Archives for June 2, 2011

This article is also a good short breakdown of the other two primary ancestors of modern offensive football: The Air Coryell system and the West Coast system. A little bit on both:

Air Coryell

The Air Coryell offense is one that is being used by a handful of teams in the league today. Oakland and San Diego use it, New Orleans runs a variation of it along with some Erhardt-Perkins, and Chicago will be using it this year now that Mike Martz is the offensive coordinator in Chicago. It’s an offense that was created by Sid Gillman back in the 60′s while with the Chargers. Later Don Coryell perfected it or made it what it eventually became remembered for while with the Chargers in the 70′s and 80′s. Another notable name to be associated with this offense is none other than Al Davis who was an assistant under Sid Gillman and took the offense to Oakland. The offense is based on timing and precession with the emphasis being on deep passes to stretch the field, and make the defense over commit to certain aspects of the passing attack.

West Coast Offense

The West Coast offense utilizes short, horizontal passing plays to stretch the defense, which then enables them to have bigger run plays and longer passes. Typical plays happen within ten to fifteen yards of the line of scrimmage. By the quarterback taking short drops, it makes the defense focus on the intermediate short routes & not on the running backs coming out of the backfield. The term “West Coast” is a term that Bill Parcells gave the offense back in 1985 after the Giants beat the 49ers in the playoffs. As people know, Parcells believes in hard nose football and tough defense over finesse football which everyone said the 49ers played finesse football back then.

Finally we have how Charlie Weis set the stage for Josh McDaniels to take the Erhardt-Perkins offense to contain elements of a modern spread.

Charlie Weis can be credited for installing the heavily modified version of this offense that we see in New England and Denver. His version of the offense became the complicated, very intricate and versatile passing attack that we have witnessed over the past ten years. He even went as far as to run five wide out sets a lot during the course of a game which was unheard of back in the day when Erhardt and Perkins created this offense. Weis left for Notre Dame which open the door for the young protege Josh McDaniels to run what he had learned under Weis as the QB coach in New England. Josh took it to another level back in 2007 with Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Donte Stallworth. He made the offense almost exclusively a spread offense that teams weren’t ready for nor knew how to stop with Moss & Welker needing to be double teamed. In leau of the expanded wide open passing attack, he was able to keep the running game portion of this offense a key component in the Patriots record breaking season.

Good article here with another fundamental breakdown of the offense, but what I’d like to focus on are the types of offensive lineman required to run it because clearly this is still very much a part of the system.

This system uses bigger offensive lineman and typically bigger Running Backs who can sustain running between the tackles on a regular basis. The Offensive Tackles and Guards in this system typically “Pull” and “Trap”. What this means is, on a Running play that is designed to run to the right, let’s say in the B Gap or between the Guard and Tackle on the Right Side, the Left Guard will quickly leave his original position and become the lead blocker for the Running Back. This type of Rushing attack usually requires big Offensive Lineman who will be able to handle a large Defensive Tackle head on.

Hmmm, big, athletic offensive lineman? Clearly Vollmer and Solder are perfect examples.