Very little in the NFL is new. The much-vaunted Wildcat was basically a re-engineering of the single wing, the oldest “offense” in pro football, and you can see some of its concepts in the zone-read as well. The concept of a fast offense in the NFL is not new either. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sam Wyche in Cincinnati and Marv Levy in Buffalo and Jerry Glanville in Houston and Atlants were all experimenting with no-huddle offenses predicated on the quick pass. And when the Buffalo Bills were going to four straight Super Bowls and winning game after game, it was routine that they would lose the battle for time of possession. The offense would only have the ball 29, 28 minutes – but they would still win, because their possessions were quick and ended with touchdowns rather than punting the ball away.
Last night, in the first quarter, the Philadephia Eagles held the ball for eleven and a half minutes.
Think about that. Even a bad Redskins team playing a sloppy first quarter would still be expected to have the ball for 5 or 6 minutes. Instead, the offense got the ball for three and a half minutes out of fifteen, largely because they turned it over three times in the first seven offensive plays. Ironically, the first Washington score of the game didn’t do them any favors – a peculiar pick-six that gave the Skins a TD…and sent the defense right back out on the field. The offense didn’t even get a crack at the ball until halfway through the quarter, whereupon they shat the bed as described.
That’s why I’m having a bit of a tough time buying all the way into the Eagles’ exciting new offense. They were handed a gift: a team with an offense that couldn’t shoot straight and a defense that started the second quarter pre-gassed for convenience. A more able defense, especially one not starting two rookies in the secondary, might not struggle the same way. It’s going to be interesting to see how it looks going into the teeth of a motivated and aggressive Chicago defense, for instance, or taking on the Niners or Seahawks (who may be playing their own game of keep away).
But even correcting for the ineptitude of the opponent, it’s pretty obvious that Chip Kelly’s Oregon blur is going to be just fine in the NFL, at least at the beginning. As tape accumulates and teams get accustomed to the offense, professional defenses will almost certainly start to catch up – walk the safeties up a little, play a hard nickel, everybody stays in their lanes and exploits the fact that every NFL defense has lateral speed that many if not most college teams don’t. Offenses like this will ultimately live or die on the quality of personnel – Lesean McCoy and Desean Jackson are the real deal and no fooling, but whether Michael Vick is prepared to take a regular beating over the course of seventy offensive snaps a game – at this point in his career especially – will ultimately dictate how far it goes. I’m sure Chip Kelly is looking back toward the Pacific Northwest and wondering whether Marcus Mariota might be prepared to go pro after this season.
But for connoisseurs of Washington pro football, last night was yet another ridiculous disintegration under the lights of Monday Night Football. The closest thing to a positive you can take away is that Chris Cooley sounds fresh, polished and professional on the radio broadcast team. He’ll be fine – and I know that Sam Huff basically can’t go anymore, and it’s for the best, but it was like knowing you’d lost your grandpa. The absence in the booth was palpable, and it’s lost on no one that Sonny Jurgensen is the last man standing from the WJFK glory days of “Sonnysamanfrank”. And another piece of the past recedes in the distance…