A Hurry Up O Discussion

[roy_miami]

I love the hurry up offense. I'm definitely in the camp excited about having Lazor running the show.

Almost every serious commitment to running a hurry up offense in the NFL has been successful. Not all to the same degree, but consider this...

It started in Cincinnati during the Icky Shuffle and Boomer Esiason days. Their pedestrian offense ran the hurry up and became supercharged. This ticked off Bills Coach Marv Levy he wrote the NFL office multiple times saying it should be illegal. But the NFL allowed it, so the next year he implemented it and the Jim Kelly/Thurman Thomas K-Gun offense was born. It took them to multiple Super Bowls.

Today, like the WCO, there are different flavors of It but most top offenses run some variant of it.

Peyton Manning hurries up to the line but then takes his time calling the play and audiblizing. Brady hurries both the lineup and the snap but only uses it on certain series.

Th benefits are tremendous. Since every NFL team has a lot of talent, small advantages can make a huge difference.

For instance, the main advantage is crippling defensive situational substitutions. The Patriots released and the Bills picked up Mike LB Brandon Spikes. He is an absolute stud vs the run ... but piss poor vs the pass. He is an ideal 2 down LB. But, on obvious passing downs he needs to be taken out. So, teams would use the hurry up to keep him on the field and keep passing. Or, as the Patriots did very successfully last year, get a team into nickel or dime coverage and use the hurry up to run the ball down the defenses throat.

To succeed against the hurry up, teams need 3 down players at every position, which few defenses have. Often Mike LB's cannot cover or blitz well. Often OLB's and DE's are pass rushers but cannot hold up against the run consistently. Often nickel backs cannot defend the run well.

Having an offense with versatile TE's and RB's allows an offense to take advantage of defenses that use situational substitutions. This is the easiest way to create and repeatedly exploit mismatches. In today's NFL, that's what offense is all about.

I wish we had gone a different route with our OL rebuild that gave us players who were solid in both pass pro and run blocking, to take advantage of any defense. But, at least we look to have the personnel to pass on any one if they sub in run defenders like Spikes.

We are becoming a tem that creates and punishes mismatches. There will be a lot of growing pains ... but this offense will score much more points and be very good by seasons end.

Another major point of the hurry up is Lazor's use of varied formations, personnel groupings and motion to disguise his plays and confuse the defense. The tempo forces defenders to read these changes quicker and communicate assignments quicker. Thus invariably leads to defensive breakdowns and blown assignments ... and great opportunities for our offense to get chunk yardage and scores.

Yes, it can put pressure on our defense ... but we are built to pass rush and pass cover, so getting the lead is the best thing we could possibly do for our defense ... even if it means they have to play more snaps each game.

Sent from my phone, so please forgive any typos.

All good points. Its mind boggling to me more teams don't try to copy even what the Patriots do in this copy cat league. They change the tempo generally when things aren't going well and want to change things up, and that goes both way from fast to slow and vise versa. Another thing they do that I love is they jump right into a hurry up after a big play, this is for two reasons, it always takes longer than teams realize to get set up 30 or 40 yards down the field and it puts pressure on the other coach if it might be a challenge situation. They also hurry on QB sneaks for a yard.

Another benefit that never occurred to me until I saw Chip Kelly's first game was it can take the other teams crowd out of the game in a hurry, the Redskins crowd was loud for about 5 minutes then you could hear a pin drop.

If we can finally get it going I guarantee our offense will at least be exciting this year. It may not translate into many more wins, and that will be largely up to Tannehill, but it should be a fun ride.

 

[roy_miami]

I agree with you and think that if we can get a touchdown or two lead, we can match up well against a team that is primarily passing. Last year, we struggled mightily when teams could smash-mouth run because we didn't have a lead or just a slight lead. I think we will still struggle getting of the field against a strong run team but hopefully, we can minimize that by putting points on the board and forcing them to pass which certainly works to our defensive strength.

Yup. Remember the Clevelnad game when we had like 7 DE/LBs on the field at the same time once we had a nice lead? I think thats the type of creativity Coyle is just itching to unleash but he never gets the chance. If our offense ever gets an early lead I could see the defense and offense working in tandem and snowballing 17 point leads into 40 point leads. I think we would like nothing more than to be one of those teams that get blasted in the media for "running up scores."

 

[Fin Thirteen]

The bit I'm curious about is how will Lazor be at playcalling. Its one thing being a QB coach, its another designing plays but its something entirely different strategising on the fly when the bullets are zinging and you've installed a hurry-up offense.



If you're a good playcaller, you don't really need the hurry-up. Peyton and Brees destroyed us last year by picking on our weaknesses without having to do it at breakneck speed.



Its not the hurry-up, but what you do with it. A bjt of read option puts some of the responsibility into the QBs hands. Whether that's a positive or not with Tannehill remains to be seen.



But designing the offense is only a part of the story, someone has to call it against top defenses and Lazor is in uncharted territory.

 

[So Be]

I'm confused on what type of hurry up we are looking to run. If we go back to huddle, it allows the D to substitute, and does not wear them down. If we don't, as FF posted, there is no time for the motion we have been hearing about. Is it a combo?

I also have some concern with timing of the OL with at least one rookie, and a couple of guys with little or no experience adapting to the snaps.

A side note on Philly's OL. As we know, they were fabulous on the run but, other than Peters, around average on pass blocking and Foles took 6 sacks on his own. RT had 3 on more snaps. On screen passes, other than the rookie Johnson, the other 4 OL were VG, as was Celek and WR Avant. For Miami, Clabo and Clay were VG, and Pouncey and Wallace were good.

 

[fishfanmiami]

This was after the first day of OTA's and gives some hints as to what we can expect from the offense. At the two minute marks Lazor explains his definition of fast tempo.

http://www.miamidolphins.com/multim...ll--More/c6007255-3f45-490b-98a7-5ffd021c7213

Not to say we wont use hurry up offense but I think even when huddling the goal is to get to the line and get the play off faster. The QB should make quick , accurate decisions and get the ball out quickly to the primary receiver who is expected to win his one on one battle every time. Sure this will not always happen and then you go to the second or third option but it is their goal.

 

[Geforce]

I'm confused on what type of hurry up we are looking to run. If we go back to huddle, it allows the D to substitute, and does not wear them down. If we don't, as FF posted, there is no time for the motion we have been hearing about. Is it a combo?

I also have some concern with timing of the OL with at least one rookie, and a couple of guys with little or no experience adapting to the snaps.

A side note on Philly's OL. As we know, they were fabulous on the run but, other than Peters, around average on pass blocking and Foles took 6 sacks on his own. RT had 3 on more snaps. On screen passes, other than the rookie Johnson, the other 4 OL were VG, as was Celek and WR Avant. For Miami, Clabo and Clay were VG, and Pouncey and Wallace were good.

For the most part it will be a combination.

(On how he would describe the tempo of his offense) – “When you hear the word tempo being spoke about, there are probably a couple of different meanings. One of the meanings when we say tempo to our guys, we talk about from the break of the huddle until the snap of the ball. I think what you saw today, I believe you were there at practice, most of the day we were in huddle. Even when we are in a huddle, we talk about playing with a certain tempo when we break the huddle until we snap the ball. As we go forward, there will be some other times we will choose to operate a different way, and tempo will take on some other meanings. As far as the plays you saw and how fast the ball was out today, some of it is a nature of what we installed today. Day one teaching we always start by getting the hitch in. There were a couple of quick throws out to the receivers. Part of that was the nature of it, but in general our passing game the ball is going to come out on time. When number one is open, the quarterback is going to take whatever his set-drop is when the ball is coming out. If number one is one-on-one, we expect him to win so we expect to throw the football. Hopefully you see that a lot."
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolp...annehill-has-to-practice-like-its-a-game.html

Lazor wants his unit to hurry to the line of scrimmage, his quarterback to process the field quickly, and then throw the ball on time. And most importantly, he needs everyone to practice at game speed every single day, keeping their foot on the gas to make the pace become second nature.

"He wants to play fast," Tannehill said of Lazor, who is widely credited for the emergence of Nick Foles, who led the league in passer rating and set an NFL record for touchdown-to-interception ratio (27:2) last season. "I think that's his biggest point at this time is just getting to the line, playing fast, putting pressure on the defense. We're going to huddle. We're going to take our time in that standpoint, but once we break we want to put pressure on the defense."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/20...-ryan-tannehill-eagles-quarterback-nick-foles

 

[Digital]

This was after the first day of OTA's and gives some hints as to what we can expect from the offense. At the two minute marks Lazor explains his definition of fast tempo.

http://www.miamidolphins.com/multim...ll--More/c6007255-3f45-490b-98a7-5ffd021c7213

Not to say we wont use hurry up offense but I think even when huddling the goal is to get to the line and get the play off faster. The QB should make quick , accurate decisions and get the ball out quickly to the primary receiver who is expected to win his one on one battle every time. Sure this will not always happen and then you go to the second or third option but it is their goal.

Lazor did mention that when they refer to tempo they don't always mean one specific thing. the term has different meanings in different situations.

Yes, some times it means huddling and getting from the huddle to the line quickly. that aspect of tempo is designed to not allow the defense time to read our formation and have their Mike (or whoever calls their defensive sets) from communicating shifts before we snap the ball.

That is one way to catch the defense out of position. Another is after coming to the line to use motion to shift the formation and force the defense to make another adjustment. In that scenario, tempo would likely get the ball snapped quickly after confusing th defense with the motion.

Yet another way would be what we are all calling the hurry up offense with a no huddle element to prevent the defense from using situational substitutions.

I expect to see us using all of these techniques.

Sent from my phone, so please forgive any typos.