00:00All right. David Blau spoke earlier today before OTA session two day one began, and he had a lot to
00:12say about, you know, Jaden and, you know, the third year quarterback adjusting to a new offensive coordinator, a new
00:20scheme.
00:20And that's how he kicked off his press conference, talking about how Jaden's adapted to his offensive philosophy and scheme.
00:30Good. He, you know, he has done a lot of work over the course of the offseason just to try
00:37to implement the things that we've been imparting on him.
00:40And that's who he is. And, you know, we are excited about where he's at and know there's so much
00:46more room for growth.
00:47And and that's the that's the fun challenge as the coach getting to, you know, show him a different way
00:53to do things. And he has responded really well.
00:56Well, this was David Blau, Washington's new offensive coordinator, on how can the offense and the new scheme help Jaden
01:08evolve as a passer?
01:11David, stealing John's question a little bit here. How can this offense help Jaden evolve as a quarterback?
01:16Yeah, I think, you know, just trying to open his eyes, maybe under center to some of the play action
01:24concepts and different things we want to stretch, you know, stretch people horizontally and vertically.
01:30And, you know, it's we're not creating essentially new concepts, just asking him to do different things.
01:37And I think at the end of the day, it's about us trying to put our best players in positions
01:43to be successful.
01:43And, you know, we'll evaluate that throughout the spring and in a training camp to do that.
01:49So let me just say about David Blau's answer there to me, like, and we've thought a lot about this
01:59since the elevation of Blau and the moving on from Cliff Kingsbury.
02:03Like, I know there's been a lot of conversation about personnel groupings and motion.
02:09I'm telling you, a lot of that will be opponent dependent.
02:13It just will be the one thing that you can be confident about is the one thing that he said
02:22there.
02:23And that is play action passing Washington with Clint King with Cliff Kingsbury was near the bottom in the two
02:33seasons, 2024 and 2025 in play action pass attempts.
02:40David Blau will very likely have Jaden Daniels among the top five, six, seven play action attempts quarterbacks.
02:50Why do I know that?
02:52Well, he just told you that, number one.
02:54Number two is he comes from a background of Ben Johnson in Detroit, Kevin O'Connell, which is off the
03:03Shanahan tree, et cetera, Gruden tree in Minnesota.
03:08And Kevin O'Connell and Ben Johnson during their years as coordinators and head coaches have been consistently among the
03:17top two, three teams in play action pass attempts.
03:22That's what you know you are going to get in comparison to 2024 and 2025.
03:30I think you also know you're going to get more snaps under center.
03:37Just so everybody understands this, and I've mentioned this many times in the past, but when you talk about the
03:43highest under center teams in the league the last few years,
03:48it's not that they're always under center.
03:51In fact, most of the leading under center teams are still not under center, meaning in shotgun or pistol, more
04:00than they're under center.
04:02You know, I think the second or third highest under center team last year in the league was like at
04:0942% under center.
04:10You know, and then when you got towards like number 10 in under center teams, it was in the 30
04:16percentile of under center snaps, which means that still the majority of snaps, and in some cases, the large majority
04:25of snaps, even for the teams that are under center a lot, are going to be not under center.
04:32So if you're expecting, you know, huddles and break and the quarterbacks up under the center over and over again,
04:41no, that's not what you're going to see.
04:43You're just going to see more under center than you've seen.
04:47And if David Blau ends up being like Ben Johnson, like, you know, the Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Gruden Tree,
04:57they'll be under center at a higher level than, you know, probably two thirds of the league.
05:03But it's the play action pass attempt thing that to me, you don't even have to think about.
05:11You're going to get more play action pass attempts from Jaden Daniels than you got in the Cliff Kingsbury years.
05:19And it's going to end up being in, I'll just say top 10, probably higher than that, maybe even closer
05:27to top five play action pass attempts in the league, because that's where he comes from.
05:32And that's what he's told us now over and over again.
05:36And for me, even going back to when they drafted Jaden Daniels and knowing a little bit about the Cliff
05:42Kingsbury approach, which by the way, worked with Jaden Daniels.
05:47It actually worked with Marcus Mariota and even Josh Johnson last year to a certain degree.
05:52But there were differences, not a college offense.
05:55You'll hear people describe it.
05:56It's not a college offense.
05:57Yes, they ran more RPO than most teams and they weren't under center more than most teams.
06:04But to act like it doesn't work, I mean, Kansas City and Philadelphia as non-under center teams with very
06:11high percentages of RPO snaps, you know, they've won Super Bowls in recent years.
06:18But anyway, moving away from that, play action pass attempts.
06:23That is the thing more than anything else that you can guarantee you are going to get that will be
06:31different from Kingsbury.
06:33I would also say you're going to get more under center snaps.
06:35You're probably going to get more huddling.
06:37But in terms of what happens post-snap, you're going to get more play action pass attempts.
06:44And man, I've been saying this since they drafted Jaden.
06:47I still think that play action pass attempts, zone run scheme, booting off of it or quarterback keeping off of
06:56it, as they say at the NFL level, the Shanahan level, we call it bootlegs.
07:00They call it quarterback keepers.
07:03It's going to be very threatening to a defense and it will be effective.
07:07And I think Jaden will be great at that.
07:10I want to see him more in play action and less in RPO.
07:14I mean, I like RPO.
07:16I like RPO as an option.
07:17I like the way RPO has evolved in the league.
07:20You know, RPO started, you know, in the lower levels of football.
07:25It's not the same as zone read.
07:28I think we've talked about this in the past real quickly.
07:30RPO is run pass option.
07:33Read option or zone read is read option.
07:36And read option is a running play.
07:39It's either a running play to the running back or it's a running play for the quarterback.
07:43RPO is a run pass option.
07:45That is, at the line of scrimmage, a run play is called, but the quarterback can immediately throw before linemen
07:53are downfield.
07:54It gets called a lot at the NFL level because the NFL rule is different than the college rule.
07:59The NFL rule is linemen can't be more than a yard downfield when the pass is made.
08:04At the college level, it's three yards down the field.
08:07RPO at the college level is completely different than RPO at the NFL level because of the ineligible offensive lineman
08:14downfield rule.
08:15It's different by two yards.
08:17It's significant.
08:18Very significant.
08:20RPO at the NFL level has been a big part of the game in recent years, but not as unstoppable
08:27as it's been in college for the reasons I just suggested.
08:30But we've even seen now some RPO where they have worked other things into the RPO.
08:38It's not just a run pass option.
08:40There is a run pass read option element of a combined play in there.
08:45But we're going to get less of that, in my opinion, and more sort of play action and more of
08:51a run, you know, creating the play action pass attempt offense.
08:57I'm excited about it.
08:59I think Jaden would thrive in any offense.
09:02I think elite level quarterbacks that are mobile are going to be really good in just about anything that you
09:10give them.
09:11Jaden is not played in a college offense.
09:13That's a bad description of Cliff Kingsbury's offense at the NFL level.
09:18They were top five in rush attempts in both of his seasons.
09:24When you think air raid or you think college offenses, you're talking about throwing 70, 80% of the time.
09:31It's not what you have at the NFL level.
09:34You could never sustain that at the NFL level.
09:37But it didn't include as much huddling, as much under center, and certainly didn't include as much play action.
09:45And by the way, I think play action with, you know, the receivers they have right now subject to change
09:54will work very well.
09:56I'm looking forward to that.
09:57I am.
09:59Of course, everything's got to be healthy and on the field in terms of their best players.
10:03But I'm looking forward to that.
10:06Blau also answered the question about the offense kind of starting from square one versus or.
10:16Or it was in it was in in or like, are you starting from square one or are you branching
10:22off previous concepts?
10:24Here's what he said.
10:25You know, I really do think, you know, as as we grow, we're a sum of everything that we've we've
10:32kind of taken in.
10:33So there's been things that I've really liked along the way from other places that we will certainly look like.
10:38There's things that we did here that I really like that you guys will see as well.
10:42So, you know, as a staff, that has been been the goal so that you can walk into this offense
10:50and say, well, why is it called that?
10:52And everybody in football always says, well, we've always done it that way.
10:55The goal was to eliminate all that and build it from the ground up, the collaboration.
11:00And we're going to make the 26 commanders offense our own.
11:06There you go from Blau.
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