That was a great closing summation. Pure roll outs are not nearly as effective in the pros compared to college. Far too often you are merely cutting off half the field on yourself. You can see it in the quarterback's face when that happens. The design is blown up and he's stuck. He wanders the extra step or two. He knows he shouldn't force it back over the middle but that's the only thing available, other than winging it to the sideline or over everyone's head.
It's very similar to screens in that respect. With wide hash marks and terrorized unsophisticated defenses, college offensive coordinators can make a living on cheap screen passes and roll outs. Take it up a notch and those plays are often wiped out. I'm not surprised when they are shocked by it and can't adjust in the early going.
I found out about roll out variance from college to pro in that stats office where I worked for a few years. It was a cupcake job but very enlightening. Frankly, when I was invited to visit I thought I'd be telling them everything. Turned out it was shared enlightenment. The pure stats guys knew angles from a pure strategy standpoint that I had never thought of, while they knew very little about stats related to wagering. I ended up leaning over the shoulder of the sharpest most descriptive guy in the room. He pulled clips of roll outs in pros compared to college. It took perhaps 45 seconds to make the point.
If we drafted Tannehill based on roll outs, that wasn't especially brilliant.
However, I did talk to one of my old buddies from the stats office about a month ago. He called after finding out my father died. We chatted for a while and he mentioned a few new developments. One has been hinted at in this thread. Play action off stretch plays is proving extraordinarily successful right now, with well above average completion percentage, yards per attempt, and burst plays. We used to call them burst in that office ("Burst on 12" meant big play unfolding on monitor 12). I guess Billick defines them as explosive plays for his toxic stat. Anyway, my friend says the play is most lethal if the quarterback bounces back into the pocket after the stretch fake, not if he rolls outside. Brady had a long touchdown pass last night on that play. Obviously the better the play action fake the higher the upside. Tannehill should spend countless hours in the offseason working on extending the ball effectively and bringing it back.
BTW, Robert Griffin is a fascinating case study of whether or not he's being used correctly. I can't stand the guy. Let me put that out there. He's definitely performed better than my biased expectation. Shanahan installed an offense that's brilliantly designed to use Griffin strengths and frustrate NFL defenses, while at the same time exposing Griffin to all the weaknesses and dangers, like poor pocket awareness and inability to avoid the big hit. In evaluating Griffin toward the NFL I never expected we'd see him in an offense like that. Pure roll of the dice. I'm not sure Shanahan would have done it in his younger years. Right now as an older coach with a notoriously impatient owner Shanahan knows he has to produce otherwise he's out the door. A few weeks ago I couldn't believe what I was hearing when Shanahan said he'd use the remainder of the season for evaluation purposes. What? Snyder won't tolerate that, not after such an investment in Griffin and fan frenzy in the region.
