Purpose of scripted plays and reason for first quarter woes

I read this fascinating answer on Asked and Answered at Steelers.com -

"Coach Mike Tomlin said the Steelers do script plays for the start of a game. As for the purpose of a script, he said, “It controls the flow and the start of the game, and it gathers information about your opponent in terms of some things they may plan to do against you as you roll through different personnel groupings and structures. If gives you a sense of the matchups within the game. If you’re employing different personnel groups, who are they putting on who and things of that nature. It controls the flow of what it is you’re doing, it provides some thoughtful variety, but it also gathers information relative to your opponent.”

So maybe the first few series are for diagnostic purposes for the rest of the game; not necessarily for scoring, but for setting things up and taking advantage later. The stats of first quarter lack of scoring and second quarter scoring efficiency would be evidence of this (if i have my understanding of the scoring trends accurate). Maybe Tomlin is playing chess, not checkers.

Too bad they can't seem to diagnose and score at the same time.

 

Interesting. I’ve wondered before if something like this was going on.

 

Funny. I thought that was the purpose of film study and practice.

 

it is also the purpose of the quality control coaches leading up to the game. that is also fine for teams that don't do much adjusting during games, but........

 

I’m sure they don’t script penalties and dropped passes. The players have to execute as well.

 

It's funny some of the rationale people try to use. I don't know maybe it's just me but a pretty perfect start to a game would start by winning the coin toss and deferring. Watch your D force a 3 and out. O takes the ball goes right down the field and put a 7 on the board...hey maybe even a 8.
The second half would start with a TD as well or do we need a grace period to adjust to whatever potential changes they mad at halftime. It's a ridiculous narrative. I know when I'm sitting home watching the game and the ticker I never say to myself....Welp NE or KC is up 7-0 4 minutes into the game they're gonna be sorry. It's just like article from BTSC about a month ago that said Ben and Tomlin were both saying the O was getting off to a bad start because of penalties and that simply wasn't true at all. Stop the BS and go out there and execute....sheesh!

 

How are you going to know otherwise how the other team is going to react to dropped passes and penalties?

 

This actually makes sense. I think this would be way more successful if we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot half the time.

 

thats fine and all but elite teams crush you. just like that team that went 21-0 vs us because we were gathering information relative to our opponent lol.

 

A lot of coaches script the first X number of plays. This is nothing new or unusual. It's been going on for decades. That's still no reason to come out flat. Coming out flat will result in us falling behind against the better teams in the league and that's not a good recipe for winning

 

We were gathering information while they were gathering our asses to hand it to us...

 

I think they are trying to score to start games but also trying to gather information. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

Yeah but it sure as hell looks like it especially considering we have one of if not the worst 1st quarter offense in the league.

 

I believe it comes down to piss poor game preparation both tactically (x' and o's) and the player. We are intellectually behind most teams in this area and may be why we perform like we do. Whatever their justification for doing this, I feel confident to say it doesn't work very well. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is.................!

 

Andy Reid is extremely successful scripting the first 10 or 15 plays. The same was true of Bill Walsh. The issue here is that the scripts seem to suck.

 

Agree, teams have been doing thus for years, but that's no reason to come out flat or make minor adjustments. I do question the types of plays called in the scripts. Do you really need to call so many screens? They didn't throw down the field for what seem like a whole 1st quarter and the Browns were all crowding the line of scrimmage making it impossible to run.

 

That’s because we scripted the first X number of defensive plays.

 

I hope not, since that's one game that has the winner pre-determined by the shuffle of the cards before the game even starts.

 

So going down 21-0 to the Chiefs was all part of the master plan..... Brilliant.

 

I agree with this, though I think the point is less about the scripting, and more using the scripted plays to get the defense to show their hands. Kind of like the way Tomlin uses preseason a little differently to some other coaches.

But all of that is kind of a separate point - if the plays are scripted, you'd want to see some damn-near perfect execution, and we often don't get that.

 

I guess our coaches must be amazing at in game adjustments if we are completely unprepared coming into the games.

 

Perhaps the problem is we're sharing the script with our opponents?

 

We are still gathering information. Inside sources say soon we will have all we need and the fan base will see the fruits of our labor!

 

Maybe its because Tomlin definitely is no Reid or Walsh. Period.