Been thinking about football strategy a lot lately with our recent installation of the West Coast Offense. Looking around the league, I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what everyone else is doing and who's responsible, what is most popular and what is "against the grain". Let's talk offensive philosophy here. Feel free to add anything missed, correct what's wrong and give your take on philosophy past and present. As far as I know there are three primary offensive playbooks in modern pro football (concepts from others are infused, but these are the core philosophy): West Coast Offense, Air Coryell, and Erhardt-Perkins strategy. Prior to that, offense in pro football was centered around the Pro Set: establishing the run to take deep shots, using backs to help block for those deep shots (2WR, TE, HB and FB). A summation of their main principles are posted below, I encourage others to point out/add any concepts that may have been missed. Looking at all the teams and what they do: Arizona: (Bruce Arians) E/P Atlanta: (Dirk Koetter) ? Baltimore: (Jim Caldwell) ? Buffalo: (Doug Marrone/Nathan Hackett) WCO Carolina: (M Shula) ? Chicago: (Tressman) WCO Cincinatti: (Gruden) WCO Cleveland: (Turner) Coryell Dallas: (Garrett/Callahan) WCO Denver: (Gase) Coryell? Detroit: (Linehan) Coryell? Green Bay: (McCarthy) WCO Houston: (Kubiak) WCO Indianapolis: (Hamilton) ? Jacksonville: (Fisch) ? Kansas City: (Reid) WCO Miami: (Philbin/Sherman) WCO Minnesota: (Musgrave) WCO New England: (McDaniels/Belidouche) E/P New Orleans: (Payton) E/P? New York Giants: (Gillbride) E/P New York Jets: (Morninwheg) WCO Oakland: (Olson) ? Pittsburgh: (Haley) E/P? Philadelphia: (Kelly/Shurmur) WCO San Diego: (McCoy/Whisenhunt) ? San Francisco: (Harbaugh/Roman) WCO Seattle: (Carroll) WCO St. Louis: (Schottenheimer) Coryell Tampa Bay: (Sullivan) E/P Tennessee: (Loggains) ? Washington: (Shanahan) WCO I don't know what ~half the league is doing. It looks like the WCO is extremely popular, I'm wondering if this is a disadvantage to us as defenses are so familiar with it. Looks like only the Parcells/Belichick tree and their disciples seem to run the E/P. Wondering if anyone knows what kind of offense Sean Payton is running as I'm a huge fan. I assume Denver installed a Coryell to accommodate Peyton as that's what he was running in Indy, but I'm not sure. Discuss, gentlemen, it's clearly a copy-cat league. We can do defense if this generates a solid response. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Air Coryell Philosophy: Don Coryell (1970s) This philosophy attacks vertically through the seams, utilizing deep and mid-range passes and a power running game. The idea is to use the entire field to spread the defense, timing and rhythm, and a lot of pre-snap motion. The Coryell offense uses three key weapons: The first is a strong inside running game, the second is its ability to strike deep with two or more receivers on any play, and the third is to not only use those two attacks in cooperation with each other, but to include a great deal of mid-range passing to a TE, WR, or back. This philosophy was the first to utilize the TE akin to a WR (K Winslow). Using this philosophy, the San Diego Chargers rewrote the offensive record books, and several Coryell disciples went on to be highly successful offense minds: Joe Gibbs, Norv Turner, Ernie Zampese and Al Saunders. West Coast Offense: Bill Walsh/Paul Brown (1980s) This system is predicated primarily on horizontal/mid range passing routes stretching the defense east/west to open up passing and running lanes north/south. The system requires precise and well-timed throws, and WRs that can catch in traffic and over the middle of the field. This philosophy also uses a lot of 3-step drops for quick release instead of 5 and 7 drops in Coryell and traditional pocket passing. Runningbacks are used as much as receivers as they are runners, and pass plays generally make up 65-80% of the plays. The pass "sets up the run", making the play-calling unpredictable based on down and distance. Erhardt-Perkins Offense: Ron Erhardt/Ray Perkins (1980s) This system is commonly thought of as a return to "smash mouth" offense, or running to set up the pass. Featuring a man-blocking scheme, and focuses on time of possession/ball control. However, this system does utilize spread formations when necessary. The passing game differs from the other two systems based on nomenclature or 'naming'. Play calls are based on single word concepts rather than assigning each player a role in the play. One word, say "ghost", tells each receiver what to do; the concept is divorced from the formation, so regardless of the formation, each player, based on where he is lined up, runs the proper pattern determined by the "ghost" concept. This places a heavy emphasis on memorization (as every player needs to know every route in every concept, not just specific routes to run on specific plays), but also allows for more efficient communication (one word does the job of complex sentences of coded words and numbers) and allows for a greater flexibility by allowing every play to be run from every possible formation.
Bruce Arians ran an E/P in Pittsburgh for a couple of years and then opened it way up with Ben Roethlisberger's help in his last two years there. It was like E/P but with a much heavier ratio of pass to run. No idea what he is running in Arizona now but he is on record as hating the WCO. Nice post BTW. We should flesh this out and keep it updated. It could become a resource.
Noted. I'm wondering if Schottenheimer took "The Mutant Offense" with him to STL. It's been stated he fused WCO blocking scheme with Coryell plays creating a total clusterfuck nomenclature, a very difficult system to pick up for players. I'm also very curious as to how many hot-shot coordinators around the league try to reinvent the wheel like this. I realize a lot of playbooks now will feature concepts from all the offenses, but the nomenclature should probably be of one specific kind for learning purposes, right? It is also interesting that Sanchez will now have played in all of the three primary systems (Schott - Coryell, Sparano - E/P, Morningwood - WCO). Third time's a charm? LOL
The Pasts use the terminology of E/P while using the playcalling philosophy and personnel groupings of a hybrid of WCO and an evolved spread. It think you'll find that while many teams around the league employ the traditional format of a system, just as many will mix and match different elements of each system, kind of making it hard to just categorize them as using one of the three most common systems.
The Indianapolis Colts also run a hybrid WCO that uses some of the terminology and principles used at Stanford during Luck's tenure. It is not a traditional WCO where YAC is usually the major recipient. More of an aggressive offense - more vertical using Andrew Luck's strengths. This offense to me is one of the more intriguing offenses to watch this season. More smash mouth football along with vertical shots down the field. 2 TE sets. Luck is going to have a great season.
Yeah, you'd think that because each system has pros and cons that todays systems feature concepts from all of them. I think thats where were at in todays philosophy. One thing I noticed is that each system deploys multiple route options per play for targets who are to act based on the coverage that they interpret. Everything is done on the fly now, which puts into perspective how important masking your coverage is for a defense. Its truly a chess match.
I don't think Bruce Arians qualifies as Erhardt/Perkins product. He worked with various group of people, but somehow he ended up staying away from any WCO/Erhardt-Perkins contingents. His first job was RB coach with the Chiefs - and that's where he was linked up with Marty Schottenheimer. Then he followed with a stint at New Orleans. After that, he spent three years in Indy, coaching Peyton Manning in his formative years - for which he got an OC promotion at Browns. [So he worked with Tom Moore, then Butch Davis.] After that, he was fired from the Browns, and he went to Pittsburgh to coach the WRs; eventually he became the OC there. Then you know the rest. I don't know if he runs E/P by any stretch since I don't know if he had anyone with direct link to either Ray Perkins or Ron Erhardt. He certainly didn't work for Bill Parcells. Of course he could be running his own variant of E/P offense without any direct influence of those practicing it, but I find it highly unlikely; to me, he is more of a Martyball product than anything. Surely, E/P system thrives on all-weather offensive system, but then Marty's Chiefs had to deal with same issues as well at Arrowhead Stadium - so it wouldn't be such a shocking thing to see the two systems looking similar. ==================================== As for Sean Payton, I do believe he also qualifies for Erhardt/Perkins system, but in his case, the taste is more of Air-Erhardt than the smashmouth E/P system Parcells used.
^So you're thinkin he's a Coryell advocate then? His offenses appeared vertical with a power run game in Pitt. But there is so much overlap now its hard to tell them apart. Its basically about the nomenclature. Rex absolutely schooled his offense last yr.
I told you already. I believe he's more of Martyball tenet - with some passing attack element influenced by Tom Moore - than anything else. The only case where he didn't need to worry much about the element was his work with Peyton. Also, if you count Bill Cowher's influence, that also strengthens Arians' link with Martyball. [Cowher IS from Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree, if at all.] Marty had his own brand of offensive philosophy, a direct influence from the past generation [Lou Saban] but he didn't run any of the three major offensive systems. He only employed WCO much later when he got Joe Montana on his team roster.
Also, does Dallas qualify as WCO? Jason Garrett learned his offense from Norv Turner, then Ernie Zampese, and these two practiced Coryell offense. [Turner - 1993, Zampese - 1994-1997] He started off as an offensive coordinator during 2007, but Cowboys had Wade Phillips as the HC during that time, so I don't think that year qualifies as his transition year to WCO under any circumstance. P.S. Also, Ken Whisenhunt is from Martyball coaching tree. [No wonder that offense sucked till a seasoned vet resuscitated it.]
Actually very few teams use the real WCO anymore, a lot of systems are based on it but few if any use the version Walsh introduced in to the league. Take Greenbay for example. They take a lot of shots deep which is actually a fusion of the WCO and Coryell, for lack of a better description. There are as many different versions of the WCO today as the number of teams running the WCO, it's a very adaptable system that you can tailor to your QB's strengths and weaknesses as long as they're accurate passers.
Where does terminology end and playcalling begin? It's one thing to choose system nomenclature and yet another to adjust that nomenclature to your actual system. Are we really talking about systems or just how the players speak to each other to execute plays? Forget who worked with who. Most of these teams are not conforming to a traditional system.
Looks like the entire chart should be scrapped as every system is now a custom collection of plays based on the installers' personal preference.
To a degree, a lot of WCO elements is present in any of today's offensive system, as Walsh's west coast offense goes far and beyond X's and O's; as was pointed earlier, Walsh was the first pioneer to introduce risk management in passing attack. To do that, he had to bring in a lot of then-foreign concepts, including meticulous approach to the offense. Any offense that brings these statistical break downs and analyses as well as scripting plays and whatnot are all employing some elements of west coast offense. That said... I don't know if that would be necessary. If at all, I had a chance to take a very long and deep look at the Patriots offensive playbook from 2001, 2003 and 2004. Finally, I have come to realize how their nomenclatures in passing play are set up. For that, I will have to thank you. It was an invaluable lesson.
