For today’s final post about Michael Lombardi’s Gridiron Genius, I thought I would look at some specific insights into the game of helmet football. I’ll try to generalize my responses so that all readers can relate to these ideas but I must acknowledge that a passing familiarity with the sport is helpful.
The triangle is the key shape of the West Coast offense. Instead of looking at one receiver, a quarterback looks to spots on a field where routes intersect to create triangles. From there, the quarterback can see how the space is being defended, then make a decision about where to throw the football.
I imagine most observers think a quarterback looks at his receivers one at a time and throws the ball as soon as he spots an open player. I don’t reject this idea but I think Lombardi’s point stresses that looking at players comes after looking at space. This thought also explains why quarterbacks sometimes throw the ball right to a defender – the right question isn’t why the quarterback didn’t see the defender, the right question is how the defender knew to stand where the quarterback would never look.
Lombardi uses 7.5 yards per attempt as a rough cutoff for whether a quarterback can drive the ball downfield without sacrificing accuracy. He also examines how this metric changes by game situation – quarterbacks should increase this number when the team is trailing in the game. Ideally, the number should go up (or at least remain the same) when the level of competition increases.
A good indicator of a person’s comfort level with statistics is whether he or she can break an aggregate metric down into relevant components. Lombardi demonstrates the skill here by pointing out that the yards per attempt metric is relevant in many ways except for one – the simple aggregate.
Defenders assigned to cover an area vacated by a blitz will often cheat to that space, tipping off the blitz and creating a hole in coverage.
NBC briefly experimented with showing games using a camera from directly behind the quarterback. I thought this was a great change and it briefly reignited my excitement for closely watching games. The most interesting consequence of the camera angle was how it showed the strategy of the game prior to the start of each play. Basically, the point of the sequence was for the defense to hide its intentions while the offense had forty seconds to figure it out. The slight movement (or even body position) of defenders could often make the difference between an offense knowing what to expect and being completely blindsided by the defensive action.
A good base defense is flexible enough to make tactical adjustments on a play-by-play basis to nullify an offense’s tendencies and take advantage of good matchups.
By nature, offense is a question of execution while defense is a matter of reaction. One way a defense can control a game is by taking an offense away from its plan. This means the offense has a harder time executing and becomes more likely to make mistakes.
Another way a good defense forces the opponent to make mistakes is by allowing the offense to run plays that do not feature their best players. This is similar in that lesser players often do not have the same experience executing the plan as do the most regularly featured players. Just like a commuter can get lost when traveling on a new route, an offense forced to try new things during a game loses the benefit of planning and turns the advantage over to the reactionary defense.
The numbers suggest that third down defense isn’t as important as preventing big chunk plays. Teams convert third downs around 35% of the time and this isn’t sustainable on a long drive where there might be four or five third downs. However, a team that gains twenty-five yards in one play moves much closer to scoring range while reducing the number of third downs per drive.
This is another good use of math to get a better understanding of what makes a successful football team. As I noted above, studying components often brings greater clarity to a composite statistic. The relevant component here is that not all third downs are created equal – teams might convert a short third down at a far greater rate than 35%. Therefore, I would add that chunk plays are important for offenses that cannot consistently gain seven or eight yards on the first two downs of any sequence.
Teams should defend plays differently based on the play’s importance in the game. A third down in the red zone, for example, is often the difference between three and seven points. A third down at midfield is much less important.
NFL statistics often measure performance by treating every yard with the same weight and tallying the total number of yards gained or conceded. However, given that the value of the next yard can change depending on a number of factors in the game, perhaps a better measurement system would account for the value of the yards gained or conceded by players or teams.
Rare ability should not be overlooked and coaches must constantly evaluate in order to determine whether poor coaching or mismatched schemes caused a player’s talent to disappear in a particular environment.
This was the team building thought that probably doesn’t translate very well outside of sports because most organizations cannot determine how much a candidate contributed to another organization. The broader idea that should not be overlooked is that environment plays a major role in performance.
Two minutes seems like a lifetime…
An entire year of preparation – team building during training camp, a grueling regular season, an extended playoff run – can often come down to just a handful of key plays at the end of a vital game. Teams who can fearlessly face these moments and leverage their preparation to execute as a unit often win close games. It’s like the student who aces the final exam – it’s about being ready to answer any question that might come up because there is no way to know for sure just what is going to be on the test...
…what?
...OK, fine.
That’s not from Gridiron Genius, that’s from Courtney Barnett’s ‘Three Packs A Day’. She's Australian and probably doesn’t know much about helmet football. But who better to end a riff off?
Thanks for reading.
