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UW's reporter, on playcalling - Hulk01 - 11-09-2018
". . .Criticizing playcalling is the easiest, laziest way to evaluate an offense, and it's almost impossible for anyone on the outside looking in to truly know whether playcalling is the issue, or whether all those calls would have seemed a lot smarter if the d-end hadn't manhandled the left tackle. . .or the quarterback had made the proper check at the line of scrimmage. . . .
". . .there have been other calls that coaches have suggested should have been changed at the line of scrimmage and weren't — or calls that were changed at the line of scrimmage, and should have been, but simply didn't work out. . . .
". . .unless you're at practice, in meetings, and understand the strengths, weaknesses, tendencies and health limitations of every single player on the roster, I just think it's tough to discern when playcalling is the primary issue. . ."
Yes, that.
The full article is on The Athletic, a good source of deeper insight into football.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - stupac2 - 11-09-2018
In the aftermath of the election (I swear this won't be meaningfully political) I've seen a lot of people lamenting that Oakland's mayor, Libby Schaff, was reelected. After all, they say, Oakland has a lot of problems and in her four years they haven't all been fixed. When asked why they wanted someone new, how that would actually help, I never see a response.
I tend to think that playcalling criticisms are largely meaningless, for reasons the author indicates, but it's sort of frustrating to tell people that you have to be an expert in something to actually meaningfully criticize it (even if that's something we all very eagerly understand in our areas of expertise, don't even get me started on the people talking about quantum mechanics who couldn't tell a Hamiltonian from a ham sandwich). Those frustrations, though, aren't necessarily meaningful. As WiM points out ad nauseam, how many playcallers have gone from obvious idiots to hot new things? Kyle Shannahan was widely derided in his first year with the Falcons, now he's one of the toasts of the NFL. His replacement, our good old friend Steve Sarkesian, was, again, widely derided early on, but has turned it around and I've been seeing plenty of talk about how he's calling great games now. Has anything actually changed in their approaches? Or is it players executing better? Or any of the myriad things that can cause an offense to appear to underperform.
The one exception in my mind is run/pass ratio. Now obviously you can still say the things about failures to check into the right play, but runs and passes are fundamentally different, and it's easier to examine them from a macro perspective. It's not easy, but easier.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - CTcard - 11-09-2018
(11-09-2018, 09:42 AM)stupac2 Wrote: I tend to think that playcalling criticisms are largely meaningless, for reasons the author indicates, but it's sort of frustrating to tell people that you have to be an expert in something to actually meaningfully criticize it ...
The one exception in my mind is run/pass ratio.
Overall I agree with the sentiments in the two posts above.
To add some nuance, I don't think the issue is exactly that you must be an expert - at least to criticize at the level of a message board.
The emphasis on individual play calls is a difficulty. Many of the issues there are noted above: what happened may or may not match what was called, some calls are going to be better and worse for everybody, why an individual play fails takes a check of the film, etc.
The default almost always seems to be: that thing they called didn't work while clearly that other thing they didn't call would have worked. The play calling focus also tends to lead people to pine for wildly different things play to play and game to game - which of course is not how an offense is constructed or learned.
But, I see no reason not to think about offensive strategy broadly. A fan who watches can get a feeling for strengths and weaknesses of personnel, can consider the importance of establishing a base approach, the plusses and minuses of tempo, personnel matching, etc. You still have to pay attention and learn a little bit to have good insight, but it's not too hard to develop reasonable thoughts at that level. This sort of conversation can be both interesting and can help one learn a lot as well.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JJJ - 11-09-2018
Here's an excerpt from Sundays with Soltau.
Quote:Early deficits are nothing new for Stanford, which has struck first in just two games this season.
But the team has been resilient. After falling behind 24-7 at Oregon, the Cardinal rallied for a stunning 38-31 overtime win.
Last week against Washington State, Stanford fought back to take a late fourth-quarter lead but couldn't hold it.
"When things are tough and when things are dark, we are at our absolute best," said David Shaw, the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football. "I love that about our guys. The problem is, we create the situation that puts us there."
The Cardinal (5-4, 3-3 Pac-12) has been outscored 69-28 in the first quarter, a trend Shaw would like to see change in the remaining three regular season games.
"We have to find a way to play great football from start to finish," Shaw said. "It's on me, it's on the coaches, it's on the leaders on this football team. We're allowing ourselves to start slowly before we kick it in. When we play our best, we're as good as anybody, injuries or not."
Shaw said there were no major halftime adjustments.
"We didn't call anything differently," he said. "We didn't change who we play – we played the same guys. They played harder, they played smarter, they played better."
What struck me were the last two lines. I don't know if I should be happy that there were no halftime adjustments and we came back because we had the right plan all along, or I should be appalled that we didn't make any adjustments when we weren't getting it done. I do recall comments for the Oregon game where they became more aggressive on defense after halftime.
https://gostanford.com/news/2018/11/4/football-sundays-with-soltau.aspx
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - CTcard - 11-09-2018
(11-09-2018, 04:25 PM)JJJ Wrote: What struck me were the last two lines. I don't know if I should be happy that there were no halftime adjustments and we came back because we had the right plan all along, or I should be appalled that we didn't make any adjustments when we weren't getting it done.
Probably neither.
One thing you shouldn't do is take what coaches say in such interviews literally. They are typically much more concerned with sending messages to their team than informing fans about the depths of their football strategies.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - BostonCard - 11-09-2018
(11-09-2018, 04:25 PM)JJJ Wrote: Here's an excerpt from Sundays with Soltau.
Quote:Early deficits are nothing new for Stanford, which has struck first in just two games this season.
But the team has been resilient. After falling behind 24-7 at Oregon, the Cardinal rallied for a stunning 38-31 overtime win.
Last week against Washington State, Stanford fought back to take a late fourth-quarter lead but couldn't hold it.
"When things are tough and when things are dark, we are at our absolute best," said David Shaw, the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football. "I love that about our guys. The problem is, we create the situation that puts us there."
The Cardinal (5-4, 3-3 Pac-12) has been outscored 69-28 in the first quarter, a trend Shaw would like to see change in the remaining three regular season games.
"We have to find a way to play great football from start to finish," Shaw said. "It's on me, it's on the coaches, it's on the leaders on this football team. We're allowing ourselves to start slowly before we kick it in. When we play our best, we're as good as anybody, injuries or not."
Shaw said there were no major halftime adjustments.
"We didn't call anything differently," he said. "We didn't change who we play – we played the same guys. They played harder, they played smarter, they played better."
What struck me were the last two lines. I don't know if I should be happy that there were no halftime adjustments and we came back because we had the right plan all along, or I should be appalled that we didn't make any adjustments when we weren't getting it done. I do recall comments for the Oregon game where they became more aggressive on defense after halftime.
https://gostanford.com/news/2018/11/4/football-sundays-with-soltau.aspx
ASide from CTCard's response, it depends on the diagnosis. If the problem was that the play calls were not being executed properly, and it was a fixable problem, like reminding the offensive linemen to worry about their own assignments and not try to block someone else's man, then it is reasonable to keep trying. If the problem is that the personnel we have is incapable of executing the playcall, say because it relies on a guy who maybe is a bit beat up whose lateral mobility is limited to quickly move down the line, then it's time to try a different play that the offense you have can execute.
I take it the coaches diagnosed the first problem, found some adjustments that could be made, and got better results after those adjustments.
BC
(11-09-2018, 09:42 AM)stupac2 Wrote: In the aftermath of the election (I swear this won't be meaningfully political) I've seen a lot of people lamenting that Oakland's mayor, Libby Schaff, was reelected. After all, they say, Oakland has a lot of problems and in her four years they haven't all been fixed. When asked why they wanted someone new, how that would actually help, I never see a response.
I tend to think that playcalling criticisms are largely meaningless, for reasons the author indicates, but it's sort of frustrating to tell people that you have to be an expert in something to actually meaningfully criticize it (even if that's something we all very eagerly understand in our areas of expertise, don't even get me started on the people talking about quantum mechanics who couldn't tell a Hamiltonian from a ham sandwich). Those frustrations, though, aren't necessarily meaningful. As WiM points out ad nauseam, how many playcallers have gone from obvious idiots to hot new things? Kyle Shannahan was widely derided in his first year with the Falcons, now he's one of the toasts of the NFL. His replacement, our good old friend Steve Sarkesian, was, again, widely derided early on, but has turned it around and I've been seeing plenty of talk about how he's calling great games now. Has anything actually changed in their approaches? Or is it players executing better? Or any of the myriad things that can cause an offense to appear to underperform.
The one exception in my mind is run/pass ratio. Now obviously you can still say the things about failures to check into the right play, but runs and passes are fundamentally different, and it's easier to examine them from a macro perspective. It's not easy, but easier.
No, you don't have to be an expert to criticize plays, but usually the criticisms are so completely lacking of analysis as to be unhelpful. As CT mentions, usually the criticisms fall into two camps, and I don't think either of them advance the conversation much. The first is "we should have zigged when instead we zagged". In other words, we should have run, instead of passed, or tried a play action pass instead of a shotgun pass. The basis of the criticism is typically that whatever we did, didn't work and doing something else would have worked better. There is nothing per se wrong with the criticism; but it is just not all that helpful with the benefit of hindsight. That passing instead of running might have worked because it is an unfalsifiable alternative doesn't tell you much. The alternative call might have failed just as much, but we'll never know because we didn't get to see it. (As a corollary, I notice people rarely criticize the plays when the work, even when it is a broken play that was saved by a great individual effort). But there are good criticisms of such plays. I found, for example, Addicted to Quack's preview of our offense helpful, see for example this breakdown of why calling between the tackle runs from the heavy formation was bad play calling:
Quote:On the first play, SDSU has all 11 men in the box, and all it takes to blow this play up is #63 RG Herbig being a little slow to get off his double-team to block the shooting linebacker; even if he hadn’t three more Aztecs had gotten past their blockers in time to cut off the playside and the backside, and of course the middle was totally clogged. On the second play (at :15), this zone block is requiring too much of the o-line given the number of defenders coming down (and SDSU wasn’t even really ready for the snap) - the RG panics at the WILL coming into the B-gap, even though that’s #6 FB Williams’ assignment, which forces #51 C Dalman to block the DT and leaves the A-gap open for the MIKE to shoot … the boundary CB is also free to contain the edge since the lone split-out receiver heads inside to block the safety. On the last play (at :37), we see the Cardinal still having trouble against the Trojans’ eight-man box - the DT shades over to #74 LG Hamilton’s inside shoulder, forcing him step inside and allowing USC to pin him and the blitzing safety to crash hard into the backfield (the only guy left to stop him is Costello, who at least taps him on the shoulder in lieu of blocking).
A few observations about this: first, all of these plays feature Stanford in very heavy sets -- three tight ends and sometimes a fullback, with one or even zero receivers split out -- so of course the defense loaded the box … where else would they put their guys? Second, maybe in previous years Stanford’s jumbo sets with eight or nine blockers could defeat the defense’s comparably stacked box, but this year they just don’t have that ability. Third, this configuration -- inside run out of a jumbo set against a stacked box -- failed constantly against FBS competition (I had thirteen more such failed plays to choose from when making this video, from just two games), and yet Pritchard called them time and again.
Fourth, while the narrative is therefore not wrong that they couldn’t run against a heavy box, it’s still misleading because Stanford can’t run against a light box either. Let me prove it:
[embedded video I can't insert]
I’ve got a lot more of these if anyone doubts it, including against UC Davis. I think my favorite is the last one (at :47) where Herbig gets flagged for holding the 3-tech but still can’t stop him from tackling Love.
(emphasis mine)
The criticism is not the play call per se, but the play call in the context of the offense's ability to execute it, which I think is right on the money. In years past we could have run effectively from these sets, so they are not intrinsically flawed, but it is wrong to call them this year because our offensive line has struggled.
BC
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - winflop - 11-10-2018
Sorry but I think playcalling can be criticized in aggregate, especially when:
- After 9 games of being able to run the ball, they start the game with 3 runs in a row and a punt
- After putting up 21 points in a quarter by going more pass, they open the next quarter by running on 2nd & 13
- 3 runs in a row inside the 10 in the 4th quarter of a tight game
And that was just last Saturday...go ahead and call me lazy. The playcalling this year has sucked.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - Hulk01 - 11-10-2018
We didn't run on our first three plays against Washington.
Four yard run on first down, five yard pass on second down, failed to convert the third and one run.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JPR36 - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 06:40 AM)Hulk01 Wrote: We didn't run on our first three plays against Washington.
Four yard run on first down, five yard pass on second down, failed to convert the third and one run.
Another thing we seem to do too much of is throw five yard passes when we need six for a first down.
(Disclaimer: This is admittedly a casual observation not based on any detailed study.)
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - Hulk01 - 11-10-2018
A four-yard pass where five is needed is almost always the fault of the passer (and/or perhaps the receiver) and not the play call. Costello too often checks down to receivers well short of the marker.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JPR36 - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 08:41 AM)Hulk01 Wrote: A four-yard pass where five is needed is almost always the fault of the passer (and/or perhaps the receiver) and not the play call. Costello too often checks down to receivers well short of the marker.
Yeah, I sure hope the play isn't designed to get four yards when we need five. I always assumed it was the receiver cutting his route short for one reason or another. And of course, a four yard gain is better than a sack or just throwing the ball into the stands.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - Treebound - 11-10-2018
The fault lies in both the QB and the Receiver when we under throw a first down marker on a critical play. We have seen it happen enough this season, that I'm willing to extend fault now to the coaching staff for not correcting the problem. With the smart capable players that we have, this should have been corrected.
As for playcalling, the trend is not positive and is too predictable. I continue to believe that we need a new, strong OC to instill some new thinking and to push/expand David Shaw. Tavita would be well served to get some experience elsewhere to grow in his career. I like him and wish him well, but I don't think at this stage Tavita is capable of challenging Shaw's thinking.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JPR36 - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 11:27 AM)Treebound Wrote: The fault lies in both the QB and the Receiver when we under throw a first down marker on a critical play. We have seen it happen enough this season, that I'm willing to extend fault now to the coaching staff for not correcting the problem. With the smart capable players that we have, this should have been corrected.
As for playcalling, the trend is not positive and is too predictable. I continue to believe that we need a new, strong OC to instill some new thinking and to push/expand David Shaw. Tavita would be well served to get some experience elsewhere to grow in his career. I like him and wish him well, but I don't think at this stage Tavita is capable of challenging Shaw's thinking.
People have been calling for Shaw to bring in a "new, strong" OC for years now. Somehow I think if it was going to happen it would have by now. So, short of us having a couple of, say, 4-8 years I wouldn't be holding my breath.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - cardcrimson - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 04:33 AM)winflop Wrote: Sorry but I think playcalling can be criticized in aggregate, especially when:
- After 9 games of being able to run the ball, they start the game with 3 runs in a row and a punt
- After putting up 21 points in a quarter by going more pass, they open the next quarter by running on 2nd & 13
- 3 runs in a row inside the 10 in the 4th quarter of a tight game
And that was just last Saturday...go ahead and call me lazy. The playcalling this year has sucked.
winflop, it's execution. The play calling has been perfect; if our guys had executed the plays well, we wouldn't be 5 and 4.
As George Allen famously said about his Cumberland Bulldogs: "We just didn't execute today".
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - Goose - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 08:41 AM)Hulk01 Wrote: A four-yard pass where five is needed is almost always the fault of the passer (and/or perhaps the receiver) and not the play call. Costello too often checks down to receivers well short of the marker.True, but sometimes that is all there is and he hopes the receiver can run for the first down. That does happen. Nobody will complain about a pass that is thrown short of the line to gain if the receiver has a clear path to run for it. Screen passes always fall into this category. Naturally, the defense tries to defend the line to gain. They will give you a short pass and rely on their ability to tackle you before you get there. It often doesn't work out that way. [sarcasm]Ask our defense if you don't believe me.[/sarcasm]
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JJJ - 11-10-2018
(11-10-2018, 03:27 PM)Goose Wrote: [sarcasm]Ask our defense if you don't believe me.[/sarcasm]Touche.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - JPR36 - 11-11-2018
(11-10-2018, 11:27 AM)Treebound Wrote: The fault lies in both the QB and the Receiver when we under throw a first down marker on a critical play. We have seen it happen enough this season, that I'm willing to extend fault now to the coaching staff for not correcting the problem. With the smart capable players that we have, this should have been corrected.
As for playcalling, the trend is not positive and is too predictable. I continue to believe that we need a new, strong OC to instill some new thinking and to push/expand David Shaw. Tavita would be well served to get some experience elsewhere to grow in his career. I like him and wish him well, but I don't think at this stage Tavita is capable of challenging Shaw's thinking.
I notice freshman Jack West got in last night and completed his first pass in a Cardinal uniform. It was, appropriately enough, for four yards when we needed five for a first down.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - CTcard - 11-11-2018
(11-11-2018, 04:54 AM)JPR36 Wrote: I notice freshman Jack West got in last night and completed his first pass in a Cardinal uniform. It was, appropriately enough, for four yards when we needed five for a first down.
Of course that was also more or less the case for Jack Richardson's first career completion, 6 yards on third and 9.
Made me wonder how bad Stanford is on this particular issue versus anyone else. So, here's the percentage of third down completions that went for first downs. I put in two categories: first all third down completions, next third and 9 or less (because lots of third and 10+ passes never get close).
Arizona 80%, 87%
Stanford 74%, 83%
Oregon 74%, 79%
ASU 69%, 78%
cal 64%, 79%
Or State 63%, 80%
Colo 62%, 67%
U$C 58%, 70%
Utah 58%, 66%
UCLA 57%, 68%
Conclusion: Stanford actually seems decent at this particular thing at least compared to other teams, but man is it frustrating when it happens to your own team - ever.
RE: UW's reporter, on playcalling - stupac2 - 11-11-2018
Football Outsiders actually has a stat for this at the pro level, Air yard Less EXpected, or ALEX (after Alex Smith). It's a QB-specific stat looking at where, relative to the line to gain, QBs throw on 3rd and 4th down. I'm unaware of any attempts to look at this at the college level, but typically this is a QB-specific stat, plenty of times different QBs on the same team perform fairly differently.