Battle Analysis..Part I

The game of football is often called a “battle.”  On old saying in battle is “no plan ever survives the first contact.”  The reason is the enemy always has a vote.  It is easy to draw up battle plans and hope the enemy does exactly what you thought they would do.  It is also more fun to fight when the enemy is doing what you thought they would do.  However, that doesn’t happen a lot.  To prepare for battle, Commanders and their Staffs (Assistants) draw up plans on how to beat the enemy.  At the minimum, the plans examine the enemy’s most likely course of action and the most unlikely course of action.  This is determined through analyzing previous actions, trends both current and historical.  The reason this is done is because the enemy has a vote and is not likely to follow the battle plan that you developed.  It provides the Commander some options that can quickly be implemented in-stride in the event the enemy does something that wasn’t likely.  The time available for planning determines how in depth the enemy war gamming sessions get and how many branches and sequels to the original plan take place.  The troops available are analyzed to determine if you have the right troops to enemy ratio to execute the plan.   

The game of football or planning for a game is really no different.  Coaches (Commanders) and Assistants (Staff) start to plan for an upcoming game.  They are under planning time constraints and need to develop a plan so it can be implemented and rehearsed (practiced).  The coaches analyze the players available as per the injury report to determine if the pan can fit the skills of what is available or vice-versa.  A prudent football plan should examine what the other team is likely and unlikely to do.  This is based off available film, known opposing coaches tendencies and current or historical actions or trends. 

The Pittsburgh Steelers failed to plan for the unlikely course of action in Denver.  The original defensive gameplan was feasible, acceptable and suitable.  It looked at past tendencies of a young quarterback and current trends.  That analysis revealed a QB that was a strong runner and horrendous in the passing game.  In fact, there hasn’t been a NFL QB with a worse regular season passer rating since Akili Smith in 2000.  Tim Tebow entered a playoff game as the only QB (since 1998) to start a playoff game when he completed less than half of his regular season passes.   Therefore it was likely that Tebow was not going to have success passing so the defensive plan called for stopping him from running and to make him try and pass.  This strategy worked for the first quarter but the Steelers plan did not account for the unlikely event that Tebow would throw and have some accuracy, particularly on the deeper patterns.  But that is OK.  The Broncos coaching staff had a vote and did the same planning and had the same amount of time to prepare that the Steelers had.  Maybe you get beat once deep.  Leading tackler Ryan Clark wasn’t in the game due to a health anomaly.  When Tebow started connecting passes, especially those over 15 yards, a trend was developing.  The trend was the wrong defensive scheme or one that stubbornly couldn’t adapt to the enemy’s most unlikely course of action. 

The defensive scheme didn’t change and the Bronco’s brain trust had to be salivating.  Tebow didn’t need to dink and dunk all afternoon.  He just had to be patient enough to read the coverage and throw ten passes for 316 yards.  Tebow didn’t have to account for Troy Polamalu, he just needed to account for Ike Taylor and understand some man coverage basics.

It is hard to know how much confidence the Bronco’s staff had in Tebow’s passing game.  Looking at the stat sheet, possibly not a hell of a lot.  John Elway called all week for Tebow to air it out.  As it turned out, the Bronco’s staff did not need a lot of confidence in Tebow.  They were; however, smart enough to see what cards the Steelers were playing.  Tebow then executed what they saw.  They had to be dumbfounded that Hall of Famer Dick LeBeau remained fixated on reinforcing failure or not adjusting to account for the unlikely.  In retrospect it looks like the Steelers underestimated the Bronco’s offense.  I’m not sure they underestimated them, they prepared for the likely course of action but had no plan when the unlikely occurred.  That isn’t underestimating.  That is stupidity (another article will follow concerning this).  

We can make all the excuses we want.  Injuries before the game, injuries during the game, non-calls, BS calls, the defense is too old ect..  Those are excuses.  The Steelers were forced to dig out of a hole to tie and then watched the post season come to a halt because Tomlin and LeBeau could not adapt or did not want to adapt.  It is really that simple.  In battle, failure to consider an enemy’s unlikely course of action can result in a lot of personnel killed in action.  In football, it results in watching the playoffs from the couch.  Enjoy the couch Steeler Nation.