Tuesday, September 11, 2012

RGIII: Forecasting the Rest of the Season

RGIII was phenomenal in his NFL debut. And I have every expectation that RGIII will become a superstar and not a bust. But in this post I want to focus on just this season -- what can we expect from RGIII the rest of the year?

The short answer is that I would expect similar good production for the next 5 games or so, and then a drop-off for the second half of the season for a simple reason: Film study.

Starting around game 5 or 6, teams will have enough film on RGIII to identify his tendencies and favorite plays, and to game-plan accordingly. Two recent examples illustrate this.

Example 1: Jim Zorn
Most Redskins fans prefer to forget the short-lived Jim Zorn era. What they may also forget is that the Zorn era began with a 6-2 start. Why? Zorn was an offensive-minded coach who remade the Skins' offense. Everything the Zorn-led Skins did was a surprise the first half of the season, because there was insufficient film for teams to study. Teams could not game-plan for the Skins offense. As a result the Skins started 6-2, averaging 20.5 points per game.

But teams had sufficient film for the second half of the season, created defensive game-plans accordingly, and the Skins finished that first season 2-6. During this stretch the Skins points-per-game average fell from 20.5 to 12.5. The losing continued the next year, and Zorn was fired.

Example 2: Josh McDaniels
Josh McDaniels was an offensive-minded coach who took over the Denver Broncos in 2009. Not only did he bring a new offensive system, but he brought in a new starting QB, Kyle Orton. Teams could not know what to expect, and had no film on which to base a defensive game-plan. McDaniels' Broncos started the season 6-0, averaging 20.5 points per game.

Teams had sufficient film after six games to identify patterns and tendencies and game-plan accordingly, and McDaniels' Broncos lost their next 4 games. They averaged just 9.2 points per game during that span. In their final 10 games, after starting 6-0, the Broncos went 2-8. The Broncos continued losing the next year, and McDaniels was fired after a 3-9 start.

In summary, RGIII's success is likely to be magnified during the first 5 games or so of the season because teams lack sufficient film upon which to base a defensive game-plan. This won't be the case for the second half of the season, and we will likely see a drop-off in offensive production for the second half of the season.

However, in the long-term, RGIII is so athletic, so talented, so smart, and so studious, that his comfort with different offensive looks will grow exponentially over the next year or two, and I suspect by year 3 he will be unstoppable.

No comments:

Post a Comment