Oakland Raiders: Think! Tweak the Contours, Patterns and Sequences of Your Playcalling!

Damali Binta – Nov 7, 2011

I don't know about you, but I had to chill out and rest after looking at the game between the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders. Some of us do the x's and o's, while I tend to look at the contours, patterns, sequences and other global factors in professional football.

My advice to Hue Jackson and the coaches is that they must do better "thinking." This quote from an article on "Game Theory and Football" tells a story:

Coaches and coordinators in professional football get paid a lot of money to call the right plays – not just the best plays for particular situations, but also unpredictable plays that will catch the other team off guard. It’s a perfect setup for game theory analysis!

I really hope that someday soon I can get with the other Raider Nation Times writers and we get some of the best videos of a few selected Oakland Raiders game, and we, as a group, watch closely and analyze what is going on with the playcalling. This type of collaborative effort would be unique and rich. More powerful observations and commentary would come out of such a rich encounter.

Two contours that have been developed and shared with the Raider Nation are:

1. The Oakland Raiders tend to lose the game immediatley after bye week. They did it, again on Nov. 6!

2. The Oakland Raiders are at the median and mode, to date, in the distribution of win-loss percentages of the 32 NFL teams. This study will be updated through Week 9 and Week 10.

 

Now  we must develop a contour or pattern analysis for the coaches playcalling. We need to look at the sequences, both proactive and reactive. We need to map the pattern and contour of the playcalling and more. The predictability and unpredictability of what the coaches have done in 2011 needs to be carefully examined and modeled for all of us to see.

New permutations of the playcalling must be done in the second half of the games. After halftime, the Oakland Raiders continue to fail the test.

Now if we know that the Raiders tend to perform poorly in the second half and in the fourth quarter, the opponents certainly have made those observations. Therefore, the opponents confidence is up in those time periods, and, obviously, the opponent determines the probably moves of the Oakland Raiders, and adjust and defeat the Raiders, in a lot of cases.

The coaches of the Oakland Raiders need their brains "jogged" or stimulated. As the quote suggests, the Raiders coaches need to not only call the best plays, but the right plays, too.

Early in the season, Hue Jackson said he wanted to build "the bully." Well, is the bully concept the reason why there are so many penalties in the 2011 games? Define "bully."

Another concept may need to be drilled in the heads of the team. What about the concept of a "victor." A victor is one who wins, and who adjusts and modifies his behavior to attain "victories" and not penalties.

Oh yes, we want to shake up the coaching staff.

My last observation is that there are levels of thinking and understanding. The lowest level is "recall and recognition." The higher levels of cognition, even in NFL coaching, would be synthesis, analysis, extrapolation, interpolation and "thinking outside the box."

Quite frankly, John Doublin, Elias Trejo, David Wilson and the others can give you point- by- point details on the concepts I am highlighting.

At this time, I simply want to "jog" the minds of the Oakland Raiders and the Raiders Coaches, and shout out, THINK and BECOME VICTORIOUS.

 

 Words from Mama Raider