Huard: “… and you watch those plays last night. Those are some of the same plays -- tell me if I’m wrong here. Was the touchdown to Baldwin not the same similar concept as the throw to Charlie Martin Week 1 on the corner route in Arizona? Are they some of the same concepts and plays you’re running?”
Carroll: “Yeah, you’d be surprised how similar those are. I mean, there’s subtleties on how we move stuff around. There’s splits and things like that. But, yeah – had we, we’re so much better now – we would have won the Arizona game. They wouldn’t have been able to keep us out on 3 shots to get in – I mean, there’s just no way. We’re so much more efficient. That’s a great throw by Russell. You know, they’ve got a little combination coverage there on the guys right there. They jumped the heck out of Golden because he’s caught the Chicago touchdown and he caught one – you know, Carolina – caught a couple of those and made some big plays on that route. Which, it’s just a matter of reading it out for the quarterback. And on the combo they wind out inside of the corner route and they couldn’t catch up – he throws a great throw to the back flag – and a great catch, you know. So, that’s just getting better – them improving and understanding – they’ve thrown hundreds of those now. When we used to throw about 10 or 20 of them – now we’ve thrown hundreds, so it makes a difference in our ability to execute.”
Huard: “So in some ways that is the essence of efficiency right?”
Carroll: “We can’t make up new plays week in and week out across the board. There’s just no way. There’s little things that we do – little wrinkles that you put in and stuff, but basically you continue to function with your basic stuff. We’ve run inside-outside zone forever. Those are the same blocking schemes forever and ever and ever and we try to – when the defense breaks down, we make a big play because we’re so consistent. And that’s what makes Tom [Cable] such a big difference on our team because of his commitment to the running game in that fashion. And so, you’re seeing the same plays. You’re seeing the same calls for the most part – with wrinkles and formations and shifts and motions and things to make sure that the opponent doesn’t know that they’re coming.”
Salk: “The fact that you’re running a lot of the same plays and different formations – does that give you some of the time to work on the Pistol and develop that? Does it give you a little extra time?”
Carroll:“Yeah a little bit. A little bit. But we still don’t have that much time. One of the things that you really want to do in football is you want to have things that your opponent knows that you like. You want them to have to stop things because when they have to make their efforts to stop things – they become vulnerable. Until YOU know what you know -- and THEY know what you know – you can’t get to that level. Now that may have been confusing, but that’s really what you WANT people to understand what you’re trying to do – and they try to stop it – and you go ahead and do your things to take advantage of that. So, sometimes you’re not even good enough to get to that point. We are now, so it’s helping us and we’ll continue to grow with good fortune.”
