One of the catchphrases that you hear throughout the draft cycle is “scheme fit.” The more hours that people spend studying the draft and revisiting how players succeed — or fail — upon entering the NFL the more people realize that all the pre-draft evaluations and scouting reports matter much less than where the players actually land. The systems they are going to be in, the coaches they are going to be learning from, and the other players around them are going to be much more important in determining whether they boom, or bust.
To that end, here are some of the best scheme fits from Round 1 of the 2020 NFL Draft, along with two potential misfits that raise serious questions.
Scheme Fits
Tua Tagovailoa, QB, Miami Dolphins
It was often said of longtime baseball manager Gene Mauch that he was better at taking impossibly flawed teams to the middle of the pack with his managerial genius than he was at taking good teams and making them truly great. Some guys are just that way, and current Dolphins offensive coordinator Chan Gailey might be the NFL’s version of Mauch. In five years as a head coach for the Cowboys and Bills, Gailey compiled a 34-46 record, and lost the two playoff games his teams made.
But if you want a guy who can take a broken offense and turn it around with pure schematic invention, there are few better. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was when he was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator in 2008. Kansas City lost starting quarterbacks Damon Huard and Brodie Croyle to injury, leaving third-stringer Tyler Thigpen as the man under center. The Chiefs were without franchise back Larry Johnson at times due to injuries and suspensions, so Gailey didn’t have much to work with.
Undaunted, Gailey took a then little-known schematic constraint called the Pistol formation — which is now the primary shotgun set in the NFL — and worked his offense from desperate to above-average.
“When Damon and Brodie went down, I think L.J. was still on a suspension, and we were able to do the regular shotgun with Kolby Smith from Louisville and Jamaal Charles from Texas,” Thigpen told me in 2010. “But once that suspension was up, and Larry was back in the lineup, that’s when we went more to the Pistol offense. Kolby and Jamaal were used to that zone type of running, where you press the side and make a cutback, or whatever the case may be — whatever lane they’ve got. We tried running that offense for one or two weeks when Larry came back, and then we realized, ‘Hey, he’s not that kind of back.’ That’s when we changed to the downhill kind of running. The Pistol is really like an I-formation, whether you put the back in the near set or the far set.”
The Pistol also presented advantages for Thigpen.
“Whether it was a quarterback draw, a misdirection with a one-back offset, having the back go to the left and bringing him back to the right, it would look to the defense like a zone left run instead of a cutback to the right,” he said. “The play action was really good, because you couldn’t see the back, and whether he had the ball or not, with the offensive line up front. I remember a couple times, just running boots and faking to [the back], and it was just wide open when I came out on the boot. It was tough for the defensive end, when he’s coming off the edge, to see whether you gave it or not. Normally, he has that advantage when you’re coming out from under center to see whether you’re close to the back or not — what kind of fake it is.”
You get the point. Now, imagine what Gailey will do with Tagovailoa, who comes to the NFL with a game that’s equal parts Drew Brees and Russell Wilson. There are few better coaches for Tagovailoa to work with in his transition to the NFL — and there are few coaches who will be more astute in combining what he needs with what Tagovailoa can already do. Boots, advanced play-action, zone-read stuff… you name it. Tagovailoa will flourish under Gailey, and it will be exciting to watch.