Essentially today in a team forum I found myself discussing something that I've actually often been criticized for in the past.
The number of plays a defense has is a very important concept in offensive scouting, and thus in defensive preparation.
There are of course huge advantages to having a large number of plays, a team that has a play for every formation and for every possible time it could be advantageous to make a change from their "base" play for a formation is commonly thought to be ideal.
I disagree... why?
Yes, as an offensive coordinator if your opponent has a huge amount of plays, its very easy to at that point dismiss the idea of scouting and just run the plays you know have worked in the past against the team (aka pretty much submit to losing the game, since obviously this isn't going to work).
However, with defenses that have a huge amount of plays its also known that if you do spend the effort to work out exactly when they will be coming out in a defense that you do happen to notice a hole in, then you can of course then use that to give you an edge ahead of that team, even though this does take a huge amount of time scouting wise, the opportunity exist. Why is it safe to essentially insert an output that says "100% of the time on x Down with x Yards to go with x Minutes left and x score difference" because, with a list of plays as long as my penis how likely is it that the coordinator on the other team is going to actually fix that hole?
Sure if the game before a team ran the same play in that scenario all game, scored a touchdown on it every time... it might not be a good idea to go all out on an opening, but if its been run once, or maybe even not at all... then you are good to go with little to no risk involved.
Now lets see how you would scout a team with say, 1 play per formation...
Essentially you run game scout, heck, why not? if they are going to make it so easy for you... but wait a second... sure this play has worked against them every single game before this, but who is to say its going to work this game?
A team with very few plays can easily shift to an entire different style of play in a very short amount of time, thus that 48 hour period of limitation isn't actually all that limiting to them.... if you take the "risk" of running say an outside run play that could easily go for a loss at any kind of high rate, who is to say that your not pretty much signing a death warrant on 3-4 drives... which is all it really takes to turn the tides on a close game (and if it wasn't going to be close... why the hell are you bothering to scout anyway).
Therefore my advice to you who may really just be diving in to the world of game planning, or even to you who are already burnt out to where you just can't spend the hours and hours and hours it used to take to win games...
Use less defensive plays.
I'm aware the more you use the better your defense will preform on a long term basis, but I'm also aware that if you have more plays than you are willing to update (each and every one) in a 48 hour period... then you aren't doing as well as you could be if you just used less.
The number of plays a defense has is a very important concept in offensive scouting, and thus in defensive preparation.
There are of course huge advantages to having a large number of plays, a team that has a play for every formation and for every possible time it could be advantageous to make a change from their "base" play for a formation is commonly thought to be ideal.
I disagree... why?
Yes, as an offensive coordinator if your opponent has a huge amount of plays, its very easy to at that point dismiss the idea of scouting and just run the plays you know have worked in the past against the team (aka pretty much submit to losing the game, since obviously this isn't going to work).
However, with defenses that have a huge amount of plays its also known that if you do spend the effort to work out exactly when they will be coming out in a defense that you do happen to notice a hole in, then you can of course then use that to give you an edge ahead of that team, even though this does take a huge amount of time scouting wise, the opportunity exist. Why is it safe to essentially insert an output that says "100% of the time on x Down with x Yards to go with x Minutes left and x score difference" because, with a list of plays as long as my penis how likely is it that the coordinator on the other team is going to actually fix that hole?
Sure if the game before a team ran the same play in that scenario all game, scored a touchdown on it every time... it might not be a good idea to go all out on an opening, but if its been run once, or maybe even not at all... then you are good to go with little to no risk involved.
Now lets see how you would scout a team with say, 1 play per formation...
Essentially you run game scout, heck, why not? if they are going to make it so easy for you... but wait a second... sure this play has worked against them every single game before this, but who is to say its going to work this game?
A team with very few plays can easily shift to an entire different style of play in a very short amount of time, thus that 48 hour period of limitation isn't actually all that limiting to them.... if you take the "risk" of running say an outside run play that could easily go for a loss at any kind of high rate, who is to say that your not pretty much signing a death warrant on 3-4 drives... which is all it really takes to turn the tides on a close game (and if it wasn't going to be close... why the hell are you bothering to scout anyway).
Therefore my advice to you who may really just be diving in to the world of game planning, or even to you who are already burnt out to where you just can't spend the hours and hours and hours it used to take to win games...
Use less defensive plays.
I'm aware the more you use the better your defense will preform on a long term basis, but I'm also aware that if you have more plays than you are willing to update (each and every one) in a 48 hour period... then you aren't doing as well as you could be if you just used less.
