The NE Patriots used a 4 Offensive Lineman formation in the playoff game Saturday versus the Baltimore Ravens to help with their comeback victory:
Click link below for the entire article:
The strategy in question involved Bill Belichicks offense employing four offensive linemen instead of the standard five on a number of plays midway through the third quarter. Running back Shane Vereen lined up off the right side of the formation, and he declared himself an ineligible receiver. In essence, Vereen had become the fifth lineman, though with considerably different duties.
Raven's coach John Harbaugh was not happy:
Harbaugh continued: We wanted an opportunity to be able to ID who the eligible players were, because what they were doing was they would announce the ineligible player and then Tom would take them to the line right away and snap the ball before we had a chance to even figure out who was lined up where. And that was the deception part of it, and it was clearly deception.
There is some Hokie irony in that it occurred against Jim Harbaugh's brother, John; who is complaining about the formation.
I've heard of unbalanced lines and 2 and 3 tight end sets, but not this.
The 'Mad Hoodie' strikes again.
Comments
Interesting stuff. Got a feeling Belichick and Brady get number 4 this year.
Not if they have to play Seattle. I could see them crushing Green Bay, though.
Does anyone have a link to the video of this sequence of plays?
I like the ingenuity. It is no different then misdirection or another "unusual" formation. CC Loefflor and lets get this in the playbook for hurry-up offense.
To play devil's advocate here, we have had execution issues with simpler plays/formations in the past (looking at you, bubble screens) and we also seem to struggle enough blocking with 5 o-linemen as is, let alone 4. I'd leave this play for the professionals and keep work on executing better what we currently do.
I'm with you on this. I agree that it is deceptive, but any kind of 'trick' play is. That is the point. Its no more deceptive than a fake punt or a freak athlete DB jumping over the OL to attempt to block a FG. Like the others, they are within the confines of the rules, but tweaked the norm to cause confusion. I dislike hoodie Bill, but this won't add to the list of reasons why.
With all that said, I feel like after this game, this play won't ever work again. Maybe I'm thinking of this wrong, but if properly recognized, wouldn't this type of play just effectively remove the '5th lineman' from the play? You have a WR/RB lined up out wide ineligible... what happens if no one covers him? He can only block, and not even too far downfield (on a passing play) without being flagged. Kind of feels like the offense is now playing 10 vs. 11...
he can do everything except catch a forward pass. he is eligible to step back and catch a lateral pass (which is what he faked), he can get the ball on a reverse, and even throw a pass.
the intent was to have the opponent mistakenly leave an eligible receiver uncovered. and it worked.
So?
I'm all for this and everything like it. There are so many rules about lining up correctly and what makes a legal vs an illegal formation. As a fan, I can't tell the difference and don't care to learn those rules. I don't see why having X number of players on the line or having Y number of players eligible matters. Everyone starts the play on their own side of the line of scrimmage, who cares how many players are where and which ones are supposed to be eligible.
Haven't we done this before? I remember Wang lining up wide as an ineligible receiver during one game - am I misremembering?
I think there difference is that when we did it Wang was a TE, or 6th lineman. In this case the Pats only had 4 linemen and then alternated between the RBs as to who was the "5th lineman". If I'm reading correctly they would then send the "5th lineman" out on a decoy route even though he was ineligible and the Ravens kept using a defender to cover him even though he was ineligible which opened up other receivers. Pretty smart; you use the defenders instincts against them.
Edit: Found a good link to explain it visually: http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/1/10/7526841/the-patriots-trick-play-th...
Can the ineligible player only run decoy screen plays to avoid having an "ineligible man down field" penalty?
Correct, see above (I just added a link), he ran backwards like it was a screen and the LB froze to shadow him.
What about the time time in 2010 when O'cainspring used some whacky alignment on the road in the 4th qtr against NC State? I remember Tyrod threw it to I believe Andre Smith for a touchdown, but we had some crazy looking formation where one of the OT's lined up at wideout as an ineligble receiver, with Smith tight to the line as what looked like an ineligible lineman. When we snapped the ball, the OT out wide didn't move, Smith released and was wide open. Is this comparable? I guess the question is, did Smith and the OT report as eligible and ineligible prior to the play and who was notified. I just recall at the time we were all amazed that O'Cainspring outsmarted someone on Offense.
Like this?
I thought this is kind of silly. Teams flex out ineligible WR's all the time. The Hokies did it often last year under Loeffler (see the jet sweep film review of the Sun Bowl.) In this case, the Patriots assumed extra risk by removing an offensive line. The rule is that they have to have seven men in the back field. It in no way means they have to have five offensive linemen. The defense has the responsibility of recognizing formations. This is sour grapes by Harbaugh, plain and simple.
I thought it was at least 7 men on the line, so no more than 4 men in the backfield. Or am I mixing it up?
The main problem that I (and a lot of other people) have with what the Patriots were doing is that they weren't being smart or inventive, they were cheesing the rulebook. It's like that A-11 offense that was popular in highschool for a while. Complete bullshit that was legal under the rules (at the time)
They huddled with 4 OL, QB, and 6 players with eligible numbers. After breaking the huddle, as everyone was getting lined up, one of those 6 players (not always the same one) would go tell the ref "I'm ineligible this play" then go line up somewhere as the ref announced to the defense the ineligible player. Essentially the defense had to have all 6 potentially eligible guys accounted for until the ineligble reciever was announced, then immediately adjust based on who was actually ineligible. The defense deserves a fair shot to get lined up based on who the offense has on the field - that's why if the offense subsititues the defense is allowed a substitution as well, and this kind of bullcrap goes against that idea.
While not technically cheating; deflating balls as the have done now is. I'd post a new topic, but I don't have 100 turkey legs yet. Eric Cartman explains,
"In America, it's OK to cheat as long as you cheat your way to the top. Just before the last Super Bowl, Bill Belichick gathered his football players and said 'Let's win this one for real, just this one time. Let's not cheat.' You know what happened? They lost."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnqQhUdXgvI
I would like to point out there is no proof the Patriots deflated balls. The NFL has made no accusations, etc.
If the balls were inflated on the low side of the acceptable range in an indoor heated room and checked there and then brought outside where it was 30-40 degrees colder, there would be a corresponding decrease in the ball pressure dropping them below the approved range.
Nobody has mentioned anything about the other teams pressure and wasn't Carroll involved in lowering pressures at USC?
The USC ball deflating scandal was under (surprise, surprise) Lane Kiffin.
I tend to think that NFL crews would know how to properly inflate a ball to account for cold weather given that nearly all of pro games are played during cold-weather months. I remain skeptical. Nothing's been proven, so let's see what happens.
Update: someone did the math.
http://www.wcsh6.com/story/weather/2015/01/20/inflate-gate-weather-roll/...
I take issue with this a little. Just because no air was added to the balls doesn't mean V stays constant. n stays constant in that case (because you don't change the number of molecules of air (and yes I know "air doesn't technically have a molecule, per se (and yes, I know I just used nested parentheses))). However, with an elastic bladder, you would have a change in V depending on pressure. It's a little thing, but if they guy is going to blame it on the cold and claim to use a particular equation to prove it, let's make sure we use the equation correctly, hmmm?
True. That's the only real criticism here. But even if you make some assumptions about the magnitude of dV based on temperature, you're still talking about a big change in temperature required to change the pressure inside the ball. The temperature's we're talking about (indoor vs. outdoor on game day) would account for only about a 7% change in volume (doing the math very quickly). And if all of Indy's balls were OK...
Update (because, you know, nerd alert): I did the math, and if you factor in the change in volume, the outdoor temperature would have to be -45 F to account for the change in pressure of the ball.
What if the Patriots didn't use typical compressed air, and instead used some other gas? Nitrogen would be pretty close to regular compressed air, but what about helium or argon?
Well, all the calculations in the link above and what I did were based on the Ideal Gas Law, so in theory He or Ar would be more close to the ideal approximation than regular air or N2. That's just a guess, but in most applications the calculations would have to be done with the van der Waals equation instead of PV = nRT, but I would expect the differences to be small in all cases. Even so, temperature alone can't possibly explain this magnitude of decompression.
On another note, why didn't any of the officials that handled the balls (snicker) notice or say anything? You would think that years of handling footballs would allow them to tell if something was off.
I'm leaving this here because all of these equations are over my head
I could accept the cold weather theory except that all of the Colts balls were OK. Maybe the scandal is that the Colts are over inflating the balls, and they settle back into the acceptable range during cold games.
The cold weather accounts for only 0.5 PSI at the most. So the Pats definitely tampered with the balls.
If the investigation concludes the Patriot's did tamper with the balls, it will be interesting to see how the League handles the punishment. My guess is a large fine of the Patriot's organization, but I would welcome a more robust punishment (such as loss of draft picks).
I definitely think it's fair to say that somebody tampered with the balls..but the point of the investigation, I think, should be to find out who did it...not so much trying to prove that the Pats did it.
I'm not a Patriots apologist. I don't like the Patriots. I will be rooting for the Seahawks (duh)..and I would have been rooting for them anyway. That being said, I do think it's only fair to the Pats to give them a fair investigation. We don't know very much. We know that the balls were discovered to have been deflated. That's it. How can anybody be sure who did it, when they did it, how they did it, why they did it? We just don't know so stop saying definitively that the Pats did it knowingly.
Doesn't the ball get rotated to the ball boy on the other side of the field on change of downs? I seem to recall reading about how the balls are controlled during a game and it goes something like that. So the Colts balls could have been fine and they never knew about the Pats deflated ones.
when we flex out an ineligible receiver, it results in either the tackle being eligible or only 4 eligible receivers. the Pats still had 5. the secondary has to recognize it when they break the huddle, not when they get to the line. if he's wearing number 50, that's easy. if he is wearing number 32, not so much. if the D is changing personnel while the ineligible guy is checking in, there is no way they will know he is replacing a lineman
i expect the NFL to change the rule to require 5 players on offense with typically ineligible numbers be on the field at all times
this is similar conceptually to the a-11 offense, tho not nearly as crazy.
can anyone explain the A-11 offense?
In it's original inception, the offense took advantage of a loophole in the rules that allowed them to run every down out of a scrimmage kick formation that exempted the team from numbering requirements. The Offensive Line would consist of a center and two Tight Ends, in front of two Quarterbacks 7 yards deep (7+ yards behind Line of Scrimmage required for any play from a scrimmage kick formation) and the rest of the players lined up as wide receivers. The players who were eligible on a given play could change, and one of the two tight ends could become an eligible receiver if enough of the players opposite them lined up on the line of scrimmage. This meant that on any given play. 10 different players could be eligible to receive a pass depending on alignment. After it had been run for about 2 years at the high school level, the numbering loophole was closed and the offense was modified by its creators to conform to the new rules.
See Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-11_offense
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=weinreb/080811
Defensive coordinators were all...
OT: Patriots use 4 Offensive Lineman formation...and deflated footballs
See above answer to deflated balls and I am a Packers fan, not patriots.
I don't really buy the 'cold air' theory given that non of the Colts footballs were coming up soft. They did play on the same field right?
Or did the Colts inflate outside and gauge outside? Maybe Luck like Rogers prefers a ball on the higher pressure side.
All in all, nothing is going to come of this for lack of any type of evidence. Or if anything comes of it it should be a rules change for next year to the following:
1) After the balls are checked they are turned over to an official and not back to the teams...
2) The balls are rechecked after every quarter during the commercial break or at least during halftime.
Now a bunch of players are all of sudden complaining about deflated footballs during games. I expected the lead up to the Super Bowl to be full of drama, but not like this haha.
They need to fill NFL related air time somehow. You can only talk about the matchup so much. Remember, there's no Peyton Manning to try to ascend to Godhood this year or Ray Lewis retiring to talk about nonstop for two weeks.
Besides, this one kind of falls on the refs. They don't use gauges to verify pressures most of the time, just feel. Aaron Rodgers said that he likes the balls over inflated and that the refs sometimes have to let air out to get them in regulation during checks.
It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that a combination of wanting the balls to be as low as possible, a not perfectly accurate gauge, drop in temperature, weather, balls being smashed into players and the ground, and almost two days of being transported around could lead to some discrepancy. 2 PSI? Maybe not, but they were made to use different balls the second half.