Holy Roman Style

"What is wrong with the 49ers this year?!" many fans demanded to know during last year's 8-8 campaign. The most common answer was that offensive coordinator Greg Roman was calling terrible plays, not running the ball enough, and not taking advantage of Kaepernick's skill set. Some of those accusations are true, but for reasons that aren't obvious without knowing some of the internal playcalling processes. 

The way playcalls usually goes is this: the offensive coordinator (OC from here on out) is in the booth at the top of the field. Some teams have the OC directly call the plays to the QB, other teams have the OC tell the Head coach, and then the HC tells the QB. This is so the Head Coach can veto or change play calls. The QB then tells the team in the huddle what the play is. Then they get to the line. Here, the QB has to read the defense, and can audible, shift players around, etc. 

Most competent teams get to the line with somewhere between 15-20 seconds left on the playclock. During Roman's tenure as OC, the 49ers frequently didn't get to the line until there were 5 seconds left. That's because Roman called the plays to Harbaugh, who then told Kaepernick. When I use the plural plays it's not because I'm trying to describe the whole game--every down the 49ers called two different plays. When Kaepernick yelled "KILL KILL" at the line, that was switching to the other play. The 49ers also used a complicated vocabulary system for playcalling. The plays were long, and complicated. This system frequently gave a young QB who isn't great at reading defenses at the line anyway less then 5 seconds to make adjustments. 

Also he would do stupid stuff like this all the time. 

The system is obviously stupid, lead to a ton of issues, and was Jim Harbaugh's fault. Harbaugh was the head coach, and was in charge of the offense (by comparison he never touched the defense, leaving mastermind Vic Fangio alone). But Harbaugh was never blamed--the fans always blamed Roman. I think this is because Roman was the smallest personality on the team. No one wanted to blame Harbaugh the savior. 

Now that Roman is the offensive coordinator for the (2-1) Buffalo Bills, we can use his new tape to get a sense of whether his actual plays that he was calling were bad, or if the overly complicated playcalling system was hurting the team. 

There are 4 conclusions that I drew after watching the Bills game tape. 

1. They score a lot. There are always was to criticize and nitpick, but the Bills have put up 27, 32, and 36 points on offense the first three games. 

2. Curiously, while LeSean McCoy has not had a good start to the season, the Bills have one of the best rushing offenses in the NFL. They lead the league in total rushing yards, and average 4.7 yards per carry (behind only Oakland and Minnesota). These stats are especially interesting because while watching the Bills @ Dolphins game, I felt like they were a bad rushing team. They had a lot of plays only go for 3-4 yards. However, so far they have broken one or two massive touchdown runs a game. Here is a link to one. I will be curious to see if their poor-to-average offensive line can keep this up. You typically can't depend on 40+ yard rush TD's every game, and I might update this article in the future when Roman is forced to re-adjust. 

3. They design plays to get Percy Harvin the ball. It seems like an obvious thing, but many teams struggle with this (look at Seattle struggling to implement Jimmy Graham into their offense). They run simple plays like this one that are designed from the very beginning to get the ball to Percy Harvin in space, so he can do what he does best (namely, looking like how everyone thought Reggie Bush was going to play). When you have a green QB like Taylor, you have to make it easy for him. Brady doesn't run plays specifically for Gronk in the open field, because he doesn't need to--he knows exactly how to read the field, and throws it to Gronk when he is the best option. But when you have an inexperienced QB, it can't hurt to ensure he gets the ball to your star 5-6 times a game. 

4. Speaking of Tyrod, the #1 thing I was impressed by is the Bills Play Action, and QB rollout game. They do one or both on almost every single passing down. Here is a great example. It doesn't require much from Tyrod or the players, but the amount of pressure it takes off of Tyrod is immense. Of course it helps that opposing defenses absolutely have to respect the Bills run game, but this is especially interesting because of how similar Tyrod and Kaepernick are. One of the largest criticisms of Roman during his time with the NIners is that he tried to keep Kaepernick in the pocket, a place where he was clearly uncomfortable. 

I would conclude that Roman has learned a lot from his mistakes on the 49ers. As of right now he is leading one of the best offenses in the league, with Rex Ryan, who is known for many things, but good offenses aren't one of them. Tyrod will play better defenses as the year goes on, and Roman will have to adjust to injuries. But right now, the man has to be feeling pretty damn smug--and I can't blame him.