The West Coast Offense

[Jesus]

Taking a look at all the threads around here about our offense I have noticed a lot of people clamoring for the Falcons to adopt the West Coast Offense (WCO). The phrase has little meaning now since it is applied to any offense that passes more than runs but it can be broken down to say any offense that uses the pass to move the ball in increments. Most teams that claim to run the WCO run it out of the spread now. So the two back, two receiver and a TE system the 49ers ran back in the 80's is not what is in use.

The Falcons are a run oriented team not quite a run first team. Though Mike Turner would be out of the loop as a running back in the WCO because he can't catch. The Falcons like to move the ball on the ground to set up the pass, or so the philosophy goes. I did a little research, not as much as some of the others on here and compared Ryan's first three years with that of Joe Montana, a QB considered the arguably the best WCO QB ever. Now Montana did not start his 1st 2 years in the league, so I didn't include those numbers and I didn't include the 82 strike season. So we're looking at years 3, 5 & 6. By year 6 he was 28 and in his prime years. He had also won his 2nd SB. But it takes more than one man to win the Super Bowl so lets just take a look:

Ryan
Record Comp Attpts % yards TD INT YPA YPC Rating
33-13 885 1456 60.8 10061 66 34 6.9 11.4 86.9

Montana
Record Comp Attpts % yards TD INT YPA YPC Rating
34-10 922 1435 64.2 11105 73 34 7.7 12.0 95.9

Now I'm not out to start a flame war or talk about arms made of pasta. But if Ryan had completed 4% more of his passes more of his numbers would have gone up. How many Douglas and Jenkins drops does that equal?

[The Falcon Jedi]

We already run a WCO. Dink and Dunk at it's finest.

[Sporkdevil]

(01-25-2011 07:28 PM)The Falcon Jedi Wrote:  We already run a WCO. Dink and Dunk at it's finest.

Actually, I don't think we are necessarily a WCO, but we aren't that different. The WCO attempts to move the ball through a lot of short and quick passes, so doesn't necessarily run as much as the short pass acts as... for lack of better words, the run game.

While it totally depends on exactly how you define the WCO, it seems to me that run something similar in philosophy to the WCO.

[kane#7]

Yer TBH I just wanna see Ryan a few times in a 4WR 1 TE set with White, Jenkins, HD and Weems as WR and Gonzalez in the slot... that is a lot of weapons...

I do however want to move away from a run first team and give the face of our franchise the Keys to our offense and we go as far as he can take us

[Beef]

The WCO is a spread-offense at it's core & incorporates no less than 3-dimensions. We certainly do not run that because we don't have the personnel to do it.

We don't need to run a WCO either. If we had multiple deep threat receivers & a scat-back on top of a power running game & a short yardage passing game (both of which we're experts at), defenses will be forced to spread out & we can do whatever we want at that point. Controlling the clock with short yardage 3-down/10 scheme the first half, then blaze it up with deep passes, play-action, & screens the second half, or visa versa, or just all 4 aspects done at random all game long.

What's great is that we're pretty close to having this when just 3 years ago this team was in shambles. I think this FO has done outstanding getting us to where we are. With FA & a good draft, we might just get 100% complete by the time year 4 starts. And that's way more impressive than people give credit for.

[JDaveG]

The WCO isn't just "dink and dunk" or "pass more than run." It's an offensive system. It relies on timing and while it does have short, quick passes to set up the run or longer passes, it also has typically 15-20 go routes called per game (even though only 1 or 2 go routes will actually be thrown). And in the WCO, a go route is typically TWO receivers running the 9 route with either a slot receiver working over the middle or a TE or RB as the checkdown.

It's true the WCO isn't "pure" anymore -- most people who run it (think Andy Reid or Mike Shanahan) have thrown a lot of other stuff in to mix things up. And it's also true that we have WCO elements to our offense (we run the sprint option at the goalline a lot). But we do not run a WCO, and I think the way the routes work in that offense is better for Matt Ryan than any other offensive system out there.

By the way, you can run a WCO base with a run first mentality. See Shanahan and Kubiak for examples of that. See Greg Knapp for a bad example

[Jesus]

This is from the end of this week's TMQ:

Quote:When a team has a bad season, from a marketing standpoint, it's important to give fans reason to imagine next autumn will be different -- bearing in mind that 90 percent of NFL ticket sales happen in the winter. So you fire a couple of assistant coaches and bring in new ones, as if offensive coordinator X will have some incredible knowledge that offensive coordinator Y lacked. Or you announce a switch from a 3-4 to a 4-3, or a 4-3 to a 3-4. This gives sports radio something to talk about through those lonely winter months and helps create hope that next season will be dramatically different from last season. If a coach or general manager says, "We need to acquire better players, practice sharper and hope for good luck on game day," that doesn't have ticket-sales appeal. If he says, "We're making a dramatic switch to the 3-4," that might inspire enthusiasm. It sounds decisive.

The worst is when NFL teams say, "Next year we're switching to the West Coast offense." Once an innovation, the West Coast philosophy today is reflected to some degree in all NFL offenses -- the term now has little or no meaning, except in promotion.

[BadMoonRising]

(01-25-2011 09:12 PM)Beef Wrote:  The WCO is a spread-offense at it's core & incorporates no less than 3-dimensions. We certainly do not run that because we don't have the personnel to do it.

We don't need to run a WCO either. If we had multiple deep threat receivers & a scat-back on top of a power running game & a short yardage passing game (both of which we're experts at), defenses will be forced to spread out & we can do whatever we want at that point. Controlling the clock with short yardage 3-down/10 scheme the first half, then blaze it up with deep passes, play-action, & screens the second half, or visa versa, or just all 4 aspects done at random all game long.

What's great is that we're pretty close to having this when just 3 years ago this team was in shambles. I think this FO has done outstanding getting us to where we are. With FA & a good draft, we might just get 100% complete by the time year 4 starts. And that's way more impressive than people give credit for.

First true response to what a west coast offense is, well a shorten definition but still on top of it.