If we selectively forget the fact that the Tigers entered the Super Bowl, the fact that the Tigers are a team that is still rebuilding. After the Super Bowl, when NBC cameras captured Tigers coach Zach Taylor and showed off his record in charge of the Tigers (6-25 before the season), we can imagine how shocking the Tigers' growth has been.
In the past two years of draft picks, the Tigers have all won the top five picks and have hit them accurately — Joe Burrow and Jamal Chase — but the rebuilding efforts haven't stopped because they're in the Super Bowl. Counting all 21 games this season, the Tigers have an offensive EPA of only 0.048, and it is still difficult to replicate the success of the playoffs in the future, let alone return to the Super Bowl.
Fixing the Tigers' offense started with their free agency and 2022 draft picks, but that didn't stop there. The offensive plan also needs to be revamped to mitigate any setbacks the team may encounter next season.
Open card offense
When Taylor led the team to the Super Bowl, Taylor's position was definitely stable, and the upcoming contract extension this week was officially announced. In fact, there are even rumors that the Tigers may have to change the coach, and even if the boss Mike Brown has never thought about these ideas, everyone can feel that the problems caused by the Tigers' attack are indeed unsatisfactory.
First we need to be clear about who Taylor is and how he became the offensive mentor of this team. Taylor was a former starting quarterback at the University of Nebraska, and under the leadership of coach Bill Callahan (now tiger OC's dad), he won the Big 12 League Offensive Player of the Year in 2006. Among them, Callahan advocated a shift from a triple option attack to the West Coast, making Taylor.
Taylor then began his coaching career, first as an assistant coach at Mike Sherman's Texas Farmers. Then coach the Dolphins at the invitation of Joe Philbin. In fact, Philbin also worked with Sherman when he was a packer, and after Sherman's recommendation, Taylor entered the professional arena. Later, he came to the Rams to become a staff member of Sean McVeigh, and two years later he became the tiger manager, and then hired Brian, the son of his mentor Bill Callahan, as an OC.
The lengthy introduction is to tell you two facts: Taylor is indeed a professional master of interpersonal communication. In addition, although Taylor took off directly from McVeigh, the tactical characteristics did not rely entirely on the contents of the Shanahan/McVeigh coaching tree.
Instead, the Tigers used a modern version of the West Coast Offensive. All of the iconic features of shanahan/McVeigh offense are not really visible. For example, their pre-kickoff motion/transposition rate and outside receiver stack formation usage are lower than the league average, but that's exactly the core detail of the 49ers and Rams.
First of all, there is no combination between the tiger's pass and run. When they use a shotgun formation, it's basically a pass; when they're in a center formation, it's basically a charge. The heavy configuration appears, basically the punch; the light configuration appears, basically the pass.
It's like a clear card in a landlord fight, and the defensive team can judge whether to rush or pass the ball based on a simple trend. The simplest connection between the pass and run – the false run and the real pass – is basically equal to nothing. The Tigers' false run true pass rate is only 19.7%, the fourth lowest in the league.
When the team does not have the help of fake running real passes, it can only rely on some simple passing routes to help the quarterback, but it is difficult to control the space behind the linebacker. The purpose of the fake run is to confuse the defense and attack the weak points of the defense. Although the offensive group exhibited a vertical attack before the ball was handed over — 50 percent of the fake moves were vertical and 50 percent of the fake moves were horizontal — they still didn't have a full attack slot.
The more common fake run that McVeigh and Shanahan jr. have promoted in recent years is called "drift." It's a faster fake run true pass fit, specifically designed to attack short distances, between code digits and barcodes, as we can see in this drift roadmap.
This fit can be linked to other routes on the other end of the field, but the core principle is that the individual outside receiver runs the drift route, and the quarterback's first reading is passed to him, and the quarterback can directly get out of the ball quickly after retreating.
The Tigers have done this no more than 15 times this season. They opted for deeper retreat steps to wait for a more far-reaching route to run. This puts the Tigers in the league with an EPA-0.084 on these combinations this season. The Tigers tied for fourth-to-last PFF scores on pass protection when they faked a real pass. With a more far-reaching coordination design, the offensive front line becomes more difficult.
In 2019 at LSU, Burrow and Chase had a lot of solidarity and SLANT cooperation in the RPO. The glance route you can understand as a slightly deeper slant route that passes through the "drift" area. The Tigers were used at the start of the 2020 season when Burrow first entered the profession, but haven't seen it this season.
Conversely, we've seen the Tigers' RPO usage drop from 5.3 percent in 2020 to 4.2 percent this season, the sixth lowest in the league. Burrow only passed the inside turn route 3 times in the RPO, and the glance and slant in the RPO did not match 15 times.
The Tigers' direct retreat offensive also lacks the diversity of coordination, as well as the combination of different routes. In the regular season, although they led the league in the number of direct retreats, the route that used double move was only tied for 21st. In a way, the Tigers' style of play is too simple, and that's their problem.
Last season we all easily overlooked that the Tigers are a strong team with long passes, because in 2020 the Tigers' long pass execution and creative ability is quite bad. Because Burrow lacks top-level arm talent, he has only 18.8 percent of his long-pass shooting percentage, ranking 33rd in the league. There are many other factors.
We know that far-reaching passes are an unstable technical statistic. 2020 was one of the worst in the league, but this season Chase came to be at the top of the league. Burrow's long-pass shooting percentage soared to 41.3 percent, seventh in the league. In 2020, Tiger receivers received only 17 percent of the five-to-five long passes, the lowest in the league. This season it has almost doubled to 31.4 percent.
As The Ringer's Steven Ruiz writes, especially about the outward pass, "This season the Tigers offense has also relied on outside passes, and of the 5-yard outer pass, no team's EPA is close to, or even far behind, the Tigers. In fact, Borrow has produced 91.9 total EPA in outside passes this season, the most in a single season in the league in the past five years. But here's the problem: such results are hard to replicate to the next season. ”
With this season's big outbursts difficult to sustain into the new season, it will make their offensive front-line issues even more important. The faster the transmission to the sidelines tends to be, the less pressure the Tigers' front line will encounter.
Dead horses are live horse doctors, and the Tigers have been mentioned countless times in the playoffs this season to reinforce the offensive front, and now they have plenty of time to do it.
Free Market Raiders
The Tigers' number one target should be the Saints' left-winger Tyrone Armsted. Although Armstedt has been hit by injuries in recent years, he is one of the league's best left-wingers. He is second on the PFF free agent list, behind outside receiver Davante Adams. We expect Armsted to receive a contract with an annual salary of $20 million. If it's too expensive, Seahawks' Duveyn Brown's annual salary is estimated to be around 10 million, but he is about to enter his 15th season of his career, which is not a long-term goal. The Tigers may also set their sights on Chief Orlando Brown Jr. and Trint Brown the Patriot, both of whom are not yet thirty years old, but the former is certainly more expensive.
On the inner front, Connor Williams, like Cowboys, is expected to earn $6.67 million a year, but the choice of high-end configuration is Commander Brandon Sharif, who is expected to earn $16.67 million a year.
Since almost every position needs reinforcements, Tigers fans can fantasize about who they can sign without limits.
2022 Draft
If you don't trade upwards, the Tigers' highest draft this year is only the 31st pick, and the three super interceptors can give up their illusions, but those interceptors in the first round of the last round are also suitable for the Tigers.
Trevo Penning, from the University of Northern Iowa, is ranked 24th overall on this year's PFF list and is an extremely fierce road coverer. The 6'7" 321-pound body can easily propel opponents. His 99.9 full road cover rating is the highest ever scored by the FCS League.
Abraham Lucas of Washington State, Karen Deish of Arizona, and Taylor Smith of the University of Tulsa may be more realistic candidates, and they may even fall to the second round.
Inside the front, the most attractive draft players are Zion Johnson of Boston College and Ken Young Green of Texas Farmers. With limited position value, Iowa's center Taylor Lindelbaum may also slip in line, but the Tigers want to get a high probability of trading upwards.
Johnson and Green are very different players, the latter is more flexible, the former is physically stronger, both are good choices. Green is 21st on the PFF draft leaderboard, while Johnson is 41st.
The Tigers' rebuilding efforts are still taking shape, but there are some potential problems that could make the Tigers look like a real rebuilding team rather than a Super Bowl-losing team. They have a good young offensive core, but there is a clear need to increase the offensive front. If the team fails to fill in the weaknesses and some dimensions regress, the new season will encounter greater challenges.