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.
Play callers are the juice. Take for instance the 2016 falcons. They had Kyle Shanahan calling plays. He left and the falcons let their whole offensive coaching staff go except for Raheem Morris who isn’t even an offensive coach. They had scored the second most points through the playoffs up until that point at somewhere around 33PPG and Matt Ryan won MVP. The next year they brought in Sarkasian and were lucky to score 20 per game.
Think the point OP is making is they’re all the same plays more or less. League wide.
I think it’s just a copycat league. So although OCs have different schemes, they also will copy plays from other people
When guys are breaking down the plays, they know the result. They are telling you “This looks like Jimmy 2 Shift” after seeing what routes the receivers run, and what order the QB looks at each of the players in his progression.
The goal of the OC is to make the result not-obvious for the defense. So they’ll do things like run multiple plays out of the same formation (e.g. by changing route combinations, the order the play is read by the QB, giving receivers options based on what the defense is doing, run out of passing formations or pass out of running formations, etc).
The difference between offenses and OCs are how they mix and match some of those concepts, which formations/personnel groupings they favor, and when they choose to call which plays (e.g. to establish or exploit expctations).