Grantland - On the Pats Offensive Communication

[Brady-Carter]

Good, but long read on the Pats offensive communication. And how it realtes to O systems, the WCO, Coryell, and Erhardt-Perkins

Even if you are not a pats fan it is a good read.

Some snippets..

There are essentially three main offensive "systems" in the NFL: West Coast, Coryell, and Erhardt-Perkins. Given that every NFL team runs basically the same plays, each of these NFL offensive families is differentiated mostly by how those plays are communicated.

In recent years, as offenses and defenses have grown more complex, these systems have started crumbling under their own weight. With multiple formations and personnel groupings, calls that began as "22 Z-In" have gotten unwieldy.

New England's offense is a member of the NFL's third offensive family, the Erhardt-Perkins system. The offense was named after the two men, Ron Erhardt and Ray Perkins, who developed it while working for the Patriots under head coach Chuck Fairbanks in the 1970s.

The backbone of the Erhardt-Perkins system is that plays — pass plays in particular — are not organized by a route tree or by calling a single receiver's route, but by what coaches refer to as "concepts." Each play has a name, and that name conjures up an image for both the quarterback and the other players on offense. And, most importantly, the concept can be called from almost any formation or set.

The biggest advantage of the concept-based system is that it operates from the perspective of the most critical player on offense: the quarterback. In other systems, even if the underlying principles are the exact same, the play and its name might be very different. Rather than juggling all this information in real time, an Erhardt-Perkins quarterback only has to read a given arrangement of receivers.

For many years, the Erhardt-Perkins offense was known as the original ground-and-pound, a conservative, run-first offense summed up by Erhardt's mantra, "You throw to score and run to win."

With the help of his assistants, Belichick's primary innovation was to go from an Erhardt-Perkins offense to an Erhardt-Perkins system, built on its method of organizing and naming plays. The offense itself would be philosophically neutral. This is how, using the terminology and framework of what was once thought to be the league's least progressive offensive system, Brady and Belichick built one of the most consistently dynamic and explosive offenses in NFL history. From conservative to spread to blistering no-huddle, the tactics — and players — have changed while the underlying approach has not.2

No team that uses the Coryell or true West Coast systems can adapt easily to a fully functional up-tempo no-huddle because, simply, they can't communicate that efficiently. The Patriots are built to communicate in one- or two-word designations, and so, with judicious use of code words, it's simply a matter of translating what they already do into a no-huddle pace.

Like NFL offenses, in recent years NFL defenses have also become too wordy, relying on long-winded calls designating scheme and technique and impractical checks. With the speed at which New England operates, the message for defenses has become clear: fix your terminology or perish.

How the terminology of the Erhardt-Perkins system has helped maintain the dominance of Tom Brady and the Patriots - Grantland

 

[Slaimon Khan Shah]

WELL THANK YOU KINDLY.