Nebulous

Payton says analytics come into play with turnovers, refs, certain statistics. Calls football more nebulous than other sports
— WWL-TV Sports (@wwltvsports) June 5, 2013

It is! Hell the ball is even kind of.. uh.. nebulously shaped.   As are the defensive alignments.. especially if you don't understand them particularly well which is most of the time.   Of all the major sports Americans follow, football is richest with arcane terminology and elaborately designed strategy. That is until the game actually begins and then it's all about "butt fumbles" Beefy Mac, and whether or not Les Miles knows what time it is.

But in between the absurd moments of live action, fans like to occupy themselves with convoluted arguments over the weighty mysteries of "offensive philosophy" vs "defensive principles" as if we're working to unlock some hidden moral truth... or at least acquire it via osmosis.

Even team ownership will get into the pursuit of enlightenment when the occasion presents itself.  Saints heiress Rita Benson LeBlanc recently participated in a ritual offering of hats and shirts to the Dali Lama in hope of receiving some useful bit of wisdom.



As far as we are aware, though, His Holiness is not available to play left tackle.

Anyway, these are all nebulous pursuits, of course.  Here's what we can say with some surety. During football season large men dress up in plastic suits and run into one another very fast. During the offseason, we pretend that it will be complicated when they do that.   Which is what was going on yesterday when Jeff Duncan wrote to us about Rob Ryan's newly installed principles of defense.

The Saints don't have a player named Jack on their 89-man offseason roster. But if they want to return to the NFC playoffs, they need to find a "Jack" somewhere on their defense.

Confused? Don't be. This Jack talk is all new to New Orleans. It arrived here only a few months ago with defensive coordinator Rob Ryan and the 3-4 defense.

The Jack is the Saints' term for the pass-rushing outside linebacker position in their new defensive scheme.

Were you confused by the impenetrable complexities of advanced football theory? No problem, Duncan will explain it for you. You might even say it's his job to do that.  A pretty sweet gig too since, as it turns out, it's really not that complicated.

Regardless of the name, the expectations are the same for the outside linebacker in the 3-4 scheme. Whoever plays the position needs to be able to rush the passer and make plays.

So the genius of Ryan's defense is that it encourages one fellow in particular to play very hard and do exciting stuff. This is different from the schemes of many coaches you will meet who actively discourage playmaking and pass rushing.

Oh and also it's actually pretty complicated.

Bradley Warshauer disagreed with Duncan's attempt at 3-4 demystification for a number of reasons which he listed here. I'll let you go over there and read through that. Plus the ensuing Twitter conversation between Bradley and Duncan.  And then, for extra football nerdiness, Bradley's follow-up article on the Saints' 3-4 scheme as well as the personnel he expects will execute it.

Here's the bit that jumped out at me the most. This is Warshauer quoting Duncan and then responding.

But like the old football saying goes, “If you have two starting quarterbacks you don’t have one.” The same can be said for rush outside linebackers. The Saints desperately need one of these jacks to blossom into a force.

The problem: MAKES NO DAMN SENSE
Ever hear of the Dome Patrol? It had a Hall of Fame pass rusher and an entirely separate Defensive Player of the Year pass rusher at the same time. Again, not every scheme is the same, and not all 3-4 defenses use under/over alignments with a pure weak side pass rusher. Regardless, the reason two starting quarterbacks equals zero is because you can only have one starting quarterback. Rob Ryan can put all four of his outside linebackers on the field together if he wants. He’s actually doing stuff like that.

I thought this was silly too.  While it's probably a bad idea to play two quarterbacks at the same time, you often may like to have several pass rushers out there together.  Also, I'm not sure what you'd do with 1,000 little Joe Vitts but that does sound pretty intimidating.

"You cut Joe Vitt up, all you're going to find is a 1,000 little football coaches coming out,'' (Saints defensive line coach Bill) Johnson said.

It's all pretty nebulous but it makes for fun, if pointless, reading which is what the offseason is for anyway.