HoofHearted

I didn't track personnel as I went through this, but I'm sure there are some people on here who have access to advanced stats who can get that split. As far as SR by player: Allen - 71.4% Harris -66.7% Cook - 57.5% Murray - 56.9% The rotation I'm sure is to keep Cook fresh.

Against the Jets specifically, sure. Calling an offense vs. zone wasn't the issue though - it's the dudes the Jets have on defense running it that's been the issue.

Mid Zone - number count was fine Torrence didn't climb to second level off of the double. EDIT: Here's the scheme breakdown for you. Everyone's accounted for. I think a lot of fans get confused as to what "the box" is when we come out in these condensed sets. I've seen Joe Marino/Cover 1 do the same thing on their podcasts.

The threat of QB run game is actually greater out of gun.

I don’t think it’s necessarily counter intuitive - it all depends what you’re trying to do out of it. There’s two lines of thinking when it gets that tight, either bring everyone into the box and try to mash or spread the defense out and play the light box. Additionally though the concept we ran from gun on the play you’re referring to is the same concept we line up and run from under center more often than not down there (Duo). Davis whiffed his block - it would have been stuffed if we ran it from under center too. Jets hardly run Cover 2.

It’s done that way for timing purposes, not momentum.

Yeah, I can get all the data out to you guys probably later today. I’ll need to figure out the best way to present it. Hopefully I’ll be able to add multiple screen shots or may just have to put it in a Google sheet and make it public. I’ll also be able to get to all the rest of the comments later today as well, but wanted to at least provide an update first thing this morning. This is the video I was referring to. He starts talking about the run game around the 11:00 minute mark.

In this case it was more than likely a check based on where our personnel were (Diggs in the 3 hole), but from a scheme standpoint it could be called or be a check based off formation or personnel.

Lock is just true man coverage backside. They can tag whatever they want backside, but usually you have a zone option and a man option that could be called. The zone option in the scenario would have likely been Cover 2 based on the splits of the backside receivers. This is tagged with the call. As far as #57 dropping into zone, it still didn't tell Allen what type of zone it was - could have very easily been Cover 2 to the field at that point (which is what I assume he thought it was based on him trying to look off the Safety and come back to it). Perfect scenario he recognizes the coverage pre-snap and throws it to Kincaid who's 1 on 1 with a corner, but the Jets did a really good job in their disguise and had a good call for what we had called.

@EmotionallyUnstable Here we go. This is the first third down of the game in the RedZone after the turnover. Bills come out in Empty and Jets show a 0 blitz pre-snap. Bills are running a Chair concept to the Field and a Switch Vertical concept to the Boundary. This is a fairly common man beater concept that's run in RedZone areas to isolate the #3 receiver man to man on a DB playing inside leverage on him. The Jets drop into what I call Special coverage which is a Quarters coverage variant. The defense will lock the #1 receiver (Kincaid) man to man with the nickel and safety playing Quarters coverage on the #2 (Shakir) and #3 (Diggs) receivers to the trips side. Josh correctly slid protection to the pressure side, saw the drop of the Linebacker (#57), and diagnosed they weren't in man coverage. He moved his eyes to the boundary side looking at Gabe to try and pull the Safety (#22) toward him to open a window to hit Diggs on the Corner, but as he comes back with his eyes he sees the Nickel (#26) dropping with the vertical of Diggs and has to pull down the pump. At that point the play is dead and Josh has worked himself outside of the pocket in his drop and no longer has a lane to step up or try to escape and ultimately takes the sack. The subtle tell to know they aren't in man here is that the Nickel (#26) is playing outside leverage pre-snap on Shakir. If it was man across the board all of the DBs to that trips side would be playing inside leverage.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BILLS RUN GAME There's a lot of misconception about the Bills run game this season, most notable is the notion that the Bills are not successful running from the gun, that the Bills Zone Scheme run game is horrendous, and that the Bills should never run from gun in short yardage situations. I took the time to break down every run concept from Week 1 through Week 10 in order to take a deep dive and flesh out what's real and what's just national media and message board noise. Through the first 10 weeks of the season it appears as though we hang our hat on 5 different run concepts. Three of those concepts being Zone blocking schemes (Mid Zone, Inside Zone, and Duo), one being a Gap blocking scheme (Dart), and one being Man blocking scheme (ISO). We've run each of these concepts at least 20 times on the season. In total we've run 21 different run concepts - 8 Zone (Mid Zone, Inside Zone, Duo, Sprint Draw, Split Zone, Zone Read, Q Draw, and Outside Zone), 9 Gap (Dart, Counter, Pin & Pull, Buck, Long Trap, Power, Q Dart, Q Counter, and Trap), and 2 Man (Iso and Base). All of our top 5 concepts except ISO average over 4 yards per carry but, more importantly, all of our top 5 run concepts have a Success Rate above 65%. Success Rate (SR) is a measure which adds context to our rushing data, something yards per carry does not. We define success rate as a play that gains at least 40% of yards required on 1st down, 60% of yards required on 2nd down, and 100% of yards required on 3rd and 4th down. Dart, which also has the highest yards per carry average of 6.83 yards per carry also has the highest SR at 75.9%. This is clearly our most successful run concept. Dart has been primarily run out of Gun (27/29 attempts), and when run out of gun averages 7.07 yards per carry while only averaging 3.5 yards per carry while run from under center. Similarly, Inside Zone (our second most successful play at 66.7% SR and 4.48 ypc) has an 81% SR when run from Gun as opposed to 45.5% when under center. The Bills are Not Successful Running from Gun Overall, this season we've run 83 times from under center for an average of 5.06 yards per carry and a SR of 54.2% and 123 times from gun for an average of 4.5 yards per carry and a SR of 61.0%. So we are more successful when running from the gun than we are running from under center. When you look at the splits the only time we've been more successful running from under center than gun has been on 2nd and medium (4-7). The Bills Zone Scheme Run Game is Not Good Overall, Zone and Gap have the exact same SR (57.4%). Man schemes have the highest SR at 66.7% which is to be expected because it's run most in short yardage situations where the yardage to gain is easier to attain. Specifically our Inside Zone and Duo concepts, which were ripped in some video that made its rounds around here a few days ago, are both averaging about 4.5 yards per carry or better and a SR of over 60%. The notion that these two schemes have been detrimental to our run game are just false. The Bills Should Never Run from the Gun in Short Yardage Situations In Down and 0-3 yards to go situations the Bills have run from under center 18 times for 4.89 yards per carry and a 66.7% SR while running from gun 30 times for a 5.03 yards per carry average and an 80% SR. Specifically looking at 3rd down situations the numbers still favor running from gun though the samples are admittedly small from under center (Under Center: 3 for 2.67 and 66.7% SR | Gun: 15 for 2.87 and 80% SR). Overall Thoughts It's clear to me from watching the film and going through the data that we have been successful running both out of gun and under center this year. All these rumors being spread by national media and message board members that we should not be in gun or should not be running zone schemes are just rumors. Obviously, scheme is very dependent on what you will see from your opponent, but the data shows that the Bills are establishing a clear identity as to what they want to do in the run game and where they think their strengths lie as a team. What was frustrating was going back and seeing how many times drive stalled out because we refused to run the football even after statistically successful run attempts. This has been one of the biggest components in why our offense has struggled over the last however many weeks.

Think what I’ll do with this is choose a couple plays from the most recent game (once A22 drops) and break those down.

We aren't great athletes so man will have to be schemed more than likely using rub routes. In general though you're going to want to run concepts that run away from whatever leverage they are playing with (slants, crossers, etc.). For quarters look for Mills, Dagger, Double Post, Post Wheel, or Scissors concepts. Basically look for something to occupy the safety and then attack the leverage of the corner outside or attack their post-snap reads by having the receivers cross each other.

Tire out their DL by playing horizontally early on (perimeter run/pass game) and have answers for man and quarters coverages. That's your formula. If you can use shifts and motions to get them having to communicate and adjust pre-snap even better!

Yeah, it’s a mouthful. Tbh I don’t understand why everyone hasn’t gone the EP route. That’s pretty much all you see at the college level these days. Players are use to it.

I’ll be able to give you a better answer after I get through all the games. Think I’ve done through the New England game so far. From a player standpoint West Coast is easier because everything is spelled out for each player within the call.

I’ll have a post probably next week about our run game this season - got three more games to breakdown, but we’ve still been running gap schemes. Ran Dart a ton against Denver. Also, there’s a lot of misinformation being spread about our zone schemes and running out of gun/under center.

I mean you can see from that clip why “Big Game Gabe” hasn’t been a thing so much this year. Look how far off that Safety is playing.

I brought this up in the Dorsey got fired thread. This is definitely the reason.

There’s a lot here to work through so bear with me on this wall of text. Call sheets are there as a tool - generally it’s there as a reminder that you like certain calls in certain situations coming into the game. What you actually call, once you get out of your scripteds, is going to be based on what the defense is actually giving you. That’s why the scripted plays are so important. Those plays are essentially being used to gain an understanding of how a defense wants to play specific sets, personnel groupings, concepts, etc. Once you’ve run through the script you now have a clear picture of what a defense is going to do the remainder of the game and can start making adjustments based on that information. As far as getting a play call in there are various systems which use their own languages in order to breakdown a play. Specifically for the Bills we fall under the Erhardt-Perkins system which is a concept based system. There’s a bunch of memorization involved in the call. Basically a call, or code as you refer to it as, is broken down into a couple pieces. Let use a pass concept for example - the first piece will be the name of the formation and any motion tied to that formation - second piece the protection - and third piece the concepts. I don’t know specifically what the Bills terminology is for things, but I’d bet it’s similar to what the Patriots have used in the past for a lot of things since the foundation of our offense is built around what Brian Daboll brought here. So as a real life example let’s say you are in 10p and want to run some type of flood concept you could call - Spread Rt Strong (formation) 72 (protection) Ghost Tosser (Strong side and weak side concepts). What’s really nice about this system is that the concepts are the concepts and you can teach them holistically. So the #1 receiver will always run a vertical in Ghost (doesn’t matter who it ends up being), the #2 will run a Sail, and the #3 an arrow. So in the example provided it’s a true 2x2 set with the #1 receiver to the strong side running a Vertical, #2 running a Sail, and #3 is the RB running an arrow out of the backfield. Backside you have double slants (Tosser). Lets say you want to take that same concept but now run it out of a 21p set. Well now you can go 0 Near Slot (Formation) Hat (motion) 72 (protection) Ghost Tosser. 0 Near Slot gets you into a 2x1 formation with twins to one side and a nub tight end to the backside with a near I set in the backfield. Hat motions your RB out wide to the nub tight end side of the formation and then you run the concept as called from there. So now the RB is running the vertical, the tight end is running the sail, and the FB is running the arrow. It’s really nice because you don’t have to have calls that are 1,000 words long like in other systems which breakdown the responsibility of each player within their calls. It is, however, a lot of memorization on the players part. Personnel packages are always tagged with names. Again, it’s another thing that just needs to be memorized. Substitutions follow your depth chart. More often than not your receivers specialize either outside or inside receiver since they can vary drastically in what is asked of them, but ultimately it becomes who’s the next best available that knows the position. There’s plans in place made throughout the week with how to handle substitutions but ultimately it falls on the position coaches to get the right guys out there given the situation. Personnel will always be determined prior to play call. No huddle is the same concept as getting a play in. Typically your no huddle or 2 minute offense playbook is limited in the number of things you can run, but they’re typically called by the QB with one word or phrase that defines the formation, protection, and concept. Post-snap each concept has its own read progression. This could be a receiver progression or reading a defender or multiple defenders based on what the concept is. For example, when we run mesh it follows a receiver read progression for the most part. On Deep Choice you’re reading a defender and throwing based off of what that defender does post-snap. Hope this helps, and if I need to clarify anything please let me know.

The system will remain the same as far as general concepts and terminology. I anticipate he'll put some of his own wrinkles into the gameplans. As far as if it will look the same - I can't really answer that until after the game Sunday. Play callers each have their own philosophies and nuances to how they go about things - for example, we're running the same defensive scheme we ran when Frazier was here - it looks different now that McDermott is calling it - but the framework is all the same. We'll know more after the Jets game.

I respect your response, but this thread isn't to meant to go back and forth about what is or isn't working. I've explained what is happening from a schematic standpoint in the scenarios you were referring to about "spacing issues". I hope you can respect that.

I understand where you're coming from with your thought process. I think a lot of what you're seeing is more a reflection on how the game has changed over the last 10 years more so than anything. In terms of scheme, the linebacker position is essentially an entirely different position now than it was 10 years ago. The way the position is taught is completely different. The physical attributes you look for at the position is completely different. So if your mindset of blue chip prospect is just a dude who is a thumper - that doesn't really exist as much in the game anymore. Run schemes are run schemes - there's wrinkles and small variations within them but in general what you see in high school will be the same way it looks in the NFL - just faster and more violent. Anything specific you'd like to see from any of those? I'm more than willing to get into talking scheme.