October 12, 2011

Al Davis' Strategic Legacy: Chris Brown of smartfootball looks at the vertical stretch concepts of the Al Davis offence.

posted by Mr Bismarck to football at 09:23 AM - 4 comments

Enjoyed reading that.

Made me think back to the time when the Raiders signed Jeff Hostetler. He had been effective running the Giants fairly conservative offense, especially in the Super Bowl.

To me, he seemed like a top notch backup who could be a serviceable starter if needed, and who knew how to operate effectively within the system and not lose the game for you.

But there he was in silver and black, guns a blazing, firing deep and going for lights out. And putting up numbers that Parcells or Handley may not have expected he was capable of producing.

posted by beaverboard at 09:31 PM on October 12, 2011

As a life long Raiders fan, It gave me chills to read, I love this.

posted by bo_fan at 10:10 AM on October 13, 2011

Thanks for posting that, great read.

posted by yerfatma at 12:01 PM on October 13, 2011

I like the strong mention of the importance of timing there.

Just this Sunday you saw Dustin Keller pick up about six yards on something like 3rd and 8 and what often follows is the usual noise about how dumb a receiver is to run a pattern that isn't at the first down line.

What the coverage doesn't then show is that Keller was jammed and released at the line by [a linebacker] whose only interest in Keller was the jam. He wasn't covering Keller, he just wanted to disturb the timing and then move on to his actual assignment.

This slowed-released meant Keller had to break his route off early to maintain the same timing and so he was short of the line when he caught the ball.

That that kind of nonsense is usually coming from a Quarterback - Simms - just makes it more annoying.

posted by Mr Bismarck at 12:48 PM on October 13, 2011

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