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Transcript
I think that.
All these teams.
That are kind of trying to in some way, shape or form, imitate McVeigh and Shanahan.
My, it's not a bold prediction, but it's just a thought.
If you're not McVeigh or Shanahan.
And you're not innovating in your own way, I think your ass is cooked.
That's my, that's my bold take.
And so I'll say it like this.
So I, I went through and I did a rough count of how many coordinators or primary play callers are now direct descendants of either McVeigh or Shanahan or some amalgamation of both of those.
What would you say that was about?
What percentage would you say that it was about?
50%.
It's like 55%, right?
And so 55% of the NFL is, is subscribed to one of two ideologies.
Now, you have guys like Mike McDaniel, who took the Shanahan thing and, and, Spun in a way different direction.
You have Clint Kubiak, who nobody gives him credit for.
His dad kind of like co-invented that system.
Like the Kubiak name kind of got bumped on off the, the marquee there, you know, that was the Shanahan, he was there, but Gary Kubiak was there for all of it, yeah, correct, um, and so , you know, I don't include him in that category either.
But that subcategory that's kind of running the thing off the manual, it worked for so long because it exposed fundamental flaws in the defense.
But what you saw with Brian Flores a couple of years ago, what you saw with Mike McDonald, after that, what you're seeing with Demio Ryans and Matt Burke is an ability, and you can kind of put Jim Schwartz, I would put Jim Schwartz in there for one very specific reason.
What you're seeing is an understanding that like, OK, if you're just running the, the, the model 1.0, we know what you're doing now.
You need other tricks to evolve on this because they have learned the rules and they have learned how to break the rules, if that makes sense.
So my parting shot for the offseason is if you're not doing any, if you're just trying to follow.
The, you know, if you're trying to follow this thing like the Microsoft paper clip and being like, what can I do to help, uh, version of this offense, I think you're host.
And I think that it's gonna not expose a lot of people, but it's gonna show who's really innovating on their own and who's kind of riding coattails a little bit.
So I remember when I was in, um, I remember when I like, like all those guys were still in Washington.
And I remember like what all of them would tell you is if you didn't learn this offense at the grassroots level, then it's really difficult to teach it and the reason why is because Um, and I remember having being with one of their coaches and they were talking about stealing plays, right?
And one of the, one of these guys says to me, he's like, well, anybody, I'd like, he's like, I could sit, you could sit down and draw up what we're doing, you know, like, but you don't know why we're doing it.
You don't know the detail, you don't know the little things that we're setting up on the backside of the play to make it look like something else.
You don't know what we're doing with the lineman's hand placement.
And if you don't learn it at the grassroots level, where you are a quality control coach or you're a position coach, and now I know why this position is doing this and how it ties into this person coming over here and doing that.
Then it's really hard for you to just take it and teach it to somebody else and I, I think that piece of it, and then I think back to Matt Patricia coaching with Philadelphia.
And if you remember like the end of that year was not good.
I think Sean Dea was the start, was the coordinator at the beginning of the year, and then later in the year, Patricia wound up being the DC and that was the Vic Fangio defense.
Now did Matt Patricia know the bones of the, of the, the, the Fangio defense?
Yes.
But what made it difficult for Matt, and like I, and I know this, like what made it difficult for him was in that situation, it was like, OK, I can coach this, I can call it.
But when all hell breaks loose and 5 things go wrong, is my knowledge of this system deep enough that I can fix it on the fly, and that's really hard if you aren't, if you didn't come up in it, which is why so many of these guys are tied into the systems they run.
You can't just learn it in textbook, you know.
You have to learn how to teach it.
You have to learn why you're doing it.
You have to experience it and troubleshoot it and go through all those things.
And so that's where McVeigh.
And Shanahan, and LaFleur, and McDaniel, and those guys who were there that actually helped build it out and learned it under the Godfather, right?
Mike.
And, you know, obviously, you know, Gary Kubiak's sons are part of that too.
Those guys have the ability to change it because they know the root of it, right?
Like, I, they can, they can essentially.
Like, tear it down to the studs, but they know where those studs are and build back up on the same studs, you know, and that's a lot more difficult if you weren't part of building it, you know, so I think like you, to your point, it's like.
Can you, can a coach come in and learn the offense on the fly and coach through a season?
Well, yeah, you probably get away with that.
You know what I mean?
Like, but when you get to season 3, season 4, and everybody knows what you're trying to do now, and you have to adjust it and you have to change it, like that's where knowing why things are the way they are is so important because that's where, OK, like this is why we're doing this in the first place.
So let's go over here.
And if you don't have that , You're, you're just sort of doing something else altogether rather than adjusting what you've already got.
This thing was like it did, it did.
This thing, when you look at it, it was like I, I, I, I don't even know the analogy.
It was like getting in on Bitcoin early.
Like you look at the scoring summary for the NFL in 2020.
And you know, whatever you, whatever, whatever year you want to say 2018, 2019, 2020, those were the years that like McVeigh was putting up like the what was the, it was the Sunday night game or the Monday night game, the Rams and Chiefs where it was like a 1952 to, you know what game I'm talking about, right?
And so it was the one that was supposed to be in Mexico City and then wound up being at the Coliseum.
Yeah, do you remember they had the, the field was a disaster in Mexico and so they had to move it back to LA and then that was on a Monday night and It was sort of felt like almost like the unofficial, like, OK, LA is an NFL city again, even though it was the second or third year, 3rd year, I think there, but it was like a big, it felt like a big stage in a big game.
We had teams like 2021, the average margin of victory, um, was like 12 points, something like that.
Um, you had in 2020.
I think it was, let me make sure that I have this right.
Almost 3 touchdowns a game.
So like 2.8 touchdowns a game and, um, you know, Now, it's not like it's that much lower, but when you go from 2.9 touchdowns a game to 2.5 touchdowns a game , when you go from, you know, like you go from like 1.7 reception touchdowns a game to 1.4, when you go from, what is it?
1.04 rushing touchdowns a game to 0.94. Like these things look small.
In the big picture, but what it's telling you is like a lot more defenses are making a lot more stops in little aggregate moments that are changing like a gigantic sample size to the point where like, and we're not, it's not enough that we're going to notice, but what I'm trying to say is that like, I think that the NFL has caught up with the very basics of it.
And, You know, like if you look at both systems, right, there is like a fundamental parlor trick where it's like, OK, we need, we're going to force you into a defense that you're not comfortable playing, or we're versatile enough that whatever defense you decide to play, we just have the answer to it already built in, right?
Um.
I remember, uh, when, when this whole thing started, I mean, it reminded me a little bit of kind of when the RPO revolution started 2017, 2018, and defenses started panicking about that.
And the need even back then was we need to get amoebic enough that they can't just cherry-pick matchups all the time, right?
It took defenses about this long to figure out like, oh, like Jalen Petrie, you know, like, here's a, here's a safety that plays like a corner, that plays like a linebacker, like, and, and there's not a lot of these guys , but there are enough teams now that have figured out like.
Yeah, it's the counter to, you know, when the 49ers break the huddle, um, when they were really rolling, and you have Christian McCaffrey, Debo Samuel, and George Kittle as like three guys that can line up legitimately all over the formation and you don't know where they're going.
You sort of need a counter to that, and the counter to that is the hybrids, right?
And the counter to that is like, Again, it's like this ability for an offense to adjust and fly.
I think it's so much of like what Seattle did, and I think I've mentioned this to you before, but you know, that somebody really smart tell me right before the Super Bowl, just look at the number of snaps that Seattle has 3 safeties on the field, and I'll tell you how the game went, right?
And Seattle had 3 safeties on the field for 70 of 71 snaps.
And um why is that relevant?
Well, it's relevant because that third safety was Nicky Minorri and like he's really sort of playing a linebacker position and you know, generally what you, you know, you, you can, and then this is one thing Josh McDaniel's offense is great with like, OK, like what personnel are they in?
how can we take advantage of it, you know, well, if they're coming out in that look, right, with 3 safeties.
Like the whole idea would be, OK, we're gonna run them out of it, right?
Like we're gonna run the ball, so they're gonna, they're gonna have to put another linebacker on the field, and that'll open things up for us.
But if that third safety can play like a linebacker, now you're in.
Now you're stuck, you know what I mean?
Like if you can't run them out of that, like the, the Patriots tried to run the Seahawks out of that, and they couldn't, right?
So I think that's where some of the evolution of defense is coming.
It's like with those hybrids, and I, you know, I like you mentioned Petrie, like it's usually that nickel position where you see it.
So like Petrie is one of those, he's a little bit different.
He's more of like a hybrid.
Corner, safety, but like can play, but can hit like a linebacker.
Then you got like the bigger guys like the Kyle Hamilton, Eman Nori is, I think another one that's coming now.
Derwin James to me would be sort of the prototype, right?
But, but it's like those, those types of guys are the ones that you combat that with, which is interesting cause like that bigger safety was sort of, it sort of seemed to become obsolete 10 or 15 years ago.
And what we're seeing then is obvious, right?
That's not obvious, right?
Because I'm not sitting there thinking about it and saying it's going to happen.
But it makes sense that Sean McVeigh is like, OK, well, now I'm going to run a lot more tight ends because you're getting a lot bigger and so I'm going to get even, even bigger, you know, and, and some of, and my tight ends can block, but they can also, you know, Some of them are athletic enough to, to do some receiver stuff.
And so it's the inverse of the kind of the second McVeigh evolution, which is like, OK, I'm gonna have my wide receiver play like a tight end.
Now I'm going to have some of my tight ends play like wide receivers.
And, you know, it's just gonna kind of, it's that little wrinkle that's gonna, it's gonna tear you up.
I'm not worried about those guys.
The people that I'm worried about.
Are the ones because this is like the brand of defense that the Texans play, the brand of defense that the, uh, Vikings play, uh, the brand of defense that the Seahawks play.
This is a defense that every defensive coordinator has dreamed of calling since the beginning of time.
And a defense that I think, and I'm, I'm not being dismissive of it, but I think a, a defense that a lot of coordinators can call, right?
That it's, it's, it's attacking.
It's like we're gonna only do a couple of things, but for the first time, and I would say, you, you know, I've been doing this long enough that we've been through so many defensive revolutions and offensive revolutions, all this stuff.
But for the first time in probably 10 years, Defenses can now attack first, you know, they're getting the first move on the chessboard, and it's not like offenses can just put them in a bottle and shake it up anymore.
And I think you gotta give like John Harbaugh and Wink Martindale credit for that, like, in that, like that was sort of, that was sort of the Eric Weddle, uh, idea 10 years ago or so, I think it was 2018, like where they wanted to make changes like, hey.
Like, if they can flip on, if they can flip on us on the fly, we need to be able to flip on them too, and we need to dictate that to them.
And it's exactly what you just said.
It was like playing defense like you're playing offense, you know.
And I remember talking to, I talked to Weddell about it after, you know, after John was fired in, in Baltimore in January about what they did there, and he was saying how like he could look over, he could look down the line.
At a linebacker and be, and just a swap.
And like now, he's dropping and the linebacker rushing instead of the other way around, which what, which might be what the initial call was, you know.
And there were so many things that they were doing.
And I think it was actually in direct response to some of the things that Shanahan and McVeigh were doing where it was like, you know, it's McVeigh in the, in, in Goff's earpiece and reading it and helping read it out for him, you know, and And the idea of which goes way back, but the idea of canning plays, you know, you go and you give the quarterback two play calls and he's give him an indicator, and it's like creating this illusion, and this is the term here, of the illusion of complexity, right?
Like we can do a million different things when really all you're doing is giving the quarterback an indicator and he's going one of two ways based on something he sees defensively.
Now the defense can adjust the same way right before the snap.
So the quarterback snap the ball, the ball snapped.
And what the quarterback is seeing after the snap is totally different than what he was seeing before the snap.
Anyway, we're probably way too far in the weeds here.
No, that's, I think that there's some people who, uh, enjoy the weeds.
That's, uh, and, and I did too.
And I think, honestly, I just think that like, These are the, the kind of things that you can see the groundwork of because and, and I'll say this, like, and it, it's not like you can catch up in one offseason, right?
Like all these teams that are like, oh, I got another tight end now.
I'm 12 personnel.
No, you're not, because that tight, tight ends a really hard position to learn in the NFL.
And so even if in theory, you're drafting another guy to run 12 personnel and it looks like you're going to be this way, it, it, it, it's not that simple, right?
This takes time.
And so I think that there's going to be some offenses that are behind the 8 ball, not going to be hard to figure out who it is.
