Mora's offensive staff next season comes from the Raiders?

his concepts in the passing game were awful, he consistently demonstrated little understanding of complementary route design and spacing. it seemed like on every third and long we’d see vick dropping back to survey another ‘all curls’ play – i’m talking about vick looking to throw and there’s crumpler, standing and there’s roddy white, 5 yards away from him, and there’s jenkins, all stationary and within a 10 yard box. one defender could conceivably make a play on all three. factor in that crump is usually doubled, and that knapp didn’t send them to a depth where they would be far away from the spying LB and there is very little chance of that play succeeding. something that also drove me nuts is they almost never employed quick slants (a supposed staple of the WCO) even when there were 8 or 9 in the box to stop the run and the slant zone was empty. the repetition in playcalling made it easy to anticipate plays from a very early point in the game.

vick’s last season, where they opened the year against tampa and carolina, they ran some plays based off rich rodriguez’s spread offense at WVU, with vick having the option to hand off to dunn or take off with the ball, depending on how he reads his key (WLB or RDE, i can’t remember). but they didn’t bother to import any of richrod’s creativity with personnel and motion – extra maddening when you have versatile players like justin griffith and alge crumpler on yr team – and by week four this single wrinkle in the offense had been stifled by the Saints.

of course, the best argument you can make FOR knapp’s tenure in ATL was the presence of Vick. watching their passing game for 3 seasons, anyone could see that it was purposefully dumbed down to accomodate Vick, who was a) not a hard-worker, b) not much of a passer. I still feel like that’s a pretty crappy excuse though, because when you’re in the position where you need plays in the passing game to win – which was often for this team – you’re neutering any chance of surviving if you don’t open up the playbook and demand that the QB make plays downfield. i’m sure it was frustrating trying to design an offense around Vick, but at the same time most of his efforts came off as half-assed. i felt vindicated in this respect when Petrino came in; for all his faults as a coach and a person, he’s a bright football mind and had a lot of smart concepts in the passing game. he let it be known right off the bat that he expected Vick to act as a field general and a pocket passer, and Vick stepped up by cracking down in the off-season and going the extra mile to learn the playbook, watch film, improve his study skills etc. i don’t think Vick would’ve ever blossomed into a good passer, but I think he would’ve had a pretty solid 2007 if he played.