Recently, I got around to reading Pat Kirwans book, and one of the things he talked about in the book was charting the games, how coaches do to check other teams tendencies and personnel packages, and when they run and throw from those packages etc. So, I decided it would be interesting to track. So, I tried to create a spreadsheet, and it took me over a year off and on, but i fought through it, and got it working. This took me a couple hours or so to do, so hopefully someone finds it useful! I can't say how often I'll do it, but I'd like to do it every game. It's time consuming. I know this is a week late, and I'm going to try and get the Indy game done before Atlanta... but no guarantees. Also, depends if you guys find this useful or not. So, what we're going to track here is first off how many times we ran vs passed. We're also going to track our personnel packages on the field, and then our tendencies to either run or pass in that personnel package, and go even further to break it down by first second or third down, and then of course break it down one step further to see our production in any given personnel package, by down, by run or pass. Make sense? For those who may be unfamiliar with the numbering system for personnel packages, we're using two digit numbers, where the first number represents the number of running backs on the field, the second represents the number of TE's. We can then use simple math to determine how many WR's are on the field. So, for example 11 personnel is 1 RB, 1 TE... we know we have 5 OL on any play, and 1 QB, so that leaves us with 3 WR's Got it? Good. Anyways, here's a basic outline of what we're able to see from our offense by going through this exercise. I found it very interesting to note how much of an 11 (1RB/1TE/3WR) personnel team we were against Cleveland. I cant remember much from last year, but I dont recall many 3 WR sets, probably because we didnt really have 3 WR's to put on the field. I'm going to try and do the Indy game sometime this week if I can get around to it. Just some notes I made about my process here. Clay is a tricky guy, at least for me when working on this... So, he lined up at TE alot, but motioned back to fullback. Also, he lined up as what I would consider a WR alot of times too, however for the purpose of this excercise, I still considered him a TE. Here's the data... be curious to hear what anyone has to add, if anything to this, or if you guys even find this useful at all.
Thanks for the breakdown Brandon. This is consistent with what Sherman did with Tannehill at A&M. During Tannehill’s QB Camp with Gruden he said A&M ran 90% of their plays from Zebra (11) with the remaining coming from Tiger (12), Eagle (10) and Y (13).
appreciated! Was thinking about you today (I know, it's weird)... you should, when watching the game the first time, take your phone and take a picture of the presnap formation. Then when the game is over, you don't have to go back and re-watch it. The information is there on your phone and you can flip thru the photo's and cross reference with the NFL.com play by play to chart the play results. Maybe that would cut down on how long it takes you?
Ditto.. please do this as many games as you can. I also have Kirwan's book and enjoyed it. This is useful. Some observations: 1) It may help to consider CLay a FB when he is in the backfield at the snap and a TE when he is not. I notice that we have 11 snaps in 11 grouping and zero snaps in 20 grouping on first down, yet surely there was a time when Clay functioned as a FB lead blocker. To get a clearer idea, i think we have to decide what to designate him based on what seems to be his intended function on the play. IF that's more work, I apologize, but it gives us a clearer picture, imo. 2) Very curious to see how COlts game compares, because this Brwons game looks totally unlike a Parcellian or Henning type team (Thank God). Less heavy sets, less dinosaur type offense. 3) We were very limited in our groupings. Wonder if it's because it ws working, or because limiting the groupings allowed coaches to better teach the players to execute a smaller number of plays. If this is the case, some players will get highlighted if their grouping is used that week, while others may seem to disappear entirely that week (like WR #4 thus far, Rishard Matthews) 4) THRILLED to see the Performance by Personnel Package numbers! Clearly a great job by the coaching staff. The groupings that were working (around 6 yds per play) are the ones they put a ton more play calls into, and the ones they tested and were underperfomning they allocated almost NONE too. Great gameplan, clearly, but also they clearly chart and adjust very quickly to allocate playcalls to the most effective groupings on the fly. One fo the best things about this staff, imo, compared to Sparano, is their ability to make coaching adjustments and judgements during a game. We test some groupings until we see which personnel group is giving us the best mismatch against the opponents personnel, then we load our resources into that area. In terms of pure allocation theory, this is very good management. 5) Can;t tell anything about the run game from this Cleveland data. That's why you have to chart the Colts game for us bro. 6) Not a single pass with 2 RBs on the field... unless we count Clay lining up at FB... curious how that changes things. Not a lot of trends to be had yet.. but the real value of this is seeing how it varies, and stays the same week to week. That will reveal our coaches' philosophies, and beleifs about our personnel strengths, as well as show how they gameplanned particular opponents and responded to situational football by downs. GREAT stuff. Please continue, as time allows.
I've got the first half of the colts game done already. Hope to do the second half tonight and get it posted. There's some pretty glaring differences already. Some which may have contributed to our success in running the ball against Indy as opposed to Cleveland. There's also something to note in the Colts game that kind of skews the stats a bit, and that was our no huddle, two minute drive at the end of the first half with the 5WR looks, so hopefully I remember to note that when I post that data, hopefully tonight or tomorrow. With respect to Clay, in the Colts game, I'm treating him as whatever position he lines up in at the snap. For instance, we were in alot of what you would call 4 WR sets, but that fourth WR is Clay. If he's on the line as a TE, I'm treating him as such, but when he's split wide as a WR, I've been treating him as a WR. Likewise, if he lined up at FB as a lead blocker on a run play, I've classed him as a RB. It's fairly consistent what I did in the Browns game too. Although, we didn't have the "issue" with him lining up as a WR then. Given what I just said about him as a WR at times, it would have been interesting to see what would have happend if Keller was still here. As for your suggestion Paul, I'd go nuts I think having to try and go with the pictures for each play. As I said in another thread, having NFL rewind would be huge, but its ridiculously expensive for us here in Canada, so re-watching the game isn't all that tough. I got through the Colts first half pretty quickly, once you get used to it, its not bad. It's the fast forwarding through the video in WMP or VLC that's the real pain in the you know what. It's just so tough to jump through the game. I have it playing, the sheet open, and the game book from nfl.com open to make sure the stats are accurate, usually while the pre-play junk is going on I'm filling out the information for the play ahead, then i flip back and catch the personnel grouping prior to the snap, rinse and repeat Besides, it's kind of nice to watch the games again, especially when you know what's coming up, you know what to look for. For example, Hartline is awesome to watch run his routes. It's impressive, its no wonder we re-signed him in the offseason.
If you go to the gamecenter for each game, then click on the Game Info tab (I believe that's what its called) There's a little box on the right hand side titled Game Access that has a link to the PDF of the game book.
Thanks for doing the Colts game, B! I know this seems to go against my prior thoughts, respectfully disagree with the decision to call Clay a WR because he splits wide. The whole point of personnel packages is to get a mismatch. You bring Clay out so they match with a linebacker, then you split him out so we can take advantage of his superior speed. By considering him a WR it makes the charting data less useful, as it looks like we had a WR out there more, in which case I'd guess we had success with a WR vs their CBs, but that's not the personnnel matchup we wanted, got or exploited at all. I would count Clay as a FB when lined up in the backfield I think calling him a RB is not only correct, but still accurately reflects personnel intentions and the liekly defensive response in personnel. Ditto as a TE. We can;t lose sight of what the real defense sees Clay as, no matter what we theorize, and I don't believe they are treating him as a WR from a defensive personnel standpoint, because if he is splitting out it's during a series where he has moved around other spots and we are trying to keep that poor LB out there to victimize him. The moment they bring a CB out to match Lcay out wide, we'd simply make him a blocker again. I could be wrong this is such a gray area. But notice this... Clay is giving US a ton of trouble in terms of charting and categorizing him. The same will absolutely be true for defensive coordinators trying to gameplan how to handle him. This is exactly what makes him such a valuable piece in this offense.
I hear ya, definitely. The thing is with Clay, in the Colts game, alot of times he was split out as a WR right out of the huddle. It wasn't a situation where he was down on the line, then motioned out to the slot or whereever. Hell, there was one time, it was either with an empty back field, or 1 RB, where Clay was lined up as a WR on the near sideline, with Gibson to his right, and Hartline and Wallace on the far sideline. There wasn't any of that in the Browns game that I can recall, but plenty of it in the Colts game. The good thing is, even though I didnt mark him as a TE, but as a WR, I still noted in the spreadsheet that he lined up at WR, of course this won't show up in the data, but if I'm wrong, at least its easy for me to go and fix. If straight out of the huddle, and he's Off the line and split from the tackle though, I've been taking that as a WR, if he's started in tight, i left him as a tight end, even if he later motioned out. I'm going to do some more digging to see which way is "correct". As for watching if we lost... We'll see how that goes.
Thanks for the explanation. I think you've done a great job. Since the purpose of charting is to track personnel groupings, I think the intention of having Clay out there is to draw a favorable matchup vs an LB, even when he lines up wide. So the hope is that a 11 grouping draws a defense where Clay has an LB covering him, which is not what would happen if a defense looked at Clay as a WR. But, like you, I would like to hear from anyone with more knowledge of this area than the one book we both read. Lol. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
