I'm enjoying trying to think more about this game you call football :), so I thought I might do one or more posts along the lines of  - a view from Oz - in the hope that it might help me learn more and might be of some interest...

I was already familiar with the criticism of Norv for predictable play calling. But a post from Wonko opened my eyes to some of the complexity around this. In basic terms, Norv doesn't want to give away his best plays until he really needs them. So he'll go 'vanilla' for as long as possible. [Is Rivera adopting a similar philosophy? :)]

I don't mind this as a starting position, but you'd want them to be 'bread and butter' plays that are solid and generally lead to an accumulation of first downs. To do this they need to play to your strengths, and I'm not sure that the set of plays done over and over against the den of iniquity, do this. With little help from the o-line or blocking back, it's hard for me to see how a game-plan based on predictable running plays is going to help get us down the field. Surely the strength at the moment is the passing game, so why not base the game-plan around a set of passing plays that are also fairly predictable but harder to stop?

I'm sure it's not quite so uncomplicated, and look forward to hearing why. Is part of the reason that setting up for the pass - in a shotgun formation say - will offer Rivers even less protection?