West Coast - Shmest Coast. Giants Still a Power Offense.

what better way to help a weak receiving core than by forcing teams to stack the line against the run?

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
We shall see. Or perhaps we shan't.

A lot more short, high percentage passing like the West Coast offense, but a lot of Rust Belt shove-the-ball-down-your-throat-in-bad-weather elements to it, too.

With the right guys, this could work really well. I don't think they've got all the right guys yet, though. The roster needs quite a bit more work (OL & TE primarily, maybe another RB and a little judicious pruning at WR, too) in the next off-season.

this is the Giants offense when queried on the WCO. It is not a pure WCO scheme - and that's been said from the moment the new hire was made. TC wanted to get back to a productive power running game, which is the foundation upon which his offensive philosophy is built. What we are going to see this year is that paired with a WCO style passing game with an emphasis on shorter drops and quick passing, with less (not none, just less) downfield long-developing plays and a departure from the previous approach that was highly dependent on combination routes.

walsh said the perfect game was 150 rushing, 250 passing.

On top of that the WCO doesnt really exist anymore.

That a strong running game was central to McAdoo's offensive scheme. So this isn't a surprise nor TC's "fingerprints".

have opted for the Shmest Coast Offense. (Grin)

After last season the Giants need all the options they can muster. Restablishing an identity along the offensive line is the single biggest priority, so I think an emphasis on being physical in the run game is a good place to start. You can place a label on them all you want but during the Nicks era the Giants had evolved into more of a passing team than a power run team. They are starting over now, and reestablishing ownership of the line of scrimmage is the perfect place to start.

In comment 11807598 ECham said:

Quote:

walsh said the perfect game was 150 rushing, 250 passing. On top of that the WCO doesnt really exist anymore.

bingo. nice discussion btw.

In comment 11807683 BSIMatt said:

Quote:

After last season the Giants need all the options they can muster. Restablishing an identity along the offensive line is the single biggest priority, so I think an emphasis on being physical in the run game is a good place to start. You can place a label on them all you want but during the Nicks era the Giants had evolved into more of a passing team than a power run team. They are starting over now, and reestablishing ownership of the line of scrimmage is the perfect place to start.

great post. the ol will evolve next year too. excellent points.

At first we hear WCO.....second game did not look like that....

It will be an offense that Eli is comfortable to work with....I doubt McAdoo tries to force Eli to do something he is not good at.....

Question is, will McAdoo work with what he has, or like Gilbride, force the team to run the race without the horses....and TC still has an influence on this offense....

All the pieces have not been on the field yet.....there is only one more game after this, for the first team.....that extra game will be wasted on final cuts....

not realizing like every offense there are multiple schemes and offenses.. There have surely been WCO that utilized a very strong running attack.. even the Packers had a more power running game when they got Eddie Lacy.. so a West Coast offense CAN be an offense with a very strong running attack. and not with scat backs either..

At least not if you have been paying attention to what they've only been saying since the day they hired McAdoo.

the frequent use of the term "West Coast" in initial descriptions of McAdoo and his experience, but West Coast Offense has become mostly shorthand and an oversimplification at that. It's too easy in a soundbite world to throw around terms like that when describing something actually rather complex.

I agree that those paying attention and not overly swayed by their own biases will not be surprised by what we see from this offense. We may be disappointed in the result but not surprised by the intent.

- the 1st team Offense actually throw the ball 10 yards?

- Cruz and Randle actually targeted and catch a pass?

- a LT that can hold off a pass-rush for several seconds?

- a pass play on a 3rd and long?

- a screen game?

please?

I think you may be on to something Jimmy! Just rewatched the tapes of both the Buff and Pitt games and if that's a WCO then I live in San Diego (I don't; I live in Ottawa Canada which is the coldest national capitol in the world). I actually suspect that WCO is a poor title for what McAdoo wants to install; I would think something like an up-tempo spread would be more accurate, but so far through the two games there has been almost no evidence of any of the radical stuff one keeps hearing the players talk about when describing the new offense. In fact, if one the offense the Giants have run in the first two games of the pre-season hasn't been much different at all from Tom Couglin's old Power 3 offense that they have run since 2004. In particular, so far over half the plays have involved a two TE type set of one kind or another and they have run only a handful of multiple WR sets on non-throwing downs. Interesting that Jennings big run against Pitt came with the Giants in a 3-wide set on a first down (one of two plays in which they lined up that way on 1st down).

What does it all mean! Who knows. Maybe in the end the offense isn't going to look any different after all. The other possibility is that the Giants don't really intend to unveil it until the regular season starts which makes a whole lot of sense. Why give Detroit and even Arizona in week 2 time to prepare for the sake of running 15-20 plays in a meaningless pre-season game.

Time will tell. In the meantime just about every body can chill a little!

The WCO has running plays too.

with Tom Rathman and Roger Craig. I think the short passes to the HB & FB are some of the West Coast elements we can look for. That and quick, timing routes & crossing patterns to the receivers will start to show up in the next couple of weeks. I do believe that TC has his offensive philosophy all over this new offense too, which is why McAdoo keeps repeating that this is the NYG offense. We will not get too far from the power, downhill running game as long as TC is here. I will say though, it sure would have been fun to watch David Wilson catching short passes out of the backfield and having a LB trying to chase him down.

Hard running, pass catching fullback ...



Craig was a high-stepping tackle-breaking HB demon.




Nothing cute or finesse about either of them. If the Giants want to replicate Walsh's WCO they could reprise it by throwing to Hynoski & Jennings one-in-while.

and I think that this is something coach Coughlin definitely wants to emphasize throughout camp and into the season.

If there is one thing Coughlin should be known for it is that he wants guys to play tough, be physical, and be smart. In no way could he have described last year's offense as tough and physical. This year, he is determined to resolve that right away - get this team playing physically up front.

And when you listen to McAdoo, he consistently has said this is not HIS offense, it's the Giants offense. Coughlin has had some influence in the ultimate design. We will see the Giants attempting to be a power offense first.

How good they will be at it remains to be seen.

should have added my final thought which is this:

If the Giants are unable to play physically early on, will McAdoo be as determined to stick with the running game as Gilbride regularly did. The Giants were frequently described around the league as a team who sticks with the running game.

Nobody knows if McAdoo will do this as religiously as Gilbride did.

With the short-passing aspect of the WCO, opposing defenses will tend to put extra players close to the line, right? And if the Giants combine that with a power-running game, won't they be running right into the heart of a tightly bunched defense?

How do these two aspects work in tandem?

Not sure, but McAdoo's concepts may be designed more for horizontal spacing rather than vertical.

That's a really good question Manh. Certainly one of the things I ma very doubtful about is whether it is even possible to try and combine those two types of offensive schemes because they are just at such different ends of the spectrum. McAdoo's old team the Packers did have some modest success combining the two but only because Finley, their TE, was more a WR in a TE's body, while the FB Kuhn was a very good receiver who could become their de facto TE in passing situations. So if other teams loaded up to stop the run, they threw and if their opponents backed off in coverage they ran. That was their theory however the Giants don't really have those types of players.

What I expect the Giants hope to do under McAdoo - and while we haven't really seen it in operation yet my guess is one should really call what they plan to do an 'up-tempo spread' rather than a traditional WCO. The theory is if you put 3-4 (and sometimes even 5) receivers on the field, the defense will have to respond with as many CBs. They also will likely have to consider putting their safeties over the top. Since you can only play 11 guys at a time, they won't be able to put that many LBs on the field and may only be able to bring 5-6 guys into the box (unlike the past when the Giants often were running against 8-9 man boxes.) In that scenario you hope defenses will regularly have only 1-2 guys in a position to make a tackle and your big backs can break that tackles and start turning 3-4 yard gains into 12-15 yard runs. Any way that's the theory, but you still need your players to make the plays. Time will tell.

It will be interesting to watch this develop and will bring no end of anxiety and controversy to BBI I'm sure.