shifty eyes

B.A. Bearacus;842127973 said:

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He's a fan of trick plays on offense and special teams to keep teams honest. Will be refreshing to see that element of surprise from time to time -- forgot what that was like.

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How could you have forgotten? Tedford used trick plays quite often. Trouble was that after his first few years, they didn't trick anyone.

In football, you use trick plays if you can't beat your opponent by playing real football, if you are just not good enough to beat your opponent by using normal running and passing plays.

This is the first time I've heard Sonny Dykes say something I didn't like. I hope he is just saying it to please the fans who like this sort of thing. When he starts winning, he won't need any.

ykes

SFCityBear;842128815 said:

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.

In football, you use trick plays if you can't beat your opponent by playing real football, if you are just not good enough to beat your opponent by using normal running and passing plays.

ykes

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I think Chip Kelly may disagree.

drizzlyboy;842129044 said:

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I think Chip Kelly may disagree.

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There's nothing "tricky" about what Chip Kelly does. Almost all of his plays are read option in a hurry up offense. His tendency not to deviate from this in some ways makes him as predictable as Tedford. He merely executes it a whole lot better.

SFCityBear;842128815 said:

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How could you have forgotten? Tedford used trick plays quite often. Trouble was that after his first few years, they didn’t trick anyone.

In football, you use trick plays if you can’t beat your opponent by playing real football, if you are just not good enough to beat your opponent by using normal running and passing plays.

This is the first time I’ve heard Sonny Dykes say something I didn’t like. I hope he is just saying it to please the fans who like this sort of thing. When he starts winning, he won’t need any.

ykes

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Tedford used the occasional "gadget play" but was otherwise fairly predictable. We pretty much ran between the tackles on first down--PERIOD. No matter the formation, no matter the RB and their strengths or the ability of our OL to dominate the LOS, that is what we did. Same with short yardage. Unless we went with an empty backfield. Then we passed (SHOCK!). In third and long, no matter what formation we were showing, we pretty much went max protect and our two receivers ran down and outs. This predictability was fine (up to a point) when we had a dominating line and power runners (2003-2006) and had QBs and receivers that could complete that 3rd and long predictable throw, but utterly failed against equal (top) opponents and especially later as our lines became a weakness and we had smaller, speedier backs.

It is like a baseball pitcher who can throw over-the-top, sidearm or three-quarters, but always throws the same pitch (fastball over the middle). A good hitter is going to just tee off on that guy. A better alternative is a pitcher whose delivery always looks the same, but can throw multiple pitches from that motion and mixes them up regularly.

Similarly, I think a good football offense is unpredictable and regularly uses a lot of misdirection from the first snap. For example, in watching Spring practice, most of Sonny/Franklin's plays start out looking exactly the same with the QB in shotgun and the RB coming across in front of him for a hand off, or the QB faking the hand off and then throwing.

Moreover, unlike the baseball pitcher analogy where the pitcher knows what pitch he is going to do and just disguises it, most of the variations in the Dykes/Franklin offense come after the ball is snapped, so if the defense guesses you are doing one thing, you can take advantage. In that way, similar to Chip Kelly's offense, it is more like a 3 on 2 fast break in basketball, run over and over and over again at high speed. You force the defense to choose who they are going to defend and you go to what is open.