Football is a strange and exciting sport. I plan to devote three entire days at some point in the next few months in order to reflecting and creating a comprehensive offensive understanding of football based on personal experience as a player and a coach. In other words, I’m going to design an offensive philosophy for myself as a coach. It needs to be done in order to be a coach in the fall, and I plan to do that.
There are a few teams who are on the cutting edge of offensive philosophy and a few others who do a few classic and basic things well. The cutting edge are the ones that, once you figure it out, you can beat. The classic ones are the ones that seem to have more of a basic ability to stretch the field against any defense. In a sense it becomes about teams based on players vs. teams based on concept. KC is a team based on concept that requires particular players and when they lost Kareem Hunt it impacted what they could do from a balance perspective. Other teams have similar issues either in the plus or minus column. The Cowboys are reliant on a dynamic mid range to deep threat, so they solved their issue with Cooper. The Rams and Chargers need a fast and hard hitting back to open up the pass game, which is why injury impacted both teams. The Vikings… don’t actually have a philosophy yet. They were predicated on a smart QB, but lacking that they’re struggling. The team didn’t recognize that or maybe they did and fired the OC as a result.
This is not the kind of week when I am predicting games, but the kind when I am predicting trends. The Cowboys have what they need and have clearly hit a stride, but they are not the kind of team that will be able to sustain the impact of teams having very good film on them. I don’t think they win many more games this season. I say that with the Giants in mind. Their last game of the season will be a major tilt, and I truly believe the winner will be the NFC East Champion.