There have been some complaints about Adam Gase's strategy and specifically that it is too conservative. Since this is a contention that I disagree with I want to explain how I see things. 1) What is strategy? In military terms defeating the enemy is usually broken into Operations, Strategies and Tactics. Operations is how you use all of your armies to win the war. In NFL terms this relates to things like player and coach acquisitions and is usually in the hands of the GM. Strategy is how your army will win this campaign. In NFL terms this is patterns that you consistently use over the season. Things like your base fronts, run/pass ratios, WCO/Coryell passing concepts. Tactics is how you use the troops you have now to win this battle. This is specific play calls and half time adjustments. A game plan for a specific opponent is on the border of what is a strategy and what is a tactic and depending on your perspective but it usually falls more on the side of strategy. However if you create a game plan that goes completely away from your usual patterns it may be considered a tactic. So what I want to look at is Gase's strategy, or the patterns that he uses over multiple games. How he usually tries to win games. 2) The use of patterns in strategy No team is going to be 100% one form, but this is to look at the most dominant philosophy. Teams can have one philosophy on offense and another on defense. Fixed pattern. Basically you do the same thing in the same situation. This usually requires very talented and/or very disciplined teams to be successful. Examples of fixed pattern teams having success are the Tampa 2 defences of Tony Dungy, The 1970s Dolphins with Csonka Kiick and Morris and the Peyton Manning Colts. Essentially the opponents know what's coming but can't stop it. Chaotic. You are completely unpredictable the opponent doesn't know what will happen next. Examples include the Dick Lebeau Zone Defenses, The Mike Martz greatest show on turf Rams, and the Bill Walsh 49ers WCO. This requires versatile players who can be multipurpose threats. Pattern breaking. The idea here is to get the opponent to commit to defending a fixed pattern and then use an element that is counter to the expectation to generate big opportunities. For example the 1990s Cowboys which forced people to commit to stopping Emmit Smith and Irving to open up lesser players like Harper and Novacek. Lastly and leastly Gimmick: By Gimmick strategies I mean adopting something that your opponents are unprepared to deal with as a core element. These gimmick strategies usually work well for a short time but once the knowledge on how to decode them becomes available they fall apart quickly. For example the Wildcat Dolphins and Chip Kelly Eagles. Each of these strategies has its own set of benefits and downsides. On offense Gase runs a pattern breaking strategy. What he's trying to achieve is to create a small number of high quality opportunities for big plays. With the versatility and variety of threats almost any of our offensive weapons can be put into position to exploit a defense that over commits to defending another threat. He is using the short passing game to get defenses to commit to defending the short flats in particular, and if they don't he will happily nickle and dime them to death. Think of it as a boxer using his jab to force his opponent to close into position for a hook. Also he is using early plays to set up later plays. If we look at the 3 TDs from the raiders game from end around/jet sweep bade package. The first one (the 18 yard TD to Grant) sets the defense to be aware of the dangers of the speed of our small receivers. Then on the Wilson to Grant TD the defenders are caught committing to defending the end around which allows Grant to get massively open. On the Wilson TD the defenders have a little hesitation and Wilson is fast enough to make that hesitation a 74 yard TD. And all of these three plays work because the Raiders had made a very strong commitment to stopping the running backs. 3) Aggression Aggression is often used to mean adopting high risk/high reward strategies. More correctly aggression means attacking the opposition. In the NFL aggression usually refers to creating big plays. Interceptions/sacks/forced fumbles on defense and plays designed for 20+ yards on offense. So for example a play here a RB who charges into the middle of the line for dive who comes out breaks a few tackles and goes 60 yards isn't an aggressive play, it's a conservative play with a better than expected outcome. Adam Gase has a lot of plays that are designed to create big yardage in the playbook. All 4 TDs the Phins scored against the Raiders were on plays designed to give the opportunity for big gains. They didn't come about because of busted coverages (like Jordy Nelson's two 60 yard receptions in the first quarter), missed tackles or the players creating something from a busted play - they all work exactly as drawn up. In my view Gase is being aggressive, but he's doing it in a controlled way within his philosophy of pattern breaking and he's also doing it in a way that mitigates his risks. 4) Risk management. The simplest way to illustrate this is to talk about interceptions. As a general rule the further you throw the ball downfield the more likely you are to throw an interception. The question then becomes how do you combat that risk. Sometimes with players like Andrew Luck, Brett Favre or Joe Flacco teams adopt a bombs away policy. They accept that there will be a higher interception rate but believe the increased TD rate justifies it. Adopting this approach means you will have more swings as random distribution is not even distribution. Some days the QB will be on fire and throw for 400 yards and 5 TDs but they'll also have some 2, 3 or 4 interception days. Another way is to never throw deep, Alex Smith, Chad Henne, Chad Pennington and the way Philbin tried to get Tannehill to play. This type of play almost never results in multiple interceptions but it is very difficult to score quickly in an emergency. What Gase is trying to achieve is to have the best of both worlds. He wants to throw deep while minimizing the risk of throwing interceptions. How do you achieve that? By setting up the DBs to expect a certain pattern to create separation and then throw to a relatively open receiver.
Wow! Nice thread Pauly! Very interesting! On a smaller, more micro level, I have heard a couple players ( Wilson and Tannehill) talk about forcing the defender/ defense to hesitate. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Wilson said that once he was able to get the defender to hesitate a second he knew he had the opening he needed to take a pass all the way in for a TD. This week RT was saying that a lot of our offensive plays are designed to create hesitation by the defense which may give us the time or spacing needed to complete the play. Being one that would draw wr routes on my palm when playing in the street, I am surprised at the level of detail our players and coaches use to give them an edge.
That’s a very succinct way of putting it - trying to get the defenses to hesitate then exploiting the hesitation. BTW I’m not saying any one strategic approach is better than others, simply trying to explain how Gase is thinking and how it showd up in what we see on Sundays.
I think that our "slow starts" to games have much to do with setting things up for later in the game.
I’ve said many times over the years, “ make these athletes think instead of just react”..it’s an obvious strategy.. Multiple formations looks makes them think,read option makes them think, bootlegs make them think, I mean we do use those plays sometimes, however, not enough imo..last game we didn’t roll ryan one time nor did we use the read option.. What I don’t like is when it’s first and long, and he runs the ball inside.
Awesome thread, Pauly! You highlight some stuff there that when described like that, seems almost obvious. You hit on some great points! The downside of trying to "set people up" is that you naturally push most of your production into the latter stages of the game (hence the slow starts). When you face a team like the Raiders that have a QB who is likely to push the ball downfield, you have to expect that you might get behind. It seems imperative that you have a defense that can play for 60 minutes and play well enough late in the game to get off the field. I think we saw some great conditioning last week--evidence that the defense can be relied upon to make plays in the 2nd half. I don't fully understand those calls either. It seems like when we're forced into 1st and 20, the best scenario would be to focus on getting the 1st down at all costs. So something quick and short that gets the offense back into 2nd and 13 seems appropriate. Those runs up the gut only seem to waste a down. Then again, maybe Gase is thinking just as we are and believes he needs to draw the LBs up to create a better opportunity for a big play-action gain on 2nd or 3rd down?
Great post Pauly, and I think there's some truth to this idea that Gase is probably trying to condition the opponent to take advantage of later on, but I don't think it's anywhere near as effective (yet) as is being described. In every one of our games, offensive ineptitude was compensated for by great defense or great special teams play. So I still have my doubts about how effective all this really is. Consider.. in the Titans game the defense gave us 3 big interceptions that put us in fantastic field position each time (at the Tennessee 35 yard line, Tennessee 28 yard line and the Tennessee 12 yard line), and we come away only with 6 points???? And btw those were ALL in the 3rd and 4th quarters where supposedly Gase's strategy should be more effective? It's not just those 3 timely interceptions, it's Grant's 102 yard return for a TD on special teams. That game was won by the defense and special teams, not offense, and I think it masked the lack of effectiveness of Gase's offensive strategy as a result. In the Jets game, the first thing to note is that we did NOT score at all in the 2nd half, which doesn't fit with the described strategy. And as with the Titans game, the defense caused two turnovers (one INT and one fumble) that put us in Jets territory for 2 TD's. It's really only the Raiders game that somewhat fits with this description. But even there our defense bailed out the offense, with one INT putting us at the Raider 35 and another one preventing a Raider TD. So yes I do think Gase is planning things on offense similar to what Pauly is describing, but I do not think it's proven that effective yet. All those wasted drives are so far being masked by a surprisingly good (as in effective) defense. The offense needs LOTS of work IMO.
One thing that I've picked up this season is that Gase custom-designs the offense each week based on the opposing team's weaknesses. For instance, Oakland was not stopping the run at all and we thought we'd have a huge day on the ground. Obviously Gase was wrong and we were all surprised. But he used what he saw to essentially re-write the offense in real time...which is something that just doesn't happen in the NFL very often. To do that though, you need high IQ players that fully understand the system, what Gase is seeing and what the field is showing you. Ability aside, we didn't have that in Cutler and it's why RT is perfect for Gase. We kept hearing about "dumbed down" play-calls last year; that was the big difference in 2016 and 2017. We couldn't adjust on the fly to seize every opportunity because Cutler doesn't have Tannehill's smarts. That's my theory anyway.
Look my thoughts at this point are we have only played 3 games with Tannehill back under center. It's early in the season and typically offenses take a little more time to come together all the way. This team has yet to play it's best offense this year I am certain of it and beyond that Thill is still working off some rust. Hang on because when it all comes together I feel like it's going to be something to see.
It's a great start no question about it. Just need to keep winning, keep improving and peak come playoff time.
very good points as always Cbrad. Whether a particular strategic approach is effective depends heavily on execution and I feel that establishing the base pattern part of Gase’s strategy isn’t as effective as we would like to be. My broad point wasn’t to say whether or not Gase’s strategy is good or bad - there’s 13 more games to figure that out - it was more to explain why there are so many conservative looking plays being called. Gase is using early plays to set up later plays. I expect as the season goes on and teams get more of a library of what Gase is doing in his base patterns we will see more opportunities for pattern breaking plays early in the game. At this point in time he needs to make the other teams forget about 2017 and the 2016 phins and start thinking about the 2018 phins.
That's the big thing...we always seem to falter in the final weeks of the season. I don't care if we're 13-3 or 11-5 or 9-7 when all is said and done, as long as we close strong and enter the playoffs firing on all cylinders. That's a long way off though and plenty of room to grow. Okay, I lied....I do care about being 13-3. =)
