I know we never made it to a superbowl with the Oilers run and shoot and red gun offenses but we sure looked good doing it. And had it not been for Dishman giving up about 20 tuchdowns to Bebe in that game that made me throw my TV over my balconey we would have have went to a superbowl. What pieces are we missing that keep us from showcasing our passing weapons? I say this because I watch Indy and other good teams use the pass to open up the run while we seem to do the oposite with only mild success?
Indy's offense has evolved over the last 3 or 4 years to the point that now they use the run to set up the pass. It is their play action that kills everyone because they are so successful running the ball. They attempt 34 passes and 31 runs per game and average 4.1 yards per carry. Most good teams do that. The two that come to mind first, who pass to set up the run, would be Dallas and Green Bay. New England has probably evolved to that point too but not as pronounced as the first two. I think this year we almost have to be able to pass to set up the run, but the run has to be credible. That has been our problem really. If you think about those teams (with the exception of Green Bay) while they pass a lot, they also have a RB who can hit the home run. We just don't have that. Those teams also have multiple receivers who would be #1 or 1A on most teams. We have AJ and Davis. Davis has been a dissapointment to this point in his career but if he keeps up what he's done this year we may have a very explosive offense next year. Oh can you say Mike Turner? Mike
ummm... who's Mike Turner? oh wait... THAT Michael Turner. We need to get a refund for Ahman Green first; surely he's still under warranty ;o)
If you notice on most of the huge bombs that Schaub has thrown, it's almost always a play-action pass. Kubiak has been stressing the run first mindset for a few reasons (None of them bad really). 1. Your QB does not have to worry about getting teed off on when passing. Obvious passing downs of course, but most of the time, opposing defenses are thinking we are going to run the ball, because that's what we do first. 2. The play-action becomes a dominant big-play in our playbook. As I said before, if you look at a lot of the long bombs, most of them begin with a play-action that fakes the run. Schaub does a pretty good job of selling the fake, and if a defensive line bites on the play-action that gives Andre Johnson about 4 or 5 extra seconds of time to get wide open (Which he will). It also means Schaub has a lot more extra time to see just who is the best option for 6. Now a lot of the time, when the Dayne Train is running slowly, teams will not bite on the play-action because they know better. Once that happens, the play-action becomes a disaster with quick D-linemen having an extra second or two to get to the QB, because the QB is going through the motion of faking the run. This is where the play-action will get dangerous, when our running game is obviously off its tracks. What I want to know is, what happened to the bootlegs, and rollouts we saw in the preseason? Is Schaub just not really mobile enough to pull these plays off?
