How to Build an Efficient Offense Quickly

[Randy Carson]

I enjoy football at a casual level. However, there are a bunch of engineers (and former players) here who know football and how to do serious analysis. So, here's my question:

Would it be possible to analyze the oh, I don't know, top 25 college football teams in the country to figure out which plays are most successful on average? The super-geeky would want to break this down into all kinds of situational analysis (1 and 10, 3rd and long, etc), but it seems to me that if you have a few dozen plays that will average five yards or more consistently, would it really matter?

I know there are a lot of anti-CPJ people out there (and in here!), but how many different plays did he actually call in a game? (Sometimes I went crazy when he kept calling a simple dive up the middle over and over and over with no success!) But one thing appeared to be certain: the offense knew those plays and ran them pretty well. But I digress.

I read somewhere on the Interwebs that some of the top teams only have a limited number of plays that they run to perfection...but they disguise them by running them out of multiple formations. I mean, how many different routes are there in a route tree?

Surely someone has done this type of analysis by now. Thoughts?

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

There are a number of plays that are unstoppable if everyone does their assignment. It’s not magic.

 

[Dress2Jacket]

There are a number of plays that are unstoppable if everyone does their assignment. It’s not magic.

Lots of good teams use the concept of actually blocking the opponent.

 

[slugboy]

There are still some posts over at Football Study Hall from before ESPN hired Bill Connelly away.

You could find the plays with the biggest EPA, but plays are part of offenses. Going back to Bill Walsh, plays aren’t a single thing, but they’re a series of actions to stretch out a defense and find mismatches. You wouldn’t find a lot of success with a playbook that’s a veer play and the next page a Lombardi sweep and the following page an air raid pass, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking for.

This is focused on coaches: https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2...-college-football-pat-fitzgerald-kevin-wilson. It’s from 2018, so Collins isn’t on the list, and Monken isn’t either.

^^ That should give you an idea about offenses ^^

Flexbone offenses are up near the top of punching above your weight. You’ll also see Urban Meyer and other coaches that blend in option concepts without going full flexbone. @ilovetheoption Anything you want to add in here?

Efficiency is about consistency. It’s about getting positive yardage every time you touch the ball. Explosiveness is about big plays. Air Raid is going to do better at explosiveness than efficiency, because receivers drop balls and passes get tipped, etc.

I’d say it’s not primarily about X’s and O’s, or Jimmies and Joes, but consistent play up front is your starting point. Your front 5/6 have to do their job well and consistently. (the mid-80’s John Riggins Washington Redskins did that with an H-back and huge linemen for their day and a massive RB).

Jimmies and Joes and X’s and O’s are FACTORs, but being good at the basics that support your scheme are the key to efficiency. It’s like a Swiss watch—all the gears need to be fit together well.

 

[Randy Carson]

There are a number of plays that are unstoppable if everyone does their assignment. It’s not magic.

When I was in the student section (in the lower east stands), a friend of mine used to yell, "Put in the touchdown play!" every now and then. Maybe we need a few more of those.

And for those who remember it, "Rats on the field!"

 

[Randy Carson]

There are still some posts over at Football Study Hall from before ESPN hired Bill Connelly away.

You could find the plays with the biggest EPA, but plays are part of offenses. Going back to Bill Walsh, plays aren’t a single thing, but they’re a series of actions to stretch out a defense and find mismatches. You wouldn’t find a lot of success with a playbook that’s a veer play and the next page a Lombardi sweep and the following page an air raid pass, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking for.

This is focused on coaches: https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2...-college-football-pat-fitzgerald-kevin-wilson. It’s from 2018, so Collins isn’t on the list, and Monken isn’t either.

^^ That should give you an idea about offenses ^^

Flexbone offenses are up near the top of punching above your weight. You’ll also see Urban Meyer and other coaches that blend in option concepts without going full flexbone. @ilovetheoption Anything you want to add in here?

Efficiency is about consistency. It’s about getting positive yardage every time you touch the ball. Explosiveness is about big plays. Air Raid is going to do better at explosiveness than efficiency, because receivers drop balls and passes get tipped, etc.

I’d say it’s not primarily about X’s and O’s, or Jimmies and Joes, but consistent play up front is your starting point. Your front 5/6 have to do their job well and consistently. (the mid-80’s John Riggins Washington Redskins did that with an H-back and huge linemen for their day and a massive RB).

Jimmies and Joes and X’s and O’s are FACTORs, but being good at the basics that support your scheme are the key to efficiency. It’s like a Swiss watch—all the gears need to be fit together well.

Thank you. I watched a lot of Redskins football in those days. Today, not so much.

 

[slugboy]

I should have given a little more of a mention to veer offenses. It’s hard to coach—not many coaches are good at it—but it’s famous as a “I just started this team and I want to be competitive in my first season” offense. Jim Grobe used it a lot at Wake.

 

[stech81]

The best way to build an offense would be to send the offensive team over to Alabama for 6 weeks of training.

 

[forensicbuzz]

I enjoy football at a casual level. However, there are a bunch of engineers (and former players) here who know football and how to do serious analysis. So, here's my question:

Would it be possible to analyze the oh, I don't know, top 25 college football teams in the country to figure out which plays are most successful on average? The super-geeky would want to break this down into all kinds of situational analysis (1 and 10, 3rd and long, etc), but it seems to me that if you have a few dozen plays that will average five yards or more consistently, would it really matter?

I know there are a lot of anti-CPJ people out there (and in here!), but how many different plays did he actually call in a game? (Sometimes I went crazy when he kept calling a simple dive up the middle over and over and over with no success!) But one thing appeared to be certain: the offense knew those plays and ran them pretty well. But I digress.

I read somewhere on the Interwebs that some of the top teams only have a limited number of plays that they run to perfection...but they disguise them by running them out of multiple formations. I mean, how many different routes are there in a route tree?

Surely someone has done this type of analysis by now. Thoughts?

Every team already does this with their schemes. That's why you see the boards the OC's or play-callers are always referring to. It has different plays grouped by the situation (down and distance, location on the field, personnel, etc.).

To your point about watching the same dive up the middle by CPJ. CPJ was a master at probing until he found a sore spot and then poking and poking and poking at that spot until it no longer worked. When the play showed it wouldn't work the way it was called, he'd change the blocking scheme and run it again. If that didn't work, he's tweak something else. Eventually, he'd find what worked and then exploit that until the defense adjusted. Then he'd take advantage of that adjustment. That was part of the magic that was CPJ and his knowledge of the offense. That's very rare. However, the concepts are not exclusive to him. This is what every play-caller is trying to do, identify the matchups that will make his offense successful.

 

[Jetdrive3]

I enjoy football at a casual level. However, there are a bunch of engineers (and former players) here who know football and how to do serious analysis. So, here's my question:

Would it be possible to analyze the oh, I don't know, top 25 college football teams in the country to figure out which plays are most successful on average? The super-geeky would want to break this down into all kinds of situational analysis (1 and 10, 3rd and long, etc), but it seems to me that if you have a few dozen plays that will average five yards or more consistently, would it really matter?

I know there are a lot of anti-CPJ people out there (and in here!), but how many different plays did he actually call in a game? (Sometimes I went crazy when he kept calling a simple dive up the middle over and over and over with no success!) But one thing appeared to be certain: the offense knew those plays and ran them pretty well. But I digress.

I read somewhere on the Interwebs that some of the top teams only have a limited number of plays that they run to perfection...but they disguise them by running them out of multiple formations. I mean, how many different routes are there in a route tree?

Surely someone has done this type of analysis by now. Thoughts?

 

[slugboy]

With an offense, there’s also the yearly pattern of “meh, meh, REALLY GOOD, meh”. Clemson got the right pieces for Trevor Lawrence, and had multiple years of “REALLY GOOD” before falling back to “meh” — or in this case, bottom of the ACC.

I’m not saying that it’s a growth pattern. It’s that the differences between having a few pieces here and there that aren’t fitting properly and having everyone mesh is almost night and day. Clemson’s offense is basically the same as our offense—if you have all the pieces and they’re all on the same page, it can set records. Pitt and UVA crushed it this year on offense because they didn’t have any weak spots in their offense. Aside from their QB play, they didn’t have much exceptional on their offense, but they also were solid across the board.

In the NFL, a lot of teams are implementing Kyle Shanahan principles. For the Falcons, we had “meh, MVP AND SUPER BOWL SEASON, meh”. Shanahan has seen some of the same in San Francisco. It’s an offense that will magnify the performance of the QB—if he’s consistent and amazing, you get a consistent and amazing offense. If the QB is inconsistent, you get magnified inconsistencies.

The Kyle Shanahan effect

When Kyle Shanahan was hired last February to be the 19th head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, a lot was said by commentators and pundits about his offensive genius as well as the "Shanahan...

www.ninersnation.com

We picked an offense that just cruises along on top of consistent play across the board, but also magnifies mistakes and missed assignments. QBs want to play in it because it shows off your skills for the pros. Offensive skill players want to play in it because it has the opportunity for ESPN highlights that show off your skills. For offensive linemen, it’s the same kind of blocking as is common in the NFL, so it’s an attractive place to burnish your skills.

It’s not a **robust** offense though. We’re spending a lot of time in the “meh” doldrums because of missed assignments and poor reads, etc. We could switch to a more error-proof offense, but we need one that doesn’t sabotage Collins’ “modern NFL” recruiting. A Meyer-style offense might fit that bill.

For any offense, we’re going to have to do a better job blocking than we have over the past few years

 

[g0lftime]

I should have given a little more of a mention to veer offenses. It’s hard to coach—not many coaches are good at it—but it’s famous as a “I just started this team and I want to be competitive in my first season” offense. Jim Grobe used it a lot at Wake.

Grobe was criticized while at Wake for cut blocking BTW by several other coaches. He was fairly successful there given how difficult it is to recruit at WF.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

There are still some posts over at Football Study Hall from before ESPN hired Bill Connelly away.

You could find the plays with the biggest EPA, but plays are part of offenses. Going back to Bill Walsh, plays aren’t a single thing, but they’re a series of actions to stretch out a defense and find mismatches. You wouldn’t find a lot of success with a playbook that’s a veer play and the next page a Lombardi sweep and the following page an air raid pass, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking for.

This is focused on coaches: https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2...-college-football-pat-fitzgerald-kevin-wilson. It’s from 2018, so Collins isn’t on the list, and Monken isn’t either.

^^ That should give you an idea about offenses ^^

Flexbone offenses are up near the top of punching above your weight. You’ll also see Urban Meyer and other coaches that blend in option concepts without going full flexbone. @ilovetheoption Anything you want to add in here?

Efficiency is about consistency. It’s about getting positive yardage every time you touch the ball. Explosiveness is about big plays. Air Raid is going to do better at explosiveness than efficiency, because receivers drop balls and passes get tipped, etc.

I’d say it’s not primarily about X’s and O’s, or Jimmies and Joes, but consistent play up front is your starting point. Your front 5/6 have to do their job well and consistently. (the mid-80’s John Riggins Washington Redskins did that with an H-back and huge linemen for their day and a massive RB).

Jimmies and Joes and X’s and O’s are FACTORs, but being good at the basics that support your scheme are the key to efficiency. It’s like a Swiss watch—all the gears need to be fit together well.

Well said.

And for example, some may have been frustrated (rightly or wrongly) by CPJ running countless plays up the middle but what made him a genius in my book was that he understood that the important play was not the explosive play but the plays run previously that influenced the defense and set up the explosive play.

So you are so correct that looking at successful plays in isolation does not reveal too much as a rule.

 

[iceeater1969]

With an offense, there’s also the yearly pattern of “meh, meh, REALLY GOOD, meh”. Clemson got the right pieces for Trevor Lawrence, and had multiple years of “REALLY GOOD” before falling back to “meh” — or in this case, bottom of the ACC.

I’m not saying that it’s a growth pattern. It’s that the differences between having a few pieces here and there that aren’t fitting properly and having everyone mesh is almost night and day. Clemson’s offense is basically the same as our offense—if you have all the pieces and they’re all on the same page, it can set records. Pitt and UVA crushed it this year on offense because they didn’t have any weak spots in their offense. Aside from their QB play, they didn’t have much exceptional on their offense, but they also were solid across the board.

In the NFL, a lot of teams are implementing Kyle Shanahan principles. For the Falcons, we had “meh, MVP AND SUPER BOWL SEASON, meh”. Shanahan has seen some of the same in San Francisco. It’s an offense that will magnify the performance of the QB—if he’s consistent and amazing, you get a consistent and amazing offense. If the QB is inconsistent, you get magnified inconsistencies.

The Kyle Shanahan effect

When Kyle Shanahan was hired last February to be the 19th head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, a lot was said by commentators and pundits about his offensive genius as well as the "Shanahan...

www.ninersnation.com

We picked an offense that just cruises along on top of consistent play across the board, but also magnifies mistakes and missed assignments. QBs want to play in it because it shows off your skills for the pros. Offensive skill players want to play in it because it has the opportunity for ESPN highlights that show off your skills. For offensive linemen, it’s the same kind of blocking as is common in the NFL, so it’s an attractive place to burnish your skills.

It’s not a **robust** offense though. We’re spending a lot of time in the “meh” doldrums because of missed assignments and poor reads, etc. We could switch to a more error-proof offense, but we need one that doesn’t sabotage Collins’ “modern NFL” recruiting. A Meyer-style offense might fit that bill.

For any offense, we’re going to have to do a better job blocking than we have over the past few years

Like your overall post.

What was clear about the top 2021 offense is the quality senior qbs and the mature ol.

In 22 last years top offenses (Pitt, Wake, Virginia, UNC ) will be retooling and u can expect to see Clemson back near the top w Miami and Ncst .

I think the entire ACC will be in chaos in 22. Time for gt to jump up to 9th and take Clemson's place.

 

[Vespidae]

Surely someone has done this type of analysis by now. Thoughts?

Yes, it's been done. I'll see if I can dig it up. I recall Bear Bryant beating Kentucky (I think) one year and he ran only six plays. Of course, they were the highest probability plays and that was his point. Frankly, Bryant didn't care WHAT offense he ran as long as it matched his theory of the game. Again, I'll see if I can find it.

 

[SteamWhistle]

Power and Counter run game.
Mesh and Flood pass concepts.
Simplest concepts for running and passing the ball. I don’t think Long will reinvent the wheel but I do think Tech will struggle less to do basic things on offense. Long has done a good job as a coach in 2 categories that we have struggled in, Penalties and Turnovers. I doubt we see Tech taking timeouts on 3rd and 4s, 2nd and 10s like we’ve seen in the past. I expect at the very least for Tech to be polished in terms of the mental side of the game. We might not be a good offense on paper ( I think we will ) but we won’t beat ourselfs.

 

[stech81]

Lots of good teams use the concept of actually blocking the opponent.

We should try this next year,

 

[CrackerJacket]

Every team already does this with their schemes. That's why you see the boards the OC's or play-callers are always referring to. It has different plays grouped by the situation (down and distance, location on the field, personnel, etc.).

To your point about watching the same dive up the middle by CPJ. CPJ was a master at probing until he found a sore spot and then poking and poking and poking at that spot until it no longer worked. When the play showed it wouldn't work the way it was called, he'd change the blocking scheme and run it again. If that didn't work, he's tweak something else. Eventually, he'd find what worked and then exploit that until the defense adjusted. Then he'd take advantage of that adjustment. That was part of the magic that was CPJ and his knowledge of the offense. That's very rare. However, the concepts are not exclusive to him. This is what every play-caller is trying to do, identify the matchups that will make his offense successful.

What amazed me about CPJ was he could see & adjust to what the D was doing from the sideline. The more football I watch, the better I appreciate CPJ’s expertise.

 

[southernhive]

I’d say it’s not primarily about X’s and O’s, or Jimmies and Joes, but consistent play up front is your starting point. Your front 5/6 have to do their job well and consistently. (the mid-80’s John Riggins Washington Redskins did that with an H-back and huge linemen for their day and a massive RB).

What are these Redskins you refer to? just kidding

Dam woke crap ruining everything.

 

[LongforDodd]

The best way to build an offense would be to send the offensive team over to Alabama for 6 weeks of training.

And bring back Alabama's 3rd string OLinemen and put them on scholly.