theENGLISHseahawk":1utylpoi said:
And if the Seahawks offense is top-10 for four years in a row via DVOA then that to me isn't just because Wilson is good at improvising.
I actually would pick that theory up in a heartbeat, honestly.
It begs a very interesting question: Just what role does any OC play in an offense's success? And the answer is, not as much as fans think. Whatever an OC's intentions in a play, it's the defense's job to thwart it, and they do it often. The result is improvisation, and although that improvisation may look different with different teams, it's still improvisation.
When Tony Romo or Tom Brady stand stock-still behind utterly pristine pass protection for six seconds, that's actually improvisation. The OC originally designed the play to go to either a target or a specific part of the field. If it didn't happen after three seconds, the WRs have started their scramble drill and it's improvisation. There are very few plays whose original design requires more than three seconds for WRs to run their routes; there is no play in those teams' playbook labeled "X Double Cross 2 Shallow Fake Dagger Stand Around Forever and Wait For Whoever to Get Open". That's not how plays are drawn up in the NFL.
With Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, or Ben Roethlisberger, the improvisation is
more dramatic. They start running around; they buy time by leaving the pocket. Fans interpret this more harried-looking improvisation as a negative, since they've been conditioned by talking heads to believe that. But Wilson's improvisation is actually of the same purpose as Romo's, arguably of the same frequency, and indisputably (as you mentioned, Rob) of ACTUALLY BETTER RESULTS.
For that reason, I don't interpret our positive results as Bevell being a strong OC, because every OC in the league has enough of their plays thwarted to whittle the Super Bowl to the two best improvisational quarterbacks.
Now DVOA doesn't differentiate between a 40-yard bomb/12-yard scramble that was designed, and a 40-yard bomb/12-yard scramble that was drawn up as something else entirely and got salvaged by a QB with legs. So on that count, it's not a convincing stat for me. It does tell me that we have the potential to explode at any time, and that's valuable. But the visible plays on the field tell me that this offense has a ceiling we haven't reached. It's leaving us to walk a fine line, one which we've slipped off five times and are now on the outside of the division looking in.
My reasons for my dissatisfaction with Bevell have more to do with his weird tendencies - not designing effective third-down plays or screens, throwing deep bombs on third and 2 when a simple high-percentage out route would do, using Baldwin as a halfback...Bevell isn't an easy target, he's a deserving target. This stuff is daft. It's overthinking and it's not using players to their strengths.
