Cheese Curds - News Around The League 2021

[APB]

I can only remember one high priced STs coach we didn't pony up money for: Adam Gase.

Is there any others?

Using vague terms like this is a consistent practice would appear there is. But I cannot think of any.

Didn’t the Packers show interest in Darren Rizzi a few years back but then reportedly passed on him due to his contract asking price? He went to New Orleans instead and is still there. The Saints placed 5th in Gosselin’s rankings this year.

https://packerswire.usatoday.com/2019/ ... zzi-coach/

[Yoop]

I can only remember one high priced STs coach we didn't pony up money for: Adam Gase.

Is there any others?

Using vague terms like this is a consistent practice would appear there is. But I cannot think of any.

Didn’t the Packers show interest in Darren Rizzi a few years back but then reportedly passed on him due to his contract asking price? He went to New Orleans instead and is still there. The Saints placed 5th in Gosselin’s rankings this year.

https://packerswire.usatoday.com/2019/ ... zzi-coach/

Thanks Rizzi is the one I was trying to remember, would have been a great hire

Adam Gates was interviewed to be our HC, I don't think he was interested in being our ST's cord.

[go pak go]

I can only remember one high priced STs coach we didn't pony up money for: Adam Gase.

Is there any others?

Using vague terms like this is a consistent practice would appear there is. But I cannot think of any.

Didn’t the Packers show interest in Darren Rizzi a few years back but then reportedly passed on him due to his contract asking price? He went to New Orleans instead and is still there. The Saints placed 5th in Gosselin’s rankings this year.

https://packerswire.usatoday.com/2019/ ... zzi-coach/

You are right. It was Rizzi. Not Gase.

So that is the only specific example I can think of the Packers being cheap.

And yes. That was a terrible decision. But I cannot think of any more "obvious choices" beyond that.

[NCF]

So with player safety more in focus than ever, can anyone explain the reason to me to continue to have inactive players on game day?

Doesn’t it just feel like if you are on the active roster you should be active (if healthy) on game day?

[APB]

So with player safety more in focus than ever, can anyone explain the reason to me to continue to have inactive players on game day?

Doesn’t it just feel like if you are on the active roster you should be active (if healthy) on game day?

Aren’t there a lot of contractual clauses tied to gameday active status? That’d all need to be revamped if a change was to be made. Lord knows these owners aren’t just gonna shell out that money willingly.

What other road blocks are there?

[BF004]

So with player safety more in focus than ever, can anyone explain the reason to me to continue to have inactive players on game day?

Doesn’t it just feel like if you are on the active roster you should be active (if healthy) on game day?

[YoHoChecko]

So with player safety more in focus than ever, can anyone explain the reason to me to continue to have inactive players on game day?

Doesn’t it just feel like if you are on the active roster you should be active (if healthy) on game day?

Aren’t there a lot of contractual clauses tied to gameday active status? That’d all need to be revamped if a change was to be made. Lord knows these owners aren’t just gonna shell out that money willingly.

What other road blocks are there?

I think short term IR has also helped eliminate road blocks.

I think the idea is that a team with 10 injured players in a week would be at a major disadvantage against a team with only two injured players that week. So having 5 or 7 or 8 inactive slots over the years leveled that out, where even the healthy team has to shoot some players out to keep it balanced.

With a 3-week IR teams are carrying fewer injured players on the active roster, and this are less adversely affected in game day availability by injuries

[NCF]

So with player safety more in focus than ever, can anyone explain the reason to me to continue to have inactive players on game day?

Doesn’t it just feel like if you are on the active roster you should be active (if healthy) on game day?

Aren’t there a lot of contractual clauses tied to gameday active status? That’d all need to be revamped if a change was to be made. Lord knows these owners aren’t just gonna shell out that money willingly.

What other road blocks are there?

I think short term IR has also helped eliminate road blocks.

I think the idea is that a team with 10 injured players in a week would be at a major disadvantage against a team with only two injured players that week. So having 5 or 7 or 8 inactive slots over the years leveled that out, where even the healthy team has to shoot some players out to keep it balanced.

With a 3-week IR teams are carrying fewer injured players on the active roster, and this are less adversely affected in game day availability by injuries

Pointing this conversation at our team, if Z and Mercilus come back and we cut, say Davis and Tipa... how do we sit 5 guys?

Jake Hanson, MVS, Shemar (ST?), Garvin or McDuffie, Amari or Winfree... OK, maybe it won't be that difficult.

[paco]

I swear, unicorns have gone from fictitious to thriving in the NFL. Everyone is a unicorn these days! Getting really tired of the term.

[YoHoChecko]

I just want to point out that there are 8 teams left in the playoffs and 4 of them are coached by Kyle Shanahan, Matt LeFleur, Sean McVey, and Zac Taylor--all young guys who know and are friends with each other, worked with each other, and run the same system. It's such a remarkable fine tuning of modern offensive football the same way the west coast offense took hold in the 80s and flourished in the 90s. Not that there weren't other successful systems at the time (who can forget the run and shoot that shattered reception records in the late 90s around the league, particularly in Atlanta), just as there are now.

But man, 6 years ago none of these guys were head coaches and now their version of one of their dad's systems is dominating the league.

[salmar80]

I just want to point out that there are 8 teams left in the playoffs and 4 of them are coached by Kyle Shanahan, Matt LeFleur, Sean McVey, and Zac Taylor--all young guys who know and are friends with each other, worked with each other, and run the same system. It's such a remarkable fine tuning of modern offensive football the same way the west coast offense took hold in the 80s and flourished in the 90s. Not that there weren't other successful systems at the time (who can forget the run and shoot that shattered reception records in the late 90s around the league, particularly in Atlanta), just as there are now.

But man, 6 years ago none of these guys were head coaches and now their version of one of their dad's systems is dominating the league.

For me, what makes LaFleur's system superior to, say, MM's old one, is that not only does it put the desired target player(s) on a given play in a favorable position through route combos, picks and such (that was MM's goal), but it also allows for a crapton of different plays from the same look, forcing Ds to be reactive and thus a tick slow, and tempts the D to make mistakes via misdirection (not a MM thing). Only takes one defender who bites on a fake handoff/sweep/pass/rollout to open a hole, and there can be several fakes on one play. And it's not one-off trick plays, it's in-built misdirection.

The sheer variety of things the scheme allows also makes it flexible in case of injuries. For example, OL has been wrecked hard, yet AR has been able to get rid of the ball in record time without opponents figuring out how to stop it. It's also good at disguising weaknesses. We are pretty dang weak in the passing game weapons at TE after Tonyan's injury, but that has barely slowed us down.

The only thing that would be hard for this scheme is to play catchup when down too many scores (but then, what scheme doesn't struggle at a disadvantage). In that scenario, a lot of the misdirection becomes moot. No one's gonna bite on a run when you have to throw. In that case it becomes more "win your 1-1s" and we may wish we had an all-star receiving group. That scenario is why I'm SO glad we have a solid D this year.

[Pckfn23]

Motion. Motion stresses eyes, alignment, and assignments. It also can tell you coverage. McCarthy refused to use motion, especially at the end.

[YoHoChecko]

I don't mean to brag, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, I designed like 6 plays from the same formation and imported them to Madden and preset them as my audibles.

I'd have 2 pass plays that are man beaters, 2 pass plays that are zone beaters, an inside run, and an outside run.

Before each play, I'd run a guy in motion, check how the defense responded, audible to man or zone beaters based on the defense, and run the play. Looked like the same play before the snap every time. But changed according to the defense.

Yes, a rudimentary version; but let's just say I was big into "same look, many plays, stress and check the defense with motion" decades ago

[salmar80]

Motion. Motion stresses eyes, alignment, and assignments. It also can tell you coverage. McCarthy refused to use motion, especially at the end.

My (admittedly terrible) memory has a print of MM actually kinda trying to incorporate more motion to get a WR in better position late in his time with us. But it was rudimentary compared with LaFleur's scheme today.

I personally think MM kinda not-quite burned out in the latter years. He tried his best to innovate along with holding the ship together, and just didn't have enough energy/time to do a full self-analysis and an innovative re-design of his scheme. I have a lot of respect for him. Too bad we didn't give him the chance to rest and regroup a bit earlier.

[salmar80]

I don't mean to brag, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, I designed like 6 plays from the same formation and imported them to Madden and preset them as my audibles.

I'd have 2 pass plays that are man beaters, 2 pass plays that are zone beaters, an inside run, and an outside run.

Before each play, I'd run a guy in motion, check how the defense responded, audible to man or zone beaters based on the defense, and run the play. Looked like the same play before the snap every time. But changed according to the defense.

Yes, a rudimentary version; but let's just say I was big into "same look, many plays, stress and check the defense with motion" decades ago

At that point in time, I was like: "Audible? But I can see just fine?!"

[YoHoChecko]

I personally think MM kinda not-quite burned out in the latter years. He tried his best to innovate along with holding the ship together, and just didn't have enough energy/time to do a full self-analysis and an innovative re-design of his scheme. I have a lot of respect for him. Too bad we didn't give him the chance to rest and regroup a bit earlier.

McCarthy was like the author who writes a great book and spends the rest of their career trying to come up with another great idea.

He had a scheme. It worked in his era. He was really good at implementing it and getting QBs ready to play it at a high level--I mean really good at it. Rich Gannon credits MM for his career revival. Favre's career revival and Rodgers' initial development, as well as strong performances from the likes of Matt Flynn in-house are clear evidence of it.

But the game started catching up to that and McCarthy was a little slow to adjust. But then when he DID adjust, he just... wasn't very good at these new concepts. He turned to analytics but misinterpreted correlation and causation and started pushing for the wrong plays (emphasis on creating big plays to improve the offense instead of improving the offense to facilitate big plays was a prime--and the most damaging--example). He tried to do some motion or create some gadget looks and players (the TyMo era) and just... not great.

As MM tried to implement these not-quite-right reforms to keep up with modern football, Rodgers--whose football IQ probably got him to modern concepts a little more smoothly and a little faster (but who TOTALLY bought in to the big play = good offense fallacy, in public comments and obvious impact on his play style) started losing respect for him. Clearly, what MM was trying wasn't working.

Once the inability to win with scheme broke down, his long-term flaws in terms of game and clock management, lax on penalties, and pass happy play calling started mattering a lot more because he had diminished his strengths without strengthening his weaknesses. And while he still had strength as a leader--no one can ever tell me he doesn't know how to get teams used to winning because he wins a ton of games), that, too, diminishes as younger generations come in unless you keep it fresh.

It doesn't dilute how good his first book was. It doesn't make that book any less of a classic, or undermine his skills as an author in that book.

But it just means he had one good book in him and when the world changed, he didn't know how to write for the new audiences.

[Yoop]

I just want to point out that there are 8 teams left in the playoffs and 4 of them are coached by Kyle Shanahan, Matt LeFleur, Sean McVey, and Zac Taylor--all young guys who know and are friends with each other, worked with each other, and run the same system. It's such a remarkable fine tuning of modern offensive football the same way the west coast offense took hold in the 80s and flourished in the 90s. Not that there weren't other successful systems at the time (who can forget the run and shoot that shattered reception records in the late 90s around the league, particularly in Atlanta), just as there are now.

But man, 6 years ago none of these guys were head coaches and now their version of one of their dad's systems is dominating the league.

if ya can't get rid of the ball quick the pass rush of this era will destroy your passing schemes, rushers are getting to the QB faster now then I think they ever had, no longer do QB's get 3 to 5 seconds waiting on receivers to come clean, at least consistently enough to stick with spread verticals as we used mostly with McCarthy, so now we see more deception, mis direction, play action, motion, and other stuff designed to freeze and fool defenses, and beat pass rush.

that PFF article I brought some time back high lights the increased pass rush success as of late, just a few years back is the first time any defense has had plus 40% pass rush success rate since PFF started recording this stuff about 15 years ago, this year 3 or 4 teams have eclipsed that mark.

[YoHoChecko]

Sounds like McAdoo is Backadoo in Carolina as OC

[Drj820]

If this is true, this could spell trouble for McCarthy in Dallas.

[paco]

Apparently Brady is pondering retirement. Would be wild if he, Rodgers, and Big Ben all hang them up.