The rapid explosion in “QB breakdown” videos this year from QBSchool, Kurt Warner, Brees, Daniels and a million copycats made me realize that they seem to have their own name for basically every route combination. “Oh yeah, I call this one Jimmy 2 Shift” proceeds to draw out the route combination.
I get that there are definitely some broad differences like Shanahan offenses leaning on zone run and bootlegs but it’s not like they’re running some extra special sauce right? Seems like everyone else knows the same plays and could just run more of them if they wanted to have a “Shanahan offense”.
What is it that actually separates the quality of these different coordinators and schemes?
Playcalling sequence and script is a huge part of it. You watch the Eagles for instance just hammer people with the same concepts that have been shown to be working and that’s very distinctive.
The personnel you lean on, heavy or light, can vary even when you run the “same” play concepts. Some teams (Rams) run outside zone from 11, others do a lot of outside zone from 21 (Vikings, 49ers, Dolphins), some will really only run it out of 12 or 13.
And even if a run concept/passing pattern is in like 80% of playbooks that doesn’t mean everybody’s running it the same amount.