Coach Tuesday
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Let's be honest - I give TD plenty of credit, and he deserves it for this, as you point out - but, luck is also a factor that cannot be overlooked.
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You tha man, GG. Can't wait to see this line MAUL next year, esp. with Shelton in the fold and a rook at center (that's just to bait you Teague-lovers).
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Interestingly, fan opinion of him kinda reminds me of Reuben Brown - great run-blocker/mauler (although Reuben obviously was more athletic), average pass blocker and prone to mental mistakes. I'm interested to see what the coaches do with this guy - really, although he wasn't cheap, he wasn't expensive either. I think we got fair value for the "gamble" - if he's a backup, it's not the worst thing to have a guy like that on the bench (and he'd be only slightly overpaid); if he's ultimately cut, the cap hit really isn't too substantial.
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I seem to be alone here (except maybe J frm Hemet) in thinking that this means that Teague is OUT. The fact is, his production vs. Tucker's probably doesn't justify his contract value vs. Tucker's. I say he's a June 1 goner.
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(once again, from the bright folks at www.footballoutsiders.com)
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/ramblings.php?p=2484&cat=11
Zone Blocking vs. Man Blocking
Guest Column by Brian Hook
As TMQ often says, Denver’s helmets should have a label that says "Insert running back, gain 1000 yards". So many Denver running backs have been accused of benefiting from "the Denver system" that we thought it would be a good idea to see what correlation might exist between the Denver "one-cut" zone-blocking scheme and overall running back success.
To gauge that we needed to trawl the archives for running backs that have gone from one system to the other. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Denver running backs seem to remain Denver running backs for life – possibly because they have a nasty habit of suffering devastating injuries while a Bronco. Terrell Davis, Mike Anderson, Olandis Gary, Reuben Droughns, Quentin Griffin, and Tatum Bell have had almost all of their career carries as Broncos. The only player in recent memory that has gone from Denver to another team and achieved significant carries in both locations is Clinton Portis.
However, as luck would have it, some teams have recently transitioned to a zone-blocking scheme. Houston hired Joe Pendry as offensive line coach and installed a zone-blocking scheme for Domanick Davis between 2003 and 2004. Atlanta also saw a similar transition, this time by bringing in the godfather of the zone blocking scheme, Alex Gibbs, whom many a defensive player can thank for a career or season ending lower leg injury.
So this gives us four players to work with: Clinton Portis (Denver and Washington); TJ Duckett and Warrick Dunn (Atlanta); and Domanick Davis (Houston).
ZONE BLOCKING
For those of you unfamiliar with the Denver offensive line scheme, they use a technique known as "zone blocking". In a "man" or "drive" blocking scheme the lineman is responsible for an individual, and the play is designed for a running back to hit a particular gap. The zone blocking scheme, on the other hand, has a lineman blocking an area instead of a designated defensive player. If multiple linemen are blocking an area than one can break off and block into the second level.
The offensive line typically moves as a unit laterally, and the result of their blocks should create some natural seams or gaps in the defensive formation. The running back is responsible for finding a hole, making a cut, and then running upfield. One of the key tenets of the Denver system is that the running back takes what he can get – he should never dance around waiting for a hole to open. He needs to be agile, authoritative, and possess good instincts. Nothing fancy, just try to gain positive yardage.
A final element of the zone blocking scheme is the use of the much hated cut block to seal off backside pursuit. This means that any linemen on the backside of the play cut block defensive players in front of them, which drops the defensive players to the turf and, oddly enough, opens up holes for the running back. Note that the cut block is legal in this case, as long as the offensive lineman isn’t hitting the defender from behind and as long as he doesn’t roll up on his legs. But hitting him below the knees near the line of scrimmage is fair game, as much as the NFLPA doesn’t want it to be.
Obviously getting defenders on the ground is one benefit of the cut block, but an intangible benefit is that defenders start worrying about their knees and ankles. They lose a bit of their aggression and speed since they’re paranoid that some lineman is going to creep up on them and take out their legs. This has the benefit of slowing down the entire defense.
For the record, Joe Pendry claims that his zone blocking scheme doesn’t rely on cut blocks. Given Davis’s performance, he might want to reconsider that stance.
CONFOUNDING VARIABLES
Before we start looking at the data, let’s go ahead and establish up front that nothing we’ve discovered is conclusive. We’re dealing with very limited sample data and a huge number of confounding variables. Portis had to deal with moving to a run-heavy offense with a passing game as threatening as a sleeping infant. In addition, Washington’s starting right tackle (Jon Jansen) was lost at the start of the season. And, finally, Portis casually mentioned that he had been suffering from a shoulder injury he didn’t want to "bother" the trainers about during the season.
While Atlanta managed to keep its personnel relatively intact, they turned over their entire coaching staff and installed brand new offensive and defensive schemes. In addition Dunn and Duckett flip flopped roles as primary ball carrier – in 2003 Duckett was the workhorse but in 2004 that title moved to, well, Mike Vick, but for the sake of this article, we’ll just note that Dunn had more carries than Duckett in 2004, a reversal from 2003.
One final note before we get to the analysis: we’re not trying to analyze effectiveness (a la DPAR, DVOA, or Success Rate), we’re instead trying to get a feel of the "nature" of their carries. Are they getting stuffed more often? Are they breaking off fewer or more long runs? Standard metrics such as yards/carry or standard deviation have a hard time telling us about the style of a runner, but an analysis of the distribution of their runs gives us a pretty good idea.
THE ANALYSIS
We took the running play information from 2003 and 2004 for Davis, Portis, Dunn, and Duckett and sorted the runs into buckets. These buckets were:
0 or fewer yards ("stuffs")
1-3 yards ("short runs")
4-9 yards ("good runs")
10+ yards ("long runs")
Discounting situational success, the first two buckets are "bad" runs and the second two buckets are "good" runs. We then graphed the results for each back comparing the frequency of runs within each category between zone and man blocking schemes. The results were inconsistent but still interesting.
Now, without looking at any real numbers, I think the graphs tell us a lot about each runner. Let’s take a look at TJ Duckett first:
Duckett clearly improved with the zone running scheme. In fact, that he had more runs for 4-9 yards than for 1-3 yards is impressive. In 2004 he almost halved the number of stuffs he suffered, he had a far greater percentage of "good" runs, but his 10+ yard frequency stayed about the same.
In other words, he isn’t a big play back, but in the zone scheme he was a lot more dependable for getting good, solid carries. Basically that distribution is exactly what you want from most running backs – get me at least 4 yards over half the time. It is not a coincidence that he has the second best RB Success Rate of backs in 2004 (up from #20 in 2003). (RB Success Rate explained here.)
Of course, other factors are at play as well – he wasn’t asked to carry as much and it he was used very differently. In 2003 over 65% of his carries were on 1st down, whereas in 2004 less than 50% of his carries were on 1st down.
Then we have his teammate, Warrick Dunn, who went through his own changes:
The graph basically says "In 2004, Dunn was far more likely to get you positive yardage, but less likely to get you GOOD positive yardage".
Davis, on the other hand, isn’t as cut and dry as expected:
The media have gone on and on about his lower yards/carry this year vs. last year (3.9 vs. 4.3). But the graph indicates that he was more consistent in the zone blocking scheme, i.e. a greater proportion of his runs were between the extremes of "stuffed" and "long run", which means he was stuffed less but also had fewer long runs. The numbers bear this out – in the zone blocking scheme he had 73.3% of his runs between 1 and 9 yards, but in the man blocking scheme only 64% of his runs were in that range. Visually this is obvious, as is the fact that he had more stuffs and long runs.
It is possible that the lack of cut-blocking on the backside prevented Davis from breaking out past the 3 yard area and grabbing large chunks of ground.
Now compare this with Portis:
The graph there, again, clearly shows the trend difference – there’s a crossover between the "bad" region and the "good" region. In other words, in the man blocking scheme he tended to have more "bad" runs and fewer "good" runs than in the zone blocking scheme. He ran more often for more yards in the zone scheme, however it should be mentioned that Joe Bugel and Joe Gibbs recognized this near the end of the 2004 season and supposedly incorporated more zone blocking type plays, however looking at the overall game summaries I don’t immediately see a difference.
SUMMARY
With such limited data and with so many confounding variables we can’t really draw any strong conclusions about man vs. zone blocking. But there are some interesting observations to be had.
First, the data seems to indicate that odds of getting stuffed drop with a zone scheme. This makes sense, since in a zone one-cut scheme the running back chooses the hole instead of sticking with the play’s pre-selected gap.
Second, there seems to be no correlation between scheme and the ability to rip off long runs. Davis and Portis had more long runs with zone blocking; Duckett was the same; and Dunn had more in a man scheme.
Third, it is possible that Davis might have had a better year if Pendry had used cut-blocking to Davis’s advantage – his distribution of runs is similar between the two years with the exception of his lack of long runs.
The "Denver system" isn’t a magical pill that a team can swallow to generate 1500 yard rushers with consistency, but obviously it has been successful for running backs in Denver. One reason it has not been widely adopted is time: it takes time to teach, time to master, and time to get the smaller, more agile offensive linemen that the system requires. If you take zone blocking and try to implement it with 340 pound behemoths, you will probably fail, and for better or for worse, 340 pound behemoths are what you’ll find on a typical offensive line in the NFL.
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You mean our second-round pick - but I completely agree.
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That's true what you say about the message board to a point (eg. small minority who crusade against TH). But living here in Baltimore, I know a lot of Ravens fans
, and I can tell you that Anderson is pretty much universally despised by the locals ala Pucillo. I'm nowhere near saying he's as bad as Pucillo was, but where there's smoke, there's fire.
I have to concur, this is a bit of an odd signing. He wasn't cheap (nor expensive), and this is a draft full of quality guards. Perhaps they put a weight clause in his contract, or some other incentive-based formula (starts, etc.). It's possible, as some have suggested, that McNally was confident from what he saw on film that he could mold Bennie into a quality player, although I too was a bit concerned by what TD said in his Serius interview yesterday ("Bennie's a great run blocker" - said nothing about his pass protection).
We'll see...
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Curious who you'd list there. You might be right that Teague will be in a better position to succeed in-between two power-guards - but I still don't think he's the young mauler this staff is looking for to man the Center spot. As far as pulling, I don't see Bennie doing too much of that.
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I'm hoping they trade for Shelton, and draft a Center who can move a 3-4 nosetackle off the ball. Cut Teague (yes yes he performed well last year, I know, but he's not the right guy for a power run offense, and he isn't suited to a league featuring more and more 3-4 defenses).
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That was basically my first answer - which is the simple answer to the question this thread posits - if JP would theoretically have gone higher than #9 this year, then we got a good deal, and factoring in his relative contract price, we got a steal.
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You are missing one important factor when you assign value to the position in the draft - the price expected for waiting a year to get the 1st round pick back. I have followed the draft for years and have seen teams pay a stiff price for a deffered draft picks. In the 1980s, when Bobby Beatheard was the GM for the Washington Redskins, he would trade a 1st round pick in next year's draft for a 2nd round pick in the current year's draft. In a sense, he established the value for deferred draft picks.
If you look at it from that point of view, Donohoe got good value, paying only a 2nd and 5th round pick for getting a 1st round pick a year early.
That was before the salary cap though - don't forget. First round picks are expensive risks now, and they don't always justify their contracts (Mike Williams, anyone?). Look at teams nowadays that have picked poorly in round 1 and you'll see a different kind of problem than the one you describe (Cleveland comes to mind).
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Look, there actually is a simple answer to this question. Would JP have gone before the #9 pick in THIS draft? If the answer is "Yes" (I think it is), then it was worth it, definitely (b/c the #2 pick is worth more than the #9 pick). Factor in the cheaper contract b/c we got him at 21, and it's a no-brainer.
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http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=7698
Coach Tuesday (Kazakstan): M, do you think the Bills and Cardinals already have an agreement in principle re: Henry/Shelton?
Chris Mortensen: No they don't. They are hung up on a detail. The Bills want to swap second round spots. That would take them from 21 to 11 or 12. Arizona is balking right now. I think that if the Cardinals take a cover corner with their first pick (No. 8) then the chances of this trade happening increase greatly on Draft day.
(I'll never make the TSW Wall of Fame, but at least I'm ubiquitous!)
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I dunno why no one has suggested Teague - IMO he's a goner June 1.
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There is no "wagon" - it's a lifestyle, which you obviously have not adopted. Once you have, there's just no turning back.
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Yup.
Another interesting player to look at has 50 more INTs than TDs and completed only 50.1% of his passes.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/NamaJo00.htm
CW
FEZMID: please answer these questions - I'm genuinely interested in your OPINION as to the following:
1) In your opinion, why did TD and co. trade back into the first round of the 2004 draft to take Losman? (Not, Why did TD take a young QB in the 2004 draft, but why did he feel it was necessary to trade back into the first round to take one?)
2) Why did the Bills let go of Bledsoe this offseason, in your opinion?
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Am I the only one who thinks Holcomb starts the season??
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Sounds like he might not even pass a physical until August...
Hearst visit to Bills
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
He's also a vitriolic homophobe, which bothers me but not everyone.