DazedandConfused Posted May 9, 2009 Posted May 9, 2009 The interesting thing to me is the job that opposing teams had to do when facing the Bills (or any upcoming opponent) of reverse engineering some version of the playbook and breaking that down to spoonfeed it to your D to attempt to diagnose the play from the positions taken by an opposing player. One of the reasons the K-Gun apparently was so difficult for the opposing defender and the opposing DC was that from the same formation the Bills might run or pass. In addition, the pass plays might be deep routes or cut-off routes from the same formation. Add into this that without the play delay or stoppage with the huddle, the opposing D was not able to make substitutions so defenders were on the field for longer than normal with no chance to take a rest or get a blow when the Bills flipped sides with the O and a defender was forced to run deep downfield repetitively to cover somewhat fresh offensive players who had not had to run downfield repetitively or knew that the pass was not coming their way so they did not run as hard as the defender who must treat every play as coming his way. Looking at this (I assume its true or some sad person really does have too much time on their hands) it does not seem that difficult for the individual player to understand as like the WRs who can leave the huddle after hearing the first words because nothing else which will be said alters their route running in the least, an individual player needs mostly to learn which parts of the massive book to ignore as he only need focus on a very small part of the O to make it work. The most interesting part of this post is actually what is not there. Like the K-Gun it was neat until opponents caught up with it that you and the D had trouble figuring out what happens next.
Steely Dan Posted May 9, 2009 Posted May 9, 2009 I happened across the Bills' 1994 playbook. It is simply dizzying. (Make sure to fullscreen it). How on Earth does anyone learn where to be and what to do on any given play? Not to mention what happens if someone has to fill in at an unfamiliar position due to injury, or gets traded to a new team in the middle of the season. No wonder some of these guys have such low wonderlic scores. They cant do analogies or pattern recognition because their heads are full. Thanks, that's hugely cool! I see no problem with learning that with an average amount of effort. I know I could do it if I needed to. You probably could, too. These people are the best in the world at what they do and football is ALL they do. They are (supposedly) the elites. Think about it. How do computer programmers know 3 or 4 languages? How do DBAs know all the ins and outs of SQL and database optimization? How can stone masons look at a pallet of fieldstone and envision a perfect wall? Because they LIVE it. I have no pity for what pro football players must learn. Anyone who has a complex job and is good at it must learn a similar amount of stuff. Most of these guys have played pee-wee league and all the way up to college before they are drafted. They know a lot of this stuff already. I read somewhere that players don't need to know everything, they listen in the huddle for certain words that pertain to just their position, then they know from that, what route to run or who to cover. That's what I've heard too. I've heard of players described as "knowing everybody's assignments on each play". I've mostly heard it when announcers are talking about a players future ability to become a coach. The quarterback has to know every players assignment on every play and that's why smart QB's are more likely to do well. That E-gun reference was my creation. I was a young Bills fan during the glory years and always assumed it was for Kelly. Did you remeber correctly? What is the significance of K to the TE? Thanks to anyone who can answer this. Keith McKeller could do everything so well that they never needed to substitute a player for him. Since they could then run all of the plays without substitutions they would move so fast to the LOS that the defense had no ability to substitute players. So if the defense started with a group of players to stop the run they were committed to that group for the series and that opened up the ability to pass. If they committed to a group of players to stop the pass then the ability to run was there. With Thurman, Andre, Kelly, a great OL, a TE that was very versatile the defense was screwed. They would be huffen and puffen after several plays. Without McKeller the no huddle didn't work nearly as well. IMO
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