00:00Jaden Daniels yesterday, weekly quarterback presser,
00:04which came late in the day after the show was over.
00:07There were a couple of things he said that I want to play for you.
00:10This was Jaden kind of talking about the lack of production
00:14for Terry McLaurin on Sunday against the Eagles.
00:18Jaden, I know you said with Terry last game,
00:21they were sending a lot of cloud coverage his way and extra attention.
00:24You know, it's going to happen often with your number one receiver.
00:26What are some ways you can keep him engaged in the offense,
00:28even when he is receiving that extra attention from the defense?
00:31I think we just have an answer for that,
00:33and you try to predict what you could see.
00:36You're not going to get every answer to the test right,
00:38but you try to have predictions of, like, this could happen.
00:42And obviously, Philly did a great job with their game plan of, you know,
00:47taking Terry away and, you know, forcing other guys to make plays,
00:50which they did.
00:51And, you know, when those opportunities present itself for Terry to make plays,
00:54you know, we got to make them at the end of the day.
00:56I got to give him a good ball.
00:57He got to catch it.
00:58A lot has to go on to, you know, successfully have a play.
01:01But, you know, moving forward, man, it was having answers for that.
01:05And, you know, not going to force feed, you know, Terry the ball,
01:08but still go through my reads.
01:10But when those opportunities present itself for Terry to go make plays,
01:12I know he'll make them.
01:14So a lot of you jumped on that last part.
01:18You know, we just have to have answers for that.
01:20I'm not going to force feed Terry the ball.
01:23I'm going to go through my reads.
01:25And when those opportunities present itself for Terry, go make plays.
01:28I know he'll make them.
01:31I've talked a lot about over in recent years, Terry's not a, you know,
01:36force feed 15 target a game receiver.
01:39It's just not who he's been.
01:41It's certainly not who he is now.
01:43But let me just say, that's not really what Jaden was saying, in my opinion.
01:48Jaden wasn't saying Terry's not a force feed receiver.
01:52Now, he might think that.
01:54And, by the way, I think they all think that.
01:57But that's not what he was meaning to say.
02:01Like, Terry's not a guy that you force feed the ball to.
02:04He was saying that I got to go through my reads and take me to which receiver
02:10the reads take me to.
02:12That's good quarterbacking.
02:14You know, if you have one of those true force feed receivers, well,
02:20your game plan changes a little bit differently.
02:22And you've got a game plan that is going to force feed that particular receiver.
02:29You know, we've seen that before in the NFL.
02:33Guys that get, you know, double-digit targets every week regardless of what the defense is.
02:38But in most offenses, and by the way, in a Ben Johnson, Kevin O'Connell, Sean McVay,
02:45Kyle Shanahan offense, it's all about the quarterback going to where he is supposed to go
02:52based on the coverage and his reads of that coverage.
02:55And that's Jaden's responsibility.
02:58And if the reads take him to Terry, they take him to Terry.
03:02Now, if you want Terry to get touches early in the game so that it doesn't take three and a
03:07half quarters
03:07to get him his first touch, you've got to throw something really simple.
03:11You know, you've got to take the easy, you've got to give Jaden some easy stuff.
03:15I would recommend that.
03:17I mean, from this, you know, inexperienced, non-expert seat,
03:21I would definitely say I'd love to see a couple of quick hitches,
03:26a couple of quick, you know, wide receiver bubbles just to get the ball in the hands of a Terry
03:31McLaurin early.
03:32By the way, also giving Jaden Daniels a few easy, confidence-building throws.
03:40Not as easy against a team like Philadelphia, but you should be able to scheme up some of that stuff.
03:48You know, Blau is in his first year as a coordinator.
03:51They were very convinced that this was the way to go,
03:55that he was the guy and the scheme was the right scheme to employ.
04:00It doesn't mean that they were right.
04:02It doesn't mean that they were right about the scheme.
04:06It doesn't mean that they were right about Blau.
04:08It doesn't mean that they were right about either one of them.
04:11I mean, they could be right about one and wrong about the other, and we'll see.
04:15This guy's never done it before.
04:17And the best coordinators in this league, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Kevin O'Connell, offensive guys,
04:25they can scheme people open.
04:29So we didn't see a lot of that on Sunday.
04:32Harder to scheme people open against an exceptional defense, which I think we think Philadelphia is.
04:38We'll see.
04:39Every year's a new year.
04:41But they certainly are well coached.
04:42They certainly have great talent on their defense, especially on the back end.
04:49But it's pretty good up front as well.
04:53But I don't think Jaden was saying what some of you tweeted me to say,
04:58Jaden agrees with you, can't force feed Terry.
05:01It's not, I don't think, what he meant to say, like, Terry's not a force feed receiver.
05:06It's true, he's not.
05:07But I don't think that's what he was saying.
05:09I think he was just saying, I can't force feed anybody.
05:12I have to go where my reads take me.
05:14And when the reads take me to Terry, I'm going to go to Terry.
05:18And I got to make the throw and he's got to make the catch and he's got to make a
05:22play afterwards.
05:24There was a couple of other things.
05:28Well, there's one other soundbite that actually we don't have the sound of,
05:32so I'm going to have to read to you.
05:36He was asked about the shotgun versus under center split on Sunday against Philadelphia.
05:43Big talking point, obviously, with this new offense.
05:47A big expectation with this new offense is that Jaden would be under center a lot more than he's been
05:54under center
05:55and that he'd be under center, you know, at a high level compared to the rest of the league
06:00because that's what Ben Johnson's offense was.
06:03That's what Kevin O'Connell's offense.
06:04Kevin O'Connell's had and Ben Johnson has had some of the highest under center snap counts in the league
06:13over the last couple of years.
06:15I've pointed something out and I just want to point it out again.
06:19The highest, you know, percentage under center teams in the league last year were right around 50
06:27or a little bit higher than 50 percent.
06:29But everybody else was below 50 percent.
06:32I think the Rams were above 50 and maybe Seattle was.
06:34But under center high percentage doesn't mean that you're doing it 100 percent of the time
06:40or 90 percent of the time or even 60 percent of the time.
06:43It is somewhere around 50 percent of the time if you're near the top of the league.
06:48The average last year of under center snaps was 35 percent.
06:55That was up from the year before.
06:57And apparently week one we saw an even more significant gain in teams taking under center snaps.
07:04But Jaden was asked about the shotgun versus under center split on Sunday.
07:10And he said, quote, I think it was what I expected.
07:13I know a lot of people thought it was going to be like 80 percent under center, 90 percent under
07:19center.
07:20It wasn't going to be that.
07:21I think that's the kind of split Blau envisioned for the offense and what we game planned for.
07:28So let me just tell you what Jaden's talking about in terms of what he expected,
07:34what was game planned for and what they ended up doing.
07:38They had, if you count the two point conversion, they took 71 offensive snaps in the game.
07:4618 of those 71 were under center snaps.
07:52That's just over 25 percent.
07:57I think a lot of people expected something higher than that.
08:00At least the league average last year of 35 percent.
08:04In the first game, they were just over 25 percent of under center snaps.
08:1118 out of 71.
08:13I would also add to this because I went back because I had this feeling that they were much less
08:21under center
08:22and much more shotgun during those two long touchdown drives in the fourth quarter.
08:29And it was there was a difference between the snaps that came before the fourth quarter and the fourth quarter
08:36snaps.
08:37It wasn't the disparity that I thought it was.
08:40But here were the numbers.
08:41So 48 of the 71 snaps happened before those two touchdown drives in which Jaden was under center on 13
08:51of the 48.
08:52So 72.9 percent of the time he was in the shotgun and 27.1 percent of the time he
09:01was under center.
09:02And then on the two drives, and I threw the two-point conversion play into it.
09:08It doesn't actually count as a play on the drive.
09:11But basically 23 offensive snaps and just five of those 23 were under center.
09:1818 were in shotgun.
09:20By the way, some of those shotgun snaps also included hurry up with pace.
09:25So 78.2 percent.
09:27So there was about, you know, basically a 5.3 percent difference increase in shotgun snaps on the two touchdown
09:37drives
09:38versus all of the drives that came before it.
09:41The only reason it was interesting to me is they were much more productive on those final two drives
09:46than they were on the, you know, nine drives that preceded those final two.
09:52And it just seemed to me that he was not under center a lot.
09:58He was under center on some of those Catron Allen runs.
10:01But, yeah, I think he's still more comfortable in the shotgun.
10:06If that was what was expected, 25, just over 25 percent of the snaps under center,
10:13it's more than 24 and 25 for Jaden, but it's much less than what the league average was last year.
10:21If that's the expectation, I guess our expectations, mine anyway,
10:27I thought they'd be at least at the league average of under center snaps.
10:32If the expectation is 25 percent, now maybe that was just the expectation Sunday against Philadelphia,
10:40and that was the game plan against Philadelphia and maybe against other teams,
10:43there will be a lot more, you know, a 10, 15 percent increase in under center snaps.
10:49But I thought that that was notable, that A, they didn't take as many under center snaps as we thought
10:57they would,
10:58yet it appeared as if, based on 24 and 25, he was under center a lot more because he was.
11:04But he wasn't even close to the league average last year.
11:08And then when the game was on the line and he had to deliver, they had to deliver offensively,
11:14he was in shotgun even more than he had been in the first, during the first three quarters of the
11:21game.
11:21And I think it's in part because Blau said he's still more comfortable in shotgun.
11:26And by the way, he's comfortable with some pace too, you know,
11:30and they had more no huddle down the stretch than they had in the first three quarters of the game.
11:37So anyway, that was the observation on Jaden, especially when he answered that question like,
11:43yeah, we're not doing it 80 or 90 percent of the time.
11:45And I do think he's right.
11:46I think people, when they hear this under center trend in recent years,
11:52they just assume teams are lining up primarily under center.
11:55No, the average last year was 35 percent, and that's a high average in recent years.
12:01And the teams that were at the top were just over 50 percent of the time under center.
12:07Most teams, pretty much all, but I think two or three teams were under 50 percent of under center snaps.
12:14We still see as NFL fans many, many more snaps with quarterbacks in shotgun or in pistol
12:21than we do with the quarterbacks under center.
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