The System is the Thing

It may be a bye week. The Huskers may be coming off a 42-point win. But that won’t keep the Callahan bashers away.

On Monday’s coaches teleconference, Callahan went on the offensive while defending his system.

“I’d say this to you. We took a guy from the junior college and developed him into the conference player of the year in Zac Taylor. We took a guy that transferred, in Sam Keller, that was on schedule and on pace to break every record… And then we insert the third guy here … that throws for seven touchdowns. I think that record won’t be broken around here for a long time … I mean, that’s development, that’s coaching, that’s system.”

Callahan has been an easy target for criticism, given his team’s 5-6 record. This will open him up to even more.

I understand what he’s trying to say. I don’t expect a coach who’s been taking a lot of criticism to just sit there and take it. I would want my coach to defend his system.

“Everybody’s very critical of myself about how our offense is too complicated and it’s too pro-like, and it’s this and it’s that,” Callahan said. “But the fact remains. The numbers don’t lie. And the performance of these players doesn’t lie. It’s there. It’s all out there. Somewhere in there, there’s coaching, there’s development, there’s system. There’s some real positive things that aren’t being brought out.”

The problem is, he’s one loss away from his second losing season in four years. That can’t happen at Nebraska. And if you’re going to take credit for the system when all is good, you have to take the blame for it when all is not so good.

Even if Ganz is truly a product of the system, Callahan needs to understand how a comment like that might come across. It sounds like a coach who is taking the credit for his quarterback’s success.

Related Reading

I would recommend a book to you football fans out there. It’s called “The Blind Side”, by Michael Lewis. It’s how the left-tackle position became arguably the most important position on the field. Lewis also explores how average quarterbacks went on to become statistically remarkable passers in Bill Walsh’s west coast offense.

Here’s a snippet:

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When [Walsh] arrived in Cincinnati in 1968… to run the passing game for Bengals head coach Paul Brown, he faced a new problem: comically inadequate football players….

His new quarterback, Virgil Carter, was a case in point. Carter wasn’t able to get the ball more than about 20 yards downfield in any form other than a slow desperate wobble. Walsh’s job, as he saw it, was to create a system that suited Virgil Carter’s talents: guile, nimbleness, and an ability to throw accurately, as long as he didn’t have to throw far….

Walsh’s solution to Carter’s weak arm was to teach him to use the field in a new way. He spread the field horizontally; that is, from sideline to sideline. He had the receivers run short routes timed precisely to the steps of the quarterback. If Carter took a three-step drop, they ran one sort of route; if Carter took a five-step drop, they ran another. Carter didn’t wait for his receivers to come open but threw to where he expected them to be–usually just a few yards away. The process was further speeded up by reducing the number of decisions the quarterback was forced to make. His presumed precision means that he doesn’t need to pay nearly so much attention to the defensive formation. His short, timed passes, if executed properly, can be completed against any defense….

Walsh had created the contraption to compensate for the deficiencies of his quarterback, but an offense based on a lot of short, well-timed parses turned out to offer surprising inherent advantages. First, it delivered the ball into a runner’s hands on the other side of the line of scrimmage, thus removing the biggest defensive beasts from the space between him and the goal line….

Next, by shortening — and timing — the passing game, Walsh reduced its two biggest risks: interceptions and incompletion….

In 1971, Virgil Carter, who had never completed as many as half of his passes, somehow led the entire league in completion percentage… The next year Carter gave way to Ken Anderson, a little known passer out of even less well known Augustana College, who hadn’t completed even half his passes in college. In Walsh’s offense, Kenny Anderson did even better than Virgil Carter… In 1974, Anderson led the league in completion percentage and total yards and yards per attempt……

Walsh left Cincinnati… to run the offense for the San Diego Chargers. There he inherited a struggling quarterback named Dan Fouts. In Walsh’s passing system, Fouts went on to lead the league in completion percentage….

In 1979, Walsh, now forty-nine years old, finally was named an NFL head coach, of the team with the league’s lowest payroll and the league’s worst record, the San Francisco 49ers.The 49ers also had, by most statistical measures, one of the NFL’s worst quarterback, Steve Deberg… the next year, in Bill Walsh’s system of well timed passes, the seemingly inept Deberg threw more passes… than any quarterback in the history of the NFL.Lewis argues that the next two quarterbacks for the 49ers, Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young, owed a huge amount of their success to the Walsh offensive system.

Eventually people must have noticed. As Walsh performed miracle after miracle with his quarterbacks, a more general trend emerged in NFL strategy: away from the run and toward the pass….

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Lewis goes on to say that quarterbacks like Steve Young and Joe Montana owe part of their success to Walsh’s system. It’s a fantastic read.

The point being, yes, the system is incredibly important to a quarterback’s success. Is Tom Brady a product of the system? Was Joe Montana?

At the same time, each quarterback brings a unique skill set to the table that is imperative for success. And to not give credit where it’s due is a slap in the face to the quarterback’s hard work and dedication. Especially to a guy like Joe Ganz, who has paid his dues and then some.