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Coaching

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Posts tagged with Coaching

Schemers Have No Aura

Offensive coordinators tempt fate when they try to reinvent the wheel

Schemers Have No Aura
Ben Johnson (L) and Josh McDaniels (R)

There are three dominant schemes in the NFL: "West Coast, Air Coryell, and Erhardt-Perkins," as Chris B. Brown writes in his book, The Art of Smart Football.

"Given that every NFL team runs the same plays, each of these NFL offensive families is differentiated mostly by how these plays are communicated."

Starting with the passing game.

The Memory System

"The system is as old as football itself, which is no surprise given that Bill Walsh's onetime mentor Paul Brown is credited as much as anyone with inventing the modern conception of huddles, game plans, and play calls. For more than
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Offensive Line Continuity

To be effective against modern defenses, offensive lines need to move like synchronized swimmers in lockstep with one another, knowing how their arms and legs will move in any situation without having to think. That takes time.

Offensive Line Continuity
Buffalo Bills starting OL (from left): Dion Dawkins, David Edwards, Connor McGovern, O'Cyrus Torrence, Spencer Brown

Four of five starters along the Buffalo Bills offensive line have played more than 2,000 snaps together the past two regular seasons. Bookend franchise tackles Dion Dawkins and Spencer Brown are north of 3,000 snaps.

Left guard David Edwards joined the team in 2023 and played 148 snaps (12.7%) before playing 977 snaps (89.8%) in 2024, when Connor McGovern (97.6% in 2023 and 88.3% in 2024) moved to center to replace longtime great Mitch Morse. Right guard O'Cyrus Torrence played 100% of snaps during his rookie year and 93.1% last season.

That type

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NFL Coaching Continuity

Coaching might be the single biggest competitive advantage NFL teams can exploit during the salary-cap era.

NFL Coaching Continuity
Six members of the Chiefs coaching staff who have been with the team since 2013 (L-R): Andy Heck, Mike Frazier, Rick Burkholder, Andy Reid, Tom Melvin, and Dave Toub.

Here's where I'm at in building out an extensive coaching tree for all the sickos.

It's still in the sapling stage but the goal is to grow an evergreen so big and tall that Rockefeller Center comes calling around Christmas Future.

I went to each NFL team's website, toggled to their coaching page, and went to work compiling a timeline of the coaches' previous stops over the past three seasons.

I quickly learned that I would need to establish a few guardrails if I was going to come up with any sort of viable formula to assess coaching continuity at

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Finding the Next Sun God

The next PPR menace heads to South Beach.

Mike McDaniel thinks impatience is a virtue. Sometimes, that means skipping a night's sleep and calling an 8 a.m. meeting that leads to your team trading for the fastest player in the NFL.

Miami's front office had planned to sign some hogmollies to protect Tua Tagovailoa, back in 2022, but McDaniel argued they should instead spend their resources on speed.

The first-year head coach had compiled a 700-play highlight reel to share with his quarterback and discovered Tagovailoa "could sense an opening before it happened." He was more accurate and got rid of the ball faster than most "star

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