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Gibbs takes a page from William's Playbook


Ignatius J.

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When Greg Williams signed up to coach under the hall of fame enshrined Joe Gibbs, I bet he thought he'd be the one learning from Gibbs.

I saw some adjustments from gibbs that seemed, well, williams-like.

Greg Williams has achieved amazing success this year by taking players with marginal talent, and playing to thier strengths. Chris Clemons is not a good defensive end, but he has just enough size to make his speed useful while taking a big arc around offensive tackles. As an every down defensive end, that would be aweful, but he only asks chris to do one thing well, and then he uses that one skill only when it useful, third and long. (and sometimes second and over 20).

You saw this more often earlier in the season when our depth wasn't starting, but ryan clark and todd franz would shuffle in and out in certain situations.

But Gibbs did this too last week. Coles is no longer our number one reciever. When we have two wide outs on the field, coles and gardner go in. When we went to one wideout, coles and gardner came out, and d-mac went in. Instead of asking all the recievers to understand all of the formations, gibbs speciallized them. When we went to three wideouts it was thrash who came in, and not mccants. The depth chart went out the window. This was williamsesque.

There were the obvious changes as well. The team didn't run the same plays when betts was in. They actually changed up the way they attacked the line of scrimmage to exploit betts's ability to move downhill. They might still run a zone block but the emphaisis is on pushing bodies up field. With portis in, they tried to create lanes throughout the line, opening up cutback by walling off the backside. Cooley would come in motion and seal off the backside while samuels and dockery pulled in the counter tre. Even with pulling lineman, there were backside lanes available.

It wasn't just that the packages were changing, the plays and formations were changing too. Gibbs used to be about the same plays from different formations. Now, we're seeing different plays from different formations. Each formation is playing to the strengths of the men making up that formation and it works better.

We have a long way to go, but the changes gibbs is making are far more than smoke and mirrors. Let's hope philly doesn't see us coming.

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Not to nitpick, but this is pretty typical for Gibbs.

For example, in the 1991 season, Monk and Clark were our WRs for our 2-receiver set. Sanders came in if it was a 1-receiver set and for 3-receiver sets.

Now, this might be different than he's been doing all year, but I'm not sure it's something he took from GW.

Gibbs has always been big on having specific packages with personnel. And maybe he's just getting more comfortable running these packages on and off the field.

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That, if true, is kinda scary cause you can see the set of plays we're going to run just from the players we have in there. I doubt though that Gibbs would make it this simple though.

I can believe the different people for different formations thing, but I would still have to believe the Gibbs foundation of running the same basic plays from each of these formations.

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Substitutions that play to a given player's strengths based on down & distance were a staple of Gibbs' first stint with us. In fact, I think it was him that actually coined the term "player packages" when he instituted the "Heavy Jumbo" package.

However, I don't know if he was simply trying to evaluate our players or perhaps letting them get more accustomed to the system before doing too much with the substitutions and shifts.

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I don't necessarily agree that this is something Gibbs is picking up from Williams. If anything, I think its just that Gibbs is finally starting to get a good feel for what he has on offense.

I think that part of the problem all along has not been entirely the players, but Gibbs not having been up to speed with what he had. He has been out of football for over 10 years. He no longer had tabs on all the players on his team, or the opposition. He has over 10 years of rust to shake off.

When he first came to Washington, he had come from one football team as an assistant coach to the Redskins as a Head Coach. Sure, he started slowly, but the learning curve was nowhere near as steep.

He's had a LOT of ground to make up, and I daresay that we are starting to see things turn around. Slowly, but surely....

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Originally posted by TD_washingtonredskins

Not to nitpick, but this is pretty typical for Gibbs.

For example, in the 1991 season, Monk and Clark were our WRs for our 2-receiver set. Sanders came in if it was a 1-receiver set and for 3-receiver sets.

Now, this might be different than he's been doing all year, but I'm not sure it's something he took from GW.

Gibbs has always been big on having specific packages with personnel. And maybe he's just getting more comfortable running these packages on and off the field.

Exactly.

Don't forget Gerald Riggs coming in for Byner on the goalline too.

The other thing that I credit Gibbs with (correctly?) is being the first guy to come up with the so-called Heavy Jumbo short yardage package, with 2 or 3 OG's in as blocking TE's on the goalline. Again, this is big time specialization.

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The one thing that amazes me about this site (the people on it) is how you see the details of the game while watching. I'm not being sarcastic either. When I get to see the Skins play (which is considerably more this year than in the past), I am to busy yelling at my TV to pick up the things you guys talk about. So I come here to find out what I was yelling about!! Ok, sorry for the interruption.....as you were.....

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For example, in the 1991 season, Monk and Clark were our WRs for our 2-receiver set. Sanders came in if it was a 1-receiver set and for 3-receiver sets.

Beat me to it TD. Good pick on that one. I think he can probably learn somethings for Williams, but Gibbs was the first coach to venture down many roads. The situational player was one of them.

How many teams had third/passing down backs before Gibbs? Joe Washington, Kelvin Bryant. Short yardage backs? Gerald Riggs......etc etc :2cents:

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and this is what belicheck does so well and to thnk ole gibbs pioneered it all!!!

That's a very good point. What Belicheck has done is fit the "role player" strategy into the salary cap era. That's tougher than when Gibbs was here last time.

However, I'm sure Gibbs will find a way to make it work just like Reid and Belicheck have.

:logo: :point2sky :logo:

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Originally posted by Leonard Washington

its about time. ive all been begging gibbs to take advangtage of people's skill sets all year. i would like to see sellers doing some lead blocking.

It's a matter of the players becoming more comfortable with the playbook. It's finally starting to click with some of these guys.

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