mark gets comfortable w/ Plax and we can run the ball this offense is going to be pretty good. I'm one of the few that likes our OC but my biggest complaint about him is his love of trick plays, I'm glad the WC is gone.
Please no wildcat. A package that takes the QB out of the play makes no sense when you are trying to develop consistency at the QB position. It's like a giant distraction from the task at hand and even when it works the Jet's flow is disrupted.
Junc, Brad Smith averaged 9.6 yards-per-carry from the Wildcat the last 2 seasons. I don't have the stat for just last season, but it was still very good. http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/25112/jets-new-look-offense-key-to-season Maybe it wasn't as good last year, but it was still effective for us, and we miss it. Shonn Greene averaged 4.1 ypc, LT averaged 4.2 ypc. I guarantee Smith averaged more. That said, it wouldn't be nearly as good behind this OL how it has played so far.
last 2 seasons and last season are 2 different things, it was much more effective in 2009. It lost effectiveness in '10 especially later in the year.
It averaged 9.6 yards per carry. Even if that's 11 ypc in 2009 and 7 ypc in 2010, it's still very effective. Did it slip in effectiveness late in the year? Yes, but everything on our offense slipped late in the year. Late in the year, Woody also got hurt. Hmm... And now we're struggling running the ball this year
it's not always about raw #s, when we needed it most was it effective? do these #s include end arounds? I don't know, what I do know is the WC lost effectiveness last year and Brad was hurt in postseason but we didn't miss him at all.
There's a reason that nobody runs a Veer offense or any other type of option offense in the NFL on a regular basis: it's easy to shut down plays that rely on lateral distribution behind the line of scrimmage, even if the QB is carrying the ball giving his team another blocker. This stuff works in high school and even occasionally at the NCAA level because defensive players at those levels are not uniformly quick and strong. In the NFL they mostly are. The reason the wildcat is dying out is because it really is not that hard to defense once defenses decide they have to do so. The 46 absolutely destroys the wildcat. Any defense that puts 9 or 10 men near the line of scrimmage destroys the wildcat. The NFL has adapted to the wildcat to the extent that it needs too in order to eradicate it as a rarely used facet of the offense. It would adapt more heavily if the need arose. The team that ran the wildcat most often, the Dolphins, was among the first teams to ditch it. That's because they saw a lot of defenses that were prepared to stop it since the Fins ran it so much.
