Martz calls Gase one of the three best play callers in the game.
Gase uses a clicker to go through Denver’s season-opening win over the Colts. We watch every play two or three times, an old habit for the coach. On Mondays after games he might have watched the tape four times—by himself, with the coaches, with the quarterback, and, finally with the offense.
We’re on a hunt for the coaching identity of Adam Gase, the Broncos’ 36-year-old coordinator. He began as a scouting assistant in Detroit in 2003 under Steve Marriucci and worked his way up to quarterbacks coach by 2007, the last of Martz’s two years as offensive coordinator with the Lions. After two seasons in Denver, Gase is arguably No. 1 on the unofficial list of head coaching candidates for 2015.
Martz hones in on one particular run. With 9:28 left in the first quarter, Montee Ball runs off tackle for four yards. No big deal, right? Watch again. There’s motion on the bottom of the screen. Gase knows from his film study that it’s de facto policy for the Colts to drop the strongside safety into the box when the offense is in a bunch formation, and to retreat the weakside safety. So he motions a receiver into bunch, and Manning immediately calls for the snap.
Ball takes the handoff with both safeties out of their ideal positions; one is even retreating away from the play. If Ball had made it beyond the first level, he had nothing but open field.
“This is big,” Martz says. “Playing defense is about rules. If you understand their rules, you can put them in bad positions.”
The Broncos have had problems running the ball, ranking 27th in the NFL in yards per game. Some of that falls on Manning as a play-caller. But Martz also sees it as a symptom of inexperience. Gase only sprinkles in the occasional zone-blocking run. “If you want to run zone-running plays, you have to do it over and over again. You have to have reps,” Martz says. “Twenty years ago it was difficult to evaluate quarterbacks because they might have thrown 120 times a year. Now it’s 450. You used to be able to evaluate running backs. Now that’s switched.”
Where Gase thrives, though, is in the passing game.
Second quarter, 6:50 remaining. Martz recognizes an old standby: 288 special, so named by Coryell. Two receivers run identical posts on the left side of the field, hence ‘88’.
On their way to winning Super Bowl XXXIV, Martz ran this exact play on the Rams’ first snap of their divisional-round victory over the Vikings in January 2000. Isaac Bruce took the inside post route 78 yards for a touchdown. On the Fox broadcast, John Madden exclaimed, “He did it!” So confident was Dick Vermeil that he told the broadcast crew they would run 288 on the first play. In the aftermath, Madden drew it up as only he can.
The Rams got the play from Norv Turner, who at the time “used to run the heck out of it,” Martz says. But Gase runs his own tweaked version of 288, which demonstrates his ability to create mismatches. On this play against Indianapolis, Gase positions his best pass-catching tight end, Julius Thomas, in a three-point stance, and a blocking tight end as the wing. Thomas will cross the field and the face of the defense.
Consider these contingencies:
A) If the Colts are in man defense, Gase and Manning know the linebacker will cover the tight end on the inside while the better-qualified safety will check the wing, because most offenses position the more agile player as the wing. Julius Thomas would then be covered by linebacker D’Qwell Jackson. No-brainer.
B) If the Colts are in a Cover 2, Manning will try to look off one of the safeties and throw the open post.
C) If it’s Cover 3, Thomas might still be open underneath, and you can always check down to the running back.
The Colts were in man coverage, and Thomas beat Jackson (of course) for a 35-yard touchdown.
“As a coach,” Martz says, “you have to have an answer for the quarterback so he knows where he’s supposed to go with the ball against every coverage. If Thomas was the wing, the safety would cover him. But by sticking him inside, now that linebacker has him. The safety wants to cover, and it’s logical for the safety to cover him, but he’s told not to.
“That, by design, is outstanding. It’d be easy to put him on the wing, but Adam knows the defense’s rules. All the little details work out really well. Very few people do this.
“They’ve got good players, and he knows what to do with them. He puts guys in position to have success. It would be easy to do the same stuff over and over, but each week he’s going to create.”
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/12/02/nfl-m...ike-mccoy-mike-mccarthy-best-offensive-minds/
