“Motion” is one of those buzzwords that has been talked about a lot with the Dallas Cowboys as of late, specifically about how the team is not incorporating it as often as people would like. How much would you like, even? Well, more than the current rate.
This is the general sentiment to be clear. Football fans look at modern offenses and how they are running things and they see a lot of motion. They see the statistical findings that list the top offenses deploying it at high rates. So when Cowboys’
offensive play-caller Brian Schottenheimer is not utilizing it all too often, especially after pledging to when he got his current job, people notice.
Very recently, after the loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Schottenheimer was being grilled on his motion rates and noted that falling behind in games changes the calculus for him. This was an interesting answer and not one that I had ever personally heard a coach give before.
It stood out a bit, clearly. Why abandon motion when you are behind? What is the thought process behind that?
Motion is hardly an advanced concept, but there may be advanced reasoning. When I had the chance to speak to FOX’s Greg Olsen earlier this week, thanks to AWS and Next Gen Stats, I asked him about Schotty’s stance on the matter. You can watch our entire conversation below.
Regarding Olsen’s thoughts on Schottenheimer’s quote on not being able to run motion as often when you are trailing in a game, here is what he had to say:
“I don’t know if it’s necessarily like just that black and white like A and B. I do think there is an element to if you look at the teams that use motion at really high rates it’s a very specific style right. It’s under center. They’re more condensed formations. It’s in the play action game. It’s in the run game. There’s pre-snap movement horizontally at the snap. You know, you, the offenses you think of are like the Shanahans and like that style right. So when you get to shotgun spread just wide numbers to numbers, formations, shotgun, one back, right. Whether it’s 11 or 12 but let’s just say it’s 11. There are a lot of teams from a protection standpoint and just from a coverage identification standpoint they don’t like changing strengths.”
“They don’t like bringing CeeDee Lamb from a three by one. He’s the number 2 receiver and all of a sudden we motion him to the left and now we’re in 2 by 2. Well we just moved the nickel. We just changed where the safety was. The offensive line now started this is a three by one now it’s a two by 2. What are our pass set rules? So there is a conversation a lot of quarterbacks feel this way a lot of coordinators feel this way in more of those gun pass.”
“Now so if the assumption is “Hey we’re losing,” getting under center and running play pass all game doesn’t really help us ’cause they’re gonna just play pass as we play catch-up. That certainly makes sense to me if that’s what. Again I don’t know the quote from Schotty, I’m just going off what you said there is. So that would probably be my answer. If you feel like you’re coming from behind and I just gotta operate 11 personnel, put Dak in the gun, CeeDee on one sid,e George on the other side, mix and and just go play pass offense. 7 on 7 to go win the game, maybe change of strength doesn’t really have the effect it does under center run play pass.”
“’Cause what you’re trying to do under center run play pass is you’re trying to change gap responsibilities of the defenders in real time and oftentime the guy I’m bringing into the run fit I have guys running routes in his pass coverage responsibility. So you don’t really have that when you’re in 2minute mode spread gun play from behind. So outside of motion just undressing man zone motion getting a free release where they can’t come up and jam me. Like there’s elements to that but it probably doesn’t have the greater effect it does in that other style of play which you wouldn’t probably do when you’re losing.”
To be honest, this was way more of a justification than I thought was possible. It was very interesting to hear Olsen, justify may be the right word, but explain the potential rationale that Schottenheimer might be operating with these days.
As noted, Olsen took time to chat with us thanks to AWS and Next Gen Stats which now offers NFL League Trends as a result of their work and technology. This tool, Next Gen Trends, powered by AWS, is free to use for all fans and is a ton of fun to play around with: You can access it right here.
What do you think about the point regarding Schottenheimer and motion? Is it fair? No? Somewhere in between?
Let us know in the comments below.
