When Bucs Used Pre-Snap Motion
July 14th, 2026
Possiblities.
There is a basketball analogy to this potential 2026 Bucs offense.
Joe’s old man played college basketball for three years. Gave it up his senior year to focus on a second undergrad degree.
He wasn’t on a basketball scholarship, and way back then Joe isn’t sure how many private schools awarded free rides for basketball.
But Joe’s old man once taught that the more you move on offense, the more opportunities you’ll have to score. The offense knows where it’s going with the ball, Joe’s old man said; the defense doesn’t.
The more the ball is moved, the better the odds the defense makes a mistake and breaks down and you get an easy shot.
Joe’s old man despised Bobby Knight (unlike Joe) and would have punched him if he ever crossed paths with “The General.” But Joe’s old man loved Knight’s motion offense because the ball and the players always moved. Joe can still hear the constant grumbling how Lou Henson’s offensive players at Illinois would “stand around.”
Joe brings this up because one area the Bucs’ offense did better with last year was with pre-snap motion.
You know, that’s what knothead Byron Leftwich used to mock as “fantasy football.” Former playcaller Liam Coen was a huge believer in pre-snap motion and the Bucs offense under him was excellent. His Bucs successor, Josh Grizzard? Not so much.
Per Warren Sharp in his “Warren Sharp 2026 Football Preview,” when Grizzard did run pre-snap motion, the success rate of the Bucs offense was much better.
Obviously, this begs the question as to why Grizzard didn’t run more pre-snap motion? The man who could answer that (Grizzard) is now working in Philadelphia.
Interestingly, the Dixie Chicks used pre-snap motion the second-most of any team in the league last year. Who ran that offense? The same guy who will call plays for the Bucs this fall, Zac Robinson.
July 14th, 2026 at 10:28 am
Agreed. I’m a big believer in motion and misdirection. If I recall, Brady wanted to add motion to Arians/Leftwich offense and when they did midway thru the season, the offense got much better. Someone with better recollection please confirm or correct.
July 14th, 2026 at 10:32 am
A bunch of us screamed it all last season… And, no one bothered to listen. Same with Otton in the run game, tipping their hand. NO TEMPO. NO RHYTHM. Horrible. Run the play clock all the way down on EVERY fricking PLAY. No URGENCY. You can go on. TIMING. Baker would just hold onto THE BALL. Just Awful. VERY hard to watch.
July 14th, 2026 at 10:34 am
You are right and Brady proved it on the field with a Super Bowl season win.
July 14th, 2026 at 10:53 am
LOL Joe Love the Bobby knight story sir.
My dad made me sit down and watch Knigh’ts Hoosiers play. Particularly come tournament time. He loved Knight and told me to pay attention to the fundamentals his guys always played with. I did and I learned a little bit about the game. Alas I never was any good at it. Tall yeah coordinated …No. BTW. I got more injuries in three years of basketball than 6 plus years of football. Don’t let anyone tell you it is a non contact sport.
Go Bucs!
July 14th, 2026 at 10:55 am
How often did Baker snap the ball late and an OL moved before the snap?
Result = flag.
July 14th, 2026 at 11:01 am
It’s truly baffling how few of Coen’s successful concepts Grizz incorporated into his scheme.
Equally baffling is how our seasoned HC sat idly by and did nothing g to correct it.
July 14th, 2026 at 11:41 am
Bobby Knight game faces is the best.
July 14th, 2026 at 11:41 am
Yea, we struggled with Coen too.
Sometimes the design makes a difference, but if the play within a design doesn’t make a difference the design means nothing.
Also, there’s that one time from last season the Falcons under Robinson used motion and it worked against them as it tipped the play off to at least 1 player which got a 4th & 1 play sniffed out and shut down.
So sure, more motion, but not the same sh** you’ve been running the last 2-3 years.
July 14th, 2026 at 12:25 pm
I’ll give him five games. That’s a good sample size.
Especially with three straight home games in that sequence.
Will the defense still be the main issue? History says yes.
Scoring 30 points a game goes a long way to winning the division.
Otherwise we might be in for more of the same results we’re getting accustomed to.
July 14th, 2026 at 12:48 pm
Back in the mid to late 1980’s, Alvin hosted a little radio sports show in Naples. He tried to get callers to call in so he didn’t have to just continuously talk. He called Bobby Knight, “a fat guy in a red sweater.” The switchboard lit up because everybody wanted to speak to the GM of the radio station and complain about the guy on the air who said that. I actually think the GM made me apologize on the air. Sports radio has come a long way baby!
July 14th, 2026 at 12:55 pm
Bowles is so nice to let his oc do whatever he wants, even though it’s not working. Since it frees him up to focus solely on coaching the defense.??? Wait. What did i miss?. It’s a Bucs life
July 14th, 2026 at 1:18 pm
HeartyNickerson:
Sounds like you think that was all Grizz’s offense. I gotta believe there was a lot of Todd Bowels finger prints all over it . We know this because Todd would tell us so after the games. No way that was just 100% Grizz. Probably 50/50
July 14th, 2026 at 1:24 pm
It will be refreshing to see way more motion and play action. As a viewer, I could plainly see more success when they were used especially when used together! I for one am looking forward to this!!!
July 14th, 2026 at 1:39 pm
“Sounds like you think that was all Grizz’s offense. I gotta believe there was a lot of Todd Bowels finger prints all over it . We know this because Todd would tell us so after the games. No way that was just 100% Grizz. Probably 50/50”
Zero evidence at all that Todd told Grizz how to run his offense. None.
July 14th, 2026 at 1:45 pm
Joe’s old man was talking sense.
July 14th, 2026 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for sharing Joe. Nice lead in to your point, and yeah, why the heck didn’t Grizz use more motion? If it ain’t broke…..
July 14th, 2026 at 2:07 pm
Amazing how, without the hard stats, I could sit at home and watch the plays and know that motion and play action worked better than not using it – yet the ‘boy genius’ running the offense couldn’t figure that out.
July 14th, 2026 at 2:54 pm
Pre snap motion isn’t just eye candy, it tells the offense what coverage the defense is playing.
July 14th, 2026 at 3:26 pm
“Pre snap motion isn’t just eye candy, it tells the offense what coverage the defense is playing.”
Not if the defense is designed to account for it or prepared enough to ID the motion and guess closer to right than wrong. Not as automatic as it once were.
July 14th, 2026 at 4:35 pm
Joe,
Congratulations!!!
Perhaps the most insightful post of the summer!!!
No Play Action run on 78% of plays with a 42% success rate.
No Pre-Snap Motion run on 46.8% of plays with a 39% success rate.
No Play Action and no Pre-Snap Motion run on 41.6 % of all plays with a 40% success rate!!!
Play Action with Pre-Snap Motion run on 16.7% or plays with 55% success rate!!!
Did the Bucs do no self-analysis during the season?
What was the go to play in crunch time? Baker in the shotgun with No Play Action and no Pre-Snap Motion which overall was run on 41.6 % of all plays with a 40% success rate!!!
What was literally the least used??? The most successful combination of Play Action with Pre-Snap Motion with a 55% success rate used on a ridiculously low 16.7% of plays!!!
Yes, Grizzard failed!!! He failed grossly and obviously as these numbers make clear.
Why did the organization not intervene with this analysis if Grizzard’s staff was not providing it???
Is it just not a thing in the NFL to analyze success and failure cumulatively week by week?
Is it just not a Bucs thing?
Did the Buc do and provide the analysis and Grizzard or Bowles just would not or could not change?
Mind blowing!
Without the detailed stats, the overall picture was obvious just from watching at home.
And, so far as my keyboard can scream without driving X’ers crazy with all caps, I was screaming about this in post after post last year!
I wish that I could send this post directly to Robinson. Hopefully, he is already fully aware of this failure and has and will utilize the tools to fix this.
But, I assumed that when Grizzard was hired. I sure was wrong!
We can only hope that Robinson will get the most out of this analysis and continually self-analyze all season. The raw numbers from Robinson’s time at Atlanta gives some cause for hope.
Joe, can we get the same table for Robinson’s time as OC at Atlanta?
July 14th, 2026 at 4:49 pm
@HeartyDickerson:
Amen!!!
@OLDSCHOOL1976 and @Simple T
It is not just how much was Bowles responsible and how much was Grizzard responsible, where were Licht and the Glazers?
As little, from an NFL perspective, as it costs to pay an intern to collect and correlate data, if I were either Licht or the Glazers and such analysis was not already available, I have to believe that I would have someone providing cumulative independent audits all season long. And, that I would act on something this egregious!
Surely at least some teams do
July 14th, 2026 at 6:41 pm
The plug in piece oline,was sure of the qb’s cadence! It only takes a couple hrs to get it right with the backup linemen… piece of cake!!
July 14th, 2026 at 7:24 pm
There is no reason to look at what Grizz did last year. Zac should run his own system and maybe check with his buddy Coen. Bowles had his fat fingers all over that offense. Especially at the end of the year. The one Carolina game he bragged about overusing the run game the whole time just like the year before. Still lost. Bowles needs to keep his nose out of Zac’s business.
July 14th, 2026 at 8:15 pm
I was watching Ready Player One (good movie!) and came up with a new nickname for Egbuka. Emeka Godzilla. lol.
As far as play action and pre-snap motion I really hope Robinson is aware of this too. They have all kinds of analytics so hopefully he is. I also hope he watched our 2024 season and will bring in those awesome counter runs that Bucky is so great at. We couldn’t run them last year due to third and fourth string guards and the amount of time they take to develop someone would be in the backfield but they were spectacular for us in 2024! We broke off 30 yard+ chunk plays on tons of those.
July 14th, 2026 at 8:17 pm
We didn’t have Ko Kieft either and he was crucial to the success of those plays playing fullback…so I guess there was lots of reasons we couldn’t use them but I sure hope they come back.
July 14th, 2026 at 8:19 pm
Alvin:
*Great* story.
Toopanca:
Joe hopes Zac Robinson hits the ground running. He has experience.
July 14th, 2026 at 8:36 pm
Robinson hasn’t strayed much from the McVay philosophy and pre snap shifts and motion are core principles of that. We’re going to see a lot of it.
I’m hoping we see a return to the short passing game and lots of YAC to supplement the run game. We can use all the quick hitters to set up deeper shots. I think he’ll find creative ways to use our backs – he did so with Bijon.
July 15th, 2026 at 1:58 am
Stpetematt Says:
July 14th, 2026 at 8:17 pm
We didn’t have Ko Kieft either and he was crucial to the success of those plays playing fullback…so I guess there was lots of reasons we couldn’t use them but I sure hope they come back.
————
The issue with lack of movement and lack of play action was evident from week 1. Heck it was evident in preseason, but I, like most, were hoping that it was the Boy Genius saving the ‘real’ offense for the regular season.
While Ko was certainly missed, way more than most people realize, him being injured didn’t really change the play calling much. It was just flat out mostly bad from week 1 to week 18 – at least bad compared to Coen, when this was allegedly the same offense (it wasn’t bad compared to Leftwich, who is still the leader in being a moron as OC when he didn’t have Arians to bail him out).