Our game planning on the offensive side of the ball (and recently, our defensive side too) has been just terrible. I remember reading an article that asked Raye about "making adjustments to the game plan" and I believe his response was "we'll wait until the game and adjust from there." Are you kidding me? This is the NFL. You're an NFL Coordinator. You better dang well have a plan -- no, at least two plans -- in mind.
Here's an example. Say we line up in one of the the Power-I formations show below:
Now, lets say it's first or second down and the defense brings 8 or 9 into the box. There are so many things we can do:
1) Shift into a single-back set (we can either start out with Delanie or Norris at FB). The right split end shifts into the slot, and Vernon moves outside becoming a wide receiver.
From here, there are numerous options.
-A deep shot should be taken to whichever side of the field the one safety does not drift to.
-A WR screen could pick up a huge gain, especially if they blitz.
-Also if they blitz, a quick slant could be huge if they only have one safety back.
-If they drop back the second safety in response to the shift, the underneath routes should still be open. Pump and go could be extremely effective in that case as well, but the QB would need a little time.
Furthermore, from there:
-Alex could shift back into the shotgun from the singleback formation.
-Gore could go into motion to make it 5-wide.
-If they back off all their defenders, and Gore stays in the backfield, we can stick with the called run-play and hope to gash them running out of the shotgun.
So many possibilities with a single shift in formation, yet we see none of this, which leads me to believe that at this point, Jimmy Raye is problematic in two ways:
1) He does not know how to effectively game plan on a game-by-game basis to ever "outcoach" other teams.
2) He has not been able to fully cater the offense to each players' strengths (or adjust for weaknesses for that matter).
This is disturbing to me.
Raye must buckle down and mix things up, get creative, and at least make some sort of an effort to be less predictable, in order for us to improve. We have the talent to do some things. Raye just has to recognize that, and utilize it.
[ Edited by OnTheClock on Nov 25, 2009 at 3:07 PM ]