Delhomme

Pretty much everything is in pretty much every playbook. It's the frequencies and variations that define an offense, and Walsh simply didn't use 3 WR sets much at all in his coaching career. To illustrate that, look at what the 3rd WRs did for Walsh in his career:

1979: Dwight Clark - 18 rec, 232 yards
1980: Ray Rhodes - 0 rec, 0 yards
1981: Mike Wilson - 9 rec, 125 yards
1982: Renaldo Nehemiah - 8 rec, 161 yards
1983: Mike Wilson - 30 rec, 433 yards (although some of that was filling in for an injured Freddie Solomon)
1984: Renaldo Nehemiah - 18 rec, 357 yards
1985: Freddie Solomon - 25 rec, 259 yards
1986: Mike Wilson - 9 rec, 104 yards
1987: John Taylor - 9 rec, 151 yards
1988: John Taylor - 14 rec, 325 yards

The WCO was primarily a two TE offense and rarely used 3 WR formations. And it's also most certainly true that the WCO was primarily horizontal, featuring short crossing routes rather than deep routes. That's obviously not to say that the WCO didn't have deep routes, but they were certainly not featured, unlike what Green did in Minnesota.

Just give it up. You know I'm right about this and making a big deal out of a simple mistake is just silly. It's much better to just acknowledge the simple mistake and let it be forgotten than to dig yourself deeper and deeper when you already know the truth.


Interesting article found during research that shows how the WCO term is actually misapplied anyway.

 

No.

 

No it isn't. What defines an offense is its origins. Saying that Mariucci wasn't running the WCO when he started running the I-form in 97-98, since the WCO was originally a split back, pro formation offense at its inception?

But yeah, "Pretty much everything is in pretty much every playbook." in itself kinda invalidates "it's not WCO because it's 3 WR." That and the fact that most every WCO team, and most non-WCO teams, use a lot more 3 WR than anyone did in 1981.

uhh, two back.

But anyway, if you want to crow all about having whipped my ass and such, why not show me where MN wasn't a WCO team in the last ten or so years? I mean, I've not seen where I'm wrong, so it'd be hard to be in stone-cold denial and trying to hide some mistake.

seen that a couple times, yeah.

 

You are such a child every time someone proves you wrong about something. There is a huge difference between having some 3 WR sets in a playbook and 3 WR sets being used often in the actual games. 3 WR sets were very rarely used in San Francisco, as evidenced by the above numbers. Meanwhile 3 WR sets were very common in Minnesota (evidenced by Jake Reed's numbers, and Qadry Ismail before him).

Both, actually. Bill Walsh was just on NFL Network the other day talking about his offense, and he talked about how the idea was to create balanced sets with two TEs (primarily some combination of Ramson, Francis, and Young). The WCO also featured two RBs on running downs, although it certainly didn't have two TEs on every single down either.

#1) You admitted that Linnehan did not run a WCO in Miami this year. Given that he was in Minnesota for the previous three seasons, either he adopted an entirely new system in Miami or Minnesota's offense wasn't a WCO.

#2) Minnesota used a shotgun set and 3 WR sets frequently, while the WCO does not.

#3) Minnesota heavily utilized vertical routes, while the WCO is primarily an offense of short routes that rarely features vertical routes.

 

they used it plenty. Obviously Denny runs 3 starting receivers in AZ. That doesn't make it "not WCO."

He would run what Saban wanted, I don't know why that's so hard. JDR didn't run Marvin Lewis' playbook, he ran Fox's.

McCarthy did it in NO. Favre's done it. And the WCO's a function input. You can make it what you want, as you yourself admitted above.

Our 99 team relied on vertical routes. Does that mean it wasn't WCO? Why in the devil would you actually argue that the WCO is short routes only?

 

Who? SF under Walsh? If that's what you're saying then that's an outright lie. I already posted the meager numbers on what the 3rd WR did in San Francisco under Walsh, but anyone can watch the games on Classic and see that the 49ers rarely used 3 WR formations in games. Meanwhile Green has used them frequently in Minnesota and Arizona.

You don't hire a WCO guy to run a vertical offense. If you want a vertical offense, you hire a vertical guy. And moreover, there's absolutely no question that Linnehan was a vertical guy in Minnesota.

No. All offenses, not just the WCO, incorporate wildly different elements. What makes an offensive philosophy is the frequency of using particular formations and personnel. GB has used the shotgun some, but it has not been a shotgun-heavy offense, unlike Minnesota. Similarly, WCO-era San Francisco would occasionally use 3 WR, but very rarely, unlike Minnesota.

"Walsh crafted an offense to suit him, a horizontal offense with a lot of motion and underneath routes and breakoff patterns, an attack that now goes by the misnomer "West Coast Offense.""


*sigh* This is obviously a pride thing. If Piper had pointed out the fact that Minnesota obviously wasn't a WCO offense, you probably could have admitted your mistake. Given that I was the one who corrected you, that's pretty much impossible. Why not stop at this point and you can insist that you aren't wrong and I can insist that you're being stubborn and ridiculous?

 

I distinctly remember Jake's contract being worth about 7 mil a year. Maybe 8. Nowhere near ten. The cap numbers may reflect that now because I'm sure he's restructured several times.

Johnson's making 2 as a backup after no one wanted him as a starter. He demanded top dollar when starting. He also put the Bucs in a bad position by refusing a simple restructure, which would not hurt him at all, because they accidentally had not guaranteed a roster bonus in the offered restructure, even when the Bucs tried to put it back. IOW, I don't think there's any way BJ would be starting for us for less than 9 mil a year.

 

The bonuses I cited were from the original extension, while the bases would be from whatever subsequent restructuring. Assuming more bonus money was added when restructured, that would account for the money I seem to be missing in my calculations, but that would push his cap hit per season up even further.

Normally I respect your opinion, Ide, but this comment is just absolutely asinine. Johnson signed a 5 year, 28 million dollar contract with Tampa Bay as a free agent in 2001. Then he restructured after the Super Bowl to free up room for the team to sign Booger McFarland, but even that contract was only $25 million over 4 years. Given his age, it's ridiculous to suggest that he would have asked for anything more than $4 million a year, and he actually took a little less money to sign in Minnesota, so pretending that he was all about money and would have refused to start without getting a crapload of money is absurd. And as noted, Johnson isn't even getting $2 million per; he's getting $1.5 million.

 

Who tells me I'm wrong has nothing to do with whether or not I decide if I'm wrong. You're obviously and intentionally looking to cause trouble, so I can understand how you'd use that as a crutch for someone not absolving themselves of disagreeing with you, but if Piper said "they're not a WCO team", I'd still expect him to back it with something real.

WCO playbook = WCO. I don't care what's called out of it, it's still the same system. If you have anything that states definitively that they swapped out playbooks, then I'll gladly say I'm wrong.




And seriously, I don't think anybody wants Brad Johnson here over Delhomme. We're not going to cut Delhomme.

 

#1) The WCO does not and never has used a 3 WR set much at all. Dennis Green used it as his primary passing set in Minnesota.

#2) The WCO is "a horizontal offense with a lot of motion and underneath routes and breakoff patterns." Minnesota's offense was primarily vertical. There were few slants, and most of the short routes were to TEs, not WRs.

Minnesota under Dennis Green was not a West Coast offense. You made a mistake, you have been proven wrong, and you're too stubborn to simply admit that you made an error. Instead you made it into a big production.