I'm gonna wait through the next couple of weeks and see what the offence looks like when not dealing with defences where safeties aren't their strong point and what happens as that'll answer the question. Although it has to be noted that if we're avoiding opposition strengths, running 41 times on Atlanta isn't exactly the answer.
Indeed, and to a certain extent I respect that. I'm okay with guys being slow to change their mind on guys they believe in. Got to account for the biases though. I'm glad there's other guys like him out there to give a cross-section.
And speaking of biases, I think something possibly to bear in mind with O'Sullivan on Fields is that as a long time believer who's been burnt, maybe he can be over critical, so here...
This is one where I'm 50-50 and would love some super nerdy data on time elapsed between recognition and action - and how far people run in that period.
If you look at this, I'd agree
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That to me screams wide running lane, tight-ish coverage... why not tuck the ball under your arm and go. I mean, can you throw it to Muth? Probably, but Fields can easily run it to more or less where Muth is with less risk than comes from throwing it, so why not?
But then you get this at... a second later? Half a second later? Hard to be sure as O'Sullivan pauses the tape and this is what he pauses it on
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And to me it is indeed on. The two guys behind Muth aren't going to catch him and that number 20 in front of him is running away from him while squaring up to Fields and therefore can't interfere. It would be even more blatant about a half second more -
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where 20 is well away from him. I think there's even a YAC opportunity there. I do kind of wish that throw was made.
But I suspect that in that time elapse, Fields has made the perfectly good decision to run. I don't know whether he's meant to read that number 20 is going to drift wide (I'm not entirely certain why he does that and would love a defence guru to explain it to me - he's not covering anyone and it could make sense from a run stop perspective but he shoots up when Fields commits so why not shoot up immediately?). I don't know whether he's meant to be anticipating that, I don't know that it's reasonable for him to read that it's changed and throw in that period of time.
So... 50-50 for me. And it's a bit ticky-tacky to point it out as Fields makes a good play - as O'Sullivan says, what Fields does there is never a bad thing - but at the same time, it's emblematic of the sort of plays Fields doesn't make that maybe top guys do. And while I get the criticism about O'Sullivan wanting things to be done as thinks they should be done, I'm also kind of with him because if you're drilling an instinctive don't even think about it way to play this sort of scenarios, passing is going to beat running most times so yeah I think QBs should be encouraged to pass instead of run in these scenarios because that way they're automatically doing the higher percentage thing.
Which might have contradicted what I said earlier.
I would love to know how Atlanta thought that defensive play was going to go down btw. It seems wild to me not leave a QB spy on Justin Fields on a 3rd down.