http://www.theprovince.com/sports/footb ... story.html
Hallelujah ... Angus is preaching to the choir here.
As I’ve stated many times before I don’t care how talented the individual players are, an offensive line can only get good with quality time spent working together. That’s just the reality. It looks as though this year’s unit will never get that chance now. We’re getting to the home stretch and they’re still at the training camp stage of finding out who’s going to play where.
And lots of tinkering too. T Dre is healthy. Left tackle has been a schmozzle from the get go. With some brilliant play by Hunter Steward relying on his athletic instincts.
If you can’t create more time, what is left to do? How do you get this line confident playing together and speed up the learning curve to get them playing at the level they need at this time of year? You simplify everything
Confidence, as I noted earlier. More important than pretty much anything. Easy to destroy. Hard to build.
f you can’t create more time, you remove the barriers that occupy so much of it. Highly-detailed techniques and blocking schemes that require a ton of verbiage or lots of defensive recognition need to be shelved or at least massively minimized.
Yup. Throughout this thread, that has been a major theme.
It’s too late in the season now to keep trying to crash course a new unit on the intricacies of your compete offence every week and hope they get it. We’ve seen the results of that too many times already this season. Way too many missed assignments, players left completely unblocked, and lack of aggressiveness due to uncertainty.
The basics of coaching run through every sport, at every level. Ya gotta keep it simple. At the level of the players. More experienced ones can integrate more.
It’s simple: Your run game becomes either run hard right, or run hard left. Forget the detailed double teams, the decisions on who’s supposed to pull, or the hesitation because the opponent lined up in a front you’ve never seen. Get rid of all the complicated, easily misunderstood directions and over-coaching. You either run as hard as you can as a unit on a pre-determined angle to your right, or the call is to all go left. You want to build confidence, aggressiveness, and eliminate all assignment mistakes. That’s how you do it. Just go hard on that angle and block anybody in your way.
Big theme throughout this thread and others. Angle blocking. Keep it simple. Build the confidence.
It’s no different for the pass game. Every single defensive coordinator in the league licks their chops before playing the Lions. They know each and every week there will be a brand new player somewhere on that offensive line. Confusion is the key to any great pass-rush team in this league. Keep the O-line guessing where the defensive players are coming from and any drop-back passing offensive will be in trouble real fast.
And the reverse is true also. Aggressive defence wins games. Conservative defence is a slow death.
So why keep putting yourself in that bad situation? If the O-line is getting confused due to lack of experience or some of the new players are straight out struggling with their one-on-one pass blocking, why keep putting them in that position to fail? It’s too late in this season now to hope a new combination of players every week will have time to learn this whole offence and gain confidence with the man beside them. You have to give them the confidence by simplifying the whole system.
Get away from drop-back protection. Defences bringing confusing fronts? Move away from it. All you have to do is base your passing game on having your offensive line slide as a unit to the left or right. The quarterback simply rolls out with them. You stay on the move. That way you are never exposing your inexperienced lineman. You’re simply letting them be aggressive, and having them block as a true unit, thus shortcutting the learning curve.
Let’s stop hoping new players can learn the system and mesh together in a week. It’s time to just let them play. Let them perform. Don’t handcuff them with overcrowded details that slow down performance. Get the ball to your playmakers. It sounds simple, but ‘simple’ done with confidence is always more effective than complicated done with hesitation. It’s time to let the big boys loose.
http://www.theprovince.com/sports/footb ... story.html
Tremendous article by a man who has been in the trenches, playing at an extremely high level for 13 years.
These themes have been harped on over and over on this site. It is very gratifying to see these words from Angus Reid.
Can we do it? Of course we can. Our guys are huge, powerful, intelligent and hard working. They bring vast athletic experience to their tasks, even those who are rookies.
Let their athletic instincts prevail. Let their strength prevail. Play the power game.
Angle block to the right. Angle block to the left.
Will we do it? Dunno about that ...
But it is always very interesting to watch.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.
Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.
Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.