Playbook Tapped Out?
June 9th, 2021
Careful now.
Joe smells some gamesmanship. And Joe loves backroom intrigue (and readers do too, admit it).
Yesterday after underwear football practice, Bucs Super Bowl-winning coach Bucco Bruce Arians was asked how much more of his playbook can be used now it’s fully comprehended by park-violating, home-invading, NFLPA-ignoring, down-forgetting, handshake-stiffing, jet-ski-losing, biscuit-baking, tequila-shooting, smartphone-phobic, waffle-grilling, trophy-throwing, roller-coaster-scared, numbers-rules-peeved, Bucs-Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady.
Arians seemed to indicate Brady has already burned through the playbook.
“Hardly any,” Arians said of what’s left in his playbook Brady hasn’t used yet. “We threw the whole book [at them]. By the end of the season there wasn’t much left when you play that many games. There’s some minor things that we’re looking at that some other teams have done and maybe that fit us.
“Our coaches do all the research on the top red zone teams, the top third down teams. We do all those research projects and if there’s something another team does well that we have close to it, we may adjust it.”
Well, it is common for a playbook to have many hundreds of plays. And coaches often tweak and add — or even, take out — plays as the years go by and players change through attrition.
In many ways, a playbook is only limited by the fertile mind of the coach. And Arians impresses Joe as a creative fellow.
Joe suspects there are more than one or two plays a game the Bucs will run this fall that they never showed last year, so no one has film of it to study.
That’s the cool thing about having a soon-to-be 44-year old quarterback. To fully understand Brady, defensive coaches have to scour two decades worth of tape, including hundreds of games from Brady’s New England days.
June 9th, 2021 at 5:56 am
Great to see the head coach and qb on the same page. In New England they blame TB-12 for coach billys screw ups.
June 9th, 2021 at 6:37 am
Ole stale biscuit and noodle arm have done quite well for themselves and Buc Nation.
June 9th, 2021 at 7:19 am
All those plays, yet we ran up the middle on first down every series for the first 9 or 10 games
June 9th, 2021 at 7:31 am
Gonna be hard to top this comment today. And it’s only 7:30 am. 👍
June 9th, 2021 at 7:42 am
If running up the middle on first down results in a Super Bowl let’s run it up the middle on first down every game. IJS
June 9th, 2021 at 8:02 am
Good news that they research the top offenses to pick up ideas–the top red zone/third down offenses (top 5 in both) were Green Bay and New Orleans, so we should be seeing some LeFleur and Payton wrinkles, which are welcome! Maybe I’m imagining things, but rewatching Ronde Barber’s film sessions, it seems the offense was more creative after the bye last year.
June 9th, 2021 at 8:18 am
Bucs as a team averaged 5.7 yards running over center, led by RoJo’s 6.3 yard over center.
RoJo averaged 4.8 on 1st down and 5.7 on 2nd down
Bucs had 14 explosive runs (10+ yards) running over center- 3 times more than any other direction
Don’t fix what’s not broken…
June 9th, 2021 at 8:19 am
Joe Says:
June 9th, 2021 at 7:31 am
All those plays, yet we ran up the middle on first down every series for the first 9 or 10 games
Gonna be hard to top this comment today. And it’s only 7:30 am.
I’ll be here all week folks!
June 9th, 2021 at 8:34 am
Well, you can either run right, left, or up the gut. Between the tackles softens the defense more. We also have a pocket passing 44 year old QB that doesn’t bootleg or do sprint out passes, so play action outside runs won’t do him much good.
Just because Leonard Fournette has no interest in getting hard yards doesn’t mean that other running backs are as incapable as him.
June 9th, 2021 at 8:48 am
There’s any number of things you can do, but if you’re so predictable that they can exactly guess your play, then I submit it’s a bad idea
June 9th, 2021 at 9:15 am
lambeau.. the Packers are all about Pick plays. They run more of them than most basketball teams. They just walk that fine line of being called on them.
June 9th, 2021 at 9:34 am
Picks are great–Gronk, Evans, Brate in bunch formation!
June 9th, 2021 at 9:52 am
Picks are used to various degrees. But some teams rely upon them more than others. The Packers do. And when obvious, they are illegal. And with Rodgers arm, he only needs a second of rub.
June 9th, 2021 at 12:42 pm
Learned it in 2020
Perfect it in 2021
June 9th, 2021 at 12:57 pm
Those runs up middle set up Playoff Lennys outside runs and the first touchdown to Gronk in the superbowl.