Chicago Strategies

I'm in favor of completely scrapping the Philly formation. It worked nicely last season, but it hasn't worked since precisely because our biggest problem is that defenses can always key on our lead blockers, thus giving their defenders time to bunch and stop the run. The more lead blockers you have, the bigger the key and the longer it takes to develop. If you watch the tapes, a lot of times you'll see someone coming back-side to take down the RB for little or no gain, all because he had to wait for the lead blockers to open up a hole everyone knew was coming. Maybe if we had some legitimate in-line offensive linemen who could blow people out we could get it to work, but we don't have that at this point.

That said, if you're going to beat Chicago then you'll do it on the ground. You're playing right into their hands if you pass too often.

 

I take it you're thinking more of the Denver running game? Or maybe more of a straight up Henning pulling guards style? Or, simply rinse and repeat the Giant's strategy (which seemed to count on a weak LB corps).

 

Sure, if you move the ball from that formation, you use it again some. You don't rely on it.

It doesn't play into strengths or weaknesses. It doesn't play into anything other than giving their ends a free release and being used too much in what you're suggesting.

 

kinda like last week, too much of any one thing before the game is in hand isn't something I'd advocate. It'd be great to get 35 carries on every team in the NFL we play, but I'd rather do what's working well. If it's the run, great. But balance at all competitive times.

 

Balance is good for the regular season, but run heavy offenses tend to work best in the playoffs, especially outdoors and against good defenses. It doesn't really matter if the run doesn't work right away, we have to keep doing it. As people keep citing, one of the reasons the first game got out of hand was because we unnecessarily abandoned the run.


Scope:
I'd like to see some misdirection period, but I was mainly just thinking that we'd probably have more success running out of a spread formation. Whether that's 3 WR or only 2, I just don't want to see us lining up a big group of people in the middle and hope that they can create some kind of hole.

 

Okay, I went back and checked. Philly had one of the leagues worse run defenses in 2003 but sent most of its secondary to the Pro Bowl. Makes sense to use a formation like that in that situation. Less so against a strong runstuffing D like Da Bears. I'm still hoping for 2 to 1 run ratio and waiting for them to make the first mistake. Call it conservative or unbalanced but play it like the first half of the 2003 Super Bowl and see who blinks first.

 

You call what works. You go in, you try things out.



And you're right, it's just as likely that you get the 2003 Pats treatment as the 2003 Philly treatment. The nice thing was that, in Philly, we had a lead, we had their QB knocked out, and we had a soft, small run D to face. Chicago's not huge, and I'd advocate running at Browna fair amount, but it's not like they're weak and looking only to pass rush.

 

What exactly is the Philly formation again?

If we open with 4 wide I will strangle Henning. Thats how the Chic D scores all those points.

If our O just refrains from giving the Bears their scores, we'll be in decent shape. Score sooner or later, but in our spots.

One thing Chic has that the Giants didnt is Moose. The Giants WRs gave up. Moose will play hard.

 

that full house formation

I guess in some ways you could call it a broken T since it's the spacing of the t backs but lined up where a FB would go in the broken I

 

On a semi-related note, I still find it a bit thrilling that I created that exact formation to use with my Panthers franchise in that year's Madden (although I used Goings and Hoover instead of Hoover and a TE). Either Henning is someone I played against online or I'm his long forgotten bastard son. :supergrin