"Spread offenses" "The Cats out of the Bag" laram

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laram

"Spread offenses"....

IMO is severely impacting the ability of personnel people to properly evaluate players.

coming from a "spread offense" it's much more difficult to project how an offensive lineman will adjust to the pro game because most of them have never gotten into a three-point stance to blow an opponent off the ball or been asked to maintain a block for more than a few seconds.

Some college offenses that run the spread may throw the ball 50-60 times, so its difficult to evaluate every technique that they’re going to be taught in the pros.

It’s much easier when you evaluate a guy coming from a run/power offense where you can see him do the things you’re going to ask him to do in your system. It becomes more difficult when you have to project a player coming from a totally divergent system.

"The Cats out of the Bag"

A very good Topic and what you stated has been surfacing more and more over the last few years.

This has been discussed in pre-draft discussions within the last 3 to 5 years from some the better draft pundits, (depending on which ones you follow.)

Greg Robinson will be used as another fresh example of why the college spread formation system clearly effects more than just the quarterbacks when scouts are trying to break down their film and project their transition to the NFL level, or how a particular player might fit their teams scheme.


How spread offenses are changing evaluations on both sides of line

DOUG FARRAR
Wednesday February 24th, 2016

The problem on the offensive side of things is that at the college level, you simply don’t see the repetitive power-blocking, drive-blocking and combo blocks that are required by every effective offense in the NFL.

There are a few programs that still go with the pro-style concepts—Stanford, Alabama, Michigan and Michigan State are four—but more and more, it’s about scoring points through a sustained passing game that requires very little in power concepts.

What you wind up with, as Arians said, is a group of blockers who basically have to redshirt at the next level because they’re so behind on technique. Arians remarked that the three-point stance is the base ideal for nearly every NFL blocker, but since it isn’t taught at the high school or collegiate levels, there’s a major reset from the start.

Arians said this about all positions, but specified it to draft prospects along the offensive line: The athletes are better than ever, but the fundamentals are worse than they’ve ever been. For instance, the Cardinals selected Florida tackle D.J. Humphries in the first round of the 2015 draft, and then made him a healthy scratch all the way through the season. That was intentional from the start.

“We drafted D.J. last year knowing we were going to redshirt him because we had so much to teach him,” Arians said. “If we threw him out there, he was going to fail. Once they fail, it’s hard to get those scars off. He didn’t dress a game purposefully just to get better and better.

Going against guys like Dwight [Freeney] and Calais [Campbell] in practice, he got better every week. I think next year he’ll be ready to play.”

That’s one way to try and dodge the alarmingly high bust rate for highly picked blockers over the last few seasons. As I wrote last September, the percentage of hits when drafting esteemed linemen is pretty grisly since 2008, and it seems to get worse every year. Many place blame on the NCAA’s overall change in offensive philosophy.

Seahawks offensive line coach Tom Cable believed the difference in technique to be so bad that it was basically impossible to solve, so his team was going to go a different way and convert defensive linemen to the offensive line.

It’s a theory that’s had mixed results for Seattle at best, but as Seahawks GM John Schneider told me Wednesday, the team isn't ready to scrap that idea.

“All throughout the league, everyone’s concerned about offensive line play,” Schneider said. “You can talk to college coaches who are recruiting high school kids, and that’s a concern as well. In terms of our philosophy, we’re going to keep attacking it the same way we always have.

Tom does a great job, and he’s a great teacher. There’s a lot of experience in that room, and those guys do a great job of coaching up the position. Whether or not we convert guys, it really depends on what the draft looks like.”

Then again, there are those in the league who believe—and have proven—that as long as you put the right kind of thought process behind your line, you can hit on the right players.

For all their personnel shortcomings in other areas, the Cowboys have done a marvelous job of building what’s become the NFL’s best young line.

They did it by taking specific players in the first round year after year (Tyron Smith in 2011, Travis Frederick in ’13, Zack Martin in ’14), and as coach Jason Garrett put it to me, it can be that simple as long as you understand that there are players who fit your scheme—or who can be trained to do so.

“One of the things we made a commitment to was rebuilding our offensive line,” Garrett said. “That started five years ago with Tyron Smith out of USC, and we’ve allocated resources three of the last five years, and we drafted players we believe are cornerstone players.

It’s a cause for great optimism to have guys like that, who are the right kinds of guys and outstanding players. It requires a commitment, it requires an allocation of resources.”

More specifically, it requires the types of players with the combination of athleticism and experience in pro-style offenses who can make those transitions. Smith was an athletic marvel at USC, but he also got a load of fundamental training. As did Frederick at Wisconsin.

As did Martin at Notre Dame. (Martin was a pro-style blocker, and trained as such, despite his presence in a spread-style offense.)

When the Cowboys were able to take La’el Collins as an undrafted free agent last year despite Collins’s first-round talent due to an off-field incident, there was also the fact that at LSU Collins had experience in an offense one might term NFL-ready, if far too basic at times.

So, is the schism due to a real lack of developed talent at the line positions, or are some coaches and GMs just giving up and firing excuses at the problem? When you watch tape of this year’s class of blockers, there are clearly some players who appear ready for prime time.

Tackles Laremy Tunsil of Ole Miss and Ronnie Stanley of Notre Dame seem to have everything in order, but we’ve said the same things about guys like Matt Kalil and Luke Joeckel over the last few years. It’s more of a crap shoot than ever.

Perhaps the most interesting example of a spread-style blocker with potential beyond that narrow frame is Texas Tech’s LeRaven Clark.

The 6' 6", 312-pound Clark was a freshman All-America at right guard and made multiple All-Big 12 teams when he kicked to left tackle, but there’s a lot of trepidation about his NFL future because he played in a spread system in which he simply wasn’t asked to do a lot of the things NFL tackles need to handle.

There may be teams who reject him because of that, but based on my own tape evaluation,

I think that’s a mistake. I believe Clark has the frame, aggressiveness and nascent power to become something special at the next level—it’s just going to take the right team and coaching staff to see it and respond.

When you watch him excel in a multi-step kickslide and extend his hands to envelop pass-rushers, it’s easy to wonder if the spread bias has gone too far. Clark, who’s working on three-point stances with performance coach Bill Lewis in Arizona, put it very plainly—people aren’t seeing everything he can be.

“We did a lot of things out of two-point stances, we did some three-point stance in short yardage situations, but I feel pretty comfortable in my three-point stance when I come off the ball for sure,” Clark said. “There's definitely a misperception there—most people don’t think we have any combo blocks or power blocking in our plays.

They think it’s just inside zone and outside zone. But we have a few running plays, and we run the ball more than people think. Our running back [Deandre Washington] ran the ball for [1,492] yards last year, and you have to run the ball a little bit to get that many yards.”

We’ll soon see where Clark lands, and we’ll watch over time how the consternation about spread offenses in the NFL works itself out. One thing’s for sure—college teams aren’t changing their approaches, so unless multiple NFL teams want to miss out on a major talent pool year after year after year, there’s more adapting to be done.

No matter the year of the combine, and no matter the specific subject, it’s a constant dance between the college and pro game.
[www.si.com]


Tom Cable: Spread offenses in college are “a huge disservice” to players

Posted by Josh Alper on May 13, 2015, 3:53 PM EDT

The increasing popularity of spread offenses at the college level have made it hard for NFL teams to evaluate the ability of rising quarterbacks to play in the more buttoned-down style seen at the professional level, but Seahawks offensive line coach Tom Cable says that the issue extends to other positions as well.

Cable said that part of the reason why the team has moved players like J.R. Sweezy and 2015 sixth-rounder Kristjan Sokoli from defense to offense is because he feels like he has to retrain linemen to play outside of a spread system anyway because of their poor fundamentals.

“I’m not wanting to offend anybody, but college football, offensively, has gotten to be really, really bad fundamentally,” Cable said Tuesday on 710 ESPN in Seattle. “Unfortunately, I think we’re doing a huge disservice to offensive football players, other than a receiver, that come out of these spread systems.

“The runners aren’t as good. They aren’t taught how to run. The blockers aren’t as good. The quarterbacks aren’t as good. They don’t know how to read coverage and throw progressions. They have no idea.”

There are a broad range of offenses using spread principles at the college level and the teams employing them are making those decisions based on what they think will win them games. That may not match up with what Cable or other coaches are looking for, but we’ve seen teams adapt by installing some of those elements in their own playbooks.

Without any developmental or minor league in place, that’s going to have to continue as long as those schemes remain in vogue at schools around the country.
[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com]