How Much Did We Learn About Kliff Kingsbury's Offense? | Grant & Danny

Saturday afternoon in the Meadowlands we got our first look at Cliff Kingsbury's offense now I'm hesitant to take a lot out of what we saw because in the same way when we're saying we got to grade Jaden Daniels with a grain OFA Sal or anybody else you know kingsberry gave us a pretty vanilla look at what he wants to do but I do think there were some key takeaways the first was Washington which was not slow but certainly not one of the faster teams in terms of tempo offensively last year ran plays at the fastest rate of any team in the league in the first week of the preseason so if you look at time between snaps Tempo basically you operated your offense with the commanders were number one in football this past week which would be notable regardless of who your coordinator was but when it's a guy like cliff kingsburry who you already know likes to go no huddle likes Tempo comes from the college game before he was the head coach of the Cardinals and was at USC helping them last year it goes without saying that's what they want to be that's what they want to do they want to get as many plays off as possible it's like an NBA team that wants a lot of possessions they want to run you little Mike dantony ball the more you shoot the more you're going to score the more offensive possessions you get the more points you're going to put up right so I think that was the first takeaway that meant something to me was the pace the tempo the no huddle element I think there's going to be plenty of times this year where they get to that maybe early in games they came out without running true legitimate huddles for Jaden Daniels and especially if he's comfortable and maybe more comfortable doing that why not major in that from time to time now you've got to move the sticks I still remember talking to Mike Shanahan about why he didn't like no huddle and he hated it but he didn't do it more often and he talked about how awful it is for your defense and you know would would go back to the old football aoms of you know the the each phase of the ball being responsible for the other right and this you know NFL game is really about taking care of the defense as an offense and vice versa and so if if you're going up Tempo and you're not moving the chains then they're going to be right back higher risk and lower floor but I still love that they came out they showed no huddle right away they showed Tempo yeah I I mean I misspoke I mean it's higher ceiling lower floor right like if if you go three and out in 30 seconds that's a disaster that's bad that's almost like a sudden change uh turnover kind of situation but it can also be successful I mean to me the the the thing that I've always wanted is what Green Bay does when they or what Green Bay did for a long time when they had Aaron Rogers they were just so well orchestrated it's if we got you in a Personnel grouping that we like that's to our advantage you don't get to substitute we're not just going to let you Trot on the guys that you want to have on we're getting right to the line we'll probably draw you off sides once and we're gonna beat you to you know what with that matchup that we think is better for us New England did that when they had the double tight end look these smart good offenses that are cohesive and on the same page can do those sorts of things where we're not going to let you be in sub package that you like or you you prefer it's the thing I worry about off honestly all the time when when you've got some continuity like if you look at Philadelphia that's got Hertz now for a few years look at Dallas with Dak and that it was similar offense for a while where Washington's got all these sub packages they're they're dime linebackers this guy their nickel linebackers this guy this when they go to the extra safeties that you could you could negate some of that stuff by just get into the line you could take your time once you're there but you don't let people substitute I love that idea as a way just again to to make somebody comfortable and also exploiting a positive match up if you have one the other thing that we saw in the first preseason game at least in the drive where the starters were on the field especially 11pl 70 yard touchdown Drive moved right down the field Cliff Kingsbury called Eight running plays on that drive and for all all the conversations we've had about Daniels it was three passes two of them were screens Now by Design you weren't trying to show anything and it was pretty Trader Joe's vanilla ice cream but eight runs and 11 plays you just talked about this in the Beltway Blitz and you asked I think it was Russell it was Earl actually Earl yeah that's who it was it was Earl do you think they're going to run it a lot more than maybe people suggest I mean the expectation I've heard all year long from our guests certainly since training camp began is they're going to run the football at ton so are you saying more than more than whatever the expectation is they're going to be super balanced at least and maybe even major in the run and minor in the passing this year to help Jaden Daniels but I think if you include Jaden Daniels designed runs Jaden Daniels keeper stuff not scrambles on passing plays but just the times that they ask him to run the ball by Design I think they're absolutely going to be a run first team essentially this year as well they probably should be with a Young quarterback C 2012 Robert gri like take a little bit off the young gu's plate make the reads a little bit easier with play action and use his legs to make defenses go 11 on 11 so I I have a couple data points I've been mulling this for a few days and I'm kind of feel like I'm now ready to unleash the theory so to speak um you go back to Kyler Murray's rookie year Cliff Kingsbury in Arizona right they didn't run it in an outrageous rate I think they had around 400 Rush attempts uh to right around a thousand plates okay so that's not a ridiculous you know 6040 types but it's not what Baltimore was doing or San Francisco was doing both of those teams that year playing with tremendous leads so you're salting away the clock and you're so good at running it that you just sort of major in that but hidden within that is effective runs hidden within that is not just running on first down Scott Turner nor uh um Ron Rivera style and setting up bad down in distance it's effective running getting a lot of first downs via the run right on that that second and four after an early down short pass or something like that or even EXT ention of the Run game to take care of that young quarterback my second part of my theory here is I think this front office is smart I'm operating with that assumption I'm just a dude okay but I look at a receiver room where you got Jan doson sort of a slot guy playing deep into the second quarter of a preseason game you don't really have much Beyond Teran mcen they didn't seem interested in going out and and and trading for a Keenan Allen or or you know using a high pick in the draft and what was deemed as a pretty excellent receiver class on a white out to improve that room and I'm going if you're going to do what I think everybody else has thought you were going to do which is let the Young quarterback Thrive and throw the football and give him weapons give them safety blankets and give them yards after the catch and explosive plays and all sorts of things that are going to make him uh you know a CJ Stroud likee figure you would address that you would improve that group from someone that's uh PFF doesn't have his 26th overall in terms of the skill position groups you would have done something and then it occurred to me they don't plan on doing that they plan on running the ball they're going to protect him by running the ball even more than everybody including people like me think it's not a priority because it's not a priority they didn't think that the he was best served talking about Daniels this is my theory uh to to drop back a reasonable number of times they're going to do it less than that they're going to run the ball way more than I think everybody's anticipating and that's how they're going to indoctrinate him into the league so I think it's hard to like decipher what everybody's anticipating is but I I think they are going to run the the ball a lot and that's I mean we've talked about it on the show quite a bit I I think that is going to be the philosophy early in his career and it should be with a dual threat quarterback who's got some learning to do you could probably just stop at it should be with a Young quarterback right so that's number one we learned that and we saw that with Sam how last year to some extent but the other thing I will say to that is in addition to the fact that it just makes sense to not ask Jaden Daniels to go be Superstar I also think the quick game is going to be his best friend when you talk about how they're going to protect him they're going to protect him with a lot of horizontal raid I'll call it quick safe easy throws we saw two screens on three passing plays and three screens were called as a matter of fact now some of that is you're showing nothing but I do think the foundation of their passing game is going to be horizontal the foundation of their passing game is going to be short yardage quick completions and I do think people should get ready for that so between the running game which is going to help take some pressure off him and not having him hold the ball in the pocket that long on designed longer developing five and seven step plays you will Whittle down the number of times that you're asking him to process a ton and I think it seems like he could do that but just generally as a Young quarterback the less you're asking the better and the the amount of time he's going to hold the ball behind this line and that those two things could both Elevate his floor as a rookie and I think ultimately the the path to Excellence to me is more of a balance and it's it's allowing him to have some of those gudy numbers like Justin Herbert had as a rookie um that CJ Stout had last year to would agree that Baker Mayfield had Franklin Cleveland that was supported also by a good running game and good talent around him I think they're just not as concerned with with wide receiver talent I think I think there there's a reason Austin ekler was a priority which is to catch the ball to the Back Field early and often I think there's a reason their second round pick was a tight end that people weren't really sure would go in the second round he's going to get some targets you add in Zack Herz the the safety blanket that that close to the line of scrimmage type passing game I'm with you is what they're going to major in that's the way the NFL is trending anyway yeah I would say you're your typ if there is such a thing as a typical Series right there isn't but bear with me your average series will look like this first down from the shotgun running back to either your left or your right in in a split um quick handoff fake short pass for four and a half yards second down run third down dealer choice right again another short pass potentially or or otherwise to kind of try to keep the sticks moving I think that's going to be your average three Downs for this offense and I had this vision of this prolific passer who could also run it you know putting up 4,000 yards as a rookie potentially if he went out and got him the kind of talent that Caleb Williams had has in Chicago and I don't think that's their Vision I think they're going to limit his opportunities for big gudy numbers and you know try to spoon feed and build that way with these short safe stuff to go with a running game there was no path to do it the Bears did because you didn't have the other top 10 pick to get an adun type player they could have traded for Keenan Allen though you know you could have two-thirds of what the Bears had and that's kind of my point and and they didn't do that obviously but yeah I mean to me that that's another story of talking about what is our offense going to look like with cliff kingsberry uh and what did we learn from this past weekend to get back to that I mean I I thought saw a lot more of the read option stuff I think that's going to be a huge part of this offense I don't want to say it's going to be 2012 all over again but I think it's going to look more like 2012 maybe than people think which was a 1600 yard Alfred Morris season and Robert Griffin running the ball on Keepers a ton making Morris better making everything in that offense easier and you know a lot of easy kind of half the field one read throws and if Cliff Kingsbury is smart there's no reason he doesn't just pull up some of that tape because Daniels can do anything Griffin did may be better at this point as a prospect coming out of the SEC