Read Option - can it be sustained?

It's been clear to me for a few weeks the current incarnation of the Seahawks cant operate without the read-option sprinkled in.

My guess would be the read option keeps defenses honest and from exploiting size advantages at WR as well sporadic Oline play. It's especially huge with Miller out of there, because I think the TE in this offense dictates the passing game. And, without a TE, any semblance of a normal passing attack is out the window. It gives a defense one more thing to think about on passing downs as well (and this Oline will forever need an advantage in pass protection).

The down side is it does effect Wilson's accuracy via fatigue. RB's get to come take a breather after running the ball...not Wilson. He has to get right back under center and do it again. I saw a thread about whether his running effects his accuracy; of course it does! There's an Olympic event based solely on extreme cardio and accuracy (winter biathlon).

With this offense, without Zach nor legit WR threats, I think the good outweighs the bad. While it's different than Lynch's punishing style, having Wilson keep the ball contributes to the physical toll on a defense. Psychologically, it may do more damage than anything Lynch can do.

My question is the RO a sustainable offense for this team through out the year?

I think it is, because of Wilson's intellect. I also like the possibilities out of that look. You give Michael some run on a series where the RO is working, he'll bust 1 out of every 6 or 7 runs for an explosive play. Speed would dominate the cutback lanes.

You defend the RO by playing assignment football. That likely puts receivers in one on one coverages. We have to be willing to exploit that.

brimsalabim":1k6yq0b4 said:

You defend the RO by playing assignment football. That likely puts receivers in one on one coverages. We have to be willing to exploit that.

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assuming they can win their one on one matchups which is in serious doubt based on what I have seen this year.

Until teams stop it, we should keep using it.

Whatever gets the W.

Anthony!":1sdkw6j4 said:

brimsalabim":1sdkw6j4 said:

You defend the RO by playing assignment football. That likely puts receivers in one on one coverages. We have to be willing to exploit that.

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assuming they can win their one on one matchups which is in serious doubt based on what I have seen this year.

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Which is exactly why I think this offenses leans on the RO so much. Their personnel needs whatever advantages it can muster.

peachesenregalia":1ly20ft9 said:

Anthony!":1ly20ft9 said:

brimsalabim":1ly20ft9 said:

You defend the RO by playing assignment football. That likely puts receivers in one on one coverages. We have to be willing to exploit that.

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assuming they can win their one on one matchups which is in serious doubt based on what I have seen this year.

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This is what I'm talking about. We rely so heavily on the run because it's basically all we have. Our receivers and our shitty route trees prohibit us getting a whole lot of separation in one-on-one matchups, meaning RW has to put it up and trust his man to get it. Right now he doesn't, which is why he's pressing.

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Nor should he trust it.

Ive heard the same thing since we started running it in 2012. It is sustainable? This is our third season running it. And were not the only team that does. Hell, even Miami has been running it lately. Its just as legitiment as the play-action pass. It just requires that you have a smart QB with good running skills.

A good defense playing good assignment football can counter it, but that still requires a single defender winning the matchup against the QB if he keeps it. We all saw against the Giants a few times where the defender was in perfect position to contain Wilson, and Wilson still made him miss.

Until its no longer effective (which I dont think will happen), we keep using it. It may not work every time (like every play in the NFL), but it works more times then it doesnt and keeps defenses confused.

They defend the RO by committing one less guy to try and stop the beast. Im cool if rw hands it off everytime in that scenario. Ill take my chances with our rb's in the hole. IF that d end crashs rw should have atleast an easy 5 yards.

Word.

Yup everyone says "yeah, but you can gameplan for it" but that's not really true. There's little to game plan...the RO breaks down a defense into a very simple me vs you scenario. Coaches will always prefer a my guy vs their guy type of play.

The Seahawks team have never dominated teams like they did at the end of 2012. Does anyone remember the Buffalo and Arizona games?

The read option and power running games were never more prevalent than during that time. My guess is that the team took a hard look at those games and said, "this is what we do best". As long as Russell doesn't get hurt, we will score points in this offense. I think they also looked at their WR core as a part of making this decision.

We would have likely won the Superbowl that year as well provided that Clemons didn't tear his ACL. We had no pass rush. We were scoring 30+ ppg.

I don't think the RO is meant to be sustainable in the sense that it's to be relied upon and run regularly. It's just one of our fave misdirection plays. We also like to run the play where the line crashes one way and Russ flicks it to the RB running the other way (not sure what the play's called). CMike picked up 18 on the play on Sunday and Percy got a "TD" against SD. It's meant to keep teams honest and not crash down in the direction of the play. All these plays forces teams to play assignment football and it ends up opening up running lanes for Lynch. Really, almost everything we do as an offense is predicated on unleashing the beast. Now if our deep game would open up a little bit more, I think we'll start really firing on all cylinders.

pehawk":3lv0vggt said:

Word.

Yup everyone says "yeah, but you can gameplan for it" but that's not really true. There's little to game plan...the RO breaks down a defense into a very simple me vs you scenario. Coaches will always prefer a my guy vs their guy type of play.

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This is why the RO works so well in college; it gets one on one matchups and usually the offensive player will win that.

Wilson is unique among QBs in that he's built like a RB; stocky and muscular. He can take some punishment, and he's smart about how many hits he takes. Maybe the smartest player in the league at that.

What I'd like to see is more RO variety. We've seen players WIDE open on the RO pass. Now we're doing a RO with a flip to the weak side to explosive guys like Michael. The more variety and the more personnel options we can utilize, the more unpredictable we are and the harder it is to game plan against us.

Think about it: there have been a few times this year where the defense got hit on a big play early, then later we hear Sherman or Thomas say something like "we hadn't seen them do that all year" or "this was something they've never done before, but we made adjustments". So we'll get hit with a few big plays in the 1st half, then the defense shuts them down in the 2nd. Now imagine a team that prepares for all the RO wrinkles we've shown, plus a few contingencies: read options passes and the like that we've only used once or twice this year.

Then we go out and hit them with our regular offensive sets and playcalling. It will take them off guard for a bit. Then you hit them with the RO again. It's like 2 separate sets of offenses.

peachesenregalia":1o1ukiqv said:

I think we need to look at the law of diminishing returns here. The more often we dip from the well of the RO, the less effective it will become. I think what I'd like to see more is Bevell using his offensive weapons situationally depending on who we're playing and what the opposing D is giving us on the day. the RO can be schemed for, most obviously by assigning a spy for RW. Now, can we run 2-3 big misdirection plays per game to nullify the spy? Absolutely, but I think once a D is scared enough of the RO, they're gonna account for it, unless they lack the talent and/or personnel. What we CANNOT do is become so one-dimensional that we're stuck spinning our wheels because the opposing D has all of the answers to what we're asking. Remember the Steelers game in either '06 or '07? They just stuffed the box and dared us to pass, knowing that we couldn't. I want to avoid anything like that happening again.

I think that 'sprinkling' the RO in here and there is a good thing, and RW appears to be smart enough to understand that sometimes you need to make the handoff to Marshawn, even if the DE crashes down and you had some room to run, because you need to keep the D guessing. The key here is patience, and Bevell has shown on occasion that he'll abandon the running game early if it's not making quick gains. So long as the D can keep us close, we need to pound the rock and use RO looks to confuse the D. I agree that getting Michael some plays out of the RO look could work wonders for our offense, and will help to give Lynch some needed rest for those all-important goal-to-go situations.

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This. Exactly. It's taken longer than I would've liked to get it to work properly. Last week I think was the best use, with the threat of a RW run vs a Lynch run keeping them guarded. But the ultimate RO is a QB run, RB run or a pass. We haven't threatened with the pass. If we don't get that aspect rolled in, it's going to fail. There's obviously a gamble point, you've got to figure when you've drawn the DBs in enough to let loose on the long ball, and we've got the speed in Richardson to do it, but the longer we only have 2 options, RW is going to get fatigued and I have to wonder if he'll be able to make that deep ball accurately after rushing for 100+ yards...on top of scrambling to save his life because of our leaky line.

Hawks46":z0wkkg6w said:

pehawk":z0wkkg6w said:

Word.

Yup everyone says "yeah, but you can gameplan for it" but that's not really true. There's little to game plan...the RO breaks down a defense into a very simple me vs you scenario. Coaches will always prefer a my guy vs their guy type of play.

Click to expand...

This is why the RO works so well in college; it gets one on one matchups and usually the offensive player will win that.

Wilson is unique among QBs in that he's built like a RB; stocky and muscular. He can take some punishment, and he's smart about how many hits he takes. Maybe the smartest player in the league at that.

What I'd like to see is more RO variety. We've seen players WIDE open on the RO pass. Now we're doing a RO with a flip to the weak side to explosive guys like Michael. The more variety and the more personnel options we can utilize, the more unpredictable we are and the harder it is to game plan against us.

Think about it: there have been a few times this year where the defense got hit on a big play early, then later we hear Sherman or Thomas say something like "we hadn't seen them do that all year" or "this was something they've never done before, but we made adjustments". So we'll get hit with a few big plays in the 1st half, then the defense shuts them down in the 2nd. Now imagine a team that prepares for all the RO wrinkles we've shown, plus a few contingencies: read options passes and the like that we've only used once or twice this year.

Then we go out and hit them with our regular offensive sets and playcalling. It will take them off guard for a bit. Then you hit them with the RO again. It's like 2 separate sets of offenses.

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Has less to do with how well RW is "built" (he's not running through people and is avoiding contact any way he can) and way more to do with the new emphasis on protecting QB's. Option Football and the RO has made a big comeback at the highest levels of NCAA and now even in the NFL because QB's are protected to the point of almost being "non-Contact" players.

I'm a defensive minded guy, so I hate when I see these QB's running around all day. You used to be able to punish a QB with legal, yet physical play, which is why teams didn't want to expose their QB's by letting them run. Today, you can't hit a QB below the knees or above the chest in the pocket. You can't grab their jersey from behind, they wait until the last possible second to slide in hopes of getting an extra 15 tacked on (Russ and Kap are masters of this move), or they wait until the last sec to run out of bounds to hopefully get another 15 tacked on.

A defender can be shoved past a QB and his hand can just lightly touch the QB's head and it's a 15 yard pentalty. Football has become 7 on 7 with "light" tackling.

I've seen so many flags both in college and the NFL this year where the flag was thrown simply because the hit looked vicious. Even when the hit was perfectly legal the refs are throwing flags.

So now we get rec's that can't be touched or hit, QB's that are so protected that it's laughable and it's ruining the product on the field. It's trickling down to all levels too. The NFL is becoming a joke. The game of football has changed, and not for the better.

My question is how long can RW run the read option effectively in his career. Eventually he will get injured and his running ability will be hampered (which is the most dangerous part of his game). If he doesn't learn to play from the pocket (which he can/should be able to), then he won't have as long of a career as the Mannings, Brady's or as I suspect Andrew Luck will.

TL/DR

I despise the running/scrambling QB's. Their proliferation is nothing more than the effects of rule changes that have made them virtually non-contact players and you can't even touch them without a flag being thrown.

Russell's first pick came from a read option pass look.

It's a D we will see copied.

Presnap.



just after the read option handoff fake


Notice the safety that had been in a two deep look has attacked the read option on the left edge, two of the linebackers have attacked running lanes, and in the next picture you will see the third linebacker has the right edge just in case Russ goes that way, and when he doesn't see Russ running he peels back into coverage.


Last, the defender breaking on the poor decision.


Point is, the Giants thought they had a blitz designed to take away the read option for both Russ and 'Shawn, and cover passing options. They gave up the middle of the field, guy was open there with a safety over the top, but we don't do much of that middle passing.

Other teams with better personnel than the Giants will run this, it actually looks like a copy of how Arizona attacks the read option.

So, what are you trying to tell us, Scotte?

The RO is like any scheme, if used correctly it is, and will forever be sustainable.

The teams that struggle with it are teams that either overuse it (RG3), or don't have the talent or QB to run it, like it's a gimmick play they need to deploy 2-3 times a game.

Russell is the best of both world's when it comes to the RO. He's smart enough to know when to keep, and when to hand off...........and he doesn't take the big hits that make the RO too dangerous to use with any sort of consistency.

My only worry is as Russell ages and slows down, is the RO going to be less and less effective, thus making Russell less and less effective. Let's be honest, Russell is a great QB because of his legs and smarts, and not so much his pocket passing (even though when he has time he's proven he can do that too).

QB's get worse hits standing in the pocket than they'll ever do running. Wilson's biggest hits have been taken in the pocket.

The "too many hits" saying is BS spewed by curmudgeons yelling at teenagers for their music.

pehawk":26tc824w said:

The "too many hits" saying is BS spewed by curmudgeons yelling at teenagers for their music.

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For Russell it's BS, he doesn't take hits on the RO, just pocket pressures and sacks.

But for a lot of RO QB's like RG3, Vick, Cam, etc it's a very real problem for teams wanting to use it.

Sgt. Largent":1um3je2s said:

pehawk":1um3je2s said:

The "too many hits" saying is BS spewed by curmudgeons yelling at teenagers for their music.

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For Russell it's BS, he doesn't take hits on the RO, just pocket pressures and sacks.

But for a lot of RO QB's like RG3, Vick, Cam, etc it's a very real problem for teams wanting to use it.

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Agree, totally.