Other Sports: Philadelphia Eagles (NFL): THIS IS BRAZIL (Start Of 2024 Regular Season)

[trostol]

Tom Brady was a 23 year old rookie 24 years ago. The game changes. That offense isn’t run today because it’s not good enough.

Nick Saban was the absolute king of this. Even he openly tells you in coaching clinics that ball control and field position doesn’t work anymore.

Someone needs to tell that to Todd down there in Tampa

 

[Flybynite]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1857796264987128122

lol

 

[Flybynite]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1857553942722523621

 

[nacc BLOCC]

Those are training wheels. The league doesn’t work like that anymore. The Eagles have the training wheels on right now, just in different ways. When they take them off, it looks like the 1st Half of the Dallas game. And that’s ok. You can still build a reasonably successful offense with those in place. But then the QB doesn’t get as much credit for it when it does succeed.

We have tons of evidence at this point that Sacks are mostly a QB stat. Pressure to Sack ratio is both consistent and sticky with Quarterbacks. OL play does have some effect of course, but for the most part, it’s an outlier discussion. The middle of Chicago’s line can’t block anyone for example. But that doesn’t absolve Williams.

Then we can talk about how often Hurts leaves clean pockets or runs himself into pressure. But that’s another post. And really his biggest weakness.

i wonder how much of that weakness comes from lack of recognition, as opposed to requiring instinct. the sensing of pressure and escaping from it seems more instinctual, and more difficult to teach.

i believe athletic development is similar to human and educational development. to be overly simplistic: if you’re not good at reading by second grade, you will likely never be good at reading. there are certain times on developmental curves where certain benchmarks must be hit to maximize potential, and if you miss those moments, it can put a cap on ability or require more arduous training.

hurts, like most athletes, does not have unlimited potential, and i also believe coaching volatility may have hampered his potential more so than a qb whose weaknesses were more along the lines of footwork or throwing mechanics.

within this lens, what i am curious to see is not if hurts’ weaknesses can become strengths, but if they can at best be corralled to do no harm.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

i wonder how much of that weakness comes from lack of recognition, as opposed to requiring instinct. the sensing of pressure and escaping from it seems more instinctual, and more difficult to teach.

i believe athletic development is similar to human and educational development. to be overly simplistic: if you’re not good at reading by second grade, you will likely never be good at reading. there are certain times on developmental curves where certain benchmarks must be hit to maximize potential, and if you miss those moments, it can put a cap on ability or require more arduous training.

hurts, like most athletes, does not have unlimited potential, and i also believe coaching volatility may have hampered his potential more so than a qb whose weaknesses were more along the lines of footwork or throwing mechanics.

within this lens, what i am curious to see is not if hurts’ weaknesses can become strengths, but if they can at best be corralled to do no harm.

I'm not a cognitive scientist, but I would certainly argue that pocket awareness is not a skill that meaningfully improves after the initial CFB acclimation period let alone in the NFL.

In Hurts' specific case, it seems much more like instinct than awareness to me. I would expect awareness to manifest itself as doing things like forgetting about pass rushers that get pushed behind you. That's not what he does. He leaves clean pockets and seems to not have whatever some QBs do have that allows them to look downfield while navigating his surroundings. He can do either separately. Just not both together.

Like you said, the goal is not to turn the weaknesses into strengths. That's functionally impossible. But because this is football and we have meaningful schematic levers to pull, coaches can try to make those weaknesses occur less often. The point of RPOs and Read Options isn't that Hurts can't read defenses. It's to give him a sped up schedule where there are clear lines drawn in the sand. If he stays within that structure, he doesn't have to feel his way through. Every time someone says he needs a quick passing offense, I want to die a little bit because it's largely the same people who complain about those plays.

The rare true transformations that we do get tend to be generational narrow bands of skill being so spectacular that they allow things to happen in atypical ways. Early NFL and Purdue Drew Brees was a hectic scrambler. He didn't so much morph into something different as lose the athletic ability while being the most accurate passer the league had ever seen.

 

[BigToe]

I'm not a cognitive scientist, but I would certainly argue that pocket awareness is not a skill that meaningfully improves after the initial CFB acclimation period let alone in the NFL.

In Hurts' specific case, it seems much more like instinct than awareness to me. I would expect awareness to manifest itself as doing things like forgetting about pass rushers that get pushed behind you. That's not what he does. He leaves clean pockets and seems to not have whatever some QBs do have that allows them to look downfield while navigating his surroundings. He can do either separately. Just not both together.

Like you said, the goal is not to turn the weaknesses into strengths. That's functionally impossible. But because this is football and we have meaningful schematic levers to pull, coaches can try to make those weaknesses occur less often. The point of RPOs and Read Options isn't that Hurts can't read defenses. It's to give him a sped up schedule where there are clear lines drawn in the sand. If he stays within that structure, he doesn't have to feel his way through. Every time someone says he needs a quick passing offense, I want to die a little bit because it's largely the same people who complain about those plays.

The rare true transformations that we do get tend to be generational narrow bands of skill being so spectacular that they allow things to happen in atypical ways. Early NFL and Purdue Drew Brees was a hectic scrambler. He didn't so much morph into something different as lose the athletic ability while being the most accurate passer the league had ever seen.

Are there any examples you know of that have improved a significant amount instinctually? No matter the position really.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

Are there any examples you know of that have improved a significant amount instinctually? No matter the position really.

Modern defensive players in coverage do it all the time because they need time and repetition to learn the rules of their defense. The whole point is to develop the proper instinctual reactions.

But of course there are levels to that. You can see the development in Match coverages in Quinyon from the first 3 or 4 weeks to now. But he always showed this ability to plant, drive, and finish. Whatever that is is hardwired into guys or it isn't.

 

[nacc BLOCC]

I'm not a cognitive scientist, but I would certainly argue that pocket awareness is not a skill that meaningfully improves after the initial CFB acclimation period let alone in the NFL.

In Hurts' specific case, it seems much more like instinct than awareness to me. I would expect awareness to manifest itself as doing things like forgetting about pass rushers that get pushed behind you. That's not what he does. He leaves clean pockets and seems to not have whatever some QBs do have that allows them to look downfield while navigating his surroundings. He can do either separately. Just not both together.

Like you said, the goal is not to turn the weaknesses into strengths. That's functionally impossible. But because this is football and we have meaningful schematic levers to pull, coaches can try to make those weaknesses occur less often. The point of RPOs and Read Options isn't that Hurts can't read defenses. It's to give him a sped up schedule where there are clear lines drawn in the sand. If he stays within that structure, he doesn't have to feel his way through. Every time someone says he needs a quick passing offense, I want to die a little bit because it's largely the same people who complain about those plays.

The rare true transformations that we do get tend to be generational narrow bands of skill being so spectacular that they allow things to happen in atypical ways. Early NFL and Purdue Drew Brees was a hectic scrambler. He didn't so much morph into something different as lose the athletic ability while being the most accurate passer the league had ever seen.

believe it or not, i know nothing at all about cfb to nfl progressions.

what i had envisioned was essentially ludovico’ing him to recognize rush flows, in combination with what i suppose is called a sped up schedule (sick new vocab for me). but it seems the wisest route is wasting no time and effort on his pocket actions, and instead focusing on trying to approach structural mastery.

one of the things i have grown to enjoy a lot about football is the tactical deployment of freakazoidal human specimens.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

one of the things i have grown to enjoy a lot about football is the tactical deployment of freakazoidal human specimens.

My personal favorite aspect is that coaching matters the most and also the least. Every game is truly a 2 vs 2 chess match and there is no end to the amount you can learn about the tactical aspects. I can watch the same tape every year and notice new things every time that I wasn't able to appreciate yet.

But also none of that matters if your guys can't move their guys or knock them over. Sometimes a guy jumps over another guy while moving backward and there isn't shit you can do about it.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Is cornerback the toughest position to judge in sports? Only time you really notice them on TV is when they allow a catch, break up a pass or intercept the ball. Outside of ballhawks, it seems the quieter they are the better they are. Only comparable I think would be a defensive defenseman in hockey

 

[DancingPanther]

My personal favorite aspect is that coaching matters the most and also the least. Every game is truly a 2 vs 2 chess match and there is no end to the amount you can learn about the tactical aspects. I can watch the same tape every year and notice new things every time that I wasn't able to appreciate yet.

But also none of that matters if your guys can't move their guys or knock them over. Sometimes a guy jumps over another guy while moving backward and there isn't shit you can do about it.

This reminds me of the Kollmann vid on Lane Johnson I watched yesterday. Myles Garrett is an absolute f***ing beast of a human. Athletic freak. Meanwhile, Lane Johnson's entire career is built on letting dudes like that run into him super deep behind the line of scrimmage, because his technique employs physics that don't let him fall over. It's seriously amazing

 

[nacc BLOCC]

My personal favorite aspect is that coaching matters the most and also the least. Every game is truly a 2 vs 2 chess match and there is no end to the amount you can learn about the tactical aspects. I can watch the same tape every year and notice new things every time that I wasn't able to appreciate yet.

But also none of that matters if your guys can't move their guys or knock them over. Sometimes a guy jumps over another guy while moving backward and there isn't shit you can do about it.

ja, these things 1000%