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Browns offense busy forming new identity

Kevin Jones Staff Writer

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Brian Hartline left his first meeting with his new team nearly awestruck. Quickly and with precision, offensive coordinator John DeFilippo installed nearly 100 passing plays on the second day of offseason workouts.

Coach Mike Pettine, who has embraced a more involved role on the other side of the football, sat quietly in the back of the meeting room taking notes, soaking in the often animated and compelling presentation.

“It would be difficult to doze off in one of his meetings,” Pettine said last week at his press conference after DeFilippo’s first time addressing Browns players. “I’ll put it that way.”

As much as Pettine and the culture change was a selling point to incoming free agents last month, so was DeFilippo’s creativity. From the moment he was hired, the 37-year-old play-caller has reiterated Cleveland’s offensive identity will be loose and fluid with the main objective of getting playmakers the football in space and scoring more touchdowns.

While the creativity will be ever-present, DeFilippo is practical, too. Instead of scrapping what the Browns did on offense in 2014, the coordinator has kept a hefty portion of the terminology the same and also adopted Cleveland’s zone-running system.

“The terminology is great,” Hartline said. “I’ve been around systems that are similar. At this point, I think everyone is just trying to grab their bearings because no one really has a leg up. When a new offensive coordinator comes in, everyone is learning from scratch.”

During phase one of the NFL’s offseason program, players are only required to be in the building for four hours at a time – with a mixture of classroom work and conditioning.

That’s why this time in April, May and June is so critical for the Browns’ offense. Players are obviously encouraged to dive deeper in their preparations at their homes. But the complexities and nuances of each play have to be hammered out in the classroom during the spring for improvements on the field to be seen once September rolls around.

“It’s about being good on that day and learning how to maximize our time here,” quarterback Josh McCown said. “Let’s leave this building every day getting a little bit better.”

Hartline later told reporters DeFilippo has required McCown and each of the other quarterbacks to stand up in front of the entire classroom and highlight the key points of each play.

“He hit it out of the park,” Pettine said. “I told the players in the team meeting that, ‘I can tell you why I hired the guy, but when you have your first meeting with him you’ll see why.’ To me, it comes down to it’s passion and it’s energy. He was great.”

Hartline simply called DeFilippo “awesome.”

“He and coach Pettine are reasons why I wanted to be here,” Hartline said. “Coming in and talking to those guys and really being on the same page and understanding football the same way and talking football in the same kind of language.”


Lnk

Question for any of you who have actually played or coached football: How smart is it to install almost 100 plays in day?

LOL........they never cease to boggle my mind.

After reading the article I just had to hit the link. I almost knew 100% where it would take me. And I was right. A "hired hand" writer.

Is it possible to install 10 plays? 5 receivers. Different routes depending on coverage. And then call that "100 plays"?

It's obviously possible since they accomplished that.

I just never believed in that type of philosophy.

I think you learn a play and master that play before moving on. I believe in quality over quantity. I think teams/classrooms get sloppy when you overwhelm your players/students w/an abundance of information at one time.

It's a process. Teach/learn one play at a time. Master it. Move on to the next play after that and then run the first mastered play every 4th or 5th snap while learning the second play. Then, introduce the third play. While mastering it, run the first and second play once every 8 or 9 snaps. Etc.

Overloading the brain is typically not successful. Take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place.

Btw--------I didn't invent that philosophy. I borrowed it from many, many great coaches.

By installed the writer means downloaded to their iPads, I hope.

100 plays in four hours does seem a bit excessive, though if that was all the base plays in the entire playbook and he was giving a general overview maybe that'd make sense.

I hate offseason articles, I'm ready to see action on the field.

We need to go 6 plays, Remember the Titans (movie) style.

"I run 6 plays, split veer. It's like Novocaine"

Agreed, for the most part.

My point was the "installed 100 pass plays" may just be 10 pass plays with 10 different possible routes on each play.

And, with 5 receivers, that's only 2 different routes per receiver per play, depending on what the d shows.

That's very, very possible. The article makes it sound like they learned 100 different plays, when I would guess they learned more like 10 plays - with different routes.

Mike Leach installed his entire offense in 3 days. He never had a problem with his offense.

That said, he could do it because of the amount of players he had, not because his students were extremely great at memorizing.

i think i get what your saying but.... doesnt that mean the QB has to learn all of them?

Not a fan of Mike Leach. But again, we all have our own philosophies of how things should be done.

my guess is with the limited player contact in the off season, the coaches want to expose the players to as much info as possible. And then the players are expected go home and study and learn the plays and the terminology between now and the OTA's. I would rather the players come back knowing 100 plays vs 10 plays.... this is a job and I think its just part of holding the players accountable.

I would also speculate that in these plays, there are similar if not the same terminology for a certain pattern or route- the repetition in a "new" play actually will help learn the terminology. Once the basic terminology is learned, then the number of plays just mushrooms exponentially by calling out the different combinations... before you know it, there aren't just a hundred plays, but an entire play book.

Again..............different philosophies.

We'll see how well it works out for this offense.

But leach didn't go into much detail in his offense.

Heard the Connor Halliday interview by Pat Kirwin. One of the things he said was rht Leach installed a passing play. Halliday asked what the footwork was, Leach replies what do you mean. Well is it a 3 step drop or a 5 step drop. Leach comes back with you figure out what works best timing it up with the receivers.

Absolutely. The qb has more learning to do than any other offensive player.

However, saying "100 pass plays were installed" does not mean "100 pass plays were perfected". To me, it means ...say...10 pass plays were installed, with a combination of 100 different plays.

And no where did it say "100 pass plays were perfected."

Installed and perfected are 2 different things.

Installed and being able to run them are 2 different things.

I think that's a bit unfair. The Air Raid is suppose to give QBs almost-ultimate freedom. The offense just didn't need to detail the drop back. That said, he really systematized the Air Raid. You would either be a Receiver X, Y, or Z and the routes you needed to memorize was based on all of that.

So instead of learning all the routes on any given play you just had to know one. I think the results speak for themselves.

General thought.

Just make sure they get the ball downfield. Please!
Pass plays for a short gain really hurt.

Just pointing out that Leach installing 100 plays would be significantly different than an NFL team installing 100 different plays

Its the Al Saunders/Coryell offense. 700 pages of dynmic offense. Which i am sure Flip has his own version but I am curious to see how it works.

j/c

When he became the offensive coordinator in Washington last year, commanding a three-year, $6 million salary, Saunders caught some heat for the complexity of his 700-page playbook. Critics said it was too hard for the average football player to digest.

Truth be told, the size estimates were inaccurate.

"If you took all of Al's playbook, it's a hell of a lot more than 700 or 800 pages," said Dick Vermeil, who won a Super Bowl with Saunders in St. Louis and racked up offensive records in Kansas City. "But it's not all in [the players'] book.



Link

It says he has the QBs stand up and talk about the highlights of each day. When it says installed, I think it means he went through a set of plays with a common theme and the idea was to understand the concept, then go home and study the exact aspects of each play.

It's like having a history teacher talk for an hour and fifteen minutes in a lecture on WWII.. you can cover a tremendous amount of information but if you don't go home and study, you aren't going to actually learn it.

It's probably 25 plays with various options. Man in motion or not becomes 50 plays. Play action or not becomes 100.

Why do we need a NEW identity?

I REALLY enjoyed that no huddle, zone running, play action based offense that we ran to perfection the first five games of the season last year.

Can't we PLEASE just stick to that!?

Crowell & West can collectively carry this offense.

I coach a little defense.. on the first day of the install
the DL learns four formations and two slants on the snap
the LB learn four formations ( depth and width)
the safeties four
the Corners three

So technically they learn 288 plays ( actually more but who has time to count ALL the variations possible)

Did I mention they are 3/4 graders?

later we add a few other formations and all the blitz packages

Depends on counting. If right and left count as two, then it is 50. Or mirrored sets. If it is a route tree, then each route is a "play" in a mix. If it is 100 different plays, never a good thing unless you coach the Wallopin' Einsteins, then maybe. Not sure I would crow about this.

Reminded of a D-2 team, believe they won the playoffs. They only had 3 plays, run on either side, and 2 or 3 pass routes. They ran the devil out of them. And won.

"Wrinkles" if counted, variations on the same play, could be jacking that number. Sounds like if our games are played in that room with enthusiastic coaches, we will be fine. Glad they are getting after it hard. But while gushing about this off-season stuff, homer journalism cannot lose track of the real important stuff.

This offense has never had an identity. If we ever keep the same scheme for more than two years, I'd like to "think" our identity would be a hardcore, smash mouth run first team.

If we have a choice, I'd like our identity to be "Scores a TD on every possession"

The use of "new identity" definitely didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. To an extent, I suppose every season has a new identity with players coming and going and the natural evolution/expansion of the playbook, but I would love to see more consistency. I like Mike Pettine's hard nosed attitude and hope we stick with a run heavy, play action based offense. I'm curious to see how Flip's getting playmakers the ball in space plays out. If it's within that heavy running, play action framework, great. If not, count me a little concerned. Only time will tell.

I do like the vibe and mesh of the team that I'm getting, but it's easy to feel that in the offseason. I want to see it hold up through the rigors of the season.

I really like that DeFilippo is trying to incorporate terminology from our last system to help make the transition easier.

I like that he's having the players "drink from the fire hose" right now. I think he will slow things way down when training camp comes around in order to start mastering plays. Keeping major elements from the previous offense (specifically, the stuff that worked like the ZBS) will also help a ton.

There's not much to get too excited or angry about as far as what we're going to be like next season, but a coordinator that can implement his own offense while having the flexibility to keep what worked really well last year is a plus.

Dang Bard, that's funny!

j/c: Personally, I think it is ignorant to force feed a bunch of plays on players at one time. You guys seem okay w/it. Kinda figured you would be.

I think it is like math. You don't teach a kid how to understand place value, add, subtract, multiply, divide, do all of those operations w/decimals and fractions, solve equations, measure w/a ruler, use a protractor, solve elapsed time, plot coordinates on a graph, understand slope, algebra, data analysis and probability, and geometry at once.

It's a progression and one thing leads to another. Things build off of the the previous unit of study.

I imagine music is similar. I doubt that young musicians start off by playing complex pieces. They probably learn at slow and steady pace that is designed to build off of the previous experience.

And I think if you move on to a new play before you master the current one, than you are doing your team a disservice.

Take care of the little things and the big things come together.

I kinda get what you are saying Vers, but I don't think the analogy really holds. These aren't peewee football players. These are professional football players who have spent most likely half their lives honing their football craft. They are new plays, but it's still football and familiar concepts. I think as far as the learning part (as opposed to the execution phase which I'd want much slower), it's more like giving them new problems, but they already know the formulas to use to solve them.

This isn't the perfecting stage, we're still in the early going. Hopefully we're all getting on the same page with terminology and basics of the play calls rather than the "graduate level details." Sort of a this is more or less what we want to do so everyone can start to get comfortable with it.

We can disagree. No problem.

I get that they aren't little kids. But they are not exactly the smartest guys in the world either. Most are here because of their athletic talent, not their mental capacity.

I still think it is a mistake to move on [no matter what level] to a new play before mastering the prior one.

I think it is a simple concept, but apparently most people don't think that way.

I'm not an apologist for management or the coaching staff, I think for myself, period. I also can't get worked up based on unconfirmed second hand statements about what is taking place in Berea. Whatever is or has taken place in the classroom has to have some order, purpose and logic. Absent any concrete information to the contrary I have no basis for criticism. If any of the above elements were missing then it's on Pettine to make Flip aware of his concerns. The reports says he was in the room while Flip was leading the class. I didn't sense any bewilderment by Hartline in his remarks. He seemed impressed by Flips intensity and passion.

I can only speak for myself. Some of the best classes I've ever had were taught by people who were passionate and energetic about the material they were presenting.

It's not even that we disagree, I agree that we want to master a play before moving on to the next. However, I don't think we're at that stage yet. Players can't even get on the field with coaches yet. I look at it like if the season were a semester, "installing 100 plays" is like being handed the syllabus. It's most likely a poor choice of words by the Browns' staff writer. You're not going to perfect a play in a classroom, Athletes learn plays on the field through performing them in my experience.

Are you saying that you can't be passionate when teaching one play at a time?

Good point.

I think "installing" 100 plays, is a poor choice of words, and probably used by the writer to build a good vibe with the fans.

IMO, at this stage, the players have been "exposed" to 100 plays. I doubt highly anyone knows them all. But most football plays are based on the same concepts. I mean, I've seen the pros run plays that 8th graders run. They are probably taught more in depth, but basically they are the same play.

I think the were shown 100 plays, and now have them in their playbook to study. The mastering will probably be done more on the lines of Vers philosophy. One at a time, once they hit the practice field.

Also, I'm betting there are many plays that are the same as last year.