Said RBs might have to be good at fewer things when running those types of plays, but still talented. Burst and decisiveness are two qualities that come to mind. It’s also not like we’ll abandon the screen game, at least I hope.

If you’re up by 2 tds, then in the 4th quarter, you’re probably going to call 65% rush.
Also, I didnt’ realize that the 03 and 04 Pats were so good at rushing.

We’ll just be a lot more “run heavy” & run often. Subtle difference. But the core of the WCO isn’t going to see wholesale changes under Knapp – we’ll just see new wrinkles thrown in. Knapp’s big thing is that he strives for that 50/50 balance in his playcalling. It’s not a matter of “one setting the other up”, it’s using them effectively to compliment each other.

Like comparing he ’05 ’Hawks to the ’07 version …. basic scheme is the same but the playcaling was vastly different between the two.

If I had to guess, IMO Knapp’s goal is to look a lot like those late ’90’s Bronco’s teams, and those 49er teams from the Garcia/Owens/Hearst days.

P.S. – I don’t think the ‘05 Steelers were anymore “lucky” than the ’06 Colts, ’08 Giants or any other non #1 seed SB champ. They were a good team, were 15-1 the year before, and hung their hat on 2 big strengths. And they got hot at the right time to blast their way through the playoffs. I hate picking at the scab of WL, but I separate bad refs from good play by the Steelers – both of which we faced. IMO, the ’01 Pats are actually one of the luckier champs in recent memory, because there wasn’t one thing you could look at (besides coaching & gameplanning, I suppose) and say they did at an elite level.

I just went to nfl.com and pro-football-reference.com and cut and pasted the O & D rankings … which are just based on total yards, which is a very flawed way of doing things. For the run/pass ratio, I just did the simple math using a teams total rushing attempts & passing attempts.

But I realize total run/pass ratios don’t tell us much about team’s philosophy. For example, the ‘05 Seahawks had more total rushing attempts than passing attempts. But if you look at the play-by-plays for ’05, The ’Hawks started almost every game in pass first mode. For those scripted plays on the first few drives, it’d be close to a 2-1 pass ratio. So that indicates that the ‘Hawks came out throwing to soften the D, then started pounding Alexander one things got rolling. The ’07 Giants are the opposite. They finished with more pass attempts, but their play-by-plays show them opening up games by running Jacobs up the gut, and they started throwing once D’s started creeping into the box, and play action became a big threat.

I’d really like to look at all the stuff you mentioned, to get a better overall picture of things. But I don’t have access to any of the premium footalloutsiders.com stats, and play-by-plays on nfl.com only go back about 5 years. And it takes going back and charting out each game individually. It’s fun, but sadly I don’t have the time to do that level of research right now.