Jason Campbell's Deep Ball

[GPinn1224]

I'm sitting reading about this record that Campbell is close to breaking and to me its kinda similar to Brunell's 22 straight completions record. It didn't mean anything because they were all screens. ANYBODY can make 22 straight screen passes.

If Campbell can make this record, its a great accomplishment and I'll be happy for him, but in the back of my head I'll be thinking that part of the reason is because he DIDN't TAKE CHANCES DOWNFIELD. Not saying that nullifies the achievement, but being unwilling to take chances can hurt us a lot more than him getting the record can help us.

I feel you on what you're saying but my thing is......if he can get the record AND keep winning, then why not. it's not like anything he's doing is hurting us. THEN i'd say to take chances here and there, but if he's close enough for the record and it's not hurting the team, then i say go for it. besides, i don't think thats JC's intention. i think he's just giving what the defense gives him. no need to go down field when portis is playing like a beast. and i'm not just saying that because i have portis on my fantasy, lol.

[Thinking Skins]

Sorry, I can't let this pass. What we're seeing is nothing like "Joe Gibbs type football." We're seeing fewer deep drops, less max protect, more receivers in the pattern, more quick, short tosses, unpredictable play calling, more gambling on key downs.

The passing game is not fully implemented. Eventually Z wants a 60/40 pass to run ratio. The only legit deep threat in the lineup right now is Moss and defenses can take him away, but their cost benefits Portis.

The rookies will make their mark eventually. Than, we'll see what we have.

In theory, you're right...but in truth its not that simple.

yeah, we are seeing fewer deep drops, less max protect, more receivers in the pattern, more quick, short tosses, etc. But "if you put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig".

What we've been seeing lately is just the Gibbs offense under a different umbrella. Like Czaban (or was it Riggo) said, this is what Gibbs hoped his offense would become.

I'll even buy that the reason for this success is because we were a passing team early on, with campbell to moss being a regular connection in those early weeks and Moss even led the league in recieving yards at one point in the season.

But my point wasn't to say that we're running an exact Gibbs offense. Even Extreemeskins members know that West Coast Offense is not the same as Don Coryell Offense.

But the similarity between our offense and Gibbs's style of offense is the smash mouth football, the long drives, the putting the team on Portis's back, and the (possibly) limiting Campbell. These are the things we complained about Gibbs II and we've been somewhat seeing them again lately. And I'm kinda seeing the same things.

[Thinking Skins]

I feel you on what you're saying but my thing is......if he can get the record AND keep winning, then why not. it's not like anything he's doing is hurting us. THEN i'd say to take chances here and there, but if he's close enough for the record and it's not hurting the team, then i say go for it. besides, i don't think thats JC's intention. i think he's just giving what the defense gives him. no need to go down field when portis is playing like a beast. and i'm not just saying that because i have portis on my fantasy, lol.

definately. I want him to get the record. But I don't want him to lose sight of winning for the sake of the record, and I think that if we don't get back to taking shots downfield, we can really become a limited offense.

[mjm4soccer]

I think another big issue in the last couple games has been the fact that Heyer is missing at RT. If I recall correctly, he wasn't on the field much the last couple games. Jansen has been playing well, but maybe Zorn doesn't trust Jansen enough in pass protection to call the longer routes, as evidenced in Heyer starting at RT to open the season.

That being said I'll echo the remarks that it seems like the defenses are trying to take away the long ball, and we're seeing more of JC checking down rather than taking sacks waiting for things to open up.

[Riggins77]

See, this is my thing....and it kinda ties into something that Doc normally says on his show. Its nice to see that Campbell "has the ability" to check down. I like knowing that he's not always going to try to put the team on his back and win THIS PLAY. But I would like him to be a bit more of a gunslinger. Why not just say, "I know Moss is double covered, but I think I can get it between the two defenders?" Thats what I'd like to see more of.

Yeah, so are you going to come on here how pissed off you are if Campbell tries this a lot and ends up getting picked? Throwing into double coverage is not smart, I don't care how great of a QB you are.

Why take luck over reality?

[Oldfan]

But the similarity between our offense and Gibbs's style of offense is the smash mouth football, the long drives, the putting the team on Portis's back, and the (possibly) limiting Campbell. These are the things we complained about Gibbs II and we've been somewhat seeing them again lately. And I'm kinda seeing the same things.

The Coryell is not known as a grinding it out, move the chains offense. Walsh designed his system to do that.

The term "smashmouth" originally meant one-on-one vertical, power-blocking --which we don't do much of anymore. I take it that you are using the term to describe a heavy dose of running the football.

The reason Portis is getting better yardage is that he isn't predictably running on first down and the passing game has been more successful in moving the chains.

Another reason for Clinton's success this year is that Moss is healthy again and drawing double teams for the first time since 2005. Gibbs ran Portis to close out 2005 because he had no choice. With Moss doubled, the passing game was generating 150 yards per game.

The major reason for the improvement is Jason Campbell. He's a quicker, better QB than he was previously.

[ADF]

You'd be a moron not to put a safety over the top of Moss on every play. Until Thomas is ready, Moss is our only true explosive deep threat. If Moss was a bigger guy, you'd probably see the team take more risks. Also, it takes time to get over the safety. If pass protection gets a bit better then you'll see more attempts.

[MrJL]

I'm sitting reading about this record that Campbell is close to breaking and to me its kinda similar to Brunell's 22 straight completions record. It didn't mean anything because they were all screens. ANYBODY can make 22 straight screen passes.

If Campbell can make this record, its a great accomplishment and I'll be happy for him, but in the back of my head I'll be thinking that part of the reason is because he DIDN't TAKE CHANCES DOWNFIELD. Not saying that nullifies the achievement, but being unwilling to take chances can hurt us a lot more than him getting the record can help us.

And yet I see so many dropped screen passes.

[jtyler42]

Let me ask you this do you not consider 10-15yd passes downfield passes?

From my recollection he has connected on alot of deep crosses, seam routes, and skinny post's to El, Cooley, and Moss...

He isn't in the traditional sense just dropping back and chucking it up 40-50 yds but he is throwing downfield...I think this is why Zorn gets irritated when people keep asking this question. Zorn knows JC is making the proper reads and throwing it to the open man...THIS IS THE WEST COAST OFFENSE FOLKS...

We aren't running a vertical offense anymore we're running a horizontal offense that is all about ball control and picking your spots to take your shots vertical...The 49'ers of the 80's and 90's, The Packers, The Raiders, The Buccaneers, The Seahawks, The Eagles and The Broncos have all gotten to the Super Bowl running this exact same offense. Just be patient and remember we are just 7 games into running this offense and we're 5-2, it will only get better with the talent we have...

[Thinking Skins]

Let me ask you this do you not consider 10-15yd passes downfield passes?

From my recollection he has connected on alot of deep crosses, seam routes, and skinny post's to El, Cooley, and Moss...

He isn't in the traditional sense just dropping back and chucking it up 40-50 yds but he is throwing downfield...I think this is why Zorn gets irritated when people keep asking this question. Zorn knows JC is making the proper reads and throwing it to the open man...THIS IS THE WEST COAST OFFENSE FOLKS...

We aren't running a vertical offense anymore we're running a horizontal offense that is all about ball control and picking your spots to take your shots vertical...The 49'ers of the 80's and 90's, The Packers, The Raiders, The Buccaneers, The Seahawks, The Eagles and The Broncos have all gotten to the Super Bowl running this exact same offense. Just be patient and remember we are just 7 games into running this offense and we're 5-2, it will only get better with the talent we have...

I was looking for the 40-50 yard bombs. Maybe you're right and I shouldn't be expecting them....but gosh darnett I like them (Steve Spurrier memory)...

[Thinking Skins]

And yet I see so many dropped screen passes.

true, and so Brunell deserved some respect (especially en light of Derek Anderson), but its not like the award put us in the playoffs.

[darrelgreenie]

This is a thread which I hope to re-open a discussion from last season, namely Jason Campbell's deep ball. Here's a thread where this topic was discussed at length last year.

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?t=220127

I'm not trying to criticize him, but its not hard to notice that the deep ball isn't a large part of our playbook right now. Whether it'll become more of a part of it over the coming weeks remains to be seen. I'm a big supporter of Campbell but I'm disappointed in the number of big plays by our offense and in particular, the lack of attempts at deep balls.

Last season this was a problem as well. It seemed that Gibbs was ultra conservative with Campbell and didn't want Campbell to just throw it up for grabs. Add to that the fact that his WRs were so often injured last year that it could have been hard for the WRs and QB to develop chemistry and I could somewhat understand both sides of the argument.

But this season, we have Moss putting up good numbers. We have a rookie WR in Thomas who may not know his routes to perfection, but has gotten open on many deep routes in his limited time playing. Then we have the ball to Fred Davis which was a moderately deep ball and I think Campbell was stumbling a bit when he threw it, but that shoulda been 7 points and he missed it.

I bring this up because I'm wondering how many of the same problems from last year are present this year?

- Is there still a problem with the chemistry with the WRs on the deep ball? This doesn't seem to be true because Moss has been our sole deep threat in most games (and Campbell has made some nice plays connecting to him), but what about the other WRs? Is the reason that we're not trying more stuff to Thomas because Campbell just doesn't have the chemistry yet?

- Are our WRs still injured? I know ARE had a broken hand and Thrash had a sprained ankle. I don't know if those are the same level of banged up as last year, but it may be limiting our play calling.

- Is Zorn trying to "protect" Campbell in a similar way that Saunders/Gibbs tried to? I think that the most telling stat about this may be the fact that Campbell hasn't thrown a pic yet. We as fans see it as a blessing and Zorn praises it as a good thing, but could it also be a curse in that he's still trying to build Campbell and the offense's confidense in this system? Or does he feel that we're not good enough to make the mistake of a pic on a deep ball and overcome it?

Yeah bro. The Zorn/Campbell combination has not been throwing deep as much as i thought they would. (http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?t=263869 / http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?t=261079)

I checked the stats of some WCO QBs passing attempts of over 11 yards and Campbell was at the bottom of the list. But, over the past 2 games ,the Rams game especially, JC has hit several intermediate downfield passes over 15 yards. Its easy to forget that this is JC first year in the WCO that most say takes 3 years to master. I think Zorn is cautious but is starting to open up the downfield passing attempts. I was hoping for a more wide open version of the WCO, something like the Denver Broncos with Devin Thomas playing the role of Brandon Marshall. But that might be next year, lol.

Also i think Campbell's 'stinginess' with the ball is a great thing. Look at the Manning boys recent games. One could argue that their interceptions cost them the Browns and the Green Bay games respectively.

[skindogger47]

It will come more and more as teams stack the box against Portis.

[pocampo]

Thanks for the great thread. Great reading after a hard Monday. I think we can be a Super Bowl team this year not in three years. We have a great defense an awesome running game and great WRs (and we have the COOL)!!! What is missing right now - can we pass deep with any consistency, or do we really need to? I think to take it to the next level we're going to need to. I know our game plan has worked so far, but if we're going be a real playoff contender, this should be implemented. I think we can win the Super Bowl this year. Its just a matter of utilizing the talent we have and scoring more points.

[Voice_of_Reason]

We're winning games playing Joe Gibbs type football. Most of this board wanted to fire Gibbs for calling these plays "limiting" Campbell. Now Zorn comes in here and is doing the same things and suddenly people shouldn't care?

Ultimately it bogs down to us keeping bad teams in games a whole lot longer than they should be. So stuff like the onsides kick against the cowboys or the FG at the end of the Rams game or the fumble in the Browns game wind up being plays that could cost us the game, when the games shouldn't be that close.

The play calling is more run oriented because they are moving the ball, and Portis is having a great year. (More on that later)

The big difference between last year and this year is turnovers and a higher percentage completion for JC.

Nor can the fans. Especially the ones at home.

Yeah, shows you what we can see, doesn't it?

See, this is my thing....and it kinda ties into something that Doc normally says on his show. Its nice to see that Campbell "has the ability" to check down. I like knowing that he's not always going to try to put the team on his back and win THIS PLAY. But I would like him to be a bit more of a gunslinger. Why not just say, "I know Moss is double covered, but I think I can get it between the two defenders?" Thats what I'd like to see more of.

And I definitively DO NOT. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Unless you are 3rd and long, and if you have a 5 yard completion, take it. Why get into bad situations when you can avoid them? Keep the chains moving and live to fight another down instead of risking an INT. Doc Walker is just flat wrong about this. Sorry, I know he played, I know I didn't, but on this topic he's just wrong. You don't throw down field when it's not there. It's stupid. That's how you lose momentum and ball games.

Or even when a guy like ARE or Thrash is covered, I'd like to see Campbell throw it to their outside shoulder where only the WR can get it. Or heck, even if he does something similar to what Bulger did to us last week, where he underthrew a well-covered Avery and allowed the WR to make a play for the ball.

And if the throw gets hung up in the wind or is a little over or under thrown, then it's an INT. btw, the throw to Avery was IDENTICAL to the throw to ARE in the game for 25 yards (pointed out in this thread.)

I like that he CAN check down (something that he wasn't doing in the Giants game), but he doesn't NEED to check down on EVERY PLAY. I guess that's my main point.

And he doesn't. But he is doing a terrific job going through his progressions, and taking what the coach wants him to take. He gets an A+ for me in improvement in that.

ONE OTHER NOTE: part of getting these deep balls is opportunities. They threw the ball a whopping 24 times in that game. They were very content to grind it out on the ground, because Portis was averaging 5.5 yards a carry. I'm guessing that if Portis had not been getting big yards, they would have passed more, and there would have been more yards and probably more 1st downs. Most passes were in 3rd down situations. Shrug.

I'm completely fine with JC right now. Absolutely fine with the way he's playing.

[iMeast]

I think the deep balls will happen some time in the second half of the season if all the WRs are healthy and activated. :lionsuck:

HTTR

[Meskeet21]

to me it seems like teams fear santana moss. thats why the have 2 deep safeties and practically ask portis to run it down their throats. they need to put 8-9 in the box and make campbell beat them. i hope they do cause thats when the show will really start

:evil:

[darrelgreenie]

to me it seems like teams fear santana moss. thats why the have 2 deep safeties and practically ask portis to run it down their throats. they need to put 8-9 in the box and make campbell beat them. i hope they do cause thats when the show will really start

:evil:

Good passing teams are equally adept at attacking all defenses. I'll know the passing game is in gear when we can consistently make plays in the passing game against Cover 2.

[RandyHolt]

If Portis is averaging 5 yds a carry now, then there is less reasons why we cant take at least one shot down the field to Moss, not Thrash, every game. Just overthrow it or chuck it out of bounds if he is covered. Zorn's found a winning formula running Portis for more yards than Jason passes for, but its barely winning games. One fumble, and we are in a coin flip win loss situation.

Put teams away Zorn!

[Thinking Skins]

Part of the problem may be Jansen starting at RT instead of Heyer. Zorn has said many times that Heyer is better at pass protection and Jansen better at run blocking. So it may be that he's not confident enough in Jansen's pass blocking abilities to put Campbell back on a lot of deep drops that are needed for the deeper passes.

[mjm4soccer]

Part of the problem may be Jansen starting at RT instead of Heyer. Zorn has said many times that Heyer is better at pass protection and Jansen better at run blocking. So it may be that he's not confident enough in Jansen's pass blocking abilities to put Campbell back on a lot of deep drops that are needed for the deeper passes.

See post 54. I mentioned this as well, but no one has has commented.

[Thinking Skins]

I think another big issue in the last couple games has been the fact that Heyer is missing at RT. If I recall correctly, he wasn't on the field much the last couple games. Jansen has been playing well, but maybe Zorn doesn't trust Jansen enough in pass protection to call the longer routes, as evidenced in Heyer starting at RT to open the season.

exactly.

[darrelgreenie]

Part of the problem may be Jansen starting at RT instead of Heyer. Zorn has said many times that Heyer is better at pass protection and Jansen better at run blocking. So it may be that he's not confident enough in Jansen's pass blocking abilities to put Campbell back on a lot of deep drops that are needed for the deeper passes.

Dude, Heyer might be a better pass blocker then Jansen. But, IMO Jason has attempted and hit on more downfield throws in the past 2 game then in his previous games. *(He was 5/9 attempts over 11-40 yards)I don't think the stats support the theory about Jansen has affected Zorn's playcalling in the downfield passing game. Dude, i just don't see Zorn or any coach allowing a lineman to hinder his ability to throw the ball downfield. IMO if a HC and Line coach would get together and come up with a protection scheme that would allow them to do what they wanted to do.

I think the downfield passing game is a work in progress. Rome wasn't built in a day.

:2cents:

*I've been keeping a log of the downfield passing game recently

I save each weeks updates from ESPN qb/splits/passes by PASS PLAY

[corrupt3d]

I'm not afraid of us not being able to accomplish the deep ball. I think we can with regularity.

I think what we lack on is the protection long enough for JC to set up. Look at most of JC's deeper throws, all of them he had to reset due to protection.

[WSHRedskins3ATLBraves3]

As the OP of the original thread I just want to say that JC's deep throws look a lot better this year. He's hitting his receivers in stride (Saints game) and putting the ball right on the numbers.

I'm not getting into play calling because from the TV view you can't tell how many times per game we are trying to go deep and I wouldn't know what I was talking about.

I am impressed with how JC has thrown the deep ball this year when he has let it loose though.