Gap Discipline and Safety Help

What do you envision as the biggest changes in your team’s playbook due to shifts in team personnel and coaching staff?

As we look ahead to the 2009 NFL season for the Oakland Raiders, the biggest changes in the playbook due to personnel changes and changes in the coaching staff will be seen on the defensive side of the ball.  Although quarterbacks coach Paul Hackett and passing game coordinator Ted Tollner have installed a QB School to aid the learning of the passing game and develop chemistry among the quarterbacks and receivers, Tom Cable is an offensive minded head coach.  As such the offensive schemes and play calling will likely resemble the last few games of last season with Cable in his same role as play caller.  On the defense, however, the majority of the staff was turned over.  Gone is Rob Ryan and his, put players in the position to make plays, defense.  Replacing Ryan is John Marshall.  Marshall and Dwaine Board will have the primary task of improving on Oakland’s porous defense.  Is this simply a case of shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?  Skeptics will suggest that as long as Al Davis runs the show he will also have a large fingerprint on the defensive scheme, so the coaching is largely irrelevant.  This view is too cynical, however.  Yes, Al is a fountain of knowledge with a defensive pedigree.  This gives him license to involve himself in the defensive scheming.  However, the defenses of the Raiders have not been carbon copies from year to year and Al is the constant.  So, new coaches do provide new wrinkles. 

            The new staff differs in some philosophies from the Rob Ryan schemes in that the defense will be instructed to be more gap disciplined.  The safeties will also be used to cover respective sides of the field instead of using a centerfield type player.  The key difference that has been emphasized in the press conferences is the teaching.  Because no scheme is without its vulnerabilities, the differences in the safety positioning will not be as important as making sure that the players, safeties included, are where they belong.  If a perfect scheme were to be devised it would still be up to the players to execute it.  That is were the teaching comes in.  It is critical that each player has an appropriate understanding of where to be and what to do under specific circumstances.  Otherwise all of the defensive tackles in the world could be drafted and the defense would continue to be exploitable as players miss their assignments. 

So, when you hear that the practices weren’t as loud and the coaches weren’t screaming constantly at the players to motivate them, relax.  The new emphasis is on instructing the players.  We know that the Raiders have athletes.  What we haven’t seen is the coaches’ abilities to get them to make enough plays.  By being more disciplined the players allow the whole defense to make tackles instead of having talented but rogue athletes chasing down the ball after they bit on fakes and misdirection.  This will cut down on the number of big plays given up and will allow for more tackles to be made at or near the line and by linemen and linebackers.  That’s the hope anyway.