The Ringer NFL Show - Why Isn’t Every Pass Attempt Play-Action?

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Ben and Steven continue their offseason deep dive into some of the biggest questions around the league. This week, they examine why play-action is underutilized in the NFL. They start by looking into what makes play-action so successful (01:32), the concept of “play pass” (17:37), and why play-action might not be as big of a cheat code as we once thought it was (36:20). Hosts: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guide, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure those time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league.

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Howdy? Ben Solac and this is the ringer NFL show. I'm joined today as always by the inimitable Stephen, say hi to the people. Hi people. And today we are continuing our offseason series of big picture podcast with a long look at play action. Most football fans can recognize a play action fake and tell you what might happen afterward, a deep dropback, a downfield throw, an explosive

gain. The play action pass banza has been spearheaded by coaches like Kyle Shanahan, Sean McBay, and Arthur Smith, and it has been responsible for long quarterbacking careers for players like Jared Goff, Jimmy Garoppel, and Ryan Tannahill. There is no doubt that a play-action pass is better than a drop-back pass. Yet, the league is still dropping back without a play-action fake, more than it's dropping back with one. Coaches are doing play-action more, but why aren't they doing it way more? Like all of the time. Today on the Ring-Anfell show, we're asking the question.

Why isn't every single pass attempt play-action? Steve, when was it that you first heard the good news of our Lord and Savior the play-action pass? When did you first accept play action pass into your life, saving all of our quarterbacks? I think I discovered it in 2018. I think that was like the first time I realized that there was this big disparity between play action passes and regular dropback passes. I don't even think before then I really thought about those two as two separate play call types. I just, you know, you just throw them all in the passing bucket and you just move on from there. We only had two major ones, run plays, pass plays.

But I think in 2018 is really when like the nerds got on board and like started pointing out the fact that this is a cheat code. Like every quarterback in the league is better at play action than they are without play action. And that was my that was my lightball moment. Yeah. So as a reminder, I think it's always helpful to think of the play action boom in the NFL in the framework of Jared Gough's career. That's how I remember it. So 2016, Jared Gough is the quarterback of the Jeff Fisher, Los Angeles Rams first overall pick. it's not great.

He starts seven games, and the Rams go 0 for 7. He has five touchdowns to seven interceptions. A completion percentage of 55%. In 2017, is the first year that Sean McBay takes over the Los Angeles Rams. Jared Glove goes 11 and 4

as a quarterback. He completes 62% of his passes. 28 touchdowns to 7 interceptions. This 2017 season was not yet the Rams Super Bowl season. It was the Todd Gurley. offensive player of the year, Aaron Donald defensive player of the year season, right?

The Rams were really, really good this year. They did get knocked out of the playoffs and the Eagles were the ones who went to the Super Bowl and subsequently beat the New England Patriots. Now, 2018, that's the Rams Super Bowl season. And I agree.

I think that's the year where it's kind of like, okay, what are these wizards up to? John McVehanan, this Kyle Shanahan. What's this now? What's the situation? And the landing spot was kind of play action. right? Numbers for you.

The furthest back I could find, because play action hasn't been charted for super long, was in 2015. Football outsiders had the play action rate of every single team in the league, and the Minnesota Vikings led the league in play action rate at 27%. Do you want to guess who led the league this year

in play action rate and what their number was? I know it's the Dolphins because they were doing the RPO stuff. I don't know what the number is, but I know it was high. It was not the Dolphins. The Dolphins for second. the Atlanta Falcons had a play action pass attempt, 43% of the time,

which like the leaders in like 2020 and 2020, and were like 35%, 36%. The Falcons are kind of, they're pushing new territory here, they're breaching new ground at 43%. Of course, the Falcons like also barely pass to the football. But regardless, the average league pass attempt this past season in 2022 was play action 26% of the time. So that which led the league in 2015,

was league average run-of-the-mill seven years later. And as we said, play action isn't exploding for no reason. This jaw on works. Like when you compare a play action pass to a drop-back pass, it's basically, again, a pass where they fake hanging the ball off to the running back versus a pass where they don't, play action is emphatically better. The number one metric is an explosive play rate, where a play action pass attempt last season went for 20 plus years.

yards 11% of the time. That's more than double that of a non-play action pass only went for a explosive gain 5% of the time. So you're ripping off huge chunk gains as a result of the play action pass. That leads to a play action pass being better in terms of success rate, how often teams have positive plays. And then an expected point added per dropback, which we use EPA a lot on the ringer NFL show and certainly on this feed.

EPA serves as a good barometer for how successful an offense was that goes beyond things like yards or completion percentage because you might complete a pass on third and 15 for nine yards, but guess what? That was not a helpful completion, and it was not helpful yardage. You ended up with fourth and six, you ended up with a punt.

And so expected points added gives us a context for saying, all right, nine yards is a lot more valuable on third and seven than it is on third and 15. And so when we use expected points, we're using as a barometer for how successful an offensive play is, and the EPA per drop back on play action passes,

0.09 over the last five years as a boys do negative 0.02 in the last five years for non-play action passes. So fundamentally, teams are using play action more, and it's working. When we go on film, Stephen, and when you look at coaches, and you look at the way that coaches understand this lever, because there's stuff about play action that coaches definitely get, and then there's stuff that the analytics community would say

is still cutting edge and coaches haven't gotten their teeth all the way around. When we talk about what plaction does on the film, why is it so successful? Why does it work? Well, I think one thing it does is it creates transition period. for the defense in a unique way that you don't see in any other play type. When you look around at other sports and, like, the evolution of X's and O's and the other sports, one of the big themes is trying to get, trying to attack the defense when it's not set

yet, when it's transitioning from offense to defense. Like in soccer, you press up high so you can get high turnover, so you can, you can attack the defense. Stevens have played a lot of FIFA recently. So he's in soccer mode right now. It's not FIFA. It's football manager. Get it right.

He's been playing a lot of football manager recently. Definitely a game that I've heard of before. All I know is I'm getting screenshots from Stephen. Like, my four forwards are all injured. I'm like, I'm sorry. That sounds like it's tough. I apologize. Whatever.

And in basketball, now the thing is like ball movement. This started with the Warriors. It's getting, because teams got so good at offering help defense. They're basically playing zone defenses on basketball that now you have to get the ball rotating. You have to get the defense into the rotations. You unsettle them. There's no way to create.

that in NFL, in football, because plays are contained. They're self-contained. There's a whistle, and there's a whistle to start to play, a whistle to end of play. But does tempo not create that? We go to a huddle? Tempo does create that a little bit, but that's just like with the call. The defense still gets lined up for the most part. If Aaron Rogers were here, he'd argue that tempo does that, but that's for a later segment where Aaron Rogers. He's very unique. Yeah, he's very unique in that regard. But what play action does is you do create that transition. You create the transition from, we're defending the run, we're defending the run, we're defending the run. Oh, the quarterback kept the ball. Oh, no. Now we have to transition into our past events. And now you have

this, now the structures aren't working like they're supposed to work. Like the zone defense spread out across the field isn't properly distributed. And now you have these gaps in the defense. And usually because the run action draws the linebackers, they are the second level defenders up to the line of scrimmage, that those openings are way down the field, which is where all the good EPA comes from. Yeah, there's a great Steve Sarkesian clip. He was the office coordinator at Alabama in Mac Jones's season, I think, and also two was last season. I can't. Too many Bama coordinators. He was a Bama coordinator a couple years ago, and he's doing a clinic on their play action pass, and he talks about the fact that the RPO game, which we're going to talk about

a little bit more in the show, the quick run fakes that become quick passes, right? It happens really, really rapidly. Those are all kind of hitting in this second level, and you've seen defense is adjust to that by asking those safeties to come downhill. And that's led to a big renaissance of these deep play action passes because you're, oh, we're running an RPO. Like, you better get your safety, 10 yards off the line of scrimmage. You can stop this little quick in breaking route. And then you run a post in behind him.

And that's really where you're trying to get the sucker, right? So that's where you start to see some of these big downfield passing attacks work off play action. I think that distinction, not even distinction, dividing the defense's approach and theory and responsibilities into run defense and past defense is really important because fundamentally play action is about conflict, right? It would be nice if you could run any past coverage on defense. Cover one, cover three, cover two, quarters, rotate, you know, strong rotation, requitation, behind any sort of run defense.

Four man rush, five man rush, one gap, two gaps, stunts, games, twists, but the reality is that these are not, it's like different heads of screwdriver. It's not every single head for a screwdriver fits in every single screw. You can't run, you know, cover two, and then also expect to be able to play every single run gap with your defense line and your linebackers. You start out of bodies, right? Like, you have to somehow find an additional body to get into that front. So you have to run a twist or a game or a stunt.

Like, all of these things are very connected. And if we were to try to walk through all the various connections, one, we would do a terrible job and two, we'd be on the podcast for three hours. But fundamentally, what's going to end up happening as you play defense is you're going to have to ask second level players, linebackers and nickel corners. And then also strong safeties when they rotate down. You're going to have to ask second level players to play both the run in the past. You're going to have linebackers whose job it is to fill the B gap against a run and that

gap is directly in front of them. They have to go forward to get there. And also play the hook in cover three. zone and that that zone is behind them that is in the opposite direction so you are fundamental you're saying if it is run we need you to go forward and do this and if it is past we need you to go backwards and do that and the offense says well shoot if we if it's this guy it's run for long enough he's not going to be able to get back to where he needs to be right this is why when you want when you look at some some examinations of of flash and passments efficacy in like

like in public discourse with public data, Josh Hermesmire of 538 does this a lot. One of the ways he measures the efficacy of a play action pass is by how far up did the linebacker come before he started bailing backwards into his pass responsibility. Right. It's kind of saying, all right, most play action passes, a lot of play action passes are trying to pull that linebacker down

and throw behind him. So let's see how far down he went. Let's see how convincing the play action fake was. So it's that idea of conflict that just, it allows you to move a defender. It allows you to predict where he's going, to be and then throw it to the space that he vacated. And that's like fundamentally, I think, how a pletia pass is working. Yeah. And I think that's what makes it so interesting from like a

scheme perspective, because there are different ways to put those players in conflict. And there are different directions to kind of pull them into conflict. Like you talked about making the linebacker step up to defend the run as opposed to stepping back to defend the pass. But that now you get into like the realm of Shanahan who is displacing linebackers side to side horizontally. rather than vertically. And that's where you see the differences in scheme. And that's where I think, I think that's where the analysis has to go

over the next couple of years because the defenses, the way defenses are playing, as you alluded to, is to kind of reduce that conflict that those second level defenders are facing. And now the ball is back in the offensive coordinator's court. Now they have to figure out a way

to create even more conflict and to put them in even more conflict to get back to the, basically the game states they were dealing with before we saw this influx of two high coverages of pattern matching of different of various tools to combat this conflict that offensive coordinators are always trying to create yeah i think that difference in i hesitate to say aesthetic because aesthetic makes it sound nominal makes sound like it doesn't matter like it's just kind of like a small a small thing you observe but it really it is a meaningful

thing but that difference in the aesthetics of play action of what runs is this team faking really, really matters in terms of understanding how the defense is getting pulled, right? The most helpful way to think about this, in my opinion, is to think about the Tennessee Titans under Arthur Smith, when Ryan Tannhill and Derek Henry were really cooking a couple years ago, up against the Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVey teams of the same time. Because McVey and Shanahan were running wide zone play action. Wide zone is a running play. That is exactly what it sounds like. We're running zone blocking.

So everybody's heading one direction, just going to kind of block an area of the field. And we're doing it out wide. We're doing it really far over that way. So the left, really far over that way to the right. And right, as you said, what we're taking is we're taking that gap that that linebacker is responsible for. And we're moving it to the left. And we're saying, you've got to go chase this gap. This might be a run.

And this gap that you're responsible for is heading to your left. Go, run, chase it. So now that linebackers moving horizontally, they execute the play fake and very often and very frequently boot the quarterback out the other direction. So now the quarterback's moving opposite the flow of that linebacker. The linebacker's a slam on the brakes, turn, and start running towards the other sideline. It's a left to right stretch,

and the receivers are often running left to right to kind of take advantage of the linebacker's momentum going the wrong way. Then you watch that Titans team. Brother, we ain't running a wide zone with Derek Henry. We run Derek Henry downhill. Right. Vertical. We are going

at you. And so now they're not running wide zone play action, they're running different running schemes. And it's still from under center and still with a single back, seven yards back, and it's all with two tight ends and all looks the same at first. But fundamentally they're trying to move the linebacker differently. They're trying to run Derek Henry right at him. So that linebacker feels like he needs to step downhill, come down into a line of scrimmage, and then they'll run routes that break in behind that linebacker.

So their play action office a little bit more verticality to it. They ask the quarterback to stay in the pocket. And that's where you see a Ryan Tanhill, six, four. 225, big fella, right? That's where you see him succeed, whereas, you know, kind of the six to 220 pounds of Jimmy Garapolo, who doesn't take hits as well as Tanhill does, probably would not have succeeded. He needed to roll out a little bit more. Baker Mayfield and Cleveland need to roll out a little bit more, right? And so the stylistic differences, you're changing who gets pulled and how they get pulled is a huge part of like understanding each individual

play action call from a discrete perspective. From a league-wide perspective, play-action pass moves a linebacker and then throws to where that linebacker was. It manipulates a guy and then creates more space. It's nicer than a drop-back pass where you can't do that as easily. There's other ways to do it if you can't do it as easily. But from a discrete perspective,

there's 50 shades of gray in terms of how play action works. And that's really important to understanding which teams run play action, how much they run it and why they run it. And if you look up, if you look up a playbook, an NFL playbook on the internet, and they're around. Like, if you want to Google Kyle Shanahan's 2017-49ers playbook, it's on the internet. It's there free. But the way he kind of buckets these passes, he doesn't have just a play action section of his playbook. He has play pass, which is the more vertical one, the Ryan Tannahill style. Then he has movement passes,

which are the ones you were alluding to, the wide zone where you're getting outside of the pocket and you're trying to create that horizontal stretch. I think that's a big deal. Like, You can't just call for more play action when you're, like if you're complaining about your team's play call, you can't just be like, more play action. Because the offense coordinator is going to ask, well, what type of play action do you want us to run? And then there are implications.

Like, if you want to be that wide zone type of play action where you're stretching, you're getting outside of the pocket, then you have to invest into that style of run play. Yeah. Or the defense just is it, they're going to, they're not going to play the right coverages that work against that style of play. Yeah. We're going to let's take a break.

And when we come back, We're going to talk about the investments in the offense that are necessary to run good play action. We're going to talk about that Shanahan play pass nonsense and what it all means for increasing play action rates in the league. We're going to come back after this. Okay, so play pass is the most annoying phrase that has ever been created. Deal with it. I'm sorry.

Bill, I think Bill Walsh, as all things were, Bill Walsh is the one who started it. When he was doing play action, he called it Play Pass, which I don't know if Bill Walsh knew how football discourse would grow over the next 50 years. years when he said it. But it's just the, it's the clunkiest thing to say. But you hear coaches say it. You'll hear players bring it up, right? Like when Kirk cousins, wherever Kirk's talking about his under center play action, he always goes, and so we get into our play pass stuff, right? And by that phrase, play pass, what they, what he means and what you see like Shanahan mean and what these guys that talk about, what they mean is right, that really, really hard sell play action.

So let's take, let's take a look at that. If I'm executing a play action fake, I need the entire defense to believe I'm running the football. And that means at the snap, the quarterback's eyes need to go to the running back and the ball needs to come out. The running back needs to look like he's receiving the ball, needs to look like he's reading out the defense, and he's looking like he's pressing for a hole that he's going to find somewhere to run critically, and perhaps most importantly, the offensive line needs to look like they are run blocking, right? defensive players talk about a high hat or a low hat read pre-snap, right? Where, okay, if an offensive alignment has their head up, they're probably about to pass

protect. If a defensive lineman, or excuse me, if an offensive lineman has their head lower, as their head down, they're probably going to come off the ball and they're going to run block, right? So at the snap, the offensive line has to look like they're run blocking. In Shanahan's system, right? You'll see protection schemes that are based off play action passes where half of the line, Right? I go like the play side guard and the play side tackle, the right guard and the right tackle,

they're going to look like they're run blocking. You want you guys to sell the run. And we're going to let the left side line just pass protect, right? Left side line, you guys can just drop back. You know what I'm saying? Just drop back. Don't worry about it. We're just going to kind of fade the run with this half of the lines. We want to move this line back right here. We're going to keep it contained. And everybody else can safely pass protect over here, right? And then you see play action protections, play pass protections, where the assignment is, run zone

come off the line right it is it is go block the tackle as if we are running the football there's a 2008 article on ESPN about like play action pass and pretty much it's about how Peyton Manning is super good at it

and like they're like wow like this is the magic for Payton Manning is the play action pass and I was reading I was like if Steve and I were writing in 2008 we'd be like Payton manning's a play action merchant he came not really playing the game the right way he's cheating drop back like an adult. Yeah, drop back like a man.

In that piece, Matt Burke, the Viking Center, gives a great quote where he says, you identify the defense the same way, like the same way if it was a running play, get everybody going the same way, everybody on the same page, every defender is accounted for. At the snap of the ball,

you want to make sure it, as we say, smells like, feels like, like, and tastes like run. The consequence of this decision is enumerated in the Shanahan playbook. I'll tweet out, if you go and you look on my Twitter, you'll find the playbook that I'm reading from. It says on the offensive lines responsibilities for the play, block 15, 14 week aggressively.

So it's block zone play aggressively. Backside tackle and tight end will be responsible for defensive end and Sam linebacker. So if you are a Niners fan and you're watching Hassan Redick hit Brock Purdy on the elbow, knock him out of the NFC championship game and ruin your season, and you're going, why did we have a backup tight end on Hassan Reddick? Because it's in the playbook, buddy. When you are trying to pass off of run action, when you are trying to execute a true play pass,

a true big boy play action pass, one of the things that you have to understand offensively, one of the costs of doing business, is that your offensive line does not execute traditional pass protection. You got that guy, I got this guy, we'll pick up the blitz this way, they sell out for the run. The benefit is that you fool linebackers. The cost is that if somebody's blitz in, the back's got to go get him.

The tackle doesn't have his eyes up. And critically, when you're under center, the quarterback's back is to the defense. He doesn't see it because he's executing a play action fake. So one of the real big things that we have to talk about, and we talk about play action, pass fakes, and incorporating them more into offenses, is that you have to be willing to have a quarterback turn his back to the defense. And you have to have tight ends running backs who can functionally work in pass protection. And even those teams that do have those things, the 49ers, it's still a tight end against Hassan Reddick.

And you still end up sometimes with quarterback injuries. Just ask Jimmy Garoppel and Trey Lans and Brock Bertie about these quarterback injuries. This is a huge part of play action pass. And one thing, I guess, like, the retort would be, oh, why don't you just not have a linebacker or a tight end block Hassan Reddick on those plays? And that gets back to, you have to sell it to the defense. If I'm the defense and I'm looking at the 49ers doing a run fake and I look backside, the backside of the run, the opposite direction the run is headed in. And I see they have an extra tackle over there instead of a tight end.

I'd be like, why are they doing this? They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't put extra bodies on the backside of a play on a running. A huge part of the advantage of the running play. Like when you design the run is like, oh, sick. We get to put a tight end on Hassan Reddick, run away from him. And now we're stealing an extra. offensive line body to actually use in the run.

And so when you go to do play action fake off of that pass, guess what? You still got to do it. It's got to look the way. It's got to smell like and look like and tastes like run. And so that's right. You start to get those moments. Now, we brought up the under center aspect of things a little bit. The play action fake is better when the quarterback is under center because the run fake lasts for

longer and looks more convincing than in shotgun. When NFL teams go to run the football, they just don't typically do it from shotgun. There's exceptions to this, and a lot of that is like the spread offense and the QB run offense. We're going to talk about that a little bit more. But in general, if you go and you look at the last five years of football, play action fake from under center, 0.12, expected points out of her dropback. And from the gun, it's only 0.08.

So a little bit of an advantage. Success rate, another small advantage, 50% versus 48%. but then you look at 20 plus yard play. You look at explosive play rate, and it's a 13% explosive play rate when you're under center, only a 9.5 explosive play rate when you're in the gun.

The under center play action fake tends to work better than the shotgun play action fake does. They're still both way better than dropback, but the under center looks better. The cost of the under center is turning your back to the defense, right? Ben Rothesberger, very famously in 2021, Matt Canada, new offensive coordinator, coming from the LSU offense,

coming from college. We run some under center play action over here, baby. And Ben Rothesberger said, I don't do that, Chief. I'm not about it. It's not for me. Michael, this from Steelers Depot.

Mike Lombardi said that Rothsberger hates playing under center, never wanted to turn us back to the defense, thus eliminating the play action passes. Randy Fickner in 2020, Rothusberger's old offensive coordinator said, every week we evaluate what can be done from a play action standpoint, from a protection standpoint of Ben Rothesberger first. He is always going to be most comfortable in dropback pass.

He can see in front of him. He can see his sides. He can be prepared for site adjusts and hots and things like that, basically adjusting the play to the blitz. Some of that is his comfort level. And so one of the, I think, hang-ups that you run into when you see a team

that wants to run more play action but doesn't, is that oftentimes the quarterback does not want to be put in a position where he has to turn his back to the defense to sell these play-action fakes. And you can tell them as much as you want about how good the EPA per dropback is on these plays, but he's going to say,

I don't want to get lit up like a Christmas tree by a Blitzin linebacker. And it's hard to argue against him with that, especially if he's making like a bazillion dollars. And I think a good example of this playing out last year was to attack of Iloa in Miami. You have Mike McDaniel come over from the Shanahan system. We all assumed, what I assumed at least was there was going to be some mixing of what Miami had been doing with Tua where they're running a bunch of RPO with the Shanahan scheme. and that's what it was early on.

You go back and watch that first Patriots game in week one. They call like 20 plays from under center. And they're running a lot of play action, a lot of wide zone. And Tua just isn't good at it. Like, I don't think Tua likes it. I think Tua is one of those quarterbacks to prefers to be in the gun. He gets to see everything in front of him, doesn't have to turn his back to the backfield. And then another thing with Tua is he's just not that talented of a thrower, like outside of the pocket.

So you're doing the outside zone stuff and getting them outside the pocket. And then he has to make a throw on the run, which one, it's awkward because he's left-handed, so now you have to flip the offense because it's usually for a right-handed quarterback. Yeah. And then he doesn't run well, he doesn't throw well on the run. He'll throw it in the dirt a bunch. And McDaniel, to his credit, almost immediately, almost that next game against the Ravens in

week two, now they're operating from the gun, almost exclusively. Still a fair amount of under-center play action. But as the season went on, they went away from the under-center wide-zone stuff. And McDaniels found a way to take advantage of Tua's skill set while still. still calling play action, he just did it from the gun. And now you're getting more RPO looks from Miami. So I think that's one of the challenges is it's not, oh, let's just turn the play action dial all the way up.

You have to figure out a way to make play action work for your personnel and more specifically your quarterback. Yeah, the McDaniel to a offense is a critical offense to understanding this interaction of, yes, you definitely should run more play action on a league-wide level, because it's very good and it's better than dropback. But there's definitely sometimes where you shouldn't. Last season, by expected points added per dropback on passes with no play action, Tuatung Wailoa led the league.

Better than Patrick Mahomes. There was no quarterback in the league by expected points added. Better without play action than Tuaai Lua was. That's insane because Tua is not better than Patrick Mahomes, right? You can get any Dolphins fan that you want to hear, any two and on believer. Like, he's not better than Mahomes. By on dropbacks with play action, too, it was 26th. This is the guy coming from Mike Big Daniel.

This is the guy coming for the Shanahan offense. And then it gets even crazier because guess what? Last year on dropbacks, no play action. Jimmy Grombole was third. Brockporti was fifth. What? Yeah. And the Shanahan's, the Shanehan, his play action rate is going down.

Shanahan has been known as this play-action merchant, but like, yes. If you read the tea leaves, they're going away from that. And I think a big part of the Christian McCaffrey trade was finding an early down option that wasn't as expensive as the word I would use. That's the word coaches use, expensive to install, as expensive as play action is. Because like we said, you have to invest in it. You have to run certain formations. You have to run certain run plays.

But Shanahan, I think he read the writing on the wall. ball and was like, we can't win a Super Bowl doing this. This is a concept that you kind of have to earn. It's like a luxury. And his solution was finding a running back who can create mismatches in the run game. And that's how he started to attack linebackers. Yeah. The, the, watching the McDaniel two offense of it while concurrently watching, right, the Jimmy Grop little Brock Bertie offense, where you're watching these teams just kind of sit in shotgun. And when they're in shotgun, every so often, there's kind of sticking the ball in the belly of the best. back, right? They're kind of like, oh, maybe we're going to hand it off. But in general, like,

not selling out for these large play action fakes. And yet they're still finding a lot of space in the same second level that they were previously attacking. And you're trying to figure out how, you're trying to figure out why. And then you start to see the amount of motion that they have pre-snap. And you start to realize how conflated these two things are. Right? We talk about play action. We're talking about a ball fake on a pass attempt. We talk about pre-snap motion. We're talking about a player moving before the snap on offense, a wide receiver heading from one side to the other, a running back moving out of the backfield,

running back moving into the backfield. And oftentimes we're talking about teams that have motion at the snap, right? The dolphins being a prime example of this, of a team that we are going to put a receiver in motion. And while he is still moving, we are going to snap the football. What are we, what's happening right here? The exact same thing that we talked about in terms of why play action works. we are displacing somebody, right?

We are moving a guy across the formation to force the defense to change their look, to change their perspective, right? Say, okay, like we previously were in this call because we had two receivers to this side. Now we have to flip the call because there's two receivers to the other side. And it kind of puts them in that transition defense

you were talking about, right? Right. The offense is a moving target. And it puts the offense in a position where they can predict, okay, if we send this receiver and jet motion from the left to the right, they're going to have to bump their linebackers

over left to the right. And that's going to leave a gap over here. It's going to leave a vacant area. We're going to be able to create space the same way we wanted to. So now we get the same advantage we got from play action without as many of the costs, right? Without the cost that play action usually affords us where the quarterback needs to turn around. We're not going to be as sound of protection options. That economy, right, that like, all right, we're going to get all the benefits without as many of the costs isn't 100% true.

Tua still took a lot of hits. And the Niners quarterback still took a lot of hits. the dolphins tried to solve the problem by pulling offensive linemen a lot. Instead of having five guys just straight drop back into past sets and try to block the four guys opposite them, they'd have a double team and they'd pull a guard and they'd have him try to pick up an unblock end

and they're trying to create this pocket for Tua. It was an understandable move. I get the wisdom of it. I think if you run it all back, McDaniel's probably doing the same thing. It didn't work as well as they would have liked. But some of that's on like two-of-play style and some of that's on the quality of their offensive line. So there's, this is kind of like a new frontier here for this Shanahan offense and then the McDaniel iteration of the offense is saying, all right, we've done the play action thing for like a decade now.

It takes a lot out of us. Like, we have to just be that team. We have to do this. We are only going to run these concepts and we're going to call this play action stuff off of these concepts. Guess what? We had our shots to win our Super Bowls. Niners against the Chiefs, Rams against the Patriots. We didn't get it.

We missed. And defenses are starting to catch up. Like you said, like Shanahan's moving away from play action. Yeah, play action rate went down from 2021 into 2022. And play action efficacy. But I expect the points out it went down from 2021, 2022. It's way too early to call the shot. But like there's a chance that like defenses are gaining steam here.

And so you see innovators like Shanahan and McDaniel are trying to figure out, okay, how do we get to the same? buckets and get to the same layups and get to the same spots, but without doing the whole play action thing that we've had to do for these past 10 years. Yeah. So there's a guy on Twitter. He used to be an offensive line coach in the NFL, Jim Mouse McNally. Just insane, just an insane account. He always tweets on all caps. It's just insane. But if you, and he gets very upset if you ask him a question that he's already answered on Twitter. So please scroll his whole timeline before you interact with them at all, or he'll get very mad. But he had a tweet, and I can't find it now

because he posts so much, where he was talking about how the efficacy of the wide zone is kind of dwindling. And it has been over the last couple of years because of things we were talking about with the defense, where defenses are figuring out a way where they could still defend the run, but linebackers have more time to discern run from past before they have to commit to run defense or past defense. So we're seeing less of the outside zone-based play action. We're seeing more more of like pulling guards, plays that are meant to look like downhill runs rather than side to side runs.

I think that's where we're going within the league. And it's because defenses. And that's like the cyclical nature of this, of the sport. It's always a punch, counter punch. So I feel like a lot of the times, especially with like analytics now,

they, when they came onto the scene, it was like around 2016, 2017 football outsiders was way before that. But before like they really, had a louder voice in the conversation. But like all of their takes, I feel like are based on data from like a certain time period where things were true. Like, yes, play action is great and it's going to work. It's better than drop back passing. But as defenses change and the structures

of their coverage is change. In theory, the efficacy of play action is going to change too and how it works and how you get to it and what kind of throws it opens up. So I think this is always going to be a moving target and there's not going to be like, you can't just make some grand declaration that this is the way to play offense and it's always going to be the right way to play offense. And I think we're seeing that in real time over the last couple of years. Throughout the history of the league, we've seen the efficiency of run and pass plays kind of go through ebbs and fast. But it's never like connected or it never had been in the past.

Like one, one year passing and running would go up. The next year passing would go down and running. go down. I'm talking about like in the 90s and in the early 2000s. Over the last couple of years, there's been a steady stream where passing has gone down every single year of the last three years and running has gone up every single year over the last three years. That's a new phenomenon. We had never seen that before. And I think part of that is defense is figuring out ways to stop play action. Right. I want to talk more about that era that kind of preceded the play action boom. and by I want to talk about it, I mean,

Aaron Rogers really wants to talk about it. We'll do that after the break. Okay, so Aaron Rogers hopped on Pardon My Take with some opinions last season, as Aaron Rogers just want to do, just kind of hop on a show and fire off some opinions and then get mad when people think he said the thing that he said. Anyway, on Barton my take,

Rogers was talking about, was asked about the Matla floor off, and he was talking about Randall Cobb, and they kind of had a bad couple of games, and Cobb was injured. And Rogers made, like, a comment about how there's kind of like too much motion in the offense. And the part of my take fellas were like, what? Like, what does that mean? Like, yeah, what's the situation?

Rogers was like, well, I've said all of this to Matt LaFlor before, and I've said this all to everybody before, and I tell him this all the time, and this isn't me complaining about the offense. And then he went on to complain about the offense for a little bit. And one of the things he said in that clip was, it's a little frustrating when you grew up in the West Coast offense and your mindset is all about protection and adjustments in different things. He also talked about how in that West Coast

offense, he was always so amazed by and impressed by, he called it the most beautiful offense, Peyton Manning, who he said would just line up in two by two and three by one and just run tempo, pick his matchups, right? Use his cadence to get the defense to move a little bit, find the matcher that he wanted to, and then he said, you know, you'd win with accuracy and you're movement of timing and movement with precision, which is hilarious because I got the 2008 article where everybody's like, man, play action is really making Peyton Manning go. And it's kind of like, okay, well, everything is the same under the sun. You know what I'm saying? We're not like, this mental image that Rogers has a Peyton Manning maybe isn't super accurate. But so, yeah,

so he says, uh, uh, Rogers is talking about how he came up in this West Coast offense. It was all about precision and timing and, and, and these one-on-ones and, and you beating the other guys with your talent. And there's a, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, like, you hear Dak Prescott talk about it a little bit, your Peyton Manning talk about it a little bit. They hold this offense in this, like, rarefied air. Like, oh, like, because it's, it's the grown man offense, right? It's the, I'm better than you offense.

It's the big brother, little brother in the driveway playing ball. Like, I just, I, I, I, I'm better at this than you are right now. And I think that's a really important framework for then understanding the proliferation of this play action passing offense in the league now because Kyle comes in, takes over Houston, great Matt Schaub season, goes to Washington, Kirk Cousins is a fourth round pick, becomes a starter, Atlanta, Matt Ryan has always been good, all of a sudden as an MVP, San Francisco, Jimmy Groplo's second round pick, start to get NFC championship games out of him, Sean McVeigh fixes Jared Gough,

Kirk Cousins continues to succeed under this offense, Baker Mayfield has his one good season under Kevin Sofansky in this offense. Ryan Tannihill, first round pick, bust, goes to Tennessee, gets in this offense, starts to play in the AFC playoffs. This offense is really, really good at raising the floor of bad quarterbacks.

You're not supposed to say that. You're not allowed to say that. You're not allowed to say that about them. You're not allowed to bring up the fact that they're play action merchants. Play action is a floor razor. And what it does is it simplifies the game for quarterbacks who otherwise struggle

to do their. that pristine, gorgeous, top button button, West Coast offense nonsense, right? We're like, they're not the sort of guys who can walk up to the line, do the pain, man in cadence, identify the coverage from like the one time they saw it four and a half years ago, and then throw a perfect pass with excellent timing 100% of the time. They're not the guys who can do that. So they get play action offense. And yes, like the system and the scheme of the offense has to sell out a little bit

to make it work for them. But hey, you just got a starting quarterback out of Kirk Cousins, out of Jimmy Gropa, out of Jared Gough. Like, that's huge. That's great. But then that play action offense runs into an Aaron Rogers. And Rogers wins the MVP

in back-to-back seasons, but is whining about and is frustrated about the fact that he doesn't get to run the offense the way he wants to. And when they lose, he feels like it's because he didn't have control over the dropback game

and he couldn't go tempo the way he wanted to go. He complains a lot about how he never gets to go tempo, which is always pre-snap motion. And it's like, yeah, he just wants to run, hurry up, no huddle,

call every play the line of scrimmage, and run this thing for himself, which, I don't know if Roger should get that leeway. I don't know if anybody should get that leeway, but he did win MVP, and he's kind of really talented.

And so it creates this discussion where, like, okay, play action from a leewide perspective, I think really helps quarterbacks. But when you get into the nitty-gritty, it seems like it helps the lower tier quarterbacks jump up a couple tiers, way more than it helps the top-tier quarterbacks, like truly elevate.

Which, again, like, you can argue, Rogers was not playing great and then he got into the little floor offense and won MVP's but I'd argue that's just like he went from a bad coach to a good coach. I'm not sure I'm going to argue that like play action was a thing that really like saved Aaron Rogers.

No, I think it's that autonomy that quarterbacks that the best quarterbacks want and that's why you see a lot of these I guess quote unquote pocket passers these guys that are kind of field generals I think is the best way to put it. Sure.

And to not like play action. Like Matt Ryan is another person who didn't really like play action before Kyle Shanahan came around. But I think the difference between, and I think that's why the play action guys get labeled system quarterbacks because they don't have that,

that leeway to kind of make changes. They're not guys you give the ball to and say, go get a bucket. Like, they're not, like play action quarterbacks are the guy standing in the corner waiting to hit the open three. They're PJ Tucker.

They're not James Hardin, dribbling. Let's not, we don't need to do Sixers. I did that on purpose. We don't need to bring up Sixers players. That's fine. But I think that's the difference. And maybe it sounds like a dumb guy take because like you said,

Paid Manning was calling, like using a lot of play action. But Peyton Manning could do all that other stuff. Payton Manning was also getting to the line and making changes and he was changing protections and he was changing plays. Right. And that's the thing is like you either are capable of that or you aren't. Like you can't just install that in a guy. Like even Jimmy now sitting in the gun running less play action for the Niners,

it's still training wheel stuff. You know what I'm saying? You're still point to shoot. It's still stare at Christian McCaffrey. He's going to go left or right. and you just throw it whichever way he goes. He's going to be open. That's what it is.

But yeah, but that's when you get into the limits of play action. When you have a quarterback where that's like the only way he can thrive because you start looking at different situations when play action is used. And one thing that jumps out is the difference in efficiency when you split by drop back probability. And drop back probability is just basically the chances that a team is going to pass. and that's based on down and distance.

So, like, on third and 10, dropback probability is very high. On second and one, it's slower. And when you look at play action efficiency in those buckets, it's only really effective in, like, the middle. So, like, when defenses don't know whether you're going to run or pass. And that's why I think it's a concept that you have to earn. You have to be a good team to run a lot of play action. If you're down by 20 points in the fourth quarter, guess what you can't call.

You can't call play action. If it's second and nine. get them. We're going to get them with this fake zone run. No, they don't respect you, man. If it's second and nine all the time because you suck on first down, you can't call play action. And I think that's part of the reason why a lot of people seem to think play action is this cure-all thing because they look at the league standings at the end and they're like, oh, look at all the good teams. They ran a bunch of play action. And all the bad teams

didn't run play action. I put one in one together. It equals two. Good teams run play action. Bad teams don't. That's not how it works. Good teams get to run play action. Bad teams don't get to run play action. And I think that's why when a quarterback is having a lot of success, like Baker Mayfield in 2020, and it's all on play action, that's why it's fair to point out the fact that he can only really play under play action. Like in 2020, sorry, too many 20s. In 2020, 2020.

I'm living in the future, baby. I've looked 18 millennia from now. I have seen a vision. But when you look at 2020, you look at Baker, Mayfield splits between play action and non-play action. His non-play action splits were basically Tayson Hill. Like, Taysom Hill had similar numbers on non-play action. And when I tweeted that out during this season when Baker Mayfield was having a great year and everyone was like, oh, look at Baker Mayfield, top 10 quarterback. The most common response was, yeah, well, if you take

away any quarterback's good plays, their stats are going to look bad. But this is the difference. This is a concept. This is a play that is situation, context dependent. And that's why I don't want Baker-Mayfield on my team because guess what? I need a great team around him in order to continue to call play action. Yeah, I think the point that if you look at the end of the season and you see all the good teams and you see they bring a lot

of play action and you just kind of look at it, you go, oh, so play action is good because the good teams do it. Well, no, it's that the good teams were leading games. And when you lead games, play action is more effective than when you're trailing in games. And so they just

were better than the other team, some of that being because they run play action, right? Like, there's absolutely a piece of that pie. But then they had a 14-point lead in the third quarter, and they wanted to have a 21-point lead in the third quarter. So you know how they did? Run play action. And the opposing team was,

defense was trying to be really aggressive. Defense was trying to make a play, generate a TFL, generate a stop. Defense was worried about them running the clock out, sustaining a long drive. So they take hard on the fake, and then there you go. The ball's down the field. And, again, like, take hard of the fake is difficult

because, like, I'm not sure that, like, measuring how far the linebacker steps forward totally and correctly encapsulates what we need to, but when you watch it, you see it, right? It's the sort of thing I think is visible and it's evident for the defense. I do think there is something to be acknowledged and to be said for as well

when we try to transition and start to ask that question of, okay, well, like, what's optimal play action rate? Like, where do you want to be as an offense? How much is too much? How do you know when it's too much? I think as you transition to that question, there's something to be said for like just taking the defensive perspective of things

and saying like right now, if you were a defensive coordinator, right? Like, why is the Vic Fangio defense everywhere? Why is everybody so excited about Vic Fangio in Miami? And he's the high-speed defense coordinator. And you've got a Gero Evereaux, and you've got Brandon Stanley, and you've got Joe Barry. And you have all these guys who have been around Vic Fangio,

have been kind of bringing us, even Sean Desai, all these guys have defensive coordinator jobs. Why? It's because the league went looking for a team that could handle the Shanahan McVay offense. And they found in that Jared Gough Super Bowl season, a random terrible six-point game against the Chicago Bears

then coordinated by defense coordinator of Big Fangio. This defense structurally had what was necessary to take away the play action fake, but it had something else. It wasn't just like, oh, like, you know, run the five down

and the six down fronts and rotate the safeties when the quarterback turns a play action fake. So when he's looking pre-snap, he thinks it's one high, and then he turns his back and he turns around, all of a sudden it's too high,

and he's been confused, and he didn't know who's going where. So structurally it had what it needed, but it had something else. house, which was Fangio's orientation on, his philosophy on, and this was really championed by Staley with the Rams, stopping the pass at the expense of stopping the run. Once we accept foundationally that this is a passing league, the teams that beat us beat us because they throw the football, the teams that score a lot of points do, they have really good quarterbacks

and they throw the ball well. This is a passing league. Once we accept that foundationally, our defense now is no longer structured with a being sound against the run principles as the first objective and then handling the past the second objective, which is how most traditional defenses were thought about, right? The structure came from the philosophy, and the philosophy was we got to stop the run, because for so long in football, for decades and decades to decades, so what you had to do to win. That's no longer the case.

And so now structure of defense changes as a result of philosophy of defense changing. And so it was not just the structure that Fangio's defense ran, but it was the philosophy. And again, specifically of Staley when he was with the Rams of saying, we're going to stop the pass of the expense of stopping the run. So now reintroduce the play action fake. It looks like run. But what's the priority of the linebacker here? But prior to the linebacker is defending the pass. And if he's late to the run, he's late to the run.

But that's the choice made by the defense. That's the philosophy. I always remember that play Eagles against the Niners in the NFC championship game. I think it was an RPO. It wasn't play action. but they serve as a decent enough proxy. They can kind of be interchangeable for at least this conversation here, where Fred Warner is sitting and reading,

he's reading run past, he's trying to read what the defense is doing, and he's just standing stock still, he's frozen. And like, everybody on the internet was like, this is like, look at the Eagles defense is like broken Fred Warner's brain, or the Eagles offense, excuse me, is broken Fred Warner's brain. But that really, like, wasn't what it was.

What it was was, was Fred, firstly trying not to tip off Jalen Hurst in terms of what direction he was going, But secondly, it was him playing the pass or we're playing the run. So the offensive line's flowing that way. The running back's flowing that way. But my responsibility is to fill this passing window. And then if I get to the run late, I get to the run late. When that gets flipped on its head, play action is going to lose some of its steam.

Not all of its steam because players are still coded. You stop the run. Don't be late. Go. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's still there. But that's where I think you're going to start to see this efficacy and this explosiveness of play action start to peak and then come back down a little bit. As defense has just decide, listen, we're going to.

stop the past of the expensive stopping the run. That's how we're going to be built. Yeah, when we started this, Bob, the first thing you asked me was, like, when I realized that play action was this cheat code, and it was like around 2017-2018. When I realized that it wasn't as big of a cheat code as I thought it was, was around like week two,

or week three this season. The Sunday night game between the Broncos and the 49ers, I think that was... You're disgusting. That was a horrible game. How dare you bring that game? Yeah, it finished 11 to 10, and I think it was one of the most important games of last year.

Because I think that was like the unofficial end of the Shanahan offense as we know it. I think that's the game when he was like, we need to do something different. Less than a month later, the Christian McCaffrey trade happens. And the nature of the offense totally changes from what it was. And if you read the quotes coming out from around the time of the trade, both John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan talk about how they're going, how Christian McCaffrey is going to unlock the offense. He's going to unlock the offense. he's going to allow us to do different things.

I thought that was like just, you know, general coach speak, GM speak at the time, because that's what they always say. But it legitimately happened. They did not lose a game after Christian McCaffrey went into the starting lineup. The next time they lost the game, they couldn't throw up. Running back wins, new metric.

And so I think that we're seeing the nature of how play action is going to work change in real time right now. And I think the future is illustrated by that play you just brought up with Fred Warner. I think it's about freezing linebackers rather than displacing them now. And I think the best proof of that, the best illustration over the course of the whole regular season is the Miami Dolphins, who I think really figured out a way to run play action without running it the traditional type of way. And that's like the hardest challenge.

Kyle Shanahan has been trying to figure out how to run play action from the gun for like 10 years now ever since RG3 and he hasn't been able to do it. and Mike McDaniel figured it out. And there's a clip on the internet of Kyle Shannon talking about the one play that Miami uses a bunch. They use this one play all the time. It's basically like a quick little glance post route, a guy running what's basically like a wheel route behind that. And then a guy in the flat and it puts so much pressure because you have Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle running downfield. And Shanahan's talking about it almost in awe. He's like, oh, my God, this play is so hard to defend.

And then he goes on to say that Tua isn't even really given a read. It's like just a feel thing for him. And it's almost like Shanahan is talking about it. Like he's jealous, like with envy. Because he doesn't have a quarterback who can do that. So he has to figure out other ways to run his play action to win in the same ways he was winning with that wide zone play action.

And I think he's done it with Christian McCaffrey. Yeah, if you want to see a look of the play, the, if you remember that Niners Dolphins game, first play of the game, 75-yard catch-and-run for Trent Sherfield, right? I'm 98% sure that was the play. I'm trying to find a clip of it. No, it definitely was.

Yeah, no, it is. It's the play, right? And so, Kyle Shannon's talking glowingly about this play, which Fred Warner takes one step towards the line of scrimmage, and it's a 75-yard catch-and-run, Trent-Shirfield House call. It's a good play. That'll work.

That'll go. That'll go for us. And it looks like an RPO, and throughout the season, I refer to it as an RPO, but they only handed the ball off once all year on that play. It's not an RPO. It's meant to look like an RPO.

It does, and it's because of the line action. The line is full on blocking run, which goes back to what we're talking about in terms of play pass, right? Like, if you really want to sell out for play action, you have to look like your blocking run. They leave Nick Bosa completely unblocked. 100% unblocked and Tua's not rolling out. He's standing in the pocket.

Nick Bosa is unblocked. 75-yard touchdown. That's a play. Good play. But that's such a perfect example of finding ways to get the same effect of play action without necessarily fully selling out for the whole offense. When we talk about like, oh, they need to run more play action. Really, they need to run more stuff that gives the quarterback easy reads with moving second

level defenders. Play action is one of those things. And there are currently teams that are trying to find other ones of those things. Now, if McDaniel represents one. one cutting edge of play action. There's one other guy I want to bring up, who I think represents another cutting edge of play action. And that's Arthur Smith,

the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, of aforementioned 43% play action rate. Now, any quick look at data, any deep look at data, any research that's been done on play actions for the last five years will tell you, you do not need to run the football well, nor do you need to run the football often

in order for play action to be efficient. There is no relationship Ben Baldwin writing in 2019 for football outsiders. There is no relationship between how often a given team actually runs and the effectiveness of their play action attack. The threat of rushing is sufficient to set up play action. You don't need to run first and run well in order to take advantage of it. I think that's fundamentally true. I think enough teams run the football enough that you have to respect the idea that they might hand it off on any given play. and you have to respect the play action fake.

Now, I do think that as defenses get wiser to play action, the teams that will be able to keep utilizing play action and finding such a huge advantage with it, are those teams that actually can kill you with the running game. And guess what Arthur Smith's Falcons can do, baby? They can kill you with the running game. This Falcons offense run heavy personnel at a higher rate than any non-Lamar Jackson team

this past season in terms of having multiple tight ends or potentially having a fullback on the field. They had two large running backs in Cordero Patterson and Tyler Algier, two big physical guys. They've now added a third very large physical man and Bijjan Robinson, the eighth overall pick running back out of Texas. And they're one of the teams that led the league in terms of overall run rate. When you look at like neutral down scripts, right,

you kind of adjust for game scripts, who's leading, who's trailing, you know, what down in distance are you facing? The Falcons are one of the most run heavy teams in the league. They are comfortable beating you running the football. and then when they pass, they run play action, which means that if you decide, all right, as a defense, we're going to stop the pass,

at the expense of stopping the run, we're going to stop play action by stopping the pass. The Falcons will go, sick. Cool, right? If you do that against the dolphins, the dolphins tried to hand the ball off to Jeff Wilson.

They went and got Rahim Moster. They had Rahim Moster. They got Jeff Wilson at the trade deadline. They tried to find a way to run the football when teams were selling out to stop their play action passing game. They were not successful. And they needed to invest more in the running game.

The Falcons? If you said, oh, we really got to take away the deep play action shots, the Falcons said, okay, we're going to score 28 on you. We're going to score 30 on you running the football. And those are the teams that are built to run that I think will endure a potential defensive counterpunch when it comes to this play action game. And that's where I think that running game will start to be really valuable for the Falcons for Arthur Smith moving forward.

I thought we saw this in the Super Bowl, too, the game plan for the Chiefs, which I thought was a good one, the defensive game plan, And even though they gave up a bunch of points, was to load the run box and make Jalen Hertz beat them with throws downfield to those star receivers. They made the throws. They made the plays. The receivers went nuts. But they still were able to run the football anyway, which is why they put up 40 points,

because they were able to involve the quarterback in the run game. They started going empty. They started emptying out the backfield and just having Jalen Hertz run. I think that's just proof that you have to have a dynamic run game that's able to punish a defense that sells out to stop certain things, whether it's the passing game, the deep passing game, or even your traditional run game. And I think that's what coaches around the league, offensive coaches around the league are realizing. Defenses have more tools. We need more tools to combat those tools. And play action is just one of them. And now even that is become a category that's hard

to kind of narrow down to one concept. There's so many different types. There's so many different types ways to run it. You can add motion. You can pull alignment. You can do the RPO stuff, which is similar. It's, I don't think there's an excuse to not have an expansive play-action game, but I don't think it's fair to just look at a team's play-action rate

and just say, that's not good enough. So, like, the main overarching question for the pot is like, are teams running enough play? Or why don't teams run play-action every play? And my answer to that is

because it depends. It depends on the situation. It depends on what you have. It depends on the coaching staff. I greatly resent you getting ahead of my question where I was going to make you say an exact number for the optimal play action rate for an offense. There's 32%. That's it. I asked, I asked AI. I asked like, Oh, yeah? And they actually gave you, they gave me an exact percentage. They said 20%. They said for

these reasons, they listed out three reasons. The three reasons were it takes time to set up the play, which I don't agree with, actually. It can be predictable, which is kind of what we're getting at. And I still don't agree with that. And it could be really risky. I also don't agree. with that. I don't agree with any of their take, but their conclusion, AI does not know ball. But their conclusion is that NFL teams can typically call play action about 20% of the time for maximum efficiency. So 20%. That's what AI says. And I agree with that number, actually. AI says 20%. I don't have the true media list in front of me. I would wager that like 25 of the 32 teams are above 20% 20% last year in terms of what action rate. I don't know. Like, what does that mean

though, like 20% of all plays, 20% of past plays. Like, that's, that's where it gets confusing. I think it's a percent of dropbacks, yeah. Shanahan in the second half of last year. So this is the Christian McCaffrey offense. He was traded in week seven, became a starter in week eight. 20% play action rate. He's AI optimal. That's that Shannon's secret. He's just been asking AI what to do. He thought Mike McDaniel was just a guy in a computer box for years. And he turns out I actually met him in person. He's like, it's unbelievable. No, no, Mike McDaniel's like Jarvis, like from, the Marvel universe.

Like he was, he was an AI, but somehow he got, he got turned into a human stone and now he's Ultron. And this is, this is our lore for the Miami Dolphins Head Coach. All right.

So there's no optimal number for play action passing. And I think emphatically, our answer is no, you should not run play action pass on every single attempt. But this is it, man.

Like, I think, I think we are in the twilight of the play action pass era, though it's not going to like go back down to where it was previous. It's just like going to kind of, you know, start to Valley after a peak.

I think we're probably entering an era of quarterback mobility as kind of like the defining thing of like offensive cheat codes. I think you're talking about the Eagles about that and Jaylon Hertz's development about that where he was drafted and kind of the value that he brings. But we're not going to do that right now because the podcast is over. That will be later in the summer because Stephen and I will be coming to you every single week this off season doing what we just did, which is trying to get our teeth around something really big, really chunky, really difficult in the NFL. and getting to some sort of a happy conclusion, even if we can't really answer the question. So thank you to producer Eduardo Ocampo for hanging out with us on this show. Thank you, as always,

for the additional production supervision of Arjuna Ramgapol and Connor Nevins. We will be back to you next week with why it's impossible to rank all the top 10 receivers, plus also our top 10 receiver rankings. Until then, see you then.