interesting

[alldaway]

Comparing Gradkowski to Leinart and Young is interesting however Leinart and Young have a big upside where as Gradkowski does not. Leinart and Young have big league arms where they can actually throw downfield, Gradkowski has no arm to speak of. His accuracy is as high as it is because of the west coast offense and the dink and dunk five yard passes. Just look at his average yardage per game, with the exception of one game I don't think he has thrown for more then 200 yards. Gradkowski aint gonna make it guys, I'd be surprised if Gruden goes into next year with this guy at the helm. Grudens ass will be on the line and I would be shocked if he stays with this guy.

1) Matt Lienhart doesn't have a stronger arm than Grad. Lienhart has no arm period. Lienhart's biggest critique is his lack of arm strength
2) So lemme get this straight - you negate his accuracy saying "its the WCO". But then you villify him for not putting up major yards - even though the same logic applies. WCO QB's have high accuracy percentage (which you think doesn't matter) and and less yards (which you jump all over him for).
3) Matt Liehnart runs the WCO in Arizona. He just has much better receivers
4) This post makes no sense.

Do what

Ok 1st of all a team that uses 3 wr sets like the Cardinals do, its not a WC offense. 2nd, Leinarts arm is weak but it is much more accurate and stronger than Grads. BTW Leinart threw for more yards yesterday than Gradkowski has this month...

Are you frickin serious dude? Did you just say that a a team using 3 WR's doesn't use a WCO?

Can I like highlight this and underline this, because its ridiculous. If you watched a single Bucs game from 2002-2004 - you would see Gruden's favorite formation, which is Trips bunch. Take a guess as to how many receivers are in that formation.

Second of all - Matt Lienhart has better mechanics with the deep ball. He does NOT have a stronger arm. The guy had very little arm strength.

Here, how about this arguement...

30th in the NFL on total offense

31st in scoring

29th passing offense (don't forget every single team we play puts 8-9 men in the box to stop the run)

Yeah Grads is doing wonders! He is better than leinart, young, montana, whoever individually, what about the team??? How about scoring TD's. Grads has 2 miracle wins or we would have uno in the win column. I cannot understand the pledge of loyalty to a 6th round QB with little upside, its astonishing....

If you're going to talk about numbers - why not mention Vince Young's 45% completion percentage? If you're going to talk about upside, why not mention that Matt Lienhart probably has the least upside of any QB coming out of college? The kid is already so NFL trained its ridiculous. He makes some good plays - but there's nothing in his game that says "wow - when he starts to do that, he will be God." And by the way, Gradkowski does look better than Steve YOung did in his rookie season, and Montana never played in his rookie year.

So again I ask - you have no reasonable basis for your hatred of Gradkowski other than some numbers that are easier to disprove than OJ's innocent plea (yet you keep mentioning them). So why do you hate this kid?

BK, hey buddy, dennis green ain't west coast. Maybe on madden but when you spread the field and throw down the field and run singleback sets, that is not west coast offense....

Reid does that so that means he does not use the WCO?  Do the Eagles even use a fullback in their offense?

[cvillebucfan]

Ok guys lets argue, the cardinals run the WCO, dennis green always has emplemented that offense, everyone knows that....

The Colts run the West coast too and so do the patriots...

Fact is that dennis green throws the ball down the field, always has...

[leeroybuc93]

Matt Leinert's arm is much bigger than Bruce's. All the stuff about Matt's arm was answered during workouts before the draft.  Do you guys not scout after acout saying this?  He's still not got the biggest arm in the NFL, but it's certainly an average arm.  All it did was drop him in the draft... all the way down to the 10th overall pick, nowhere near the 6th round.

[cvillebucfan]

Leeroy you are crazy dude, you have no idea. I'm being sarcastic buddy and yes his arm is much more strong than Grads, but that is not saying too much...

[alldaway]

Ok guys lets argue, the cardinals run the WCO, dennis green always has emplemented that offense, everyone knows that....

The Colts run the West coast too and so do the patriots...

Fact is that dennis green throws the ball down the field, always has...

He left Northwestern in 1985, doing a stint as running backs coach for the San Francisco 49ers under his former boss at Stanford, Bill Walsh.

Green was a disciple of Bill Walsh's West Coast offense and was touted by Walsh and other NFL pundits as a likely candidate to be the next African-American head coach in the NFL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Green

Of course Green's offense is different but the most part it is an elognated version of the WCO.  Similar but not the same to Norv Turner's vertical style WCO.

Andy Reid's offense does involve downfield throwing but it is considered a WCO and yet he rarely uses a fullback.

The Patriots mix in elements of the WCO into their offense.

[cvillebucfan]

And so do the colts...

ADW, traditional WCO, like walsh uses "21" sets (2 backs 1 TE), they throw short passes and emphasize run after the catch. Sure there are different variations of the WCO and every team in the nfl has some implementation of it in their system but that does not mean that they are all WCO. Go back to denny greens stint in Minny, with Reed, Carter and throwing bombs to moss...

The patriots run shotgun and 2 TE sets, the eagles run a more WCO but they do throw it deep, I'll give you that.

If the Cardinals are WC then the colts are WC and so are patriots and everyone else except the Raiders........

[alldaway]

Go back to denny greens stint in Minny, with Reed, Carter and throwing bombs to moss...

And how is that any different from Norv Turner's offense?

The patriots run shotgun and 2 TE sets, the eagles run a more WCO but they do throw it deep, I'll give you that.

The Eagles also use the shotgun.  So they are not considered a WCO?

If the Cardinals are WC then the colts are WC and so are patriots and everyone else except the Raiders........

Colts? I disagree.

[cvillebucfan]

Geez...I know and bill walsh ran 3 WR sets all day too didn't he?

Why are the colts not a WCO?

[alldaway]

Geez...I know and bill walsh ran 3 WR sets all day too didn't he?

Why are the colts not a WCO?

http://www.colts.com/sub.cfm?page=coachbio&coach_id=10

He entered the NFL and worked 13 years (1977-89) with Pittsburgh.  Moore coached receivers from 1977-82 before assuming the role of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach (1983-89).  He helped lead the Steelers to victories in Super Bowl XIII (35-31 over Dallas) and Super Bowl XIV (31-19 over Rams).  He moved to Minnesota (1990-93), serving as assistant head coach/quarterbacks (1990), assistant head coach/offensive coordinator (1991) and receivers coach (1992-93).  He then joined Detroit as quarterbacks coach in 1994 and was offensive coordinator from 1995-96.  During that three-year span, Barry Sanders ran for nearly 5,000 yards (5.2 average).  In 1995, Detroit led the NFL in total offense (6,113 yards, 382.1 ypg.) and became the first NFL team to have two receivers post 100+ receptions (Herman Moore, 123-1,686, 14 TDs; Brett Perriman, 108-1,488, 9 TDs).  The 3,174 combined yards by Moore and Perriman set the NFL seasonal tandem yardage record.  Moore moved to New Orleans in 1997 as running backs coach.

[alldaway]

Green is a WCO disciple, no one runs a classic WCO anymore. Even Gruden doesn't since he's grafted the WCO pass attack onto what is basically a power I running set. If you recall the classic WCO ran from a lot of split backfield stuff that almost no one uses anymore.

Exactly.  No one runs the traditional WCO anymore.

Here is an article that is a blast from the past.  Enjoy.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/story/OAK/4418671

In search of the West Coast offense


(Editor's Note: Last season, Jon Gruden led the Oakland Raiders to their first AFC West title since 1990 and to within a game of the Super Bowl. He was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and was included on People Magazine's list of "The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World." The NFL's youngest head coach at 38, Gruden will share his thoughts on this season in a weekly diary for NFL.com.)

By Jon Gruden
Special to NFL.com

(Oct. 18, 2001) -- Someone asked me where our 23-18 victory against the Colts in Indianapolis ranked among the games I've coached with the Raiders, and my response was that the last win is always the best win.

This one was really nice because we got it going into a bye. We'll get a chance to let some injuries heal, give our guys some time off to rejuvenate themselves, and have a couple of practices heavy on fundamentals. And we'll do it all in a positive frame of mind.

As a coaching staff, we'll do some self-scouting and take a close look at ourselves. We'll do some preliminary work on the Philadelphia Eagles, whom we play on the road Oct. 28.

Personally, I plan on taking my boys to a trout farm. I promised them fish, and if I don't deliver, I'm in trouble. Then, if I have any extra time before we get back to work next week, maybe I'll go in search of the West Coast offense.

The term West Coast offense is one of the most commonly used descriptions in football. What is it? It is the San Francisco 49ers' offense of the mid-1980s to early 1990s, a split-back attack in which you have multiple formations and different launching spots for the quarterbacks.

I've never been clear on where the "West Coast" designation came from.

In terms of the original, there was a lot of motion and a lot of plays that started off looking the same but were different. You would throw to the flanker, use the split end away from rotation, and have the tight end dominate the field in the middle.

The running attack was diverse, with a lot of traps, pulls, and counters. Very deceptive. I worked for the 49ers as a low-level intern for eight months in 1990 -- one of my jobs was to get coffee for George Seifert -- so I suppose that brands me as a "West Coast" guy.

When Mike Holmgren went from an assistant in San Francisco to head coach in Green Bay, that made him a "West Coast" guy. He used to wonder aloud how you could possibly run a West Coast offense in Wisconsin. Paul Hackett worked with the 49ers and then went to Dallas and he was a "West Coast" guy. Mike Shanahan left the 49ers for Denver so he was a "West Coast" guy.

Since Steve Mariucci, Andy Reid, Mike Sherman, and myself all worked for Mike Holmgren in Green Bay, we're all "West Coast" guys. Marty Mornhinweg worked in Green Bay with Holmgren and in San Francisco with Steve Mariucci, so he's a "West Coast" guy. Denny Green worked for San Francisco and then Brian Billick worked for Denny Green, so they're both "West Coast" guys.

The thing is, the football I study and most people I know study is for the most part single-back or I-formation in nature, with a lot of zone blocking and things not associated with the original 49ers offense.

There are certain principles that remain consistent in the passing game: middle triangles, weakside triangles, strongside triangles, weakside floods, high-lows. There is a similarity in route distribution and maybe in the theory of progression in how quarterbacks make their reads.

There are a lot of sound plays that can be built on and used creatively for the personnel of each coach. But to say we're all running the West Coast offense is like saying we're all politicians so we have the same views. Everybody is different.

You look at the Baltimore Ravens and what they do on offense and it is nothing like we do. We had a game once where we lined up about 20 times in a power formation with three tight ends. If that's "West Coast, " I'm Jimmy Carter.

We keep up with what other teams are doing because we want to be flexible in terms of finding new ideas. I'll be the first to tell you that if a quarterback is having great success in this league, I want to get the tape of his latest game and see exactly how he did it.

Everyone borrows and builds on what they have seen. It's not so much that you're looking to steal plays -- some of my players would probably tell you I already have too many -- as it is an attempt to stimulate and generate ideas to stay abreast of what's going on.

I know we don't look much like San Francisco used to look. Sure, there are certain plays. You may see a familiar slant pattern, but who doesn't run a slant? But I hear we're "West Coast" all the time and I find it kind of amusing.

I call it the "Alcatraz" offense. When I was offensive coordinator in Philadelphia, we called it the "Jersey Shore" offense.

If I can't figure out what the West Coast offense is by the end of the week, I know I'll have to prepare for it next week because we play the Eagles and I hear Andy Reid is running it in Philadelphia. We used to work together, so maybe he'll tell me.

[cvillebucfan]

beleive it or not I don't have time to read Moores' bio.

The colts are not a WCO for the same reason the Cardinals are not. They run spread 3 WR sets. Sure they may have a variation of the WC but to sit here and argue the cardinals are a WCO is nuts, makes zero sense. You can get bios and go to winkpedia or whatever and say when dennis green was 14 he played in WCO but the fact is that the Vikes threw the ball down the field, severely and the Cardinals throw the ball down the field, the Colts throw the ball down the field and the WCO is predicated on the short passing game...seen the bucs passing game, its ugly isn't it? Maybe we should run a variation of the WCO and throw downfield more like those teams I just mentioned or maybe Grads just doesn't have the arm to cut it, who knows.

[alldaway]

The colts are not a WCO for the same reason the Cardinals are not.

Aye carumba.   [banghead] [banghead] [banghead]

[Boid Fink]

A lot of the WCO is predicated on the player making a play after a short reception.  And Clayton falls down (2.9 YAC), Ike is dropped almost instantly, and then there is Joey, who can make things happen, but he is the only playmaker on the receiving corp.  And Caddy has not been able to catch the ball to do much with it to begin with.  It comes down to what types of players are being employed to run this offense, versus are they capable of making a move to get some YAC?

To date, the Bucs have sorely lacked in explosive playmaking.  Sans Galloway.

[cvillebucfan]

Dal, how many 5 yard slants did jerry rice take to the house in his career? You dont know, know why, he did it too many times to keep track of. Jerry Rice or John Taylor would take a 5 yard slant and go 80 yards. Sure They hit jerry rice down field but they mastered the short pass long run, not the long bomb. Rice or taylor would consistently take a short pass and go a long ways, thus helping their YPC. Again, the WCO is predicated on the short passing game, taking a short pass into a long gain.

[cvillebucfan]

A lot of the WCO is predicated on the player making a play after a short reception.  And Clayton falls down (2.9 YAC), Ike is dropped almost instantly, and then there is Joey, who can make things happen, but he is the only playmaker on the receiving corp.  And Caddy has not been able to catch the ball to do much with it to begin with.  It comes down to what types of players are being employed to run this offense, versus are they capable of making a move to get some YAC?

To date, the Bucs have sorely lacked in explosive playmaking.  Sans Galloway.

Be careful boid, you will get flamed in here! I just found out via ADW the colts run a west coast offense too!