SB Nation User Blog: broncobear

Pass-Happy Coaches and Quarterbacks

broncobear — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:38:32 -0000

John:

Your recent post that mentioned the pass-happy ways of Josh McDaniels got me to scrounging around in my records and I found a few things that might interest you. The idea of pass-happy, to my thinking, has to involve what exactly the averages are and what is, therefore, unusual or extraordinary. Here's what came to light.

Let's take a quick wormhole back to the 1960s. Pro football emphasizes a power running game, and for good reason. Rushing plays outnumber pass plays by a margin of 59% to 41%, industry-wide. Why? It's simple - pass plays produce 4.8 yards per play, on the average. Running plays only produce between 3.9 and 4.3 yards per play. So - for the extra .3 yards per play, why not pass?

It's because passes are being intercepted at a rate of 6%. Fumbles, on the other hand, are occurring at 3%, and it doesn't take a lot of interceptions to wipe out any advantage in length of play. You also have the fact that this is the pre-holding era - offensive linemen can't hold with their hands inside the defenders shoulders, and as a result you have both a higher number of sacks (although the stat isn't being kept yet) and a higher number of injuries for starting QBs. Rushing is just a better option, and the league focuses on it. But things start to change and for a lot of reasons.

There's little doubt that the biggest change comes about in 1978 when the league makes it legal to grab for O linemen and they no longer run around the field with triangles hanging from their shoulders. It wasn't the only change that was taking place - that rule was altered in part because the league understood that passes are exciting, scoring is exciting and excitement builds franchises (and bank accounts) - but it was a huge change nonetheless. There was one other major factor taking place that made a huge difference and the Chargers were ground zero for that area of growth. It goes back to Sid Gillman, brilliant strategist that he was, and to those who studied his work on passing.

It is surprising, in part, that Gillman hasn't gotten the kind of recognition among fans that other name achieved. Certainly, his schematic descendant, Don Coryell, earned a lot of what he has received, but it was in the genius of Gillman that the ideas of stretching the field - vertically and horizontally - came into common usage. Al Davis, Don Coryell and Bill Walsh were the three who studied Gillman's approach the most intently. Gillman's work was complex and not everyone was interested in a strong armed passing approach back then, for the reasons that I elucidated. But that was all to change...

Coryell's work is probably common knowledge among Chargers fans and for good reason. But while both Davis and Coryell took mostly their vertical passing approaches from Gillman's work, it would be Walsh's inventions that would probably change the passing game the most. That came about in the mid 1970's due to a little know QB by the name of Virgil Carter. You see Virgil, unlike most (all) modern QBs, really couldn't throw the danged ball more than 10-15 yards, but was accurate in that area. And Walsh, stuck as an offensive assistant with Cincinnati, was given the responsibility of creating an offense that could use him, since Cincy didn't have anyone else. That was where the league started to change.

To maximize production from Carter, Walsh decided to stretch the field horizontally. He came to the realization that the idea of throwing to a receiver who was not there yet - timing routes - could be nearly unstoppable if the pieces each played their role. Clearly, this has had a dramatic impact on much of the modern game; although only about a third of the teams currently play a 'West Coast Offense' (the definition of which is under substantial attack), using the concepts of stretching the field horizontally and/or even more commonly, extensively using timing routes, has become commonplace in the NFL. In fact, Bill Polian of the Indianapolis Colts said,

"In (a) sense, everyone in the NFL today is running Bill Walsh's offense. Because the rhythm passing game is all Walsh."

Walsh knew that these short, timed passes could be effective against any defense that was used during this time. Later, part of the reason for the modern Cover-2 formation, which stretches the zone of the MLB and plays zone coverage by the CBs (hence the name Cover 2 - pass coverage in the 2nd level), was to defend against this offense. The system as Walsh developed it used receivers who ran routes exactly geared to how many steps back the QB took - one set of routes for a 3-step drop, a different set for the 5-step drop.

From Walsh's perspective, back in his days with Cincinnati, it was all about having a chance. His job was on the line: he had to find a way to win with the pieces that he had. He believed in offensive strategy. He just needed to make his players effective. But it changed the NFL for all time. The modern passing game was on its way, and soon the league was making other changes to encourage the scoring offenses that they believed would put players in the endzone and fans in the seats. Walsh would go on to considerable fame, but his time and effort at improving the mechanics and decision-making of Dan Fouts alone is worth a footnote in Charger lore.

By the mid 1990s, the percentages had reversed themselves. Rushing plays now accounted for about 41% and passing for 59% of all plays. That hasn't changed, much. I've only got figures up to 2005, but over that time, the percentages stayed about the same. Running plays would bring in 3.9-4.3 yards per play. Passing, however, had grown to about 7.7 yards per attempt, and that made a huge difference. Because of that, the NFL average has remained about the same - 57-59% (variable by year) passing and 41-43% rushing. A more thorough accounting of this transition can be found here if anyone cares to peruse it.

What is even more important is that interceptions have dropped to the same level as fumbles - about 3%, with minor variations by year. Since passing is more productive and no less dangerous to ball control (in the sense of INTs to Fumbles), it has made sense for the leagues teams to go to a pass dominant overall scheme. Obviously, there are teams like Chicago that claim to get off the bus running and teams that throw no matter what (Denver was one last year), but the leagues averages have stayed very close to the numbers I've listed above. I'm taking them from Michael Lewis' The Blind Side and from the Journal of Quantitative Analyses in Sports (Ben Alamar), by the way, in case someone comes up with different numbers at some additional source. Some of the info on Walsh came from Dr Z at Sports Illustrated - there were several sub-sources on Walsh and his influence, but the numbers were only from those two sources.

The reason that this came to light is that Josh McDaniels is just average when calling passes versus the run. Over the 4 years that he called the plays for the New England Patriots, he averaged 56.9% pass and 43.1% run - just inside the NFL averages. He's not, apparently, the pass-happy guy that he's been painted as. I know - I used to think that same thing. As is often the case, it's those nasty facts that spoil such lovely theories. Someone should do something about that, but until they do - McDaniels is just a middle of the road kind of coach, when it comes to the run/pass percentages. By the way - Jeremy Bates called the Broncos plays last year and he truly was a pass-happy guy. Other than Jay Cutler, you would be hard-pressed to find any fans who mourned his professional passing. He's likely to be great in college ball, though. (Find the McDaniels' stats in Part II here)

Thanks to all. I enjoy and appreciate the writing here and I hope this contributes. Since Gillman was the source and Coryell and Walsh were the students from whom many modern forms have emerged, I thought that Chargers fan's might be interested in a short treatment of how our modern game has come about. Best to all.

Broncobear

Broncos Dreams and Musings July 3, 2009

broncobear — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:38:41 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

25 days ago: Denver Broncos linebacker Darrell Reid, left, talks with head coach Josh McDaniels before drills during the team's football minicamp at the Broncos headquarters in Englewood, Colo., on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Browse more photos »

The Denver Broncos and Michael Lombardi

I was meandering through some old materials this weekend when I found a pre-draft set of concerns about the Broncos by Michael Lombardi. I had thought at the time that they were reasonable and a fair consideration, so I kept them around. Here is what he said:

DENVER

Who is going to be the Broncos starting quarterback? Can they repair, restore and revive the relationship between Jay Cutler and the head coach?
With the switch to a 3-4 there are plenty of positions up for grabs, but the essential question is this: Who will rush the passer from the outside?
Denver forced only 13 turnovers last season and clearly lack speed on every level of their defense. Who is going to be their playmaker?
The Broncos struggled to cover anyone, even with Champ Bailey, and finished with just six interceptions for the season. Who can cover?
Can they expect to get another year out of Casey Wiegmann at center? They struggled when they played physical defensive teams

I thought, even then, that these were excellent questions. There was not doubt that pre-draft, the Broncos had reason to give pause to even the most voracious fans. This led to a lot of musing on what happened and dreams of what might be. That being said, let's take them one at a time and see if Denver did anything to work out those concerns.

Question 1: Who will be the Quarterback?

The Broncos made a decision to give up on the more emotionally fraught and fragile situation with Jay Cutler, cut their losses and make a deal that would yield a starter in Orton and kept their backup in Simms. That same deal also netted them (in essence) Knowshon Moreno and Alphonso Smith and 'half' of Richard Quinn, with a caveat involving the trade of a 3rd-round pick for a 5th-rounder (There are different ways to parse this, but this one seems most accurate to me). However, the issue of who starts at QB, although important, is secondary to the issue of whether or not the Broncos got good value in a trade that most industry people agreed that they had to make. While it’s easy for fans to argue (as I have myself) that it would be grand and emotionally satisfying to see them sit Cutler on the bench for a while, that kind of thing can poison a locker room and distract a team already facing huge changes. It isn’t reasonable and it wasn’t going to happen. I have to say that they seemed to do very well with a tough situation.

In addition, the arrival of Tom Brandstater, who will probably suit up as an emergency quarterback and who will begin his apprenticeship under Head Coach Josh McDaniels and the two QBs ahead of him is a very good sign. Brandstater has all of the tools to become a very good backup or even a starter in the NFL. He needs time and work, and should be able to receive both.

Question 2: Who will rush the passer?

This is a great question. It was then and it still is now, prior to training camp. One of the many areas of weakness last year was the inability to get pressure on the QB (or the running back or the receivers, for that matter). Part of that will shake out from the front 3, and other than Ronnie Fields it seems open right now. But the draft yielded one Robert Ayers, lately of Tennessee, who was one of the best young DEs in this year’s options. Will he rush the QB well? This could be one of the questions that determines the outcome of the Broncos season (The production of Knowshon Moreno is the other).

A change in scheme is also letting them move Elvis Dumervil, Jarvis Moss and Tim Crowder to the outside and will let them create a wide variety of looks and options. Moss's and Dumervil's weakness against the run made them less effective coming in from the outside - the change in scheme could create a better disguise for what they are going to do. Denver will be moving towards a full time 3-4 defense, but will give a lot of different looks over the course of the season. See here for SlowWhiteGuy’s helpful look into one way to view this change.

We're going to rush the passer with scheme as well as players, as hoosierteacher pointed out with his excellent series on the Ted Blocker.

Question 3: Who will be the playmakers and create turnovers? Do we have enough speed?

To me the first section was and is the biggest question. Who will be the playmakers? You need to look at this question from two angles. If, by this, you mean to create turnovers (And it seemed that was the thrust of the question) there was a quick response by the Broncos. The answer was to redo the entire secondary, with only a scant few holdovers. They are looking to Andre' Goodman and Alphonso Smith as well as Champ to knock down and pick off passes, to Darcel McBath (David Bruton may take longer to mature, but he has the potential to be a lot more than a special teams player) to learn centerfield and look for opportunities, and Brian Dawkins and Renaldo Hill to prevent the kind of repetitive big plays that hamstrung them in the 2008 season.

I'm not huge on extrapolating stats. The players get injured or have a career year, the scheme changes and with few exceptions, rookies aren't going to get what they did in college. Still - you have to look at the overall stats to see where you were and what needs to change. When you add up last year's turnovers versus our new starters, the new players so far outdid the Broncos measly 13 defensive turnovers that you have to be impressed, and Alphonso Smith was brilliant at creating turnovers in college - fumbles as well as interceptions. The emphasis in training camp has included new drills on how to function if you're the 2nd or 3rd player to a tackle - you generally ignore the man (if he's going down) and hammer on the ball. It wouldn't even matter if he's getting away from Tackler 1 as long as you get the ball loose. Watching film from last year, it was clear that we did that erratically, but not with any consistency. We lost several fumbles to teams that used this practice. Will we be better? I hope so. Are we better prepared via personnel and approach. Assuredly.

If by playmaking you mean 'coming up big with plays to stop drives' you would have to include the massive restructuring of the front 7 as well. Ayers, Doom, Moss, Woodyard, probably Reid and certainly Williams in some degree of rotation, probably with A. Davis at LILB to start, will have to step up. I'd expect Spencer Larsen to be a backup to start and to be moved around from special teams to fullback to inside linebacker, although he may well take the job at linebacker later in the season or in next year's training camp. Fields has been noted by a few writers as the steal of the off-season, and there's reason to believe that since his explosion off the snap was the best on the 49ers D-Line last year. There are too many options for NT and DE to cover here, but that fact in and of itself makes my point. There will be no shortage of folks who can step up. The question of whether they will step up will begin to be answered in training camp.

I did look with interest on the part of this question that involved speed. I'll concede part of the issue - Shanahan drafted for speed for a long time, but we ended up with a smorgasbord of players, styles and abilities due to the revolving door at defensive coordinator and the accompanying revolving personnel door. We became neither fish nor fowl, although we managed foul pretty well.Many of our most recent pickups aren't incredibly fast nor incredibly slow. Bruton looks to be a backup - he's incredibly fast for a safety. McBath is just fast. Smith - there will always be an asterisk in my mind around the players from this year's draft. The timing was flat-out off. He's not a burner, but neither is he slow.

Most importantly, the scheme that we are setting in motion will use more zone coverage to minimize the issues of speed. We drafted fairly well for speed as well - Darcel McBath is in the 4.58 range, Bruton was in the 4.46, A. Smith was 4.51, not a burner but very quick and agile. Ayers only had a 4.9 40 - slow for a linebacker, but good for a defensive end. Jarvis Moss, on the other hand, is a 4.7 40 guy. Overall, I'd still have to say that Lombardi has a point. Scheme will have to help us here or we'll see issues from it, but I'm Ok with that as we stand now..

Question 4: Coverage and Interceptions

This is a great question. My own feeling is that they had answered it in spades at both the cornerback and the safety positions before the draft and filled out the answer sheet in depth during the NFL draft. Champ is healthy, they added Alphonso Smith in the draft and Andre Goodman in free agency. Jack Williams or Josh Bell will have to step up to stay on the team. They also did 'a little' at the safety position, with Brian Dawkins there to anchor the team and Renaldo Hill to start. Behind them are three young players, all distinct and with different skillsets.

Jerry Angelo got my honest appreciation for this comment in a recent National Football Post article by Matt Bowen. It brought out some issues on our safeties.

"...it's obvious that Angelo sees the safety position as a concern heading into this summer, and not just in Chicago.

"It's the poorest-played position in football right now," he said. "It's very hard to find a safety that can tackle high to low," meaning players who can tackle from the free safety spot in the open field. As Angelo said, there's so much emphasis placed on athleticism and ball skills at the position that sound tackling has become a thing of the past. "

This is one area where Angelo and I are in full agreement, and when I read it I suspected that our own Hoosierteacher wouldn't argue much with us either. In fact, I took this chance to ask him about this remark and appreciated his reply so much that I wanted to include it here:

"The big problem with safeties (in my opinion) at many levels of football is the mistaken belief that they are just extensions of the cornerback position. This line of thinking has safeties valued for the ability to race to a passed ball and intercept or disrupt. But this is not the classic role of safeties, and the effect of this type of thinking is what has hurt the position.

Safeties are, above all else, the last line of defense. They must be sure, open field tacklers because they are intended to stop any ball carriers (runners or receivers) that get past the front seven and corners. The ability to tackle, speed, and read plays are the most important ingredients. When one of those skills (almost always "tackling") is sacrificed to get a safety with "good hands" for interceptions", the position suffers. Good hands should be seen as icing on the cake for a safety, not as a requirement."

In addition to the pleasure of a chance to learn from MHRs master of Xs and Os, the other thing I love is that along with Josh Barrett, the Denver Broncos now have three young, hard hitting safeties (Barrett, David Bruton, McBath) that can play on special teams and who love to make tackles. Having lacked a decent backfield general for years, the Broncos suddenly find themselves with a plethora of riches among the veterans and the youngsters. Will they keep all of them, or will Vernon Fox make the team. I'm better that Fox falters in training camp, but I could be wrong.

With Renaldo Hill starting as the season opens and both McBath, the current heir apparent and David Bruton behind him both having great scouting reports as bright players and sure tacklers, the Broncos are finally paying attention to the defense as a unit, rather than to one position (cornerback, for example, or DE) during one draft and a second position (DL) the next. The upgrade of quality, with new FA players brought in at all positions and a lot of great young talent there from the draft and an unparalleled CFA class, is pointing towards a huge change from the past two years and brings a smile to my face.

By the way, this article on safeties and on Rodney Harrison in particular, also by Matt Bowen is a better than average look at the position and the skills it requires.

I've mentioned this, but have you noticed that the Broncos have more talent in the defensive backfield than at any time in modern memory? Think about it. With Champ Bailey and probably Andre' Goodman starting and Alphonso Smith able to bring his zone coverage skills to the table as a nickel back, we finally have a decent crew at cornerback. Even better, Goodman and Hill have played well together in the past so we've got some built-in continuity. There will be changes in scheme and terminology, granted, but these two know and understand each others tendencies. Even better, they are paired with Champ and Brian Dawkins, who brings instant leadership and drive to a secondary that last year was best described as ‘porous'. We are much, much better than we were last year.

Question 5: Can Casey Wiegmann play, and can the Broncos play physical football?

Let's move on to the second issue right away. I know that Lombardi meant this in terms of the offensive line, but it's such a good question that I though we should look at the entire team this way. The Broncos gave up way too much to other teams in terms of physicality last year and prior to that. Shanahan preferred speed to size; there are arguments both ways. I'm of the school that wants both, but will take the speed guys if they (and Wesley Woodyard is my favorite current example of this) like being physical, regardless of size, and enjoy taking on the challenge of a team trying to out-muscle them.

It's not necessarily a situation of preferring one or the other. Lots of players give you both - look at Ryan Clady on offense or Ron Fields on defense, each of whom is very fast /explosive/agile for their position. We have quite a few examples of getting both now - David Bruton ran a 4.46 40 at Combine and had the third highest number of tackles on Notre Dame in 2008. NFLDraftScout.com calls Bruton a playmaker "with the size, speed and athleticism to potentially be a good starter and very good special teams player." (There's video at the link I provided). Then there's the physicality of players like Robert Ayers, Alphonso Smith (who was referred to by Jonathan Hull of fantasyfootballjungle.com as the Steal of the Draft) and Jack Williams, all of whom are fast but not burners, yet incredibly tough players.

It's interesting to me that Buckhalter is still our fastest running back (Yes, even despite his knee surgeries) and that Hillis is just slightly (.02 - .04 seconds) faster than Moreno, yet Moreno's nimbleness has astonished people, while Hillis just runs them over like gophers in the road. Toughness - would anyone out there take Selvin Young and Andre Hall over Moreno and Hillis when it comes to toughness? I'm just asking. Toss in Buckhalter and Jordan and our squad is even stronger. I know - the injuries last year did seriously hurt the Broncos RB squad, but even so... Top to bottom, we just have a much better group at RB. We have a question mark at Torain, but we brought in a couple of young guys to cover us if Torain doesn't get well (don't be surprised if they get him on IR to start the season and to give themselves an option later when there are 2009's injuries to deal with). But toughness? It's a very new year, and for that I'm thankful. This is a tough bunch of guys.

When Parcells won the Super Bowl against the LA Rams in January of 1991, he leaned over to Will McDonough for the Boston Globe who had also been a long time friend, and while waiting for the post game press conference to begin he loudly whispered two words: "Power Football!" During the days following conference, he noted the same thing twice more:

"...I've coached this game for a long time, and I know one thing," said Parcells, two days later. "Power football wins games." He then repeated it, just for emphasis.

Personally, I love speed but I know that Parcells was often right. I believe that speed has to be paired equally with the ability to match up, stand up and finish up. That takes power and strength (and scheme, which we often lacked). Games are usually won in the 4th quarter and we lost too many that way, whether by lack of strength or lack of conditioning. Our free agent acquisitions like Brian Dawkins, Renaldo Hill and Andra Davis are also very mentally tough, as is undrafted college free agent Rulon Davis, for example (Davis also has run his 40's in as little as 4.8, although his combine time was 5.06). Tough wins games. Tough generates the stats that correlate to wins. Given the smaller, lighter DEs that we've found ourselves with (Moss, Doom, etc), turning them into bigger linebackers makes a lot of sense. We also added a little weight, players like Fields, Parker and Askew

Moving back to the first part of the final question - How about Casey Wiegmann and the physicality of the Broncos O line approach? There are two good questions here. Can Wiegmann play another year? He says that he can and the Broncos have responded with a 2 year contract so they obviously believe him. The odds are very good, and yet the Broncos had the sense to hedge their bets. They drafted two good offensive linemen. They have Kory Lichtensteiger as the guard/center apparent, Tyler Polumbus at tackle, new center Blake Schlueter and an assortment of other options. 'Steiger has a reputation for toughness that borders on sheer nastiness and he's down to 295 of rock muscle (from up to 310 lb) and dropped some soft weight. Our new offensive lineman, Seth Olsen, was described by draftcountdown.com as "Very tough...Plays with a nasty demeanor" and plays at about 306 lb. Just our new kind of guy - he was also elected as a member of the Leadership Group in all four of his playing seasons for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Wiegmann is light for his position - listed at 285. The guys behind him are a little bigger - 'Steiger at 295, even Schlueter at 290 - but adequate for a zone blocking center (Denver will add other blocking schemes, and actually used to use some other schemes, but we will keep the predominance of the ZB). The question will be whether they can play with technique and leverage - for the ZB, that's the real issue.

As far as being physical, by the end of last year the Broncos were playing much more physically on offense. Their run blocking was a work in progress last year - by the end, they were hammering out holes for people that you either hadn't heard of or didn't want to, but the holes kept coming anyway. The relative size of Seth Olsen gives us a clue as to the direction they will go in – the retention of line coach Rick Dennison says a lot for the zone blocking approach, but they will be adding other blocking schemes as well. They may be looking at bigger guards than they have used in the past. Ryan Clady’s 325 lb. goes a long way towards creating a bigger, tougher line, and the genius of their zone blocking scheme will always put more of a premium on athleticism than just sheer road-grader size. Olsen is big but not huge at 306 yet he's very strong and late rounder Blake Schlueter is smaller yet very athletic (and mean). He's more of the lineman that Denver used in the past, but something about him drew the Xanders/McDaniels team to him. That 'something' was simple - he's incredibly fast, agile and tough as nails, is a master of the knockdown despite his lighter weight (leverage and technique are big tools for him and wields them like sledgehammers) and was a team captain in his junior and senior year.

I'm still not sure about Ben Hamilton. He just didn't seem quite the same guy. Could just have been the year off, maybe something else was going on. I don't see any signs that it was concussion-based, by the way. I do wonder if he's vulnerable to an in-camp challenge by a younger guy. McDaniels has shown one thing - he's not huge on sentimental holdovers.He needs to win.

You could also question this one issue from Lombardi: I'm pretty sure that Casey Wiegmann, among others, out-played, disarmed and diffused Kris Jenkins and a host of other players. It seemed, after looking at the numbers and the tape, as if the Broncos O line was pretty physical themselves. I thought that the physicality questions were better asked of the rest of the team, but maybe that's just me.

Conclusions:

Michael Lombardi asked a lot of good, insightful questions regarding where the tam came from at the end of last year and where it's trying to go. What stands out to me is how well these questions were answered. In looking back at the players that we (often mercifully) let go, the free agents acquired and the way that we handled the draft, the Broncos did a solid job of providing players that answer what I thought were fair, sensible queries.

They ranged from the quarterback to the pass rush, to playmakers at each level of the defense, to the quality of the secondary and defensive backfield and back again to offense. There was one question on Casey Wiegmann and another on the level of physicality on the Bronco, particularly the offensive line. Frankly impressed at how well they’ve answered them to the extent that they can, pre-training camp. I think that every team has a high level of expectation from the fans during the weeks prior to training camp. A certain allure can abound, sometimes realistic, sometimes false. How do you tell which is which?

I think that there are several means. We cannot truly understand how the Broncos are matching players to scheme simple because we do not, cannot know the schemes. But many of us have done substantial work on the statistics and schemes that our current coaches have used in the past. We've done more analysis of last season than any year in my memory (our available tools improve as does the quality of the people we have researching and writing). We can look at who stayed, who went and who was ushered out the door and consider the background and stats on those who replaced them. Taking all known factors into account, I'm impressed at how well we answered the valid and reasonable questions that were put to the Broncos early last spring. With the onset of summer, training camp is nearly in our grasp.

Bring it on!

This Year's Frunobulax

broncobear — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:11:58 -0000

Often, you hear someone say or post, "Yeah, he's this year's _____ (fill in your own blank)". It's a kind of verbal shorthand that can be useful if we are either on the 6th beer or clear on why a certain player has something in common with the one cited. Commonly, it's a just way to denigrate the player without giving any specifics, as in 'He's this year's Ryan Leaf'. Anyone who's followed football for a decade knows exactly what is meant by that - Player X is going to be an utter bust (and probably a felon as well). It's an easy way to say something. Sometimes he's just going to be this year's Frunobulax.

Depending on who you talked to, Mark Sanchez was either this year's Ryan Leaf or this year's Brady Quinn. Occasionally he was this year's Tom Brady, but I never could figure out why. If anyone is this year's Brady, it would nearly have to be our own Brandstater, given the strange list of coincidences they share. A running back who isn't as fast as some might imagine can be this year's Terrell Davis, for example. Darren McFadden, according to many, was going to be that year's Reggie Bush, although I didn't see that as the insult that it was usually meant to be. The list is long, the comparisons so simplistic that even their meaning can be obscure. But they all have a single thing in common.

via nbcsportsmedia2.msnbc.com

They go a long way toward expressing things in as a simple way as possible and equally far toward avoiding the intricacies that are involved with analyzing the specific players and seeing them as individuals with strengths and weaknesses. There's nothing wrong with that unless you want to be precise about what you're talking about, at which point it's not too helpful. They are ways to talk about how you feel about something as opposed to whether or not you think about something, a process that should involve more data and analysis.

You read this from some commentators. Recently, the most common object of this kind of statement has been Denver's own Alphonso Smith. He is a very good cornerback who is a fraction under 5'10 and therefore - to give one side - an utter bust. Well, perhaps not an utter bust, but certainly not worth the pick that was used on him. Short cornerbacks (by which we apparently mean under 5'10) are at a disadvantage, etc. We've all read both sides, and this isn't to bother rehashing those debates. I will, however, use a couple of things to illustrate the pitfalls of this kind of vague measurement-based (physical measurement in this case) thinking.

A good example is Louis Delmas. A lot of MHR members were very high on him at one point - it looks as if he could be a pretty good safety, and we really needed to draft a safety or two. This quote is from the NY Times and was written by Mike Tanier in his update on Day 2 of the NFL Draft:

Delmas is a square peg. He’s an in-the-box safety who is at his best when taking on blockers, shedding blocks, and hammering ball carriers. He’s also a good cherry picker who reads plays well, stays around the football, and can pick off passes. He’s like Rodney Harrison, only in bonsai: he’s only 5-foot-11 and under 200 pounds, so his stack-and-shed game may not translate to the NFL.

So, a square peg usually means that he's in a round hole, and Tanier is saying that he sees Delmas as a person whose skills doesn't match his projected position. Fair enough - it might or might not be true, but it is something that you can look at and talk reasonably about. Frankly, the way they're already using him in coverage in minicamps ends to cast doubt on this, but that's the point: It's an ascertainable fact. Then we have the inevitable height and weight - those are greatly meaningful, except, of course, when they aren't. Why is that? Simple enough...

I understood the allusion to Harrison who is 6'1 and 220 - the bonsai crack was at least shows that he was thinking and gives a nod to attempting to be 'literary'. Now, how important is height and weight to playing safety? We all get caught on this one at time - I certainly did when looking at potential draft picks. An equally fair question is 'what was the height and weight of the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 2007 and what was his position? If you guessed Bob Saunders at 5'8 and 200 lb you'd be spot on. He picked up a couple of Pro Bowls and a couple of All Pro rankings recently, too. But by all the commotion on Delmas as a safety and on Smith as a cornerback, we should know for a fact that each is too small to play the position he was drafted to play. And that makes not a bit of sense, since in 2007 we proved it insupportable for safeties and Darrell Green showed it wrong a long time ago for cornerbacks, (as long as we're focusing on defensive backs). Mecklenburg showed it unsupportable for the 3-4 LB/DE position. The outcome of an individual's production is based on the skills, mental and physical, of that individual. Period. Focusing on genetics is misleading at the very best.

How about Alphonso Smith? This isn't about whether he's tall enough. While Abe Lincoln said once that a man's legs should be just short enough to reach the ground, I personally don't care what his height is as long as he reaches the ball (which he's done brilliantly so far). But consider this, and you can plug in the player of your choice if you're tired of talking about Smith:

All of these players are individuals. They aren't the other guy, much less an imaginary one that you might think of if you want to reduce a discussion of a player's abilities to a mental exercise involving some statistical mean or median. They aren't part of some list of players who did or didn't get 'X' award. All of that is both pointless and inaccurate. They are individuals. They have strengths and weaknesses. They may have a lot more of one than the other. You have to look past someone's height and weight to see what their skillset is. That - and only that - is what's important.

I've been watching - and in part participating in - some verbal ping pong. If one person mentions Smith as being too short, the other will almost certainly slap it back and mention Darrell Green - he's 1+ inches shorter than Smith and comfortably in the Hall of Fame so it's obvious that height isn't the be-all and end-all as it's being portrayed. The other side then cries, "But Green was faster!" He was, too. He was shorter than Smith, too. He didn't have quite the leaping ability of Smith, either. Does that make Smith better? Of course not, and that's the point. We won't see for a long time if Smith is Hall of Fame material, or Ring of Fame material (more importantly). But what we can do is look at something other than a tape measure and a scale when talking about players. Because if that's all you've got, you've got nothing at all. That suggests that game film doesn't exist, competition doesn't exist and that we have no rational way to judge the man's skills, which is patently false.

It's just as possible that Smith makes the Pro Bowl, All-Pro status and Ring and/or Hall of Fame as that he doesn't - he will or he won't and we have no evidence either way. Neither side, if that were even the argument, has the faintest idea. Suggesting that he won't be successful because he's 5'9 is a statement without a shred of proof. Are all players of that height unsuccessful? Nope. Suggesting that he's been incredibly successful at every level of competition so far is a statement of fact. That's the difference between them. The 'height is good' argument is a pointless one, because it ignores the individual factors that have made this specific player incredibly good. If you don't know what those factors are, you should - at least, if you're going to join an argument about this player and not some other.

The picture at the beginning of this article is of Champ Bailey out-jumping everyone because he could 'see' the play unfold before anyone else. I haven't heard a word that's negative about Smith's abilities in that area. In fact, he's rated very high in football intelligence and he studies constantly. He, like Champ, has tremendous leaping ability. Why not talk specifically about those factors? If we're going to be fully honest, it's because they interfere with an attempt to keep the debate away from ascertainable specifics. If you can't really talk about why a player is or isn't good, you have to either say that he's this year's Frunobulax or complain that he isn't tall, wide, heavy or long-armed enough. Otherwise, you're stuck with facts, traits, analysis and.production.

Why not break down (in this example) Smith's skillset and/or his production? Equally, why not discuss them for each player that gets mentioned? If you can, find problems there and we can rationally talk more about this and about what they are. Otherwise, just for myself, I think that we've probably talked his genetics to death. If you accept that kind of argument, you have to suggest that Mike Singletary was too small to be a great middle linebacker. Don't try that argument on anyone he played against. The same would be true of Al Wilson, 10 lb too light to play MLB (or so went the argument at the time. . Karl Mecklenburg? Just a skinny 12th rounder, not worth the time. The list goes on. Who was your favorite player who was too small, too light, too anything to play the game?

Oh, Frunobulax? He was the cheesy monster that Frank Zappa created for his song 'Cheepnis'. Frank Zappa didn't specify his precise height and weight, though. Sad, really...

Tales of Mythology II

broncobear — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:41:50 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

25 days ago: Denver Broncos rookie cornerback Alphonso Smith takes part in drills during the team's football minicamp at the Broncos headquarters in Englewood, Colo., on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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The Myth of the Short Cornerback

When the Broncos drafted Alphonso Smith with their first pick in the second round of the NFL Draft, a huge cry went up among the pundits. Smith? No! He's too short! Shorter cornerbacks are at too big of a disadvantage. The belief was that if a receiver is taller than the coverage guy, all the offense has to do is to have their quarterback throw the ball up out of the cornerback’s reach and they will have reception after reception. This is such a common representation that I started to fire up NFL Rewind and to look for instances when it was true. The more football I watched, the more I realized that it only infrequently happened. Receptions commonly occur when the receiver is in front of the cornerback (and height doesn't matter that that point) or when the quarterback places the ball perfectly out in front as both are running (in whatever direction) but I could count the receptions where the wide receiver snared a pass that was thrown over a shorter corner such that the receiver leaps for it perfectly on just one hand. If it didn't work with just one receiver (looking specifically at taller receivers vs. shorter CBs) or in one game, sure, but in game after game it was a rarity and in most it didn't happen at all. I started to wonder, 'Why?'

This article is not meant to argue that there are no advantages to having a somewhat taller corner. There are, certainly, in some situations, depending on the other skills or lack thereof on the part of the players. However, a trade-off is at play here. Taller corners are often, although not always, slightly less nimble than the smaller corners. In a position where the ability to get around a receiver and to flash in and out of his circle, nimble means more balls defended and less penalties incurred. Of course, the number-one skill of the NFL cornerback - which is the ability to never lose your confidence, according to former Broncos cornerback Charles Dimry (himself over 6 feet) - has nothing to do with size. Quickness, both in foot speed and in hand speed, along with balance, vertical leap, body control, vision, controlled aggression, and courage are all important factors regardless of height.

Is there, however, a good example of a cornerback whose height has permitted him to use his (unusual) quickness to extraordinary example? If you were thinking of Michael Haynes, Hall of Fame cornerback and punt returner, you were right on the money. In a career that included stints with the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Raiders, Haynes managed to garner 46 interceptions during that time and gained 1,159 yards as a punt returner over the course of his career. He was the Patriots' first of three 1st-round picks (5th overall) in the 1976 NFL draft. Haynes was a true rarity, a 6'2" cornerback who was both fast and quick. Obviously - if you have a cornerback who has that kind of height and yet does not sacrifice any speed or quickness, he has a chance to be something truly special. Haynes was. But as I watched more and more games, I realized how much of a rarity he was.

As I watched the plays, still not seeing this link between the taller receiver and the high reception out of the smaller CB's reach, I realized that the answers to why it didn't happen were many, but they were also fairly simple. Obviously, most cornerbacks are quick, fast and nimble. Many of them – most of them, in fact (since it's a job requirement), have excellent leaping skills and excellent hand speed. That turned out to be one thing that really did matter. In one sense, their job is much easier than the wide receiver's. They don’t have to catch the football – Hoosierteacher has pointed out that it’s far more important to consistently bat the pass away than it is to intercept it, although interceptions are certainly appreciated. Passes defensed is a much more important number than interceptions, at the end of the day.

Colinski has been writing on the Magic Inch idea recently. To summarize (I hope), he's referring to the fact that if Smith was a fraction of an inch taller and was thus listed at 5'10", for example, few would have blinked at drafting him. Is that fraction-of-an-inch all important? My belief is that it's not, and there are several reasons that I feel this way. They are the same reasons that the height advantage seemed overplayed when watching film.

The first reason is this – all the cornerback has to do is to deflect the ball. While it's a very good thing to intercept a pass, defending all of them is an even bigger job. The CB can leap, and at the top of that leap just nudge it enough to change its trajectory out of the hands of the receiver. He can do so with a single hand – most of them do - while the receiver, in most cases, needs to be able to grasp the ball with both. Most cornerbacks are very skilled at leaping - new Bronco Alphonso Smith is justifiably famous for his 'hops' ability, and it should stand him in good stead.

I can give you a second reason, and you can test it for yourself. Try this sometime – Standing next to a tall wall, leap upwards with one hand and tap a wall at the top of your arc. Notice how high you can reach this way. Now – try to leap up and ‘grab’ just about 6 inches above that mark (the height you'd need to grab a football) with both hands. Rarely will you be able to do so. That’s another reason that the cornerback has a strong advantage. Again, tipping the ball at the top of his jump and tapping the ball is all that’s necessary for a cornerback to make a play.

There’s a third reason, and you can see this during the course of any football game. In order to catch a pass, you usually have to reach up or out and get your hands around the ball, control it and bring it down or at least into your body in order to keep control. Consider this – from the moment before the ball reaches your hands to the moment you control it against your body, the ball is vulnerable, and so are you. Your obligation as a wide receiver is to bring it down – in other words, to bring the ball right into the cornerbacks’ area of interest. While you, the receiver, are bringing the ball down and into your body, the cornerback has his opportunity to knock the ball away. Height no longer matters, because if the cornerback is taller than your waist, you’re working for him.

That's why Alphonso Smith forced 6 fumbles between '07 and '08. This short internet show at the 'fumbles' link starts off by noting that 5'9" corners are generally nickelbacks in the NFL but states specifically that Smith defies that stereotype. It shows his leaping ability, timing and ability to get between the ball and the receiver, with photos to explain why that's true. It should be required watching for MHR members and visitors - agree or not, you'll understand the draft pick much better when you see it.

Is there an exception among receivers? Interestingly, the sole exception who is frequently named by players and coaches alike is former Viking and current New England Patriot Randy Moss. At 6’4", he is about the same size as Brandon Marshall. In different books, both Mike Shanahan and former quarterback Phil Simms mentioned Moss as a very rare 'someone' who lets the quarterback play ‘playground football'. If you put it up, Moss seems to have a unique skill at bringing it down, protecting it and completing the reception. But, according to each of them (Simms and Shanahan) that’s a single exception, and there are a lot of passes thrown every Sunday. I'm sure that there are other such players in degree (and Brandon Marshall also comes to mind), who also have some of this skill, but Moss draws the most attention. It's worth noting that at 6'4", Marshall is a lot taller than any of the NFL corners. It's one of his advantages, but much shorter CBs still stymie him at times. It's really about the skill of the corner, and I haven't heard a soul claim that Smith lacks that.

The fourth reason that the size issue seems to be overstated is that throwing the pass in such a way as to throw over the up-stretched hands of the cornerback but not to overthrow the receiver at playing speed requires an unusual level of skill, even for an NFL quarterback. Is it impossible? No, of course not . But it’s very difficult and much more so to achieve at game speed with any kind of consistency. Watch a few games for yourself on TV or on NFL Rewind and see for yourself. The exception? The fade route in the corner of the end zone, which teams practice diligently. That does work, but it seems to work equally well against taller corners too; I'm honestly not sure that height is a big advantage there. It's mostly physics and geometry - if you can throw the ball over the cornerback and over the head of your receiver and if the receiver is behind the corner he may, if thing are perfect, be able to catch the ball before stepping out of bounds. That can happen to any corner of any height. Is reach a factor? Always - but generally not a conclusive one.

There is just one more reason that you don't see that high reception and it has more to do with safeties than cornerbacks although it can happen with either. Putting that pass in high is often referred to as 'laying the receiver out'. Sure, if all the factors line up and the pass is thrown perfectly, you can, in some situations, throw it over the cornerback, just exactly high enough to permit the WR to leap and catch it perfectly. But if that happens, you'd better pray that there isn't a safety helping out over the top and just begging for such a circumstance to permit him his moment of fame on SportsCenter as he sledgehammers the receiver's kidneys clear through the front of his uniform. Perfectly legal, very desirable, perfectly miserable for the receiver and probable cause for a 'chat' between quarterback and WR regarding why that's a very, very bad idea.

This myth has taken on a life of its own. Some players and coaches and most of the pundits will affirm that you need height to guard height. But in the harsh lights of the game itself, that rarely seems to matter. It might be interesting to keep an eye out for this during the coming preseason and regular season and to make note of examples both for and against.

As far as the question of this 'myth', if it is one, apparently no one has told the 5'8" Darrell Green about it. He's currently sitting in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Perhaps we should go there and ask him about it.

Beyond Brandon Marshall

broncobear — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:34:43 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

25 days ago: Denver Broncos tight end Tony Scheffler takes part in drills during the team's football minicamp at the Broncos headquarters in Englewood, Colo., on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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The Denver Broncos Receiving Options

With the onset of yet another strange distraction this offseason, as Brandon Marshall ignores the effects of his injury and additional problems this offseason with his personal life (neither of which kept him from demanding a trade), there is a lot of talk about the Broncos and the potential receivers who are out there and might be part of a trade for Marshall. While I wouldn't rule those out, from one perspective it's difficult to imagine how an injured problem-child with more offseason issues on his radar (he's already been suspended once and has more court hearings upcoming) will bring a king's ransom in a trade. It's entirely possible that Marshall will be spending 2009 with the Broncos. Whether or not he is, however, I thought it worthwhile to do a quick rundown of who Denver already has as receiving options. For purposes of organization, I broke them down into wide receivers, tight ends and running backs. How they are used may not be the same as how they are listed, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

Wide Receivers

1. Eddie Royal
Dust off the superlatives and break out the thesaurus - Eddie Royal may be vested with the nickname 'Cheese' but his real name in 2008 turned out to be 'Money'. At 5'10", 182 lbs, this is a young man who shattered the axioms about not counting on wide receivers in their first year. He showed the world that he was the top receiving rookie in the NFL in just his first game, blasting DeAngelo Hall and the rest of the Oakland Raiders backfield for 9 receptions, 146 yards and a TD en route to a Denver destruction of their division rival. He would finish the season with 91 receptions and 980 yards, with 5 TDs and only three drops despite some hand problems caused by Jay Cutler's hard throwing style. Royal showed that he can run tight routes, gain separation, get yards after the catch, adjust to the ball in the air and, oh, yes - be a constant threat as a return guy. In addition to destroying the theory about the struggles of 1st year receivers he also blew up the one about return guys not making the transition to receiver effectively.

With solid character, ceaseless effort and tremendous skill, Royal is one of the many young bright spots for a Denver squad going through major changes. Could he step in as a #1 receiver? Ask Steve Smith. In fact, think of Smith without the 'thuggery' tag that he has allowed to develop around him. Royal is the kind of player that every team dreams of having. It's interesting to reflect on the fact that most of the Broncos faithful blew their collective gasket when we drafted him last year, with many demanding to know why we didn't go with DeSean Jackson, now of the Philadelphia Eagles. Now we know...

2. Brandon Stokley
Last year, the 5'11" 192 lb. Stokley shook off the effects of a concussion that plagued him previously and showed that he is still one of the penultimate 3rd-down slot receivers in the league. He produce 49 receptions, 528 yards and 3 TDs for the Broncos. He's likely to spend this year teaching Kenny McKinley how to play the slot like an All-Pro, and if he can get across just some of the tricks of the trade that he's developed during his 10-year career, McKinley will be much the better for it. Talking about money - over those 10 years he has fumbled just 3 times and only 1 of them came with his previous employer, Indianapolis. None in his two years in Denver and none of them in the last four years shows us that he's still one of the best slot receivers in the NFL.

3. Jabar Gaffney
Coming over from the New England Patriots during this offseason, the 6'1" 200 lb Gaffney has a lot to offer the Broncos. He's familiar with the new system's terminology, used to Head Coach Josh McDaniels and a big supporter of his and has a lot of skill. Over the span of his 7-year career (the past three with New England and Houston before that) he's played in 107 games and caught 256 balls for over 3,000 yards. Gaffney put up 169 first-down receptions and 15 TDs over that stretch of time. Look for him and new quarterback Kyle Orton to spend a lot of time hooking up together.

4. Kenny McKinley
This 5th-round choice for the Broncos was the key to the South Carolina Gamecocks offense for the past three years. Unintimidated by pressure situations, the incredibly productive McKinley was described by Head Coach Steve Spurrier as the "best wide receiver (he's) ever coached". His jersey was retired when he left school, one of only 5 players from USC to ever have been honored that way; he may yet bring a Brandon Stokley-like presence to the slot. His slight frame (5'10", 192 lb.) is perhaps his biggest concern, but there's simply no denying his level of skill. Some receivers are just a lot harder to cover than others. McKinley is like that. He runs good routes, has incredible hands and broke Sterling Sharpe's collegiate school records for receptions and receiving yards as well as catching a pass in each of his last 43 games. He did well in the Combine with a 4.44 40-yard dash, a 37-inch vertical leap, a broad jump of 113 inches and a 20-yard shuttle of 4.1 seconds, but his on-field production was the key to drafting him. He was ranked anywhere from the 2nd round to the middle-5th, so getting him in the 5th round was a good acquisition. He has great vision, solid instincts and is extremely elusive as a receiver. If he can stay healthy he'll fill in for Stokley whenever Brandon eventually falters. I hope that it's a long time. Look for him to struggle at first against press coverage

5. Chad Jackson
Chad Jackson is being gifted with the best opportunity of his short career. A 6'1" 215 lb receiver out of Florida, Jackson was picked by the Patriots with the 4th pick of the 2nd round but hasn't been about to break into the rotation with either New England or Denver. Over the past three years Jackson has only played in 18 games (12 of them in his first season), but he has had an elusive potential that has kept coaches willing to find ways to keep him on the roster. He has a history of kickoff returning that has also played in his favor. Shifty and quick with good acceleration, he often tends to round off his routes and must improve there. He came out of college a year early and that may have also worked against him as the problems with his game have been ones of an immature (professionally) player.

Yahoo's draft profile on him said in part, "He is best when running short area routes, where he shows better crispness in his breaks. He has the size to compete for the ball in traffic and make body adjustments, but does like to jump and body catch a bit. Jackson excels at catching in a crowd and has the courage to combat for the jump balls. He will extend and pluck the ball, but did struggle with his consistency in the past (lacks softness and will juggle the ball). When he catches with his body, he will bobble the ball, but when he extends, he can catch and run without having to gear down." The short routes that Orton is best at and which have predominated in New England over the past 4 years should play to his advantage. This is his best, and perhaps his last chance to show a team that he can be an NFL wide receiver. Elusive with good strength and the leg drive to get the yards after the catch, Jackson could be a fine addition to this year's team if he simply matures as a player.

6. Brandon Lloyd

Recently of the Chicago Bears, Lloyd hasn't found his niche in the 7 years that he's played for San Francisco, Washington and Chicago. Despite a talent for circus catches and athletic contributions, Lloyd has developed a reputation for not enjoying hard contact and having troubles maintaining his focus. It will be interesting to see how he handles the "no-excuses" atmosphere of Josh McDaniels' team. When he's on track with a team he can provide 45 catches a year and 600 yards a season as he did in San Francisco in 2004 and 2005.

Additionally, the Broncos have Matt Willis, a 6'0" 200 lb. 4th-year player out of UCLA who is trying to catch on as well as Lucas Taylor (6'1" 195) and Nate Swift (6'0" 185), two CFAs trying to earn a place on the practice squad.

Tight Ends

1. Daniel Graham

You have to love the Broncos' options at tight end. Daniel Graham, a 6'3", 257 lb. tight end, a former Patriot himself, is equally talented at blocking and receiving and who leads this group. Graham has always wanted to be more of a receiving tight end but his skills at blocking have made that untenable. He's exactly what most teams would like at the position - durable, reliable and effective. He runs good routes and is an equally safe bet on third down or in the red zone and can be counted on for 2-3 receptions per game as well as that many or more key blocks. He is familiar with the Patriots-based terminology which also gives the Broncos an edge going into the new season.

2. Tony Scheffler

At 6'5" and 250 lbs, Tony Scheffler is a wide receiver in a tight end's body. Although his blocking is currently underrated (it improved visibly over the course of 2008), Tony is a receiving tight end, first and foremost. Scheffler redshirted his freshman year at Western Michigan and played slot receiver the following year. Scheffler switched over to tight end in 2004 which explains his less-than-stellar blocking skills in the past. Learning quickly, he achieved All-American status in 2005. He set a school season record for tight ends with 57 receptions for 670 yards (11.8 avg) and nine touchdowns that year. He also garnered Academic All-MAC honors for the third straight year (finishing school with a 3.63 GPA), a fact that lends credence to the belief that he will flourish in Head Coach McDaniels' cerebral approach to football. Drafted with the 29th pick of the 2nd round by the Broncos, Scheffler suffered a foot injury that impeded his progress during his first two season with the Broncos, but was undeterred by it during 2008 when he put up 40 receptions for 645 yards, providing 49 yards per game and a rousing 16.1 average with 28 first downs and 3 TD. If by any chance Brandon Marshall doesn't play for Denver during the 2009 season, some of the catches may well go to this big target with good hands. He's averaging 597 yards per season over the past two years.

Scheffler doesn't have great top-end speed but he's extremely explosive off the line, often catching opposing linebackers, safeties and even cornerbacks unaware. Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, Coach McDaniels shows no interest at all in parting company with this talented receiver who is still mastering the tight end position. He wasn't required to spend much time in the weight room in college, but still managed 32 repetitions on the bench press during a post-Combine public workout and is working diligently to get even stronger now that he's in pro football. His combination of size, quickness, explosion and soft (9.25 inch) hands are rare in a man of his size. Scheffler is still putting on muscle, despite a frame that is both big and ripped. Look for him to enjoy his role in Coach McDaniels' scheme.

3. Richard Quinn

The newcomer to the group, Quinn came by way of the Broncos third pick in the 2nd round (pick #64), creating a small stir among the faithful. His days at the University of North Carolina required him to stay in to block for two reasons - UNC had several NFL-ready players who could play receiver and their offensive line was porous at best. Coach Butch Davis has readily admitted that he under-utilized Quinn's receiving abilities. During the last minicamp, he made a diving catch near the end zone that eliminated for the onlooker's minds any concerns with his receiving talent. He also caught well and ran good routes at his Combine and Pro Day workouts as well as the 12 private workouts that various NFL teams put him through. That total should give you an idea of how much interest there was in Quinn, who used to pretend to be Jerry Rice when he was a kid.

But it's certainly his blocking that got most people's attention. Draft Ace put it this way: "Impressive size and strength. A truly dominant blocker. Acts like a 6th offensive lineman in North Carolina's offense." cfnscout.com said this, "One of the biggest question marks in the draft, he’s big, very strong, and a good blocker with refined technique; he could be thrown on a team right away and produce for a running game. Can he catch? cdsdraft.com just said, "Bigger and stronger than most TEs available this year. A true in-line blocker with better hands than you would think. Was not used that much in the passing game, and thus did not get a chance to really show what he can do in that area. Solid worker. No real downside." That summed it up pretty well.

By the way, Texas was looking to take Quinn in the third round if the Broncos hadn't gotten him with that pick. Comments regarding where he 'should' have gone are kind of like those on the value of a house. A house is worth what folks will pay for it. So is a draft pick - if another team is going to take him before you pick next and you want him, you have to make the move. A few teams had called Quinn's agent Peter Schaffer and told him that they were taking Quinn in the 2nd round, but for various reasons those picks fell through. The Broncos did take him, giving them two excellent blocking tight ends; both of whom can also catch well and a huge pass-catching specialist who can also line up at WR in some packages. Not a bad setup. For those who are interested, there was a good comment that gave some things to think about regarding Quinn.

Running Backs

Coach McDaniels has made it clear to all that running backs in his system (whatever that system may be) are going to do three things well - block, run and catch. He has a fine spread of backs from rookies to veterans and all of them are multi-talented.

1. Peyton Hillis

One of the most versatile players on the Broncos this year, Hillis is currently lining up at RB, FB, WR and TE and it's only June. Add to that his special teams work and you wonder if they won't trot him out on defense in some package just to see what would happen. Hillis has long been known for his soft hands and solid yards after catch numbers: He did it in college and over his rookie season and this year won't be different.

2. Correll Buckhalter

Buckhalter is usually running with the 1st team in OTAs, but he'll have to win out over Hillis and Knowshon Moreno to keep that slot. Given the realities of an NFL season, look for him to have a secure job with the Broncos and to either start or get regular snaps. He's got very good hands and should fit in well with general approach of McDaniels' receiving running backs; although he only started six games last year he had 13 receptions in that time. Buckhalter is interesting because as the game goes on, he gains strength - he averages 6.0 ypc for attempts 11-20, while gaining 4.9 on attempts 1-10.

3. Ryan Torain

Torain is a great unknown, starting with whether he can stay healthy for more than a few plays. If he can, he's said to have big-play talent and good hands as a receiver. He might add yet another dimension to an offense that appears to have all the tools.

4. LaMont Jordan

Jordan has a lot of things going for him. He's familiar with the New England terminology and playbook, he's big and strong, and no one minds knowing that you can go to Jordan in a pinch. The issue might be how to find a slot for him, and the option of going to IR with Torain may occur to some folks. Jordan's biggest downfall might be that he didn't catch a pass at all last year but he does have over 1,300 yards receiving in his career.

5. Knowshon Moreno

Knowshon has great balance, vision and skill, which happily includes the ability to make the catch and make the yards after the catch. He's going to need to in this offense, which should depend on short passes and screens to the running backs. That's right up Moreno's alley. Moreno is also a great unknown; is Josh McDaniels going to use a constant rotation of his backs or use Moreno, as some have suggested, as an every-down primary back? We'll know soon.

Conclusions

All in all, it's hard to argue that the Broncos have a sizable stable of talented and effective receivers, regardless of what position they supposedly play. To conclude, I'll leave you with a quote from Phil Simms' Sunday Morning Quarterback. He was fielding a question regarding the tight ends including Mark Bavaro leading the New York Giants in receiving one year.

"...and because they were our best receivers (Note: the tight ends) we designed plays for them. We moved them. We split them out. We put them at tight end. We ran them down the field. We ran them short. We did just about everything we could do with them in the passing game.

"If the tight end is not of that caliber, then you change formation, you move players around and you get a wide receiver in the tight end position and he runs the tight end routes. That's what all teams do. the plays they run are exactly the same, regardless of who they have running the pass routes. Instead of the fullback running into the flat they send the tight end into the flat. If they put a wide receiver where the tight end would usually go, that's because the wide receiver is better than the tight end."

Innovation is the only constant; change, the only thing that doesn't vary. If one player goes down, another must step up. In the case of the Broncos, you have a team with a young Head Coach who has been a tremendous teacher and innovator at the coordinator level. Now he will have to step up and perform as well as a head coach. As for the players - this short piece should show clearly that the Broncos have no shortage of options at receiver. We have big receivers like Scheffler and Quinn, fast receivers like McKinley, short, quick receivers like Royal. We have a group of running backs who have multiple skills; Jordan and Hillis can work the short-yardage game, Moreno can work the flat, Buckhalter can fill in wherever he is needed. Graham and Quinn can clear the way for other players, but each can also chip and go. The permutations are endless; the possibilities limited only by ingenuity and skill.

Marshall may stay or he may go. In either case, don't look for the Broncos to look back.

The Draft Strategy and Impact by Colinski

broncobear — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:11:20 -0000

Dear Friends:

This is NOT one of my posts. It came out as a comment under my article on the Mythology of the Running Game. Boydy2669 made a comment leading to this link. Colinski decided, in his inimitable way to respond thoroughly. The overarching subject had morphed, as subjects around here so often do, to the reality that there is, of course, a plan on the part of Head Coach McDaniels and Company. I've noted that in detail myself, pointing out that McDaniels gave repeated 6 hour presentations on less than 2 weeks time of preparation, something that I myself have done, rarely and with difficulty although my adult life was filled with but a single area of professional study. He had to have tremendous reams of material archived, prepared and developed.

That said, boydy had commented on The Plan and Colinski was kind enough to present a thorough, cohesive and exemplary discussion of draft planning and strategy. I felt that it was far too important to leave hidden in a comments thread that was beginning to fizzle out anyway. If I have in any way been presumptuous in presenting the material of both men (A link to boydy's and Colinski's comment, please forgive me. It is in the spirit of sharing things of rare thought, organization and importance.

I feel that those who argue that there is either a lack of planning or poor planning should have every right to present such arguments, preferably with a similar level of detail, organization and contemplation. However - these discussions should be considered by those on either side of the questions.Onward to Colinski's comment, with a link i the first word to boydy's work.

This was an exceptional post, BTW, boydy2669.

Some of the comments pundits made about our draft were inane. And I’ve been contemplating a review of draft strategy — just to try to clarify some points. Let me make a few of those points here, and I may go long.

Firstly, it’s best to look at absolute rating when considering picks because the BPA at an area of need may still fall below the threshold that justifies a pick. It’s a poor strategy to reach just because someone is the best at that position.

Moreover, we actually had a number of front seven players who were better than those reaches so we’d only be wasting money. The MSM was NOT aware of our talent level at DL/LB and they merely assumed that we were devoid of talent.

A final, and quite important consideration, is experience. The best way to address shortcomings at the front 7 is through FAs, and we brought in Fields, Reid and Davis. At best, draftees from the first two rounds can contribute immediately, and the number of DL34/LB34 types was extremely limited.

SUPERMARKET MENTALITY

The attitude that we should have taken ANY defensive player who fit — however superficially — into our areas of need is odd. I’ve equated it to shopping in a supermarket, and the assumption is (of course) that everything you need is on the shelf and all you have to do take one. This was not a good year for DLs, and the situation was compounded by the number of teams switching to the 3-4. LB was another, and curious, problem. Our needs were not as great as people expected (I credit it to a carryover effect from our needs in the 4-3 and memories of Webster). There also appeared to be a general downgrading of the position, which is why so many touted ILBs remained undrafted.

THE TEAM BUILDING PROJECT

Fixing our deficiencies on defense requires greater care than is generally recognized, and it’s also remarkable that the so-called experts are as oblivious as the layperson in this regard. There’s also a longshot myth that adds to the confusion. Some longshots do make succeed, and some UDFAs do, too, but there’s a limited amount of room for these players on the roster because of the 80 man roster limit. I certainly wouldn’t have regarded it as a victory if we brought in a large number of late round DL draftees if all they did was supplant current players such as Crowder. Despite the often repeated ‘bust’ tag that’s associated with some team members, our chances are better if we them continue to develop them rather than mindlessly replace them with other, less talented, low round picks in the hope that one will develop eventually. I realize that many people believe that players such as Crowder and Moss aren’t worth the expenditure required for further development, but the truth is that they’re still far better prospects than late round draftees.

UNDERSTANDING ‘DRAFT’ LOGISTICS

A guide: early round picks are expected to contribute immediately as starters or future starters. Later picks are expected to fill backup roles, situational roles and/or STs duties. The principle behind draft logistics is to understand how ‘when’ translates into ‘where.’ What people should notice about this Bronco draft is how EVERY pick had a position waiting for him. There’s no waste – NONE! Another of the oft repeated myths is that you acquire an overabundance of talent and let competition eliminate the excess. It’s true, as far as UDFAs go, but it’s a real money waster when you have to eat the draftees’ signing bonuses. Last year’s draft may have distorted our expectations regarding the likelihood of draftees’ success but it’s truly amazing to have an entire draft class in which even the late picks have a better than even chance of sticking.

DRAFT LOGISTIC PRINCIPLE 2. — "count, count, count"

Fans often don’t have a concrete understanding of roster numbers, and this in turn leads to unrealistic expectations regarding how many players can be added. There’s also a lack of appreciation for the experience factor. Populating your roster with a large amount of rookies creates problems, and only cellar dwelling teams that are willing to pay a sacrifice in immediate success can regard this as justifiable. Much as with the ‘when’ and ‘where’ draft relationship, teams must carefully consider the effect of having a large number of rookies at a position or area. There’s a limit to the ‘greening’ factor, and there’s a limit to how many rookies you can hope to add, which is the result of ‘hard’ roster math. Another way to look at this — even if we were successful at adding at every position on the DL, we’d be fielding a very young and inexperienced DL. A ‘successful’ draft of this type would forgo (for the most part) our chances of success this year. Teams have to minimize this effect of ‘growing too young too quickly.’

IMPACT

I’ve wedded the concepts of ‘need’ and ‘BPA’ into ‘impact.’ I’d previously used the term ‘utility’ to describe this idea. Both need and BPA have misused to the point that they’ve lost much of their value as concepts. What’s remarkable is how often so-called draft experts equivocate between the two concepts, and blast teams — alternately — for either not filling a need and not taking the BPA — a Catch-22.

IMPACT & DRAFT RISK

Moreno is a marvelous example of an impact player. He not only filled a team need (which pundits have yet to figure out) but he was the BPA at that point in the draft. More than that, his position and personal abilities mark him as someone who can make big contributions in his first year. He’s both less risky and more likely to make an impact.

I like using impact as a draft criterion because it avoids the difficulties that accompany need and BPA. Impact is a pragmatic decision, you’re only looking at whether a player could contribute in some way to your team. It may be because need & BPA have become so theoretical that people have lost sight of concrete reality.

Final thoughts — since it bears repeating, all of the draft picks have ‘spots’ that they can easily fill on this team. Moreover, many of the late picks are ‘timely’ picks since they can fill backup roles, and they’ll have the chance to develop. The receivers we drafted — Quinn and McKinley — also fit with the impact criterion, since their role will be to fill out multiple receiver sets rather than provide backup. One major point that’s been missed is how well suited our returnees are to switch to a 3-4. Added to this, there’s a truly remarkable UDFA crop of defensive players who are experienced in a 3-4 scheme. It will still take some time to add the necessary pieces to the defense but the cupboard is not nearly as bare as the pundits would have us believe.

The Tale of Tom Brandstater

broncobear — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:28:10 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

Denver Broncos rookie quarterback Tom Brandstater carries the ball during the team's football minicamp.(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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There are a few things that you can count on with Tom Brandstater. He's a big quarterback with nearly perfect size for the position. Drafted with the 1st pick of the 6th round (pick #174), Tom Brandstater is a 6'5", 222 lb. solid physical specimen. He's very intelligent and finished his degree in communications at Fresno State in only three years, also earning academic honors each year, a three-time Academic All-WAC choice. He's already finishing his Masters degree in psychology. His last name is pronounced Brand-STATE-ur. And after that, no one really agrees.

Oh, and it's fair to say that there are, and will be, comparisons to Tom Brady. Both were drafted in the 6th round. Both had poor showings at the Combine. Both have reputations as pocket passers. Both have question marks as to arm strength coming out of college. Both have had questions about mobility. One of them has 3 Super Bowl Rings. The other will almost certainly ride the bench during the 2009 season for the Denver Broncos.

Purely for fun, let's explore some of the frequent and sometimes surprising connections between Tom B and Tom B. The more I had a chance to research this, the more I had a chance to laugh. Disclaimer: Do not take this as a blanket endorsement of Mr. Brandstater. It is purely meant in the spirit of fun, but may be inadvertently educational...

A bit of history: Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round of the 2000 draft, the first of Head Coach Bill Belichick's tenure with the New England Patriots. Coach Belichick came to the Patriots from a rival, after a sudden and (in some quarters) unpopular firing of their head coach. Brady sat for his first year in the pros. Drafted by Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams, Brady was originally drafted as a development project and a backup quarterback who might later break into the ranks of the 2nd string or even start.

Tom II, the Sequel, was drafted in the 6th round of the 2009 draft, the first of Head Coach Josh McDaniels' tenure with the Broncos. McDaniels came to the Broncos after an unexpected (and in some quarters unpopular) firing of the former head coach, and came from a conference rival. Brandstater is expected to sit for his first year in the pros. Drafted by Brian Xanders and Josh McDaniels, Brandstater was taken as a developmental project who might later break into the ranks of the 2nd string or even start.

Tom I (historically) is a tall quarterback with limited mobility. He was panned at times for this quality. Tom II is a tall quarterback with limited mobility. He has been panned at times for this quality.

Tom I had a poor Combine showing, causing him to drop in the draft standings. Tom II had a poor Combine showing (due to a torn latisimus muscle) that caused him to drop in the draft standings.

Tom I is an extremely intelligent QB who is liked for his excellence in decision making. However, coming out of college he was said to have a decent arm but with suspect weakness on the deep balls. Tom II is an extremely intelligent QB who is (usually) liked for his excellence in decision making. However, coming out of college he was said to have a decent arm but with suspect weakness on the deep balls.

Tom I's draft scouting reports show that he was a tall, thin quarterback who should consider adding 15 lbs of muscle to his frame. It was suggested that to handle the rigors of NFL life that he immediately put in hours in the weight room. Tom II's draft scouting reports show that he is a tall, thin quarterback who should consider adding 15 lbs of muscle to his frame. It was suggested that to handle the rigors of NFL life that he immediately put in hours in the weight room.

From Tom I's draft scouting report: "The biggest problems that he has are a lack of good athletic ability and an inability to get good zip on his passes."

From Tom II's draft scouting report: "Weaknesses: Is not a quick-footed athlete who can avoid sacks and buy second chances consistently. Struggles to reset and throw accurately on the move."

Okay, trick question: Which Tom's draft report did this analysis come from? "...is a quick learner who calls a bulk of his plays from the line of scrimmage. He knows all protections and can recognize coverages on the pre-snap and on his pass drops. He is especially effective at reading hot routes and is quick to pick up the blitz."

The short answer is that it comes from Brandstater's report from National Scouting Service, commonly known as 'National'. However - the statements apply equally to both, at least as they left college. Tom Brady's ability to read coverages on the pre-snap, on his passes and to audible is tremendous. Brady's scouting report from New Era Scouting for 2008 says in part, "Brady has a great knack for feeling the blitz and knowing when to step up and to the side."

Both men achieved substantial success in college. Brady threw for 5,351 yards at Michigan and achieved a 62.3 completion percentage with 35 TD passes. Brandstater, in a revolving door program at Fresno State that included playing for 4 different offensive coordinators, out-threw him for distance with 6,857 yards passing over his career, but trailed in TD passes with 'just' 47, and managed a completion percentage at 59.0. Not entirely Brady-like, but certainly not bad at all.

There's just a lot about these two men that is the same, at this point in their careers. What's different about Brady? Three Super Bowl rings and a host of awards as an NFL quarterback (and a supermodel on his arm); Brandstater will be fortunate indeed if he can achieve even a portion of that glory.

Let's look at Tom Brandstater alone for a moment. He came to Fresno state, a former safety who willingly transferred his skill set to quarterbacking. He redshirted his freshman year and applied himself to his studies. Unusually intelligent, Brandstater went on to finish his undergraduate degree in just three years, coming to his junior campaign as a quarterback with the milestone behind him. He didn't stop there, either - he has now finished his Masters degree. he went on, during that year, to finish 23rd in the NCAA with a 140.49 passing efficiency rating. He also finished sixth in the WAC with an average of 213.23 yards per game. He amassed 2,654 yards on 211 of 337 passes (62.6 percent), connecting for 15 touchdowns against only five interceptions.

Yet another change in offensive coordinators brought difficulties during his senior season. Brandstater has never, that I could find, spoken a word in the media about this constant churning of the program. in fact, he's apparently a very together young man. His leadership, a quality that Brady carries around him like a miasma, is also said to be very good. His coaches and teammates have universally praised him in that regard.

Brandstater faltered, in degree, during his senior campaign. He had trouble with the system and found himself forcing some of his passes. His TD/INT ratio went from 15/5 to 18/12. However - his arm strength continued to improve, as did his footwork. He still needs help on his footwork and mechanics - every quarterback at every level needs help, in some degree, on both - but he's continuing to learn and improve each year. Most importantly, he developed an increasing ability to deliver the deep pass, something that had eluded him earlier. Scott Wright on NFL Draft Countdown also noted that he developed an increasing skill at throwing on the run over the course of this year. It's just one example of the continuing growth and development that makes him an attractive project at QB.

There is a great deal of disagreement on Tom Brandstater. For example, Walterfootball.com takes the BLESTO scouting (based in a ranking system from 1-8.0, with 8.0 being the highest) and gives it a negative twist. They claim that he has a tendency to panic and rush, had trouble with his reads and that his confusion is creating his mistakes. They may be right, in degree (they also laud the strength of his arm, which also apparently, from the reports, developed later). But if you look at his performance before and during the Senior Bowl, that isn't in evidence. Brandstater grew and developed, which made many of the comments (mostly negatives) from early in his college career inaccurate later. And even Walterfootball.com agrees that he can be a top backup in the NFL. That's what they said about Brady.

Why talk about so much about Tom Brady? As you can see, it's because the coincidences are tremendous (and fun). Will this Tom II manage a similar career? Probably not. Right now, it's his job to keep his head down, learn the playbook fast, work hard in the weight room just as Brady did in his first year with the Patriots. Brady's work ethic was one thing that endeared him to coaches and teammates alike. Consider this from Michael Holley's Patriot Reign:

"Scott Pioli, the Patriots' vice president of player personnel, has told people that Brady is the hardest-working player he's ever known. In his rookie season, Brady would come into the facility at 6 a.m., well ahead of the curve, and leave around 7 p.m. On many nights, he'd come back four hours later and work out and study film on his own for another two hours. When the security guard asked Pioli if he could give Brady his own key to the facility, Pioli didn't think much of it. Brady got the key. Working past midnight one night, Pioli encountered Brady and came away impressed."

How about this one? "Possesses ideal size and good arm strength for the position. A calm, mature signal caller who processes information quickly. Displays nice touch and accuracy on all levels of the field and knows how to look off a safety and dictate to a defense. Throws a tight, accurate ball on all areas of the field and can fit passes into tight windows.

It's Brandstater, from Rivals.com. And this? ""Is not what you're looking for in terms of physical stature, strength, arm strength and mobility..." That was from one of Tom Brady's predraft reports. Embarrassing, isn't it?

But as far as Tom Brandstater, this was taken from a school newspaper article:

Too bad there are no extra-credit points awarded to quarterbacks who absorb countless beatings but never miss a game due to injury. Brandstater was nothing if not leather-tough and thick-skinned.

He'll leave Fresno State as the No. 6-ranked quarterback in school history in total offense, but that doesn't mean as much to him as his team MVP trophy.

"To know that came from my teammates, even though I felt I could have played better, says a lot," Brandstater said. "I hope to go out the right way Saturday and see the smiles on the guys' faces."

In case you missed it, his teammates chose him as the MVP of his senior season. And, Brandstater is a guy who has never missed a game to injury. Not even a snap, at least that I can find. Durability clearly isn't an issue. That's one area in which he's even stronger than Mr. Brady.

Not that anyone's counting.

For those inquiring sorts of folks, I wanted to add a few things:

Brandstater's bio at DenverBroncos.com
Brandstater's YouTube Interview Talking with Tom -- he discusses a play against Rutgers on the whiteboard
His college profile
August 27, 2007 Interview (audio only):
Summer 2008 interview transcript:
Local, hometown journal article, post draft:
A Bleacher Report Pre-Pro Day interview:
By the way, for those hardcore draft enthusiasts and history buffs, here's an article by Bill Walsh, written in the 1990s on how to scout quarterbacks. I thought that you might find it interesting.

Thanks again to CoastalBronco for all of his help in accumulating the research for many of this summer's Tales!

Tales of Mythology Part 1 - The Mystery of the Running Game

broncobear — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:06:28 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

2 months ago: From left to right, Denver Broncos rookie running back Knowshon Moreno talks with fullback Peyton Hills and running back LaMont Jordan during the team's football minicamp at Broncos' headquarters in the southeast Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Sunday, May 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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With 3rd-and-5 the offense is in the shotgun. The quarterback takes the snap and steps up into the forming pocket. The defenders come screaming in off of both sides and the MLB comes up the middle on a delayed blitz but the quarterback coolly performs his checkdowns and threads the ball between two defensive backs towards his receiver. The ball falls just out of reach and the play is over. What just happened? The truth is, we'll never know.

We live in an age where the information stream is constant. Instantly experts abide and abound and analysis becomes reality as quickly as theories are touted. The game of professional football is constantly challenging and exciting. What goes on down on the field is difficult, even impossible to deeply understand just by watching television. It requires study, practice and effort. Even then, you can't tell, in many cases, if an interception is caused by a badly run route or errant throw. You would have to be privy to what goes on in the film room (where a bird's eye view of the game is replayed), the team meetings and then the huddle.

Have you ever watched the instant replay that showed something utterly foreign to what the announcers described? If, like me, you've watched a lot of football, you have. What is sometimes most interesting in the modern football world is the issue of information - and misinformation.

There are three reasons that announcers misstate what is happening on the football field. The first finds its roots in human nature - some broadcasters prepare extensively, while some barely go over the production notes. Some are glib and charming, others far less so, but those things aren't of issue here. The important thing is whether or not the information is accurate.

If the broadcaster happens to be one who prepares well, what are the other common reasons for misstatement? You cannot, by looking at the television perspective(s) of a play, which emphasize the quarterback, running backs, wide receiver and the ball, tell accurately what is going on. That really requires coaching film, taken from overhead, from the end zones and the sidelines. If the announcer is counting on televised feeds, he may make the same mistakes that you might make at home. Coaching film can tell a vastly different story.

The third reason that broadcasters make mistakes is that they may simply not understand that subject very well. They fall victim to the same myths and half-truths as many of the fans do - often because they, too, believed things simply because they were often said. It's important to avoid the common myths and misconceptions of the game. I chose three of the most egregious, in my experience, and I'm going to address them.

Myth #1 - The mystery of the running game

Let me start by defining terms: This next section is in no way intended to minimize the importance of the running game. I'm a huge fan of the running game. I grew up on Gayle Sayers and matured watching Walter Payton, so my love of the run game is fully intact. The raw power and fierce grace of that position brings us to our feet and brings cries to our lips. The ability to run the ball has several advantages beyond the yardage gained. The first, and probably the most important, is that if a team can run on you, it begins to sap your willpower.

Players on both sides of the ball have talked about this extensively over the years. If you are running the ball well, it means, first and foremost, that the offensive line is imposing their will on the defense. They are opening holes. They are moving men out of the way of the running back, clearing the way for the fullback (if any) to get to the linebackers in the second level. They are winning the battle for territory. The running backs are getting stronger by the play and as they see the defenders start to waver.

And the defenders? From the defense's perspective, it's an awful feeling when you can't stop the run. You can't get off the field. Drives begin to wear on you. The offensive line, running backs, the coaches on the sidelines, even the wide receivers begin to know in their hearts that you can't stop them. As their confidence soars, yours begins to falter. You get a sinking feeling in your guts and you start looking at the scoreboard, watching the clock, wondering when they're going to score on you again. It's one of the worst feelings in the world.

So, what's the myth? The myth is this - There is a constantly touted idea that a lot of running attempts means that you're going to win the game. People claim that if such and such a team would just run the ball X number of times, they'd be in the playoffs. Proponents of this claim that the rushing attack is the holy grail of football, that if you just rush the football, the game will be yours. Important as I agree the rushing attack is, they're still wrong.

If that were true, all of the teams out there would be running the ball 25, 30, 40 times a game. We know from experience that doing so doesn't win games. In fact, just running the ball a lot whether you are scoring or not is a fool's game. Look back at Oakland last year to see just how true that is. But failing to mount an effective rushing attack is also a fast track to losing. We all know that the rushing game is essential, and it is. What's the right way to look at it?

Here's the middle road - the truth - about the rushing game: The running game is just a tool. How you wield that tool says a lot about your club. You can choose to make it the dominant weapon in your arsenal, to emphasize the passing game or to balance the two. Which way you choose will be dependent on your philosophy and your players. No matter which way you go, you will still need a great offensive line to get you started.

Winning teams do run the ball a lot, but that's not why they are winning. In fact, it's exactly the other way around. Good teams, whether a rushing club or not, know that you run the ball when the game is close or when you're holding and protecting a lead. If you can run effectively at that point, you're going to win a lot of games. That's the real story. It's not just that you run the ball a lot. You can win a lot or lose a lot with that approach - it doesn't help or hurt you, in and of itself. But if you get the lead, whether by running or passing, most teams will then try to run out the clock.

That's why the number of rushing attempts ends to be higher for winning clubs. They don't win because they run - they are rushing a lot because they're winning. That's why winning teams have higher numbers of rushing attempts. The number of times that you rush the ball is going to depend on your players, your offensive philosophy and your situation in each game. When you're ahead, you should slow down the clock, and that means running the ball. I personally believe that you need a top rushing attack in the same way that you need a top passing attack, defense and special teams - they all contribute to a winning season. But that can also depend on the players that you have healthy, the defense you face and other factors. Regardless of how you're winning - if you're winning the game, the number of rushes will go up.

There is a grand story about Bill Parcells that illustrates this. He was coaching the Giants, long ago, and the Miami Dolphins and Dan Marino were going to be in town for game 3 of the 1990 season. Parcells is very upfront about his preference for the defensive game over the offensive, so this was touted as a classic battle. And it was...

After the kickoff, which Miami received, the Giants were able to hold Miami and force a punt. They took the ball and went slowly down the field, a chip at a time, taking a total of 17 plays to go 57 yards, taking 10 minutes and 25 seconds off the game clock. The drive only ended in a field goal, but Parcells immediately said to his quarterback, "Work the clock!"

At the beginning of the second quarter he was already planning how he would take 1-3 drives off the clock by slowing the game. The final score was 20-3 in favor of New York, and the quarterback got to spend most of the afternoon handing off and letting his offensive line, defense and his running backs do the rest. Would he have done that if he didn't have the lead, or at least a shot at it? Of course not. He knew when to run, and that made all the difference.

Understanding how to minimize the advantages of the opposing team, and how to manage the game to create a victory is a heck of a skill to develop. As fans, the more of it we understand, the more we can enjoy it. Next time, I'm going to take on a myth that has taken on stature among football fans. I hope that you'll join me.

Peyton Hillis, Hands and History

broncobear — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:34:44 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

26 days ago: Denver Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton, front, and fullback Peyton Hillis run during drills at the team's football mini camp at Broncos headquarters in Englewood, Colo., on Saturday, June 13, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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Innovation and the Forward Pass In the NFL

Last April, the Denver Broncos used a 7th-round pick on a player who was ranked by one service as the 76th-best player in the draft (Eddie Royal was ranked by the same service as the 78th). Peyton Hillis of the Arkansas Razorbacks had blocked for two of the best running backs in college football - Felix Jones and Darren McFadden. Just as importantly, he was known amongst college ranks for his power running and his soft and efficient hands out of the backfield.

It took a little time and a false start or two, but Hillis won the hearts of a lot of players, fans and coaches with his incredibly powerful and effective runs in the third quarter of the season. Many fans forget, however, that it wasn't until Week 9 against Miami that Hillis really burst onto the Broncos' scene - not for his running, but with 7 receptions for 116 yards and a TD, including a 47-yard reception. There was much speculation as to how he would be received in new Head Coach Josh McDaniels' administration, but many saw Hillis' incredible versatility as a weapon that McDaniels would be unable to resist; we just didn't know how true that would be. The roots of that versatility, however, were planted long ago.

The earliest days of football were a golden era for the running game. According to Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, footnote, page 120) the forward pass wasn't even legal in professional football until 1906, and it wouldn't be until 1933 that you could throw a forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage without penalty. The early pros were the professionals at running the ball; suffice it to say that the terminology applied to those who concentrated on the forward pass were a clear violation of JohnnyB's Rules of Conduct. It would be a long time before the forward pass would come into its own.

It would be disdained, in part, because the entire point of legalizing the forward pass was to make the game safer. Since football at its most simplistic is unarmed territorial warfare, valuing safety seemed at odds with the game as it was then known. To balance things out, up until the mid-1940s the practice of roughing the passer was tolerated or even encouraged in order to minimize the 'wuss' factor. Even so, the pass would be used extensively at the high school and college level and increasingly in the pros.

In the early 1960s, running versus the pass was, pardoning the pun, a toss-up. The pass would gain about 4.6 yards per play versus 3.9-4.1 per play for the run, but the pass was intercepted at a rate of 6.2% of attempts, whereas the run was fumbled only about 3% of the time. It was at about this point in time that Sid Gillman strode onto the field of history. While the history of the pass encompasses a great deal that I have to leave out, Gillman changed the way that we think of it for all time.

Brought on as the head coach of the San Diego Chargers, Gillman also had to take over the duties of general manager during the Chargers' founding season when GM Frank Leahy became ill that year. Gillman had also coached the (then) L.A. Rams and several college programs. His ability in play design and innovations with the forward pass would have a lasting effect on the game he loved. Gillman once said this:

"A football field is 53.33 yards wide by 100. We felt that we should take advantage of the fact that the field was that wide and that long. So, our formations reflected the fact that we were going to put our outside ends wide enough that we could take advantage of the whole width of the field. And then we were going to throw the ball far enough so that we forced people to cover the width and the length."

This would have repercussions for decades, and it still does today. When I was researching the New England Patriots for the Divining Series earlier this year, one of the things I watched was the way the Patriots stretched the field horizontally and vertically. All the while, I was watching what Sid Gillman had put into motion. He is generally agreed to be the first coach in the NFL to make the forward pass the primary offensive weapon.

Three people paid the most attention to Gillman's work. The first was Al Davis who, many years ago, was a bright and fertile football mind. His love of the vertical passing game has refined in degree but it has been so strong that it still dominated this year's draft for the Oakland Raiders. The second person was Don Coryell, of Air Coryell fame. Coryell, too, loved the vertical pass. Bill Walsh was the third, and he went in a different direction - literally. Walsh preferred to let the horizontal field dominate his perspective on the passing attack, and would bring in the rhythm or timing pass and polish it to mirror brightness. But there is another aspect of Walsh's invention that gets far less interest from the football public, yet has had far-reaching ramifications.

The most simple difference between Coryell and Walsh in terms of the systems each developed is that Coryell was known for playing a high-risk, high-reward style. The Air Coryell approach produced a lot of big plays; the quarterbacks who were its recipients threw for a lot of yards. But there were two downsides to this approach. The system allowed for a higher number of interceptions and incompletions, and it also took time for the plays to develop and the receivers to get open. This laid the quarterbacks open for sacks and big hits by the defense that would currently be considered untenable. There are simply too many dollars invested and too few really top quarterbacks available to permit this as a modern football system.

Walsh's system went in the other direction entirely. Beginning with the accurate but truly noodle-armed Virgil Carter with Cincinnati in the 1970s, Walsh taught Carter to throw so well that he went from a sub-50% lifetime completion average to leading the league at 62.2%. Walsh taught his QBs to throw short passes with a very high rate of completion and very, very few interceptions. After he would leave Cincinnati, Walsh moved on to the San Diego Chargers where he dealt with the momentous issues of Dan Fouts' mechanics, decision-making and footwork before moving yet again, this time to Stanford. By the time he achieved his dream of becoming an NFL head coach in San Francisco, Walsh had worked his program out to a science.

What really made his system unique, however, in addition to the more famous timing routes, was the emphasis that Walsh placed on reducing the number of decisions that the quarterback made. For example, with Fouts, Walsh taught him to look for the open man rather than trying to read the opposing teams' defense. Howard Mudd's name has been in the news quite a bit recently - he's one of the 'coaches' for Indianapolis who will be hired back as a 'consultant' in a blatant and utterly forgivable workaround on the NFL retirement rules. At the time, Mudd was the offensive line coach for the San Diego Chargers, and he summed up this circumstance up by saying, "Bill Walsh made Dan Fouts."

How did he do this? For one thing, Walsh was a genius at developing a young quarterback's timing, flow, rhythm and footwork. He also took Steve DeBerg, a 10th-round draft choice who presided over the lowest-scoring offense in the NFL in 1978. His completion percentage was a whopping 45.4%. After a year under Walsh's tutelage, it was up over 60%. This wasn't an isolated incident, either. Jeff Kemp had completed less than 1/2 his passes during his career with the LA Rams, but when he came in for an injured Joe Montana with the 49ers he threw nearly 60% and led the league in passer rating. Such was Bill Walsh's magic.

But there was an aspect that has gotten far less notice. Walsh did not believe in the idea of the quarterback as the most important player on the field. To Walsh's mind, the head coach was the most important player and the rest production assistants on his set. He once said, "The performance of a quarterback must be manipulated. To a degree, coaching can make a quarterback and it is certainly the most important factor for his success. The design of the team's offense is the key to a quarterback's performance. One has to be tuned to the other."

To Walsh, one of the most important factors in manipulating the quarterback was reducing the number of decisions that he was expected to make. For example, in his approach (and in others') you might have 4 or 5 receivers on the field. No one, reasoned Walsh, could compute who is going to be where in such an offense, track them and make instantaneous decisions. When Walsh's QB came up to the line of scrimmage he might have 5 receivers on the field, but he will already have chosen which side of the field he is going to throw to, reducing the number of options to 3 - a primary, secondary and an outlet receiver. Just before the snap, seeing how the defense lined up and shifted, the QB could then make a decision regarding whether his primary was a serious possibility. That left (in this example) just a single decision between the secondary and the outlet. The decision could be nearly instantaneous and the pass on its way before anyone could really move, meant to arrive just as the receiver did. Additionally, certain routes were precisely timed to 3-step drops and others to 5-step drops. Done to perfection, it was almost unstoppable.

But doing it to perfection meant hour after grueling hour of timing routes and patterns, practicing until the quarterback and receivers knew each other better than they knew themselves, over and over again. Many players would object to that kind of workload. Walsh simply didn't care. They were production assistants - they were paid to produce. That was all there was, in his mind.

Other changes began to creep in about now. In 1978, offensive linemen were allowed to grab for the first time. This was a year in which NFL teams passed the ball 42% of the time and ran 58%. This changed a little more each year until the mid-1990s, when NFL teams passed 59% of the time overall and ran 41%. The overall average run was still 3.9 to 4.1 yards, but with continued changes in favor of the passing game, the number of interceptions lowered until it was not more likely that a ball would be intercepted than it would be fumbled. Just as important, the number of yards per play for passes improved to about 7. The average rate of completion increased from less than 50% in 1960 to just over 60.9% in 2005. The passing game had come to modern dominance.

As we move further into our modern era, the nature of the game will continue to change. Running backs can become wide receivers. Fullbacks can become tight ends. The Wildcat (and associated variations) is fast becoming a commonality in the NFL. Three-tight end sets have made tentative appearances and many more may occur. One thing is certain - Innovation will not stand still. The best coaches will always be searching for new ways to confound, confuse and counter the advances perpetrated by their opponents. New approaches will emerge and evolve.

Head Coach McDaniels is looking to do many of the same things that Walsh did. For example, he's teaching his quarterbacks how to function from the moment they walk onto the field, how to run the huddle, how to stand, how to lean into their stance when they are in the shotgun, hands outstretched toward the center to gain a few milliseconds by controlling the ball faster. They are learning to grip differently, move differently, think differently. McDaniels has chosen Kyle Orton as his quarterback and he's going to teach him and use him much as Walsh did his players.

With all of this in mind, there's really nothing new about using a running back as a wide receiver. New England was doing so often last year. Although the term is constantly misused, the idea of an 'H-back', a lighter TE who can line up as a receiver or ball carrier as well as a blocker isn't all that new, either. However, new ways to use them are going to constantly break onto the scene.

And Hillis? ""I'm doing a little bit of everything," Hillis said. "I'm getting snaps at running back, wide receiver, fullback and tight end." Is anyone even surprised?

Zen and the Art of Draft Evaluation

broncobear — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:49:18 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

2 months ago: Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels looks on during the team's football minicamp at Broncos' headquarters in the southeast Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Sunday, May 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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Back in the 1970s, a couple of organizations evolved that would change the way we see and experience NFL football. They arose on the basis of a need teams to share the expenses of having area scouts - in those days, they didn't want to have the costs of supporting their own organizations of scouting. The first of these is still known as 'BLESTO'. This originally stood for Bears Lions Eagles Steelers Organization and was formed in 1963. The Eagles are no longer associated with it, but it boasts a roster of 12 teams, including the Atlanta Falcons. The second was National Football Scouting, which is known by the contraction, "National" and currently has 15 teams associated with it that I've been able to uncover. Four teams use independents and/or their own organizations exclusively, including the New England Patriots who only uses their own.

Both of these organizations have their own system of nomenclature which leads to a total grade for the player. National, for example, uses a 1.0-8.0 scale with the higher number being a better grade. BLESTO goes the opposite route, with a 5.00 to 1.00 scale upon which the higher number is a better grade. In addition to these there are systems such as the ESPN system in which there are different grade areas such as production, durability, character, etc, in which the player receives a 5.0-1.0 grade, 1 being the highest, but adding to total grade for the player from 1-100.

This is an example of a common system - ESPN uses the basic BLESTO rankings but they then assess the player (well, their organization, Scouts Inc. does). Draft Insiders does essentially the same thing with college players and takes great pride in the fact that they rarely agree with BLESTO's final assessments. There are a wide variety of media outlets that also do some combination of using the evaluations of BLESTO and/or National and doing their own scouting. cbssports.com uses the scouting from National, as you can tell by their rating system of 1.0 to 8.0 on various categories including, using a quarterback as an example, poise, leadership, touch and pocket movement as well as a host of other assessments.

In addition to these approaches, most NFL clubs are using a combined system of purchasing BLESTO or National rankings and using their own scouts. Both BLESTO and National have been accused of 'skating' on major Division I school candidates but it's fair to say that they are still the backbone of many scouts basic information. Without providing an opinion on that specifically, it's sufficient to say that each team has specific, individual needs and can and should look differently at certain candidates as a result. For this reason, statements by media and fans alike that player Igor Frounobulax is a good _____ (fill in the blank) and therefore the Tallahassee Pinions (as well as all other teams with a hole at X position) should run and draft him are, at best, drastic overstatements. At their worst, they perpetuate the myth that NFL teams are all alike, have the same needs within the options at any position or should draft for nothing more than a list of highly-touted names. The actual process is far more detailed and involved.

Once a player analysis has been reached, by whatever combination of methods, he will receive a grade by the team and an analysis of how well he does or does not fit into the team's roster and/or plans. For this reason, any changes that are being made to the team's systems (and those on the Broncos are extensive and in degree, mysterious) will change this aspect of the grading, so any projects by media or fans can only be based on thoughts and conjecture. This last fact has been written on extensively, particularly by styg50 and Colinski; I can or will add nothing to their offerings. Finally, teams will change their level of interest based on their own interpretations of the interview process at the National Invitational Camp, which is the formal name for that week long job interview known colloquially as the Combine or even just 'Combine' (as in, 'Alfred Neelix was invited to Combine').

In that past, nycbroncosfan and I have done some research into Josh McDaniels' professional background as an offensive coordinator in order to consider the factors that might influence his decisions as head coach of the Broncos. We were quick to note that while past is, indeed, prelude, McDaniels may choose to go in new directions. The Broncos have used National for the past 5 years, for example, but 98% of the college scouting they use is done entirely by the Broncos own scouting network, according to General Manager Brian Xanders. Given Coach McDaniels background, there are certain factors that go into player evaluations for the New England Patriots that Broncos fans may find interesting, especially if we see that seeping into the Broncos' system. With that in mind.....

The New England Patriots have a series of player manuals. These are not the 'playbook' - or, rather, they are the playbook of the personnel department. They were originally created for them by men like Bucky Kilroy and the late Dick Steinberg. Since that day, it has been updated and tweaked by Scott Pioli, now of the Kansas City Chiefs and Bil Belichick's longtime friend and right-hand man, Ernie Adams, to specifically outline the players that the New England Patriots want on their team. This system has been described as a marriage of art and science, instinct and intellect (Patriot Reign by Michael Holley, page 155). Given the history of their success in the draft and in free agency, it's worth taking a moment to consider the kinds of thought that they put into this system.

First, there is a system of twelve lower-case letters, each one representing a particular quality or issue that they consider important. These are known as alerts; a stands for age, c for character issues (bad ones), t is for special teams player (good) and tt for incredible special teams player (very good). x in this case stands for an injury concern. y means that there was a transfer in their college career, etc. Then there is a series of 13 letters in upper case. These also can be doubled if there is sufficient reason. A and A+ are, as you would expect, ranks of excellence, Q stands for 'vertically challenged', P is for a player who is projected to play a difference position in the pros than they did in college.

Following this group of rankings, the players are assigned a numerical grade that defines the role that they are thought to be looking at achieving A grade of 9.00-9.99 (A+) means that the player may or is expected to make the Hall of Fame. An 8.00-8.99 grade is an 'A' player. There is also an 8.00-8.99Q rating for a height-deficient player who will be excellent nonetheless. Next there is a circumstantial starter, one who will start right out of college but whose production in college has been limited by some (explained) factor. Those factors have to be accounted for in detail. This system goes in right down to 1.00, an NFL reject who is a waste of time.

This is not the end. In fact, this is merely the beginning - the Patriots then also grade the potential players from 1.0-9.0 in 3 different areas: major factors, critical factors and position skills. A 6.0 grade in any of these areas is the lowest that the Patriots will consider for any player. Within 'major factors' there are 7 subsections: personal behavior,athletic ability, strength and explosion, competitiveness, toughness, mental/learning (we know that McDaniels will not tolerate players who cannot learn quickly, as they just will not thrive in this system) and injury/durability. The categories and subsections that fall under critical factors and position skills are variable by position within the team. Beyond this, there is an extensive written manual on the attributes and qualities that are desired/required at each position.

I have a section available from Patriot Reigns that describes the quarterback position. I have no doubt at all that Josh McDaniels is using this in his evaluations of both Kyle Orton and Chris Simms, as well as in the drafting of 6th round pick Tom Brandstater.

"A quarterback for the new England Patriots must make the right decisions and make them fast. Just because a person is smart does not mean that they can make the right decisions under pressure." While that's certainly true, a quarterback in their system also has to pass a 6 page written examination in the week before a game that will show that they have grasped the key specifics that relate the the opponent of the week. Both intelligence and decision-making are required.

Here are some of the other things listed:

1. Be the mentally toughest and hardest working player on the team.
2. Be willing to take a big hit and then walk back into the huddle and call the next play
3. Have his head screwed on straight enough to handle the pressure and scrutiny to which all NFL QBs are subjected

Finally, at the end of this section, they have a quote from the legendary quarterback Joe Montana: "If you want to know who the good quarterbacks are, watch the passes they complete under a heavy rush. Watch the first down they get on third and long, passing into heavy coverage. Listen to what their teammates say about them." It is said that Tom Brady is the embodiment of exactly what is on those pages.

Bill Belichick knows a lot about scouting players. His father Steve wrote a book on the subject. Bill's mother, a language expert, edited it so that the average reader could grasp what he said. When you read what the Patriots manual says about players, they talk about native intelligence, football smarts, character and leadership. In developing their specifics for scouting a player with a certain position in mind, they use a Pinnacle computer system that can call up any play that they've run, show you all of the plays by position, type of direction, and give you all the information that you could use on what you've done, how you've done it, and where you've fallen short. These things are all taken together with the feedback and information of the scouts, position coaches and general manager of the team to create as accurate a picture as is possible of the precise player that will or could fulfill the needs of the team.

When we, as fans, talk about the draft, most of us (myself included) have a tendency to learn a few good or bad things about a player and to form a firm decision which our time watching film or games will often tend to support. It's a good things to consider the extensive compliation of information, film and interviews that really goes into choosing the players for your team. I don't have dertails of the Mike Shanahan/Ted Sundquist years. I have read things like Stefan Fatsis' book, in which he describes Shanahan fixating on a player and shutting out all input. I have no idea if that is true, or how often it might have happened. I did emerge from the past few years like a man from a dimly lit cave, dazzled at the light of possibilities around me. The more that I've learned about how the draft is done by Coach McDaniels former team, the more hopeful I am for the direction and outcome of the Broncos' picks.

I hope that the same kind of book is being written for the Broncos even as we speak (the possibility that McDaniels might just have a spare copy of the Patriots' manuals has not escaped me). But I can say this - when the Broncos do decide on a player, I know that it is at the end of a yearlong process. I know that they know the player, their tendencies and they best know possibility of their development. When I apply that standard to our draft class, how do I feel? I feel that we took players that we knew well and felt good about in terms of their character, skill and specific abilities at the position. Coming from such a detailed background, with an equally detail-minded approach of his own, Coach McDaniels now has to show us that these choices can manifest the qualities that he saw in them.

Bring on Training Camp!