Conventional wisdom on the NFL "run game" is wrong

[GoobyPls]

49 minutes ago, panthers55 said:

No Dion didn't do better than Cam, McCaffrey and Stewart combined. Our running attack is 3 guys, there is largely 1. 

New England ran the ball 150 times all year and passed over 700 times so that tells you they didn't have much of a running game.

You are wrong about the Eagles also. They ran the ball 473 times and attempted passes 564 times completing 341.  That is not that different than the Panthers who ran the ball 490 and passed 501 completing 300. By your definition using the Eagles I guess we were a pass first team as well... ..

Where the fug are you getting these stats from? The patriots had well over 300 rushing attempts and not even remotely close to 700 pass attempts. They were also ranked 10th in rushing, so yes they had a running game 

 

Did you even read the chart op posted? It pretty much gives the eagles formula to success. The eagle were a pass first team, they ran the ball once they got the lead. The eagles led the nfl in passing TD

 

Again wtf are you even trying to prove?

[Darvinsun]

On 1/24/2018 at 8:40 PM, ras977 said:

Agree-its the element of surprise,

When Shula pulled Olsen & Funchess against the Saints --2nd & goal from the 7--WTF?

Can you holler " its a run " 

 

The pass opens he run game only if you have dangerous wrs that teams fear. The run game opens up the pass game if you have a great running group and line. We really only had the threat of Cam stew and Cmc which was the run game. Our wrs got no respect deserving bc of the suspect hands and lack of separations, and play design. Once we get a consistent threat at wrs things will be better for stew, Cmc, and Cap.

[Darvinsun]

Balance is the key and it depends on who your playing against as well.

[panthers55]

2 hours ago, GoobyPls said:

Where the fug are you getting these stats from? The patriots had well over 300 rushing attempts and not even remotely close to 700 pass attempts. They were also ranked 10th in rushing, so yes they had a running game 

 

Did you even read the chart op posted? It pretty much gives the eagles formula to success. The eagle were a pass first team, they ran the ball once they got the lead. The eagles led the nfl in passing TD

 

Again wtf are you even trying to prove?

Thanks on the New England stat. It makes my case stronger. I was wanting to use their stats in an earlier post when you or somebody was arguing that the game was all about  passing and teams didn't have to have balance or a good running game. I remembered that most years the Patriots run the ball around 40% of the time. So I was shocked when I apparently saw some year or something where they passed all the time and must have thought it was this year. So I posted wrong numbers and created a  dialogue around it. My bad.

Still it proves that it isn't pass first, it is move the ball by passing or running whichever works and you have to do both. You say our philosophy is wrong because we run too much and the league is a passing league. It is and always has been a passing league since they introduced the first pass in1906. My point is that generalities are fine and good and folks can crow about this being a passing league all day. But what determines the offense is personnel and philosophy. Good offenses run and pass and have to do both based on their strengths and the defenses weaknesses. That is it. Otherwise generalizations are about as good  a source by which to base your football decisions from play to play as the Farmer's Almanac is to predict the weather and what you should wear on any specific day.

[GoobyPls]

4 hours ago, panthers55 said:

Thanks on the New England stat. It makes my case stronger. I was wanting to use their stats in an earlier post when you or somebody was arguing that the game was all about  passing and teams didn't have to have balance or a good running game. I remembered that most years the Patriots run the ball around 40% of the time. So I was shocked when I apparently saw some year or something where they passed all the time and must have thought it was this year. So I posted wrong numbers and created a  dialogue around it. My bad.

Still it proves that it isn't pass first, it is move the ball by passing or running whichever works and you have to do both. You say our philosophy is wrong because we run too much and the league is a passing league. It is and always has been a passing league since they introduced the first pass in1906. My point is that generalities are fine and good and folks can crow about this being a passing league all day. But what determines the offense is personnel and philosophy. Good offenses run and pass and have to do both based on their strengths and the defenses weaknesses. That is it. Otherwise generalizations are about as good  a source by which to base your football decisions from play to play as the Farmer's Almanac is to predict the weather and what you should wear on any specific day.

It completely invalidates your point, you said the reason the patriots didn't rush the ball against the jags was cause they had a weak running game when in reality they had a  pretty decent running game and they still threw it 38 times. It completely proves my point

 

Your whole argument revolves around nitpicking specific situations. No chit if a team can't stop the run you continue to run, but the end of the day all stats point to the fact that passing first leads to a more successful offense. You adapt to todays NFL or get left behind 

 

 

[lightsout]

Too much overthinking here. Here is the exact layout for offensive football at any level (and I do mean, ANY).

- Play design. What is the blocking for this particular run against the 4-3? Same run vs the 3-4? vs the 5-2? vs the 6-3? vs the 4-2? Certain plays just don't work against particular fronts, and that is fine. Is there a variation of that concept that you CAN run? How would you block it? Where is it designed to hit? If you design the play to naturally open up, that's half the battle done.

- Implementation. How do you explain the blocking to your offensive personnel? Are they good enough to get that blocking right? If they are, then you explain the blocking for the play against EVERY front you plan on using that run against. You do it 1000 times and you SHOULD have it down. Now.

- Execution. If the play is failing, why? Can it be fixed? If not, what is the lesson here? What do you change? How do you take advantage of that plays failure to set up another play? And beyond just the play being called, are you calling the play in situations that help the chance of success? If the timing of the play call is bad, the play is more likely to fail because the defense has done it's homework and knows your tendencies. You have to constantly change your approach, which leads me to...

- Adjusting. So you've set up the blocking for a particular run against a particular defense. You run the play, it works. It works the whole first half. They come out in the same defense in the 2nd half, but now they're stopping that run. What are they doing differently if they're aligning the same way? How do you take advantage of them overplaying that particular play? Not just with PA pass, but with a different run from the same look. 


That is how you run the ball and win games with the run. It's what Paul Johnson does at Georgia Tech, and we all know they're not up in most of the games the play in. A lot of times they're in tight games or losing for much of it. They would win more with a defense that could make stops, but that is a totally different conversation. They run the ball 65 times a game and are absolutely fine doing it in terms of their success in running the football and getting TDs.


And to preempt the "but the NFL game is different" argument, no. No, it is not different. It's still football. The only difference is the preparation is more intensive and the athletes are better than at any lower level. That's it. It means you can't run the triple option like Paul Johnson. It means you have to run some different things. That doesn't mean you can't run the ball 30 times every game and win doing that. Of course you can. It's all about how you do it. You don't run into 9 man fronts 30 times, but that's why the NFL game seems different. We see the big passing numbers you don't see in college or the high school levels very often on a regular basis. You don't see 9 man boxes in the NFL because the threat to pass is too high. Sure, a lot of 8 man cover 3 looks, but that's the most aggressive you'll generally see in any given game and even then, it's only in very particular situations against particular teams.

A balanced attack is the best practice for any NFL team. It's why New Orleans' offense was so scary this season. They had true balance for the first time in a while. It's why the Patriots look so good offensively. They definitely aren't world beaters in their ground game, but they're efficient with their runs. We need to be running the ball (with our RBs) 25-35 times a game. Cam is best off play-action, always has been. Can't set up play-action running the ball 20 times with 5 of those being Cam.

[Manther]

Establish the run so you can pass or establish the pass so you can run.    I believe in the latter.