Kayoh

https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2018/5/22/17376788/nfl-offense-goal-line-package-patriots-run-the-ball NFL teams are making a terrible mistake at the goal line 36 Retired NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz shatters the conventional wisdom about what an offense should do when it’s one or two yards from paydirt. By Geoff Schwartz May 22, 2018, 11:07am EDT SHARE Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports Analytics are now part of football. You can choose to ignore analytics like Jon Gruden claims he will, or you can embrace it like Howie Roseman of the Eagles. I was hesitant to embrace analytics because it was mostly centered around football player grades. But without knowing the scheme, it’s hard to grade, especially at my favorite position, offensive line. When I retired from the NFL and had more time and the willingness to read people who cover football, I found them using analytics as a tool to chart tendencies and measure efficiency. I started paying attention to the analytics, seeing how it played out on Sundays and beyond. As football evolves and we’re able to chart tendencies, we must rethink how we look at certain situations. The norm of how plays are called, the way they’ve been called for years, has to adapt with new analytics. One area of the game we need to rethink is what happens at the goal line. The general theory for years was running in your jumbo package at the 1-yard line. The jumbo package can vary at times with who plays what position, but it’s three tight ends (sometime one or two of those are offensive lineman), one fullback and one running back. The formation looks like this. There are various runs and just a few passing routes from this formation. That’s sort of the point. The offensive coaches are telling the opposing defense, “**** you, we can run the ball against any look, even if the defense knows it’s coming.” It’s the same message we get in the offensive line room. It sounds like an archaic way to view football, but it’s something offensive lineman take pride in. Run the ball into any look; we can get the job done. However, this is where analytics should inform the way we think about the run game. There are stats that show us running the ball from jumbo inside the 2-yard line isn’t the best way to punch in a touchdown. When we were joking about calling a game with a boatload of passes, one of my fellow linemen mentioned being in 10 personnel on the goal line and how that would drive us insane. It would. Our friend Warren Sharp, from sharpfootballstats.com, chimed in with stats from the last two seasons showing that running from jumbo personnel on the goal line isn’t as efficient as staying in 11 personnel in the same situation. Here is that info from Sharp: Goal-line TD rate Formation NFL NE 0 WRs on the field 1st down 50% 50% 2nd down 47% 64% 3rd/4th down 50% 43% All 49% 53% 1 WR on the field 1st down 48% 100% (1 play) 2nd down 54% 100% (1 play) 3rd/4th down 54% n/a All 51% 100% 2 WRs on the field 1st down 33% n/a 2nd down 50% 50% (2 plays) 3rd/4th down 61% 100% (1 play) All 51% 100% 3+ WRs on the field 1st down 42% 50% (2 plays) 2nd down 59% 100% (2 plays) 3rd/4th down 57% n/a All 51% 75% New England TD rate for 0 WR vs. 1+ WR (RB runs from the 1- and 2-yard lines) 0 WR: 53 percent 1+ WR: 78 percent NFL TD rate for running the ball on first down vs. second-fourth downs from 1+ WR formations: First down: 44 percent Second-fourth downs: 56 percent The only time it makes sense to run the ball from jumbo is on first down, with a 50 percent success rate. If you get stuffed on first or just get down there after a big play, it’s time to get into 11 personnel and get better matchups to run the ball. When you game plan for an opponent, you pare down the entire playbook into plays that work for that week. You have a few goal-line runs and one goal-line pass you love, and maybe one more. But sometimes just one pass. The general philosophy on the goal line in jumbo is well known. Run on first down, run or pass on second down, pass on third down, and then run on fourth down. You pass on third down because passing on fourth down is obvious. You set up the goal-line passes by running the ball once or twice so the play action pass mimics the run action. Lastly, you enter the game with one great goal line pass and a secondary one just in case. There aren’t many options for multiple pass plays. The jumbo personnel package is not designed for the pass. As Warren’s data shows, conventional wisdom has it backwards. It’s better to run the ball from passing formations on second-fourth downs and pass from a run formation on first. Teams that run the ball with more than one wide receiver on second, third or fourth down, score 56 percent of the time, compared to less than 50 percent for jumbo formations. Defenses expect the run. When you line up in a passing formation teams must honor the pass, otherwise the quarterback will check to a great matchup on the edge. Defenses in the red zone are vanilla so there isn’t much thinking on downs at the goal line. Lastly, you only need two yards. It hits quickly. Lineman don’t need to sustain their blocks for long. If you are going to get into jumbo and run the football, there’s only one way to do it — the Patriot way. If you want to run the ball successfully on the goal line, just copy the Patriots. They run the ball from personnel groupings and on downs where teams expect pass. They go against traditional football thoughts. Coaches get too fancy on the goal line by trying to “fool” the defense. Not the Patriots. They’re the best at running the ball at the goal line because they understand where the best matchups are and they have the best goal-line run play of all time. It’s a single play they over and over again, never overthinking it. The New England play is GL 38/39 Boss. It’s an outside zone with a fullback leading up on the edge player. It can go to the strong or weak side, depending on the defense. It’s an excellent play because it can eat up anything the defense is trying to do. Cross dog? Eaten up. Out charge? It can be handled. And so on. New England scored on versions of this same run in four straight games between Weeks 12 through 15. Here they are running it against Pittsburgh in the play’s most basic form. Fast forward to the playoffs, and you’ll see what makes the Patriots so dang tough to play. They adjust and anticipate better than anyone else. They’re aware they scored multiple times last season on the same play. In the divisional round, New England faced Tennessee and famed defensive mind **** Lebeau, who loves himself some middle cross dog on the goal line. Something that looks like this: They are waiting for the outside zone, with the defensive line making an all out charge and the edge players where they are. So, New England runs a cutback play that’s designed to defeat the cross dog. It looks like zone to start for a second, and boom, it’s a cutback and a touchdown. This is what New England does better than anyone else in jumbo personnel, and they’re even better on second down. I will say this data doesn’t show New England, or any other team, who tried to run on first down and got stuffed, and then tried to force it again. In New England’s case, having watched most of their film, they get to first-and-goal, run a play getting themselves down into the area where jumbo personnel is appropriate. The final thing New England does well in this area of the field is tempo opponents using goal line runs with different personnel. Against Jacksonville, in the AFC Championship, the Patriots ran a goal-line outside zone from 11 personnel. Notice what happens here. Because of the formation, Jacksonville’s defense tries to line up in some semblance of a goal-line defense with their nickel personnel. No bueno for them; excellent for the Patriots. There’s no one to defend this play. Walk in touchdown. That’s a lot to consume here, but remember this — stay in 11 personnel on the goal line. If you want to get into jumbo, run outside zone with it.

then you run out of 11 personnel like the article is suggesting is more likely to be successful than a run out of jumbo in the first place.

Jarvion Franklin is a free agent

stop focusing on one play. They had multiple chances and every single time they tried running, it was out of jumbo. That's a bigger problem than one guy not doing his job on one play.

but the point of the article is, don't run out of jumbo in general. The tone is, if you must, do it this way, but in general you don't really want to. Running at the goal line is most likely to be successful if you do it out of 2 or 3 receiver sets.

the best way run the ball at the goal line is to do it with 2-3 WRs on the field, and probably not on 1st down

did you read the article? The whole point is, if you're going to run out of jumbo at the goal line, not only should you be running that play, but you should really only be doing it on first down. Running the ball out of jumbo at the goal line is less likely to be successful than running the ball out of 1/2/3 receiver sets at the goal line on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th down.

you're probably right. i'm gonna try to remember this.

see this is one thing I will fight people on. I hate the idea of wanting a "back-up tier" player on the OL. You want your backup OL to be guys that aren't liabilities. You want guys backing up your starters that could be starters if it wasn't for the better players ahead of them. You never want a guy on your roster like Sambrailo or Schweitzer who you're afraid of them even seeing the field because of how much of a liability they are. Same thing with Dallas last year with friggin Chaz Green and Byron Bell. You need to plan for injuries to happen to your starters on the OL and be prepared with players that aren't going to completely ruin your offensive game plan backing them up.

Mack being 32 is the biggest concern to me. Big reason why I've been mocking us athletic high upside centers these last couple years. Chase Roullier last year, Scott Quessenberry this year.

it's hard to say right now what our needs will be by february of 2019. A lot can change over the course of a season. Fusco could be a bust, one of our other established "good" olinemen could collapse, none of our non-Grady DTs could be any good, etc not to mention, we only have Vic on the cheap through 2019. Might want to address that early in the draft.

honestly, I think Dimitroff knows how bad he is at evaluating OL prospects, and that's why he's only taking day 3 dart throws on them and bringing in established vets to be the actual starters. The whole thing in the NFL is that if someone on your OL is a liability, it's a problem, but you don't really need any "elite" players on the OL, as long as everybody is just good enough.

it's also a problem of sample size. Most teams have 1 5th, 1 6th, and 1 7th round pick, whereas most teams bring in over a dozen UDFAs. Over the course of 5 years, you might only keep 2-4 of those possible 15 draft picks in the 5th/6th/7th round, but you'll probably only end up keeping 5-10 of those possible ~60-100 or so possible UDFAs. The hit rate is similar, if not slightly lower, for UDFAs, but the difference is you just get more UDFAs to work with, so the lower hit rate matters less.

I agree with this. It's just frustrating when I'm trying to find most likely outcomes and there's constant pushback with people shouting that the least likely thing to happen, is going to happen, because football can't be determined by stats and stuff like that. I get that it's not perfect but there are a lot of people, yourself included, who flat out make fun of it and act like it's completely irrelevant for various reasons.

it's really hard to not get defensive about my stuff when it gets dragged through the mud with the amount of work I've put into it

if it helps, I've been working over the last couple months on not speaking in absolutes anymore. I've also been working for a while now on adding college production to my work and that probably would have tempered my expectations on hall, but not completely shattered them.

2017's LB class was just kinda weak in general. Basically every guy had dings for various reasons, there weren't any players in that class that looked like potential multi-pro bowl type NFL LBs. If we'd been willing to wait a year and just grab a UDFA (Dylan Cole was a UDFA and looked better than Duke last year - had all the athletic traits you look for, and was a tackling machine at Missouri State), an early 3rd round pick this year would've made much more sense. Malik Jefferson has the stuff to be something special and he went 78th overall, right near where we got Duke the year before.

Sign Grady, Neal, and Jones. That is kind of the core of our D right now.

I can tell you right now that most of the time I don't use PFF or think they're anything close to gospel truth. There was a point in time that I did, not so much anymore, but with OL there aren't a lot of places that give those guys love. That's why I also threw out advanced stats from footballoutsiders, because there just kind of aren't a lot of places and I'd rather go with the sort of "wisdom of crowds" and pull info from multiple sites than rely only on one. I don't have the time to go watching every LT in the league to grade them against each other, but those sites have people who do.

are you seriously trying to make the argument that because Matthews had a better 2017 grade than those guys, that makes him a better player? That's like my second biggest problem I have with PFF in general is that they say "person X is playing the best this year, therefore they are the best at their position, period". It doesn't work that way. Lewan was better than Jake every year prior to 2017, and graded as barely worse than Jake in 2017. Long term consistency > single year performance.

the point that you are just kind of obnoxious like that? Yeah I get it.

I don't see why you even feel the need to. I'm proud of Takk's rookie year but I was also not willing to give up on Vic after his underwhelming rookie year. One season can be an outlier, two seasons can be a coincidence, three seasons is when I start actually paying attention and formulating opinions on players for the most part. I'm not even on the "Carson Wentz is an elite QB" train because I think there's still a good chance that 2017 was an outlier for him and his true self is somewhere in between his 2016 and 2017 seasons.

it genuinely depends on which numbers you use. PFR AV cares way more about how good the overall offense is, than the individual OL player. Atlanta's offense has been way better than Tennessee's over the last four years so naturally Jake's AV will be higher than Lewan's. I'd rather look at places that watch every player like the B/R1000 or PFF or even advanced stats like adjusted line yards, adjusted sack rate, etc.

I know for a fact that at least one NFL player has already tried to use one of my posts as motivation. Didn't work out so well for him but I thought it was funny.

I don't see how you can have arrived at that conclusion after one year. Give it two more and we'll see.