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B.A.'s offense vs. Pep's offense.


Narcosys

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I dont know how anyone can claim to know Pep or his philosophy. I'm actually terrified. One of the things that made me happy was thar Andrew would get away from that Stanford philosophy and more was put on him. He was asked to do more in 1 yr than 3 in college. Now I'm worried if Pep will ask him to be more conservative, again.

At Stanford, all of their best athletes were TEs. So they were dependent on TEs to survive. Their WRs sucked for the most part. Owusu was horrible. Montgomery was good. And Baldwin was good during Luck's soph season. Point is, I jist dont know what Pep is going to do. I wanted a more veteran nfl mind for oc. If we're going to be awest coast team, why not hire Gruden over Chuck? I just hope we still take chances and are fun to watch. I hope this all made some sense. Typing on a phone and don't feel like proof reading.

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 You clearly weren`t getting it when you watched the games. Hundreds of his passes were Back Shoulder late.

 When asked what he needed to work on going forward Andrew said, "arm strength and accuracy."  Not like it wasn`t Obvious every week.

 The whole Point of Irvins message. By consistently not throwing more accurately in front of his receivers he made All those throws HARD to catch.

 That is 100% on Luck.

 

Accuracy, yeah, he could work on that, but I do not see his arm strength hurting his game. The description you're giving sounds like timing and accuracy is all I am saying. 

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Our offense did a good job at a lot of things, but I wouldn't call it really effective. We were good on 3rd down, especially good on 3rd and long, and we had a lot of big yardage plays in the passing game. Outside of that, there was tons of room for improvement. Some of this is due to the fact that we had rookies all over the field and a makeshift offensive line, but some of it was also scheme.

For instance, I don't know what single stat is more important than points scored, and we were 18th with only 22.3 points/game. We had 27 turnovers, 18 interceptions. We were 22nd in total rushing yards, 26th in yards/carry. We were dead last in completion percentage (I didn't realize that). Gave up 41 sacks, 9th most in the league. We scored touchdowns on only 54.2% of our red zone trips, 17th in the league (the Redskins were 4th with 60.4%).

When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, our offense was lacking, IMO. Some of that was personnel -- rookies, injuries, bad offensive line play -- but some of it was scheme. In a perfect world, your scheme minimizes your weaknesses and maximizes your best attributes. I think our scheme exacerbated our weaknesses, mostly because a) the route combinations often took long to get receivers open, and b) we didn't utilize our tight ends or backs in the passing game enough. If Hamilton's offense simply makes some tweaks to some of the passing concepts to get the ball out of Luck's hands a little faster, and if we make more of an effort to get the ball to the tight ends up the seam and to the backs in the flats, I think our efficiency would improve drastically.

May be 18th in points but we were the 8th best team in the league. It atleast top 10. All those stats say that we should have been a .500 team.

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When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, our offense was lacking, IMO. Some of that was personnel -- rookies, injuries, bad offensive line play -- but some of it was scheme.

 

In a perfect world, your scheme minimizes your weaknesses and maximizes your best attributes.  I think our scheme exacerbated our weaknesses, mostly because a) the route combinations often took long to get receivers open, and b) we didn't utilize our tight ends or backs in the passing game enough.  If Hamilton's offense simply makes some tweaks to some of the passing concepts to get the ball out of Luck's hands a little faster, and if we make more of an effort to get the ball to the tight ends up the seam and to the backs in the flats, I think our efficiency would improve drastically.

 

Bless you for saying that so well....   probably better and more clearly than I might've....  

 

Between your comments and the general change to a more West Coast style of offense,  I think we've got a good chance/opportunity for our offense to be much better than last year.     Heck, the personnel improvements alone should give our offense a jump start...

 

Better days ahead....   at least, I certainly hope so....

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I dont know how anyone can claim to know Pep or his philosophy. I'm actually terrified. One of the things that made me happy was thar Andrew would get away from that Stanford philosophy and more was put on him. He was asked to do more in 1 yr than 3 in college. Now I'm worried if Pep will ask him to be more conservative, again.

At Stanford, all of their best athletes were TEs. So they were dependent on TEs to survive. Their WRs sucked for the most part. Owusu was horrible. Montgomery was good. And Baldwin was good during Luck's soph season. Point is, I jist dont know what Pep is going to do. I wanted a more veteran nfl mind for oc. If we're going to be awest coast team, why not hire Gruden over Chuck? I just hope we still take chances and are fun to watch. I hope this all made some sense. Typing on a phone and don't feel like proof reading.

You kinda answered your own question on why Pep may have been more conservative @ stanford than he would have liked.

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May be 18th in points but we were the 8th best team in the league. It atleast top 10. All those stats say that we should have been a .500 team.

 

Then we went to Baltimore and couldn't score touchdowns. We were 0-3 in the red zone.

 

Those stats do suggest that we should have been a .500 team, if that. We won a lot of games with smoke and mirrors last season.

 

'm not being critical just for the sake of being critical. I'm saying that I think our offense could have been much better if it were more efficient, and those stats are examples of areas that need to improve.

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I dont know how anyone can claim to know Pep or his philosophy. I'm actually terrified. One of the things that made me happy was thar Andrew would get away from that Stanford philosophy and more was put on him. He was asked to do more in 1 yr than 3 in college. Now I'm worried if Pep will ask him to be more conservative, again.

At Stanford, all of their best athletes were TEs. So they were dependent on TEs to survive. Their WRs sucked for the most part. Owusu was horrible. Montgomery was good. And Baldwin was good during Luck's soph season. Point is, I jist dont know what Pep is going to do. I wanted a more veteran nfl mind for oc. If we're going to be awest coast team, why not hire Gruden over Chuck? I just hope we still take chances and are fun to watch. I hope this all made some sense. Typing on a phone and don't feel like proof reading.

 

So, if I understand you correctly (and I don't know that I do)  you're so worried about Pep Hamilton as the new OC  (I'm concerned too)   that you wonder why we didn't hire Jon Gruden instead of Chuck Pagano??    

 

Really??     Seriously??

 

I confess,   I didn't see that coming.....     a different OC perhaps,  but not a different HC.

 

Wow............

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So, if I understand you correctly (and I don't know that I do) you're so worried about Pep Hamilton as the new OC (I'm concerned too) that you wonder why we didn't hire Jon Gruden instead of Chuck Pagano??

Really?? Seriously??

I confess, I didn't see that coming..... a different OC perhaps, but not a different HC.

Wow............

I meant before Luck was drafted. Seemed like Irsay and co wanted no part of a WC offense. Didn't even interview Gruden. Now we're going to a WC offense with a young unproven coach. In hindsight, probably should've just hired Gruden last yr when everyone knew Luck would be a Colt.

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I don't think your HC has to be Gruden just because you want to run a WC offense. 

 

I love Pagano and see no problem with him hiring an OC to run the WC.

 

I'm just not sure Hamilton is the guy.    My guess is he gets two years to prove that he is or isn't...  and if it turns out he's not,  then we'll hire someone else to run the WC.

 

Gruden may not have been the right fit for many reasons.    Not the least of which is Grigson loves Pagano!

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I like the fact that Pep's offense utilizes a FB. That's something we didn't do much of anything with in the past.

 

Didn't Donald Brown run behind a FB in College? I think he'll benefit the most. Plus Havili is good out in the flat catching passes.

 

Can't wait to see that, since BA hated throwing to a back out of the back field :(

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I don't think your HC has to be Gruden just because you want to run a WC offense. 

 

I love Pagano and see no problem with him hiring an OC to run the WC.

 

I'm just not sure Hamilton is the guy.    My guess is he gets two years to prove that he is or isn't...  and if it turns out he's not,  then we'll hire someone else to run the WC.

 

Gruden may not have been the right fit for many reasons.    Not the least of which is Grigson loves Pagano!

 

I don't know why, but I thought you were a fan of the Hamilton acquisition. It seems you have your concerns though.

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The WCO isn't all just short & intermediate routes. There's deep passes. Some seam routes off play action for the TE's. Or even go routes for the outside WR

 

People need to stop thinking of the WCO as a playbook. It is an offensive philosophy that has many different interpretations.

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I meant before Luck was drafted. Seemed like Irsay and co wanted no part of a WC offense. Didn't even interview Gruden. Now we're going to a WC offense with a young unproven coach. In hindsight, probably should've just hired Gruden last yr when everyone knew Luck would be a Colt.

 

I don't think Irsay and Grigson's lack of interest in Gruden had anything to do with not wanting the WCO. I think it had everything to do with not wanting Gruden. And I'm happy about that. I think Gruden, along with Fisher, is one of the more overrated coaches.

 

By the way, the Colts interviewed Brad Childress and Brad Seely, both WCO guys.

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I like the fact that Pep's offense utilizes a FB. That's something we didn't do much of anything with in the past.

Didn't Donald Brown run behind a FB in College? I think he'll benefit the most. Plus Havili is good out in the flat catching passes.

Can't wait to see that, since BA hated throwing to a back out of the back field :(

Not entirely true. Remember the GW vs the Titans was a backfield pass. And thus, the "Ballard Tornado" was born :D lol

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Our offense did a good job at a lot of things, but I wouldn't call it really effective. We were good on 3rd down, especially good on 3rd and long, and we had a lot of big yardage plays in the passing game. Outside of that, there was tons of room for improvement. Some of this is due to the fact that we had rookies all over the field and a makeshift offensive line, but some of it was also scheme.

 

For instance, I don't know what single stat is more important than points scored, and we were 18th with only 22.3 points/game. We had 27 turnovers, 18 interceptions. We were 22nd in total rushing yards, 26th in yards/carry. We were dead last in completion percentage (I didn't realize that). Gave up 41 sacks, 9th most in the league. We scored touchdowns on only 54.2% of our red zone trips, 17th in the league (the Redskins were 4th with 60.4%).

 

When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, our offense was lacking, IMO. Some of that was personnel -- rookies, injuries, bad offensive line play -- but some of it was scheme. In a perfect world, your scheme minimizes your weaknesses and maximizes your best attributes. I think our scheme exacerbated our weaknesses, mostly because a) the route combinations often took long to get receivers open, and b) we didn't utilize our tight ends or backs in the passing game enough. If Hamilton's offense simply makes some tweaks to some of the passing concepts to get the ball out of Luck's hands a little faster, and if we make more of an effort to get the ball to the tight ends up the seam and to the backs in the flats, I think our efficiency would improve drastically.

 

 Excellent post.

 With our O-Line pass blocking well and a Good pass blocker in the backfield, we have a lot of really nice tools to flood the passing game with.

 With whip cream and a cherry on top.

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Not entirely true. Remember the GW vs the Titans was a backfield pass. And thus, the "Ballard Tornado" was born :D lol

 

It was a trick play that took a long time to set up, and it almost got batted down. Not exactly what people have in mind when they talk about getting the backs involved in the passing attack.

 

By the way, I loved that play and the timing of the call, but that's not the ideal.

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Arians' offense was fun to watch as a fan because it made for great, action-packed games. It was an offense designed to be able to score points quickly. I think that it was a good fit for us last year, in the sense that it would be reasonable to assume we would be playing from behind often with as young as the team was.

 

The problem with Arian's offense (besides our swiss cheese line obviously) was that it needed open field to be effective. Once you got in the redzone, there was not enough room to stretch the field and make us dangerous like were outside of the red zone. I think the biggest thing I'm looking forward to in Pep's offense is improved red zone percentage. If you can score the majority of times you get down there, you can afford to punt, and that means less forcing the ball and turning it over.

 

I am grateful to Arians for what he did last year, and I still believe he was the right man for the job at the time. However I think moving into the WCO is a natural progression as this team matures.

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I don't think Irsay and Grigson's lack of interest in Gruden had anything to do with not wanting the WCO. I think it had everything to do with not wanting Gruden. And I'm happy about that. I think Gruden, along with Fisher, is one of the more overrated coaches.

 

By the way, the Colts interviewed Brad Childress and Brad Seely, both WCO guys.

 

Chucky got famous winning with the house that Dungy built. What has he done since winning the Super Bowl the year after Dungy left?

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People need to stop thinking of the WCO as a playbook. It is an offensive philosophy that has many different interpretations.

 

Agreed. However, on the field the end product tends to be ball control, run the rock, short to medium routes. And yes, discard the playbook notion, because it is a culture. The playbook is just another part of it.

 

People on here thinking things won't change much from B.A. really are walking right by reality. A lot (offensive) is gonna change. From the training camp menu to how the offense practices to how we play.

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It was a trick play that took a long time to set up, and it almost got batted down. Not exactly what people have in mind when they talk about getting the backs involved in the passing attack.

By the way, I loved that play and the timing of the call, but that's not the ideal.

Hmm, didn't realize it took awhile to set up. I just saw the highlight so it looked faster. I didn't get that game that day

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Chucky got famous winning with the house that Dungy built. What has he done since winning the Super Bowl the year after Dungy left?

 

He pretty much managed to run the team into the ground with roster mismanagement and inability to have a consistent offense, which is supposed to be his area of expertise.

 

I don't mean to be harsh; I don't think he's a bad coach. I just think a lot of people bring him up because they know his name and he won a Super Bowl, not because of his overall track record or most recent trends as a coach. I thought we could do better, and I'm happy we got Pagano.

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He pretty much managed to run the team into the ground with roster mismanagement and inability to have a consistent offense, which is supposed to be his area of expertise.

 

I don't mean to be harsh; I don't think he's a bad coach. I just think a lot of people bring him up because they know his name and he won a Super Bowl, not because of his overall track record or most recent trends as a coach. I thought we could do better, and I'm happy we got Pagano.

 

I feel the same way. I think a large part of his fame comes from his personality rather than his skills as a coach. That's why he's such a good fit in his role as an analyst.

 

Edit: That being said, I wouldn't call him a players coach because several of his former players called him a two faced weasel.

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Now I dont fully know the differences between these two, but I do know that BA used a lot of long vertical routes and long range passes vs the intermediate and short routes.  This proved to be effective. 

 

Pep's offense seems to be using short to intermediate routes, but other than that i do not know a lot about how he runs his offense. 

 

Some of you who are familiar with Pep's offense can you describe how he plans on implementing it with the Colts. 

 

Now I can not give a full judgement but i really liked BA's offense, i thought it was really effective and entertaining to watch.  I am wondering which is going to be more effective.  I am a little reserved and skeptical of if Pep's is going to work.  But he basically has half his team anyways so, we will see. 

 

So my basic question after all that is, what are the main differences and where can Pep's O be better than BA's O?

Additionally, you could go to any 'Football 101' type site, or even just Wikipedia, and read up on West Coast Offences (Pep Hamilton) and Vertical Offences (Bruce Arians).

Again, this won't be gospel but it will give you a good idea of what each style entails.

Hope this helps!

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I agree one hundred percent...     Bruce's O gets QB's hurt..    It's really amazing Luck made it through the whole season last year.

 

Glad Indy is changing OC's.     Not thrilled about everyone having to learn a new O again but it will work out.

Hate to say it, but Arians leaving for AZ was the best thing to happen to the colts this off-season.

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Chucky got famous winning with the house that Dungy built. What has he done since winning the Super Bowl the year after Dungy left?

That is a tad harsh. Not that I wanted the colts to hire him, but Gruden was very successful in Oakland under then crazy Al Davis, and that says something. And the fact is Gruden was quickly able to do something in Tampa that Dungy had repeatedly failed at...winning a SB. The ultimate demise of that Tampa team wasn't due to his coaching ability.

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BA's offense- more deep and intermediate throws with a smash mouth running game. Luck takes 5 and 7 step drops. More use of shorter, speedy receivers. Little to no FB use.

 

Pep's offense- more shorter and intermediate throws with a smash mouth running game. Luck takes 3 and 5 step drops. More use of shorter, speedy receivers. More use of FB use to block and receive. 

 

Pep, I feel will use our personnel better than BA. Ba tried to put a square object into a round hole and made players play out of their element, like Fleener and Luck. I expect that our offense will be better overall by using Fleener and Allen more with Wayne, DHB, and Hilton to spread the field. And with Luck having less time to get hit using the shorter routes.

 

Also the talent of the offense will be better with the experience of everything last year and the acquisition of DHB, Thomas, Havili, and Cherlius will help the offense along.

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You know it's a long play when the article is long haha . Well, hopefully that play will not be apart of our offense this year

 

I like the play, and I especially like the play call at that point in the game. The offense had been moving the ball, but struggling to score points, and we're on the road, and it's overtime... time to spice things up a bit. It's something that a lot of fans always wanted to see from the Manning/Moore offense. I think it was a great play call.

 

But it's not what people are talking about when they say they want to see the backs used more in the passing game. At least it's not what I'm talking about. I'm thinking of swing passes to the flats, dumpoffs, maybe even some screen passes. Not gadget plays.

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Between Chuck and Arians at head coach, it took half the season to figure out what the offensive identity would be.  Early on, it was back and forth.  Now, with the transition from one system to the next, it will take another season for the offensive identity to come into detail.  I'm guessing you will see exactly what Pep said - a toned down version of Arians' offense.  And that's good. 

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I don't know why, but I thought you were a fan of the Hamilton acquisition. It seems you have your concerns though.

 

I am,  at best,  'Missouri' on Pep....    as best I can tell, no one within the Stanford fan community was disappointed, or worried that Pep left.    Replacing him was not viewed as difficult.   That might not be fair,  but I have great respect for many Stanford fans and their knowledge of football in general and of Stanford football.   

 

Put another way,  (and this may not be fair as well)   but Pep followed Greg Roman who Harbaugh took with him to SF.   In two season Roman has established himself as one of the top play callers in the NFL (the goal-line stand vs. Baltimore not withstanding)    Roman is a scary good OC and play caller.   Scary good.

 

Hamilton.....   not so much.

 

I wanted a veteran, experienced play caller to replace Arians.    Hamilton may be better than I think with all the fun pieces that he never had at Stanford.    But, until he shows me and proves it to me at the highest level....   let's just color me... skeptical...

 

Wish it weren't so.....

 

Honestly,  I'll be very happy -- even thrilled -- if Pep turns out to be very good...   Trent Dilfer calls him an upcoming "Rock Star!"    And I'm a big Dilfer fan...    so, I'm a little hopeful...   but my optimism is guarded...

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My thoughts on our "new offense". Think of it like this - Pep has never been an NFL head coach. So while I am sure his coaching philosophy comes from a deep understanding of football - I do not think you will become an NFL head coach saying "ya know, if you hire me, we,re just gonna throw the ball around crazy and see what happens." That would eventually get everyone fired.  

 

The West Coast Offense is just a "safe" system that can be easily adapted to a wide range of personel. If your QB has a weaker arm, throw short and run the ball. If you dont have the perfect RB, throw him out the backfield to raise his threat potential.

 

The point is the WCO is not a box our team will be put in. Our team will run "ITS" version of the WCO based on the players we have or dont have this season. Its ludcris to think we are not throwing the ball deep because Bill Walsh said so. Throwing deep got BA his 1st head coaching gig, its getting us enough Super Bowl's to make up for B Polian.

 

Side note - do you have any idea how much speed we have at WR? To put into perspective - i'll give you madden 13 ratings. T.Y - 95 SPD - -  DHB - 98 SPD - - L Brazil - 94 SPD - - N Palmer - 95 SPD - - Reggie - 87 SPD - just for reference - but my guy R-Dub is a wizard in the slot so he doesnt need speed anymore . To think we're not going deep in our WCO is a mistake i hope most DEF make. Just the threat is going to keep our RB's running and have Reggie giving his version of the Jerry Rice Slant all year long.

 

I CAN HARDLY WAIT

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