Just a brief word recalling the league's response to Martz.
Much of what Martz did was based on creating confusion among DBs and LBs. We'd come out in those bunch formations and nobody knew what to do.
Of course, now every offense uses those formations. But NFL defenses also have a book on dealing with them. Dungy's TB Cover 2 laid down the blueprint: set up a containing zone and ignore all the running around. After that playoff game in '99, the league began to understand how to deal with Martz's innovations. Oh, it wasn't easy. But defenses now routinely prepare for them.
I just don't see how someone is going to do that with our offense right now. The key to what we are doing now is not confusion. It is instead proving that we can attack every zone and stretching the defense on the rack of dealing with all of them. I think that will be much harder to deal with long term.
However, remember that the key is not continue to prove that you can attack all 9 zones. And that depends on personnel and unit performance. If due to injury or something else a defense could reduce the effectiveness of one or two components of our attack, the situation would shift dramatically. We have to keep up the pressure on all 9 zones to sustain the gap between us and the league's defenses.
Burn sage. Beseech the Football Gods to keep us healthy!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2018 08:32AM by RFL.
