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WITH NFL TEAMS firing offensive coordinators almost as frequently as the Raiders commit penalties these days, I have some advice for teams looking to amp their scoring: Add more play-action to your repertoire.
Yes, the trend in today's game is for quarterbacks to get rid of the ball quickly, not to take extra time to fake a handoff before passing. This season starting QBs are spending two seconds or less in the pocket on 37.4 percent of their attempts, a figure that has jumped by more than 5 percentage points in just the past four years. As I've written before, that's understandable and even laudable, given the trouble so many clubs are having developing cohesive offensive lines. But the numbers are loud and clear: Misdirection still pays.
QBs threw for 9.23 yards per attempt on play-action through Week 9 this season, compared with 6.9 ypa on all other passes, according to ESPN Stats & Information. That's a huge gap. It's the difference between Tom Brady and Marcus Mariota! Further, play-action passes lead to first downs on 44.3 percent of completions, versus 33.3 percent for non-PA, and result in fewer sacks despite QBs holding the ball longer (5 percent of dropbacks, versus 5.6 percent). Essentially, play-action is a way to grab extra rewards without incurring extra risk.
Since Hank Stram pioneered the tactic some 50 years ago, several pairs of innovative coaches and cerebral QBs have elevated play-action to an art form: Stram and Len Dawson, Bill Walsh and Joe Montana, Sam Wyche and Boomer Esiason, Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson. But many teams cling to traditionalist beliefs that prevent them from taking full advantage of it.
For some, the pure pocket passer is the beau ideal of quarterback play, and once a QB has established a high level of standard performance, it's almost as if he shouldn't need to resort to anything so gimmicky. Other clubs still think you have to run to set up the pass and will use play-action only if they are already confident in their rushing game. Indeed, as Football Outsiders pointed out in July, four of the five teams that ran most often last season (as a percentage of plays) were also among the half a dozen that deployed play-action the most.
But analytics long ago debunked the idea that you need to run to set up the pass-and besides, even the worst teams in the league rush more than 20 times a game, so you especially don't need to run to set up fake handoffs.
As far as I can tell, then, too many coaches call play-action by rote rather than looking at data to see who's actually effective at it. An extreme example: The Chargers have gone to play-action on just 10.3 percent of Philip Rivers' pass attempts since the start of 2012, even though over that span he has hurled 22 TDs with just six picks on play-action and his completions have traveled 37 percent farther, on average, than his other throws. Overall, there is actually a slightly negative correlation between how often NFL teams use play-action and how well they use it (as measured by improvement in ypa): minus-0.19, on a scale of minus-1 to 1.
Now, play-action is based on faking out the opposition. So if you use it more frequently, won't its effectiveness decline? Well, yes. Eventually, defenders will stop biting on false handoffs, and linebackers will keep clogging the middle of the field rather than rushing toward the line of scrimmage. But until the advantage of play-action erodes completely, it makes sense to keep trying. A team hasn't optimized its offense until the gains from various play types are equal-until there's no reason to switch from one to another.
Relentless play-action wouldn't suit every team-it does require an offensive line that can hold blocks and a QB with a deep touch. But I think Buffalo should consider it. Last year Tyrod Taylor crushed it on play-action, connecting on 69.5 percent of passes for a whopping 18.6 yards per completion, second in the league. This season offensive coordinator Greg Roman was running PA on 23.1 percent of Taylor's pass attempts, but since replacing Roman after Week 2, Anthony Lynn has cut Taylor's play-action usage by a third. Free Tyrod Taylor!
I also think we're sure to see Seattle bootleg and bomb a lot more off play-action in the second half of this season. Recovering from injuries, Wilson has gone to play-action on just 15.4 percent of passes this year, by far the lowest rate of his career. But when he's on his game, defenses literally can't believe their eyes. And the last time the Seahawks led the league in play-action, using PA on 34 percent of their passes in 2013? They won the Super Bowl.