Read This, Be Smarter: The Undoing of Chip Kelly's Offense

[pbmax]

https://theringer.com/chip-kelly-san-francisco-49ers-offense-f332f053870e#.gbmlfx6uv

And quotes that make me thing of the Packers M3:


“We knew what plays were coming,” Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner said after the game. “Their offense is kind of predictable. They have a lot of plays where they can only run one way.”


It’s one thing for a team to miss a block or for the play caller to guess wrong, but these are abysmal, totally hopeless plays rarely seen in the NFL. Yet Kelly repeatedly deflected criticism that his offense had become predictable by saying that the issue came down to only one thing: “We need to execute.”

[pbmax]

[After horrible loss to Giants when offense was shutdown]“I’ll never forget this in all my years in the NFL,” former Eagles quarterback Michael Vick recalled last year. “He said, ‘We will never look that way on offense the way we looked today, ever again.’”

And, at least for the rest of that 2013 season, Chip was right. The very next week, Kelly’s team bombed the Raiders with 49 points, while QB Nick Foles tied an NFL record with seven touchdown passes. And the offense was off to the races, smashing team records and finishing at or near the top of every major offensive category en route to a 7–1 record to close the season. Kelly did it by adapting, as he increasingly folded in NFL passing concepts brought by his assistants, particularly Pat Shurmur, and found new ways to run the ball from under center. Kelly had created a blend of shotgun spread and pro-style offenses that looked like the future.

Then … nothing. Kelly’s 2015 Eagles offense was essentially unchanged from 2013 (and the 49ers offense this preseason looked identical as well), and what two or three years prior was fresh is now stale and easily defended. If anything, Kelly’s later offenses were more simplistic than his earlier ones, as the creative motions and formations that Kelly once used so well largely vanished.

I look at the Packers personnel and coaches on Defensive side of the ball and I think they are going to roll.

But the arc of McCarthy's career on offense seems to have begun to fade. He is stuck with an unproductive no huddle that has caused him to abandon some pretty successful concepts from his past. All offenses need to evolve as Kelly has amply demonstrated, but McCarthy seems hemmed in by his past (too reliant on play design last year) and stuck with an offense this is WAY too predictable in the present.

[pbmax]

Try to remember the last time you say mass personnel changes on offense, motion and stacked receivers in the Packers offense. Its been 2.5 years. He got back to that a little last year just to shake a receiver from from an injury and talent depleted position group. But given his statements this year, he seems determine to move past those again.


Bill Belichick once spoke glowingly about Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs’s Washington teams that were, like Kelly’s, built around one-back formations and an elegantly simple running game. “Honestly, they [Gibbs’s Washington teams] only had three plays, running plays,” Belichick explained. “But they had a million different ways to run them: every formation, personnel group, motion, shifting. And it was hard to recognize because it was always different every week. … It’s unbelievable the amount of success they had running, really, running the inside zone, running the outside zone and running the counter [trey]. They won a lot of games doing that.” A little variety would go a long way to helping Kelly’s offense get back on track.

[esoxx]

https://theringer.com/chip-kelly-san-francisco-49ers-offense-f332f053870e#.gbmlfx6uv

And quotes that make me thing of the Packers M3:

Appears Kelly is a disciple of the Dan Devine offense, based on those quotes :lol:

[Maxie the Taxi]

Do you think Stubby is known around the league as a great innovator?

[esoxx]

But really, I concur there is staleness afoot in M3's offense. He has again indicated through camp they just need to execute and they'll be fine. I get the importance of execution but there needs to be more in today's NFL. There needs to be the motions, bunch formations, exotic looks, (subterfuge!) to create uncertainty in the opposing defense. Then go ahead and execute based on these different looks.

Sometimes you need to scheme open looks versus precise route running and hoping your guy prevails.

Hoping we'll see more of a mix this year but I have my doubts.

[Pugger]

It appears to me MM is more highly regarded nationally than by a lot of people here.

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000670900

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/list/nfl-head-coach-rankings-2016-gary-kubiak-ron-rivera-belichick-carroll-arians/1p3sytljwd80a1wei7eca55vz0/slide/6

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000671714

[Upnorth]

It appears to me MM is more highly regarded nationally than by a lot of people here.

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000670900

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/list/nfl-head-coach-rankings-2016-gary-kubiak-ron-rivera-belichick-carroll-arians/1p3sytljwd80a1wei7eca55vz0/slide/6

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000671714

Your right, the alcohol and drug issues are rampant thorough out the country

[pbmax]

Do you think Stubby is known around the league as a great innovator?

I don't think he is an innovator on a large scale. What always gets mentioned is his play calling and, formerly, play design.

He has not come up with an entire, novel offense, but he wisely uses pieces he's learned and picked up from others. Like his trips back to college, etc.

That was the genesis of the hurry up/no huddle. But it changed so much of his offense (remember in its first incarnation in 2013 it was so bad he abandoned it as a regular offensive feature) when he tried to fix the early bugs that is has really limited him.

There is also the Rodgers offense that seems to mainly serve to hamper WR development :lol: But given its existence, its sometimes hard to judge what the coach is doing and what Rodgers is doing.

[gbgary]

i don't think it's stale. it's gonna look stale when the weapons are missing, substandard, or hurt.

[pbmax]

i don't think it's stale. it's gonna look stale when the weapons are missing, substandard, or hurt.

It had become ineffective long before last year. If not for big Jordy plays, they would have been in terrible trouble much earlier.

Right now this offense needs its three physical talents (Rodgers, Nelson and Cook) to run roughshod over the opponent. Because the scheme isn't helping as much as it used to. If they get hurt, offense stagnates.

[pbmax]

It appears to me MM is more highly regarded nationally than by a lot of people here.

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000670900

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/list/nfl-head-coach-rankings-2016-gary-kubiak-ron-rivera-belichick-carroll-arians/1p3sytljwd80a1wei7eca55vz0/slide/6

http://www.nfl.com/photoessays/0ap3000000671714

Its pretty much me, red and rutnstrut on this Rat bandwagon. But none of us agree with the other about the problem. So its not so much a movement as a letter to the editor thread.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Its pretty much me, red and rutnstrut on this Rat bandwagon. But none of us agree with the other about the problem. So its not so much a movement as a letter to the editor thread.Count me pretty much in your camp. I agree with your analysis above.

There is so much to like about McCarthy. He's stubborn and anal about a lot of the right things. He's organized. He's prepared. He is loyal to his players and gets the most out of them. He's a steady hand on the tiller. He's logical and deliberate. All of these traits lead to success over the long haul, but they sometimes make it difficult for Stubby to think out of the box when required.

[pbmax]

Count me pretty much in your camp. I agree with your analysis above.

There is so much to like about McCarthy. He's stubborn and anal about a lot of the right things. He's organized. He's prepared. He is loyal to his players and gets the most out of them. He's a steady hand on the tiller. He's logical and deliberate. All of these traits lead to success over the long haul, but they sometimes make it difficult for Stubby to think out of the box when required.

I would add he does not stand still for the most part. He has changed end of game strategy (not always for the better), changed D philosophy and altered the offense he took to a Super Bowl among other things.

Its just that with this version of his offense, we are still in evaluation mode. Its going to be another year before he jettisons it completely, even if my gloomy prognostication comes true.

[Pugger]

It had become ineffective long before last year. If not for big Jordy plays, they would have been in terrible trouble much earlier.

Right now this offense needs its three physical talents (Rodgers, Nelson and Cook) to run roughshod over the opponent. Because the scheme isn't helping as much as it used to. If they get hurt, offense stagnates.

Most offenses stagnate when they don't have their best players.

[Pugger]

I would add he does not stand still for the most part. He has changed end of game strategy (not always for the better), changed D philosophy and altered the offense he took to a Super Bowl among other things.

Its just that with this version of his offense, we are still in evaluation mode. Its going to be another year before he jettisons it completely, even if my gloomy prognostication comes true.

This is what I find puzzling when people say Mike is stubborn. He isn't afraid to make a move if he thinks it will make his team better. Most of the time he is right but often he screws up - like when he yielded playcalling duties to Clements. I'm glad he saw the error of his ways and is calling the plays again.

[Zool]

It had become ineffective long before last year. If not for big Jordy plays, they would have been in terrible trouble much earlier.

Right now this offense needs its three physical talents (Rodgers, Nelson and Cook) to run roughshod over the opponent. Because the scheme isn't helping as much as it used to. If they get hurt, offense stagnates.

Wasn't the offense ranked #1 in 2014?

[Fritz]

From what I can discern, it seems to me the idea behind the no-huddle is that it gets the defense "stuck" in a certain package with players of certain talents on the field, and if your players are better (and the play calls can exploit areas the defense is less skilled in) you'll win that.

But with Nelson gone last year, the simple fact remaining was that even with Rodgers at the helm, the Packer offensive skill position guys weren't as good as the defense's guys, even when the defense got stuck in a package due to the hurry-up.

But as PB points out, this no-huddle hurry-up has been sputtering for awhile. This suggests the Packers' front-line guys may not be that much better than what the defense is putting out there.

The old MM offense - all those substitutions and packages and whatnot - seemed predicated on the idea that the Packer offense had more depth than the opponents' defenses did. Your sub-groups were better than theirs.

I'm not sure why Mikey-Mike got away from this. Seems the Packer depth is as good as it's been. And the no-huddle ain't working.

[pbmax]

Wasn't the offense ranked #1 in 2014?

Yes, that was the year he figured out his no huddle after trying an abandoning it in 2012. I don't recall the effects in 2013 because Rodgers had his clavicle injury that year. But teams began to adjust by the end of the 2014 season.

That was the start of the era where everyone would just match up in man, finding they could not stop him with zone. By the end of the year they scored 13 versus the Bills, 20 against the Bucs and 22 against the Seahawks. Of course, Rodgers was hobbled by his calf injury as well.

A healthy Rodgers, Nelson and Cook all make a huge difference, so I am not predicting they fall to the back half of offenses this year because of offensive design alone. But I don't think the Packers win anymore prior to kickoff by scheme.

[Maxie the Taxi]

This is what I find puzzling when people say Mike is stubborn. He isn't afraid to make a move if he thinks it will make his team better. Most of the time he is right but often he screws up - like when he yielded playcalling duties to Clements. I'm glad he saw the error of his ways and is calling the plays again.

The Sitton OL crisis will tell us a lot today. Now that Bahk is injured (some say he's not too great to start with) and the general consensus is Taylor stinks, a reasonable expectation would be that the left side of the OL will be a huge problem in today's game.

Up till now Stubby has publicly spouted the company line that Taylor is competent and the OL will be fine. Nothing to see here. The question is does he really believe this or is he making adjustments in his game plan behind the scenes to compensate for this crisis? In other words, will we see a lot of quick release, short passes, maybe screens and flat passes to the right, Lacy running to the right, etc.?

Or will we see a business as usual offense with deep drops, Arod running for his life and Lacy bouncing back off Taylor's butt as Stubby plays the game in denial?

Of course, the other possibility is that the company line is correct, Bahk is healthy and capable and Taylor is an adequate replacement for Sitton. Hmmmmm. We'll see.

[Fritz]

Good point, Maxie.