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The NFL Outsmarts ItselfWhy pro football needs to get back to basics.

By Robert Weintraub
Posted Friday, Nov. 16, 2007, at 12:47 PM ET
Tom Brady. Click image to expand.

Despite the Patriots' quest for immortality, 2007 is not a vintage year for the NFL. For every game like last weekend's Pittsburgh-Cleveland thriller, there are bunches of unwatchable contests like Oakland-Chicago and Monday night's heinous Seattle-San Francisco game, which served as little more than a platform for the 49ers' historic offensive ineptitude. The majority of the weekly action in pro football pits the inept against the infirm.

What's the problem? Many commentators have pointed to a lack of quality quarterback play. Once you go beyond the league's top 10 QBs, the pool of talent is appalling—Cleo Lemon, Alex Smith, Damon Huard, Brian Griese, and Tarvaris Jackson all rank among the worst signal callers in recent memory. Worn-down retreads like Vinny Testaverde and Kurt Warner have become valued assets. To this observer's eyes, bobbled snaps, false starts, unblocked defenders, dropped passes, and delay-of-game penalties are seemingly at an all-time high. (I'm sure there are stats to prove otherwise, but as Charlie Brown once said, "Tell your statistics to shut up.") But the NFL's putrid appearance can't be blamed on the talent pool—the league has never had faster, stronger, more skillful players. The problem, it seems to me, is the combination of player movement and the league's ever-increasing offensive complexity.

Salary cap pressures, injuries, and the Hobbesian brevity of NFL careers mean that coaching staffs must constantly bring players up to speed on the intricacies of their systems. For example, most modern passing schemes rely on three- and four-receiver packages in which each wideout has the ability to choose his route based on the defense. Then factor in blocking assignments that change at the line of scrimmage, and running backs and tight ends who either stay in to block or run routes, again depending on various factors. If everyone isn't on the same page—and it's rare that everyone is—the play goes nowhere.

If game plans weren't so difficult to master, the learning curve wouldn't be so steep, and we fans would be spared so many execrable displays on Sundays. You might think that simplified playbooks would lead to staid, predictable offenses, easily stuffed by the league's defensive grandmasters. Not necessarily. Pushing the easy button is leading to the greatest season in modern history. The key to New England's offensive brilliance is simplicity. They only run a handful of plays (albeit out of multiple formations), the most successful keying off wideout Randy Moss running deep. Tom Brady either hurls a long one to Moss, counting on him to go get it despite multiple defenders, or goes to a receiver running to the soft spot in the coverage left in Moss' wake. When the opposition blitzes to prevent the deeper routes from unfolding in time, Brady hits a hot receiver, like Wes Welker, coming out of the slot. When the defense sits back to prevent longer plays, the Pats run it or dump short screen passes to one of their elusive backs.

The Patriots' fantastic, and somehow still underrated, offensive line is often in maximum protection mode, augmented by a tight end or two. They are agile enough to flip between power run blocking and max protection with a single word or signal from Brady, and do their jobs cohesively. In the wake of Spygate, the Pats seem determined to win by as many points as possible without resorting to any schemes that would require inside info. It's backyard stuff—send the tall, fast guy deep, the shorter fast guy medium, the slot guy short, and have the game's best triggerman decide where to throw it. It's simpler than most high-school offenses, but it's executed by the most brilliant of athletes.

Brady, like fellow maestro Peyton Manning, has proven he can excel in more complex schemes. Most of his cohorts have proven they cannot. Roughly two-thirds of the league muddles through with quarterback situations that range from unsettled to downright ruinous. Rookie quarterbacks, brought in to replace injured or inept incumbents, have little chance of figuring things out. John Beck, drafted in the second round to take over in Miami, is still underwater midway through his rookie campaign. In the summer, Beck talked about struggling to come to grips with verbiage like "Scatter-Two Bunch Right-Zip-Fire Right-273-Pivot-F Flat." Even rookie "success" stories, like Trent Edwards in Buffalo, are qualified—the Bills managed a win with the rook at the helm, despite his one touchdown pass against five interceptions so far this season.

Is a playbook thicker than the Bible, one that might as well be written in Urdu as far as the overwhelmed newcomers are concerned, really necessary? "Getting back to basics" may be a hoary staple of locker-room speak, but like most clichés, it's based in truth. Thinking players are slow players—even the slightest hesitation means defeat in a league as tightly balanced as the NFL. That goes for defensive players, too. The popularity of the Cover Two shell defense arises, in part, from the ease with which it can be mastered. In essence, players simply fall into a deep zone, react fast to the ball, and gang tackle. Most NFL defenders can handle that, even newbies, which explains the success many Cover Two teams have in subbing in replacements. (The Colts have been able to stuff teams this year, for example, despite losing a raft of defenders to free agency and injury.)

Regardless of scheme, however, good defense usually comes down to good tackling, so difficult stratagems probably hinder the offense a little more than the defense. I can't help but think that pro coaches are trying to compensate for the elemental physicality of the game by nerding it up. All the X's and O's wizardry has a calculated element; after all, a coach who simply tosses the balls out onto the field isn't as likely to get the multimillion-dollar contracts given to supposed geniuses. (See: Weis, Charlie.) Confident coaches embrace simplicity. And then there are guys like Brian Billick, for whom running for a first down on third and short is far too philistine a notion.

The bad news is the level of play isn't likely to improve, as starters continue to fall and quarterbacks struggle to know where their teammates are on any given play. But there might be a silver lining—teams forced to streamline their sets because of circumstance will find a locker room full of relieved players, and perhaps an extra victory or two. After a bad loss, a disgruntled coach will tell the media, "We need to simplify things." A nation of aggrieved football fans hopes the entire league follows that advice.

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Robert Weintraub, a freelance TV producer/writer based in Atlanta, writes about sports media for Slate.
Photograph of Tom Brady by Andy Lyons/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

One of the problems I see is the cookie cutter approach most teams take towards the position. If you want to be drafted high, you need to be well over 6' and be able to throw a ball through a brick wall while the ability to win games is almost an afterthought.

And it seems NFL coaches rarely cater the offense to the guy's skills. They attempt to turn great runners like Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick into pocket passers. Doug Flutie was unbelievable in Canada and had a good NFL career when he got the chance, but nobody seemed comfortable with him because he was short and scrambled a lot--much better to have somebody tall who'll run the plays you send in, even if he's not very good at it.

NFL coaches also love to talk out of both sides of their mouth regarding QB play. On the one hand they say how much experience is needed to master the complex offenses, yet when the starter goes down very few teams admit to simplifying the offense for the newcomer, which would be the logical approach.

--Sundown

(To reply, click here.)

It isn't that the league has to get simpler to survive; it's that the best teams are so efficient that they wear you down with nanobots and they beat you with button-hooks.The game is cleansing itself like art does every few generations. Call it Gridiron Minimalism.

The Patriots' success is not only in the return to simplicity. While the patriots might be racking up points on no-brain floaters to Moss and check-offs to Welker, something other than "back to basics" is going on. Great plays look simple because, by definition, they happen when one guy runs quicker to one spot or jumps higher than his opponent. But it's what set up that play that counts.

More important than slimming down the playbook is the establishment of a previously unknown level of erudition among both NFL players and coaches, among the most erudite of whom are currently the Patriots head coach, quarterback, primary wideout, and left side of the offensive line. The league avant garde has come to the conclusion that, knowing all the permutations in formation and coverage, the simple plays work best when the other team is on its heels.

Randy Moss beats corners because they know he's capable of a thousand routes. When you're facing a DB frozen in Dagwood-style calculations the best move is to go forward fast, which is what Moss does with cold efficiency.The simple playbooks work now in part because they have been preceded by a couple decades of convoluted schemes. But it's only with a high level of knowledge and skill that you can "get back to basics" and win with such ease. Those "gut" plays work best either right after, and sometimes simultaneous to, crazily complex football maneuvering. The NFL has never seen more byzantine blocking and blitzing packages. Play-action is so subtle now, it's lost on a lot of commentators. And G_d only knows what mind games are happening right before the snap.

--danaadamfu

(To reply, click here.)

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