Quote Originally Posted by Maxie the Taxi View Post
I usually am not a fan of such articles, but this one made sense to me. I've often thought that a lot of coaches can't see the forest for the trees. They examine plays in isolation rather than in context. From the coach's point of view every well-designed play should go for that necessary 1st down or that winning TD if the players just "execute."

After a loss coaches AND players will often say that the players just didn't "execute." What's virtually never said is that the coach didn't put his players in a position to succeed often enough, regardless of execution. And this has to do with game planning and the things the article talks about.

In fact, I think sometimes fans and reporters are in a better position to judge than the coach, purely because most fans see the big picture of the game rather than getting caught up in the x's and o's of each play.

The article concludes:


Question: Is "Burke" Tex?
He is ex-Air Force and working for ESPN now. He might be Tex

I think coaches go beyond the single factor success-or-not when they are designing an offense and game planning. If they thought solely about success rate, the run/pass ratios never would have changed.

But they don't ALL have to be thinking big picture. There is a lot of monkey see monkey do. I think McCarthy is in between, he reviews from 10,000 feet but I am not sure he thinks in terms of probabilities. I do give him credit for being willing to try things. He could be Jeff Fisher and do it by the book. You don't get second guessed as hard that way.