Was listening to Schraeger on Bill Simmons and Bill asks him why offenses look so bad, his reply is bad QB play and bad Oline play… to me it is the complete opposite
What has the most common NFL pass play been since the start of the 2022 season? QB drops back, finds no one open down field, dumps it off to a back or a tight end who leaked out way in front of the sticks and they cross their fingers he can break a few tackles and get the first down
In the past few weeks alone think of how many times you have seen teams get to the red zone, qb’s have all day, and then they take a sack or throw the ball out of the end of the end zone because nobody got open
So my question is… what have they learned over the past couple of years? It really seemed to start in 2021 when teams started playing KC passively with 2 deep safeties on every drop back, then Lou pulled out the drop 8 in the 2nd half of the AFC Championship game and it seems to have spread all across the league
But… it isn’t like this is the first time anyone has thought ‘don’t give up big plays’ and ‘keep receivers in front of you’ so why has it become so effective?
As a casual observer without all 22 there is only so much I can see… but one thing I feel like I am seeing is maybe they are just way way better at passing off receivers from one area of a zone to another… sort of a Temple style zone with man to man principles (shout out to Bill Raftery)
So instead of in a cover 2 the corner jamming the receiver and then there being a huge chunk of space between where the corner covered him to where the safety would pick him up now it feels like maybe the corner is sticking with him like its man and there is a smooth transition to the safety picking him up, very little window between the change
Anyone else noticing anything else? By the way this wasn’t meant to be a shot at Simmons or Schraeger… I consume a lot of NFL media content and its not like anyone else has brought this up
I think the overall tendency is to play more averse. Don’t blitz, because a mobile QB will run on you. Don’t bring the secondary up, because a deep ball will burn you. Keep everything in the middle as much as possible. The more times an offense has to take a snap, the more times an error will occur even on the most routine of plays. If an offense scores a TD on a 15 play, 8 minute drive, hey man, they earned that. But if they scored on a 4 play, 1:30 drive, you messed up and will get your D gassed by the end of the game. Take away the big plays, make them earn it. I think there’s a lot less “we do what we do” on D these days, with D’s taking away what offenses do best instead of the older, hard headed way of “our best guy on their best guy and let them play”.