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Cowboys Going All Web 2.0 On Us

June 20, 2008

The Cowboys are dabbling in social media.

Written by Rafael Vela · Filed Under Trends | 13 Comments 

NFL Trends ‘08 - The Return of Lenny Moore?

June 18, 2008

Lenny Moore was the first double threat in the modern NFL era. He played halfback and flanker for the Johnny Unitas-led Baltimore Colts in the late ’50s and ’60s and was a blue-chipper at both positions. He made the Hall of Fame and a panel of former players and personnel men recently named him one of the ten best running backs of all time.

Recent news from NFL mini-camps suggests to me that we may see a resurgence in Lenny Moore-type running backs this year.

We have seen two major offensive trends in the recent NFL. One is towards spread offenses, which use base three and four receiver sets. The Patriots’ success last year with a base 3-WR, 1-RB package will no doubt be duplicated in this copycat league. The other sees more teams using running back platoons.

Reports from Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Dallas hint that the OCs there will combine both trends, producing an offense that features two running backs on the field at the same time, with one of the backs displaying Moore’s running and receiving skills.

Let’s begin in Tennessee, where the Titans’ OC Mike Heimerdinger was drawing up plays as fast as his hands could write them at the team’s first camp to get Chris Johnson on the field. His 4.2 speed was evident and the Titans will try to get him on the field in space in combination with Lendale White or Chris Brown. With Vince Young under center, the Titans are the closest thing the NFL has to an option-capable team.

In Pittsburgh, the Steelers are drooling about Rashard Mendenhall’s potential and are trying to get him on the field as much as possible. The linked story says he’s being tried as a kickoff returner but I would not be surprised if the Steelers tried some packages with Mendenhall and Willie Parker together.

Of course, we’ve seen reports from Dallas that have the Cowboys placing Marion Barber and rookie Felix Jones on the field together. Dallas tried this once in a while with Barber and Julius Jones but Felix has better hands and appears to have better open-field moxie than the older Jones.

One more tactic the two-RB package could revive is the no-huddle offense. The Bengals ran a slow version of a no-huddle, called the “sugar huddle” in the late ’80s when Boomer Esiason had Ickey Woods and double threat James Brooks in his backfield. That team would line up at the line of scrimmage and calls plays in a deliberate fashion, looking to take an offsides penalty when a defense tried to make a substitution.

Buffalo ran a more active and lethal version of a no-huddle in the early ’90s with its “K-gun,” a three-WR, one back set with Thurman Thomas in the backfield. Thomas could move all over the field and the Bills would exploit matchups while keeping a defense in its base or nickel packages.

The closest models to what we might see from Jason Garrett this year are the sometimes no-huddle packages the 49ers and Cowboys ran in the mid-90s. Dallas tried a power-version of this set, using FB Daryl Johnston as the flex back. He would move to the slot and sometimes line up wide. Johnston could do his damage — he made some enormous catches in a ‘96 win over the ‘49ers — but no one would ever confuse his moves with Moore’s or Jones’.

In San Francisco, the 49ers would sometimes open a game in their base set, with RB Ricky Watters and FB Tom Rathman in the backfield, and then go no-huddle, moving Watters into the slot or lining him up at flanker. Watters had played receiver while at Notre Dame and was a legitimate receiving threat. Because the defense could not substitute, it would either have to burn a time out or risk matching a LB or S on Watters in space.

Opposing safeties had to respect Jerry Rice and John Taylor’s skills, meaning Watters could run seam and post patterns from the slot and leave linebackers in his dust.

I imagine the Cowboys will use packages that more closely mimic what the 49ers did, with Jones playing Watters’ role. Since Marion Barber is a much better runner than Tom Rathman, and can pass block effectively, opposing linebackers face a conundrum: do they focus on Barber’s inside game and leave Jones in isolation or do they play the pass more and take their chances with Dallas’ run?

Whatever the case, we may have a new nickname for Felix Jones before the season is over — “Lenny.”

Written by Rafael Vela · Filed Under History, Trends | 10 Comments 

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