Like most football fans, I grew up hearing the old adage about running to set up play-action passes all the time.
As more and more innovative ways of analyzing football data became readily available, this myth was clearly debunked.
One example is this piece from Football Outsiders back in 2018, which dives deep into the numbers to prove that play-action success doesn’t seem to have any correlation with rushing success. This piece from Cowboys Wire back in 2020 appears to come to similar conclusions. Last year, Los Angeles Chargers head coach Brandon Staley broke down why teams actually need to establish the run, and why it has nothing to do with setting up play-action.
Contrast all of that with Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, who still seems to be holding tightly to outdated idea that in order to have a successful play-action game, you must first commit to establishing the run.
“We’ve got to do a better job of running it, right?” Leftwich said Thursday. ” There’s no such thing as play-action pass without running it [well] enough for it to be true. We’ve got to play better across the board. We can run it better – I can call it better. There’s a lot of different things we can do better to help the whole part of our game, really. That’s really how we look at it – we don’t look at it as one thing. [Play-actions] come off how well you’re running the ball – it’s always been. Or you’re just wasting time doing a [play-action] – it won’t do the job that you’re setting out for it to do.”
Leftwich’s offense is actually proving him wrong as we speak, too.
Despite having the league’s worst rushing attack through the first eight weeks of the season, the Bucs are one of the league’s best offenses when running play-action. Yet despite being so successful at play-action, only two teams in the league have done it less often than the Bucs have (via PFF’s Steve Palazzolo):
Bucs have 4th-best EPA/play when using play action.
They have used play action at the third-lowest rate in the league.
They have by far the worst run game in the NFL. https://t.co/bnJu8Vevv1
— Steve Palazzolo (@PFF_Steve) November 3, 2022
It’s long past time for this false narrative to be tossed aside, and considering Tampa Bay’s 3-5 start, doing so immediately might be one of the few things that could salvage what was supposed to be another potential Super Bowl run for the Bucs.
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