colts offense predictability

[CurBeatElite]

Nice article by Andrew Walker here on the Colts.com front page:  https://www.colts.com/news/jonathan-taylor-nick-sirianni-cleveland-browns-2020-week-5

 

The last section, I'm a bit concerned about:

 

"

» The Colts' offensive coaching staff is obsessed with staying on top of its tendencies on a weekly basis: While it's important to simply do what you do best at times, at the NFL level it's also important to make sure as an offense you're not too predictable in your play calling.

The Colts, Sirianni said, are obsessed with being as unpredictable as they can be throughout any given ballgame.

"That is something that is constantly on our minds," Sirianni said. "We know how we look at defenses and we know how our defense looks at other teams. We don't want to tip our hand in any way. In any sport, you don't want to let the person trying to defend you any little tell. We're really obsessed with that."

Sirianni said offensive quality control coach Parks Frazier has been tasked with evaluating the Colts' offensive play calls on a weekly basis and then, usually on Tuesdays, reporting his findings back to the staff.

"Parks Frazier does a phenomenal job of giving us our tendencies when we start the week," Sirianni said. "As a matter of fact, that's the meeting I'm about to go to after we talk right here, just talking through tendencies and how we cover tendencies. A huge part of what we do, a huge thought of what we do – just as much as we think about plays and players for our team and their team, we think about our tendencies and how we can break any tendency we have that can tip our hand.""

 

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In my opinion, our offense has been very predictable at times this year.  Especially with Hines at RB in the shotgun formation.  I don't study every game tape like opposing D-coordinators do, but from my television I can pretty often predict when a run up the middle is coming and most of the times, it seems like opposing defenses can, too.  

[horseshoecrabs]

You are right , but this is a progression . The play calling has been a little vanilla, hope we can learn from that and learn to  adjust as the game goes on  . This week will be a big adjustment as the game goes on against the Browns. 

[Dogg63]

Glad you agree with me, CBE. 

 

 

 

[CurBeatElite]

24 minutes ago, horseshoecrabs said:

You are right , but this is a progression . The play calling has been a little vanilla, hope we can learn from that and learn to  adjust as the game goes on  . This week will be a big adjustment as the game goes on against the Browns. 

 

Right, the play calling has been a bit vanilla.  To Sirianni/Reich's credit we had no preseason with a new QB, and between Doyle, Burton, Campbell, Pittman, Mack all missing time with injuries so early in the season, it's probably hard to get to sophisticated.  Also, we haven't really had the need to 'open the offense up'.  We moved the ball very well against JAX, other than a couple untimely interceptions, our offensive game plan was very solid.  The past 3 weeks our D has played so well that our offense's job was just to stay on the field.  I expect when we play a team with an explosive offense who can put up points on our D (I think the Browns may be able to), we'll see more wrinkles unfold in the offense and things will open up a bit more.

 

16 minutes ago, Dogg63 said:

Glad you agree with me, CBE. 

 

 

 

 

I sure do!  Sorry, I didn't see your post prior to posting this thread.

[Dogg63]

1 minute ago, CurBeatElite said:

 

58 minutes ago, Dogg63 said:

Glad you agree with me, CBE. 

 

 

 

Expand  

 

I sure do!  Sorry, I didn't see your post prior to posting this thread.

No worries! I never know if something is better off as a new thread or not. I wasn't being snarky, I am glad we agree. I respect your perspective.

[Mr.NotSoCreative]

19 hours ago, horseshoecrabs said:

You are right , but this is a progression . The play calling has been a little vanilla, hope we can learn from that and learn to  adjust as the game goes on  . This week will be a big adjustment as the game goes on against the Browns. 

Why would we keep it vanilla though? We don't have that many new pieces on offense.

[MB-ColtsFan]

1 hour ago, Mr.NotSoCreative said:

Why would we keep it vanilla though? We don't have that many new pieces on offense.

We don't have many now (JT, Burton, Noah), but my guess is that these early games give us a chance to do work on the core offense.  This is our pre-season work.  No need to get too fancy with the play calling since we're winning.  Let's get the basics down and work on the fundamentals and relationships/timings.  Also, no need to tip our hand so teams get a lot of film on us to see what we run with certain looks, etc.  If we look predictable now it's not actually a bad thing IF we can surprise teams by doing something out of our norm at a crucial time of the game.  That's a big if...

 

I think I felt the same way last year with how Frank was running the O with JB last year.  The big difference this year is that PR has already shown he can toss the longer ball with some success.  JB never got there much last year and we were never able to get to the next level.  I have much more optimism this year.

[Jason_]

20 hours ago, CurBeatElite said:

Right, the play calling has been a bit vanilla.  To Sirianni/Reich's credit we had no preseason with a new QB, and between Doyle, Burton, Campbell, Pittman, Mack all missing time with injuries so early in the season, it's probably hard to get to sophisticated.  Also, we haven't really had the need to 'open the offense up'. 

 

^Very Much This

[Four2itus]

Well, we did put the same amount of points on the Bears that the Bucs did. Does that mean we have as good of an offense as they do? Even with our noodle armed QB? 

 

sarcasm....

[Moosejawcolt]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:21 PM, CurBeatElite said:

 

Right, the play calling has been a bit vanilla.  To Sirianni/Reich's credit we had no preseason with a new QB, and between Doyle, Burton, Campbell, Pittman, Mack all missing time with injuries so early in the season, it's probably hard to get to sophisticated.  Also, we haven't really had the need to 'open the offense up'.  We moved the ball very well against JAX, other than a couple untimely interceptions, our offensive game plan was very solid.  The past 3 weeks our D has played so well that our offense's job was just to stay on the field.  I expect when we play a team with an explosive offense who can put up points on our D (I think the Browns may be able to), we'll see more wrinkles unfold in the offense and things will open up a bit more.

 

 

I sure do!  Sorry, I didn't see your post prior to posting this thread.

If Campbell and Pittman were playing, I beleive things would be quite different. U take any teams #2 and #3 receivers oit of the game plan and they become less predictable.

[CurBeatElite]

On 10/8/2020 at 11:25 AM, J@son said:

 

^Very Much This

 

11 minutes ago, Moosejawcolt said:

If Campbell and Pittman were playing, I beleive things would be quite different. U take any teams #2 and #3 receivers oit of the game plan and they become less predictable.

 

Going into the year, I think it was pretty clear cut that our offensive weapons 6 of the top receiving targets (arguably through Hines here or Pascal) were TY, Campbell, Burton, Doyle, Pittman, Mack  -- we have seen in the first quarter a lot of time without Mack, Campbell, Burton and Doyle and now Pittman (that's 5/6 or 5/8 if you add Hines/Pascal).  That's pretty significant losses and cannot help the coaching strategy, especially when week 1 was Rivers' first game with all those guys.  Rivers has shown a lot of professionalism by being able to put Mo Alie-Cox in there as a top receiving TE in the league after he lost Doyle and Burton for a stretch.  And like @Moosejawcoltsaid, losing Campbell and Pittman doesn't help at all - the fact that Rivers is still making plays with Marcus Johnson (off the PS), Pascal and others is a good thing.  I expect Pittman to be back around the bye week and hope we get Campbell back... imagine if our offense attack stays as steady as it has been (with room for improvement on 3rd Down and in the RZ) with our 'back-ups' and we get our #2 and #3 back and TY starts being TY again?

[Colt1841]

On 10/7/2020 at 2:50 PM, CurBeatElite said:

Nice article by Andrew Walker here on the Colts.com front page:  https://www.colts.com/news/jonathan-taylor-nick-sirianni-cleveland-browns-2020-week-5

 

The last section, I'm a bit concerned about:

 

"

» The Colts' offensive coaching staff is obsessed with staying on top of its tendencies on a weekly basis: While it's important to simply do what you do best at times, at the NFL level it's also important to make sure as an offense you're not too predictable in your play calling.

The Colts, Sirianni said, are obsessed with being as unpredictable as they can be throughout any given ballgame.

"That is something that is constantly on our minds," Sirianni said. "We know how we look at defenses and we know how our defense looks at other teams. We don't want to tip our hand in any way. In any sport, you don't want to let the person trying to defend you any little tell. We're really obsessed with that."

Sirianni said offensive quality control coach Parks Frazier has been tasked with evaluating the Colts' offensive play calls on a weekly basis and then, usually on Tuesdays, reporting his findings back to the staff.

"Parks Frazier does a phenomenal job of giving us our tendencies when we start the week," Sirianni said. "As a matter of fact, that's the meeting I'm about to go to after we talk right here, just talking through tendencies and how we cover tendencies. A huge part of what we do, a huge thought of what we do – just as much as we think about plays and players for our team and their team, we think about our tendencies and how we can break any tendency we have that can tip our hand.""

 

-----------------------------------------------------------

In my opinion, our offense has been very predictable at times this year.  Especially with Hines at RB in the shotgun formation.  I don't study every game tape like opposing D-coordinators do, but from my television I can pretty often predict when a run up the middle is coming and most of the times, it seems like opposing defenses can, too.  

Run, screen or a 7 yd out. Not hard to defend.