The Seattle Times printed a feature on Brian Schottenheimer. He’s now running the Seahawks offense, and he says he was told early on that getting the running game going was the No. 1 goal.
They seem to be trending in that direction. They used a first-round pick on Rashaad Penny, and he hasn’t even been able to crack the starting lineup yet. Chris Carson is running with the first unit and has been playing well. They added big D.J. Fluker to play right guard, and it looks like he’ll help.
In this article, written by Bob Condotta, Schottenheimer explained that he realized when he was backup quarterback at Kansas that his future in football was as a coach rather than a player. So he transferred to Florida to study the more advanced passing offense that Steve Spurrier was running.
Typically in these kind of stories, coaches are cautious about giving away secrets, so I was surprised when Schottenheimer riffed on his general play-calling philosophy. His goal, he says, isn’t to emphasize the run or the pass but to get to a combined 53 runs and pass completions.
“If you rushed the ball, say, 30 times and throw 23 completions, that was like the second determining factor of wins and losses after turnovers,” he says. “Some weeks, it’s going to be 33 completions and 20 rushing attempts. But we are always going to go in with the understanding that we should be able to run the ball, and believing and expect we can do it at a high level.”
I thought that was interesting enough that I wanted to look into some of the numbers. There’s a nice stats website, Pro Football Reference.com that makes it pretty easy.
Looking at the 2017 season, offenses that ran 52-plus such plays went 146-32 last year, a winning percentage of .820. Offenses that finished games with fewer than 48 plays (rushing attempts plus completions) went only 52-180, a winning percentage of just .224.
| SCHOTTENHEIMER'S PLAY THEORY | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plays | Games | Win | Loss | Pct |
| 27 | 2 | 0 | 2 | .000 |
| 29 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .000 |
| 30 | 2 | 1 | 1 | .500 |
| 31 | 6 | 0 | 6 | .000 |
| 32 | 2 | 0 | 2 | .000 |
| 33 | 2 | 0 | 2 | .000 |
| 34 | 7 | 0 | 7 | .000 |
| 35 | 7 | 0 | 7 | .000 |
| 36 | 7 | 1 | 6 | .143 |
| 37 | 5 | 0 | 5 | .000 |
| 38 | 15 | 2 | 13 | .133 |
| 39 | 11 | 1 | 10 | .091 |
| 40 | 20 | 5 | 15 | .250 |
| 41 | 28 | 6 | 22 | .214 |
| 42 | 17 | 1 | 16 | .059 |
| 43 | 19 | 6 | 13 | .316 |
| 44 | 20 | 6 | 14 | .300 |
| 45 | 29 | 12 | 17 | .414 |
| 46 | 16 | 5 | 11 | .313 |
| 47 | 16 | 6 | 10 | .375 |
| 48 | 29 | 14 | 15 | .483 |
| 49 | 17 | 11 | 6 | .647 |
| 50 | 24 | 17 | 7 | .708 |
| 51 | 32 | 16 | 16 | .500 |
| 52 | 18 | 14 | 4 | .778 |
| 53 | 31 | 23 | 8 | .742 |
| 54 | 17 | 14 | 3 | .824 |
| 55 | 21 | 17 | 4 | .810 |
| 56 | 16 | 13 | 3 | .813 |
| 57 | 21 | 16 | 5 | .762 |
| 58 | 12 | 11 | 1 | .917 |
| 59 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 60 | 12 | 8 | 4 | .667 |
| 61 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 62 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 63 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 64 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 66 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 67 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| 75 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
This theory, I think, has probably been pushed and stretched some in recent years, with more teams incorporating tempo into their offenses. More teams more often are gong to the hurry-up. Chip Kelly, for example, doesn’t fit into this box. With his offenses firing off plays, he most usually would finish above the 53 threshold but didn’t have a great winning percentage (at the pro level, anyway).
But an interesting idea to kick around.
—Ian Allan