Running game helped by down field threat in TE

[HateOffSeason]

I was listening to Moving the Chains today on Sirius, and they made an interesting point when they were discussing the Browns. They said that without Kellen Winslow, the running game was going to suffer. That kind of caught me by surprise.

They explained this statement by saying that teams with a good down field threat in their tight end, usually have a good running game. These teams can play a cat and mouse game with their TE by splitting them wide from the formation. When the TE goes wide, two things happen.

1. A safety has to come over the top out of the center of the field to cover the TE.

2. The outside LB on that side needs to split the difference between the TE and the formation to eliminate the quick slant.

The end result of these moves is, of course, that they can't stack the box. This now opens up your running attack. If the defense doesn't make that adjustment, you just audible to a pass to the TE and slaughter them all day long until they make the adjustment. Once they make the adjustment to cover the TE, then it's back to running the ball.

Sounds simple. I think we have a decent down field threat in Cooley, and probably in Davis as well. And I know we always hear about how teams stack the box against us to stop Portis. And I know one of the continual slights against our offense is that we don't motion enough.

I really don't have any idea if we do this or not. I had never looked for it specifically, and its an idea that I had not considered. So my question is, do we do this? If not, should we?

[HateOffSeason]

I know this isn't a bashing JC thread, or an I hate Zorn's playcalling thread, but this is something I'd like someone who knows about football to address. KDawg? Anyone?

I had always assumed that fan's complaints about not doing enough motion before the snap usually just involved wide receivers to see if we can uncover what the defence is doing, zone or man. Never really thought about motioning to create mismatches. Are we missing something as a team here?