Gibbs Playcalling In The 80's

[budski]

Parcells and Gibbs have both struggled since coming back at times. The reason being is the thousands of miles of tape everyone team has on them that they have learned from and used for their own teams.

[tr1]

He doesn't have the talent.

There were years where he didn't have the talent, but we had more wins than losses.

When he left, he was being criticized for not winning by larger margins.

He won't jeopardize games by giving the ball to players who haven't demonstrated the ability to hang on to it or who have yet to show him something in practice. Beathard rapped him for not using younger players.

He always finished each season strongly...

Memories tend to blur about his teams...wins were always a struggle. The best team we ever had lost to the Raiders in the SB.

We will rarely get embarrassed...the Giants game was a weird fluke.

That's my take.

[Oldfan]

There were two major factors for Joe Gibbs' success in his first tour of duty which are lacking with our current team:

Bobby Beathard's never-to-be-duplicated 1981 draft of Mark May, Joe Jacoby, Russ Grimm, Charlie Brown, Dexter Manley, and Clint Didier, added to an already decent roster of players, gave the Redskins the best talent in their division for a decade.

Quarterbacks and receivers changed, running backs came and went, but the offensive line, bigger and better than their opponent's D-line, was the foundation of the offense.

The second factor is that, in its day, our offensive scheme was innovative. Defensive coordinators, not nearly as sharp as they are now, didn't know how to handle it.

Gibbs started 0-5 in 1981with the then-conventional two-back pro set then switched to the Coryell-inspired H-back formation. It succeeded right out of the box and we finished 8-8 that year.

The talent edge and the innovation edge...these are the main differences between Gibbs I and II.

[willyt]

I think Oldfan is right. ( as if he needed me to tell him that). The 81 draft was unreal and set the tone for the next 10 yrs, but I seem to remember the same plays out of different formation and a great deal of motion. Somebody on this site has a photo of Riggins running thru a gigantic hole formed by Jacoby, Grimm and Donnie Warren,i believe. The caption reads something like" imagine Portis running thru hole like this". That was the difference. The offensive line was just too big , strong and fast

[TD_washingtonredskins]

I remember that he'd have some creative schemes to help beat up particular opponents. I think a lot of the time, he was aided by not having too many weaknesses (no salary cap + rich owner) and playing against teams that had some. It's easier to scheme in that circumstance.

I do however remember hearing people always ***** about RUN, RUN, PASS even back then...so it's not a new thing. I rarely got upset about it because it was how he won and lost...and we won much more than we lost!

[mako261]

I remember my dad always yelling late in the game that Gibbs was playing not to lose. I also remember games that we lost in the fourth quarter because we could not get the Run, Run, and Pass going. Therefore, I would say not much has changed from what I remember

When Gibbs knows he has the talent advantage over a team he will attack. Right now we just do not have that advantage over many teams, even the bad ones.

I think the reason we do not see the motions and shifts anymore is because the players have trouble executing them. Remember the first 6 games last year when we could not even get a play off on time?

Gibbs adjusts his offense and game plan to his player’s ability.

Right now, we have a limited receiving core and Quarterback play.

[Riggo-toni]

The difference between Gibbs I and Gibbs II is 5 seconds.

In the first era, Gibbs disguised every play and formation with men in motion. He ran the same 15-20 plays every game, but changed who moved where every game. Back then the play clock was 45 seconds. Now it's 40, thanks to the need to fit games within TV schedules. Gibbs' old style doesn't work because they can't get the plays off in time. Ergo, less motion, which means now it's become more evident he's running the same stuff over and over.

[NavyDave]

Conservative??

Yeah right.

Remember when everyone was hyping the Buffalo Bills offense and Gibbs came out with the nohuddle himself?

[FunBunch7]

As good as Santana Moss IS, we had 3 receivers equal to or better than him in the Glory years Monk/Clark/Sanders. Our offensive line was massive and we always had a bruiser for a back...Riggins, Rogers, Byner/Riggs.

Our QB's were "home grown" for the most part meaning that Joey T. was a Skin for years before Gibbs came then Gibbs went with him...Schroeder was a back up for a couple years before Joey T. went down and then he put together that awesome passing attack in 1986...Doug Williams was really an anomoly...Rypien was a back up for a couple years too before getting his shot and then it took him a couple years to gget to the big one.

Gibbs for the most part had "time" to mold the players into superstars...that's just not the way it is today. Back in the day, Gibbs would stash "healthy" players on IR, plus she had some amazing drafts...

When you put it all together, he had the players neccessary to run HIS style of offense...power running game setting up the deep pass.

[scruffylookin]

Like others have said, I think it's the talent he has available that is limiting him. But I also think that Gibbs has always been "conservative" in his play calling. His typical "agressive" play was the playaction pass deep to a streaking receiver.

Joe Gibbs usually likes the big strong QB with a gun for an arm. The guy who can make a defense pay with the play action when they start crowding the line.

He doesn't have that with Mark Brunell. Brunell's skills are closer to that of Joe Theismann except that Joe was at the top of his game when Gibbs got here and Brunell is, to put it nicely, not. So couple a QB who appears to not take too many chances down the field and doesn't have the consistent arm strength to stretch a D, with 1 quality receiver and you get the 2005 Redskins.

Gibbs, as always, is adapting to the talent he has. Until he can go out and get another reliable receiver (he always had 2 Art Monk/Charlie Brown, Art Monk/Gary Clark and then later 3 when they added Ricky Sanders) this is going to be about as good as it gets. I love Chris Cooley and he is the best H-back Gibbs has ever had IMHO but he's not a deep threat so does very little in spreading out a defense vertically.

Despite my ripping the Oline, overall rushing numbers are not too far off a "typical" Gibbs season. Take away the monster rushing years of the "original" Hogs 82-85, and I think 2005 falls in line with what Gibbs has gotten out of his running game for most of his tenure the first time (86-92).

Gibbs trusts Brunell right now and that's why Brunell is in there and not Patrick Ramsey. It appears that there is something about Patrick that frightens Gibbs and so Jason Campbell was brought in here to be "his" QB. Jason Campbell is in the same mold as Jay Schroeder,Doug Williams or Mark Rypien.

If Gibbs is right (and his track record of picking young QBs to groom leads you to believe he is),you get a big armed Jason Campbell in there with a legit #2 playing opposite Santana and this offense will be just as effective as his 80's offenses. Probably moreso because Gibbs has never had a talent like Clinton Portis in his backfield as his primary runner.

Gibbs will open things up more and take his "shots" when he's got better ammunition.

[Hogskin1]

Conservative??

Yeah right.

Remember when everyone was hyping the Buffalo Bills offense and Gibbs came out with the nohuddle himself?

I never thought of Gibbs as conservative, either. Just look at the points and yardage his offenses racked up. And I am not talking about just the killer '91 squad.

However, in ONE sense, you could say he was conservative. He very often would start trying to run out the clock EARLY in the 4th quarter if he had a lead. He would do that earlier that other teams, and it worked for him. But I disagree with the guy who said he was "playing not to lose". He had an awesome offensive line, and in almost all of his seasons had a BIG back that could pile drive and consistently get 4th quarter yards against a worn down defense. So, as is evident from his record, this strategy was a "play to WIN" strategy, and it worked most of the time.

[zallera]

Look, everyone wants to bring up the 91 team. That team was an anomoly, as was the 85 bears, 72 dolphins, and this years colts team. You dont see them often. That 91 skins team was the greatest team Ive ever seen, but if you think that we can just air out bombs all day like back in the day, you are crazy. I wish we did, but its not likely. I remeber the 91 team. I dont think Ryp attempted a pass shorter than 15 yards! It was ridiculous what that team did that year. But like I said, that was a VERY rare team.

I have to agree. I went to lunch the other day with a new guy in my office who's a Bills fan, and he told me that the '91 Redskins were the best team he ever saw. To finally hear that out of someone's mouth that wasn't a Skins fan was great. He couldn't believe how perfectly our team executed every play, how uncoverable the Posse was, and how effective our ground game with Byner and Riggs was.

[TURKEYTALKER]

the year we lost to the raiders we set the record for points scored in a season what I remember most was it seemed like after every turn over we got the first play we would go deep. hail skins dallas sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MrWill]

I get the feeling that JG has some surprises in store for the rest of the division. In fact, I would bet that all season he has been planning for these last three games. I mean, how could you look at our schedule at the beginning of the year and not see the significance of these last three games?

[fclark78]

NO he didn't he pretty much ran the same play's all the time out of different formations.

[DonkeyTeeth]

The 80s offense went through several phases.

When he first arrived, he wanted to air it out often, and the team struggled.

In the Theismann, Riggins, Monk, and Brown years the offense was actually very simple. The mix and timing of plays may have been switched up to keep defenses guessing, but the types of plays (including patterns by WRs) were very bread-and-butter. I have tapes of the 82 championship game against Dallas, the 83 reg season game against the Raiders, and the 83 playoff win against the Rams, and I can count on one hand the number of times there are more than 2 receivers on the field. Look at the receiving stats for 82-86. Most years only two WRs have more than 20 catches and a TE is usually the 3rd leading receiver.

Later in the 80s, when Clark and Sanders emerged and Schroeder or Rypien were under center, the passing game changed. He stopped using the rolling pocket that worked for Theismann and used Clark's quickness on all kinds of slants and crossing patterns. I think from then until the 91 SB was when the playcalling really had some variety and an innovative feel, much more than in the Riggins/Theismann years.

The 91 team did seem to be magically able to execute anything, but you have to keep in mind how long the core of that offense had been together. Bostic, Grimm, and Jacoby had played together for most of a decade. Clark, Monk, and Sanders had all been playing on the team since 86. It was Byner and Rypien's fourth year under Gibbs. And all this was opposite a defense that had kept many key players intact for the same period.

If we ever keep the core of a team together for that long, I'm sure we'll see much more dynamic play calling.

[SlobberKnockinFootball]

Will the motion and shifts ever come back? Or do we think they're dead?

[NavyDave]

I get the feeling that JG has some surprises in store for the rest of the division. In fact, I would bet that all season he has been planning for these last three games. I mean, how could you look at our schedule at the beginning of the year and not see the significance of these last three games?

I think that too, dude that while Parcells has used every play in his book Coach Gibbs has pages reserved for the last three regular season games.

Now if Brunell will try to distribute the ball to other receivers just to keep the defense honest