Greatest Show on Turf’ not new
Rams’ offense similar to Air Coryell and that used by Super ’Skins, Cowboys
The offense of Rams coach Mike Martz resembles Don Coryell's offense of the 70s and 80s.
By Mark Maske
THE WASHINGTON POST
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 1 — Move over, West Coast offense. The system in vogue these days belongs to the St. Louis Rams and their offensive wizard of a head coach, Mike Martz.
THE ST. LOUIS offense, dubbed the “Greatest Show on Turf,” is being hailed by some NFL observers as the best in league history. The Rams will try to ride it to their second Super Bowl title in three seasons when they face the New England Patriots on Sunday at the Superdome. But Martz, who was the Rams’ offensive coordinator under former coach Dick Vermeil in the club’s previous Super Bowl victory, didn’t invent the system. He and his players perhaps have merely perfected it.
The offense that the Rams run is basically the same system that Don Coryell once used to turn the San Diego Chargers, with quarterback Dan Fouts, into “Air Coryell.” It’s the system that Joe Gibbs used to win three Super Bowls — with three different quarterbacks — with the Washington Redskins. It’s the system that the Dallas Cowboys and quarterback Troy Aikman used to win three Super Bowl titles, two of them with Norv Turner as their offensive coordinator.
“I played in the Ram offense,” former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann said this week. “This offense is the same as Joe Gibbs’s, Don Coryell’s, Norv Turner’s. It’s fabulous. Troy Aikman played in it. I played in it. [Rams quarterback] Kurt Warner plays in it. I think we’ve won as many championships as the West Coast guys have won. . . . I argue all the time this system is better.”
If the Rams win on Sunday, that would be at least eight Super Bowl triumphs for their offensive system — three for Gibbs’s Redskins, three for the Cowboys (whose third title came with another Coryell disciple, Ernie Zampese, as their offensive coordinator) and two for St. Louis with Martz. That would, by unofficial count, match the eight won by Bill Walsh and his disciples with the famed West Coast offense — five for the San Francisco 49ers, two for Mike Shanahan’s Denver Broncos and one for Mike Holmgren’s Green Bay Packers.
“I want to be careful not to try to speak for Mike Martz,” Gibbs said in a telephone interview today. “But we both studied Don Coryell, who had a huge impact on me as far as offensive football. What Mike Martz is doing is terrific. I do know they believe in a lot of the formation stuff that we believed in. There are other things that are not as similar. He’s branched off with some of his own things, and the results have been great.”
Martz, who was Turner’s quarterbacks coach for two seasons when Turner coached the Redskins, grew up in San Diego watching Coryell coach at San Diego State and Sid Gillman coaching the Chargers. The roots for all the current downfield passing offenses in the NFL may have been in Gillman’s creative offense. Coryell jumped to the Chargers and put the elements of this system — which Theismann this week called the Stretch Offense because of its down-the-field passing and the way it stretches a defense — firmly in place.
Unlike the West Coast offense — which features short passes to receivers on the move, regularly producing long runs after catches — this system gets most of its passing yards with the ball in the air. Receivers run timing patterns in which they are making their cuts as the quarterback delivers the ball. The throws are longer. Neither the system nor the language in which the plays are called is particularly complex, but a constantly changing set of formations and players in motion makes the plays look different.
“It’s hard to find the same formation during the course of a game,” Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said. “St. Louis comes at you from a lot of different directions. . . . [Martz] gives you so many things to get ready for and so many things to stop, it’s tough.”
Said Theismann: “The fundamental of this offense is, ‘We don’t run a lot of plays. We just run them from a lot of different formations.’ With the Rams, if you’ve got Az Hakim running a 14-yard in [pattern] on one play, you might have the exact same play the next time, but now it’s Marshall Faulk or Ernie Conwell or Torry Holt or Isaac Bruce or Ricky Proehl. You can have six or seven different guys running at you from different formations. But for the guy calling the play, it’s the same thing. As the quarterback, you get to practice throwing to the same spot, so you become good at reading the defense and throwing the football.”
Former NFL coach Don Coryell, whose "Air Coryell" offense was prolific with the Chargers two decades ago, ran an offense very similar to that used today by Rams coach Mike Martz.
The way Theismann tells it, the offense has a nine-digit numbering system for the receivers’ pass patterns. Each number, 1 through 9, indicates a particular pattern. A 1, for example, is a quick out pattern; a 9 is a go pattern, straight up the field.
In a formation with three wide receivers, a passing play would be called with three digits. If the play called is “426,” the receiver on the side of the field by himself would run a 4 pattern — an in pattern, cutting toward the middle of the field. The inside receiver on the other side of the field would run a 2, a slant, and the outside receiver on that side would run a 6, a curl pattern.
“That’s how simple it is,” Theismann said. “In the West Coast offense, that verbiage goes up to 15 or 20 words and each play is memorized, and every play is different. In this offense, you can run ’333’ or ’428’ or ’427’ or ’426’ from all different formations. It doesn’t matter if you’re a running back or a tight end, if you’re on the single-receiver side, you’ve got the first digit. So you can bring somebody into this offense and in three days, have them run it very efficiently. You can’t do that in the West Coast offense.”
Each coach has added some wrinkles to the system. Gibbs developed a power running game with John Riggins and his “Hogs” offensive line. He used formations with two tight ends, and “bunch” formations with three wide receivers on the same side of the field. Martz has revved up the offense even more by using many formations with four wide receivers, and the Rams’ wideouts — mainly Bruce, Holt and Hakim — have so much speed that their routes can be run deeper.
“The speed is the difference,” Theismann said. “They can run 18- or 20-yard routes where most teams can only run 14-yard routes. When you can add an extra six yards to stretch a defense, that’s tough. . . . I think Kurt just goes to bed thinking, ‘God, just let me wake up with my back feeling okay and my arm healthy.’ He’s got to go to bed at night smiling, and wake up smiling even more.
“Thirty teams have to abide by some standard of turnovers. Then you have the Rams, who can turn the ball over three times and still score 35 points in a game. . . . If the Rams don’t make mistakes, nobody beats them. That’s a fact. They’re that good. This game is about people on the field. It’s about talent.”
And the Rams have plenty of it. Warner is the game’s most accurate passer, especially considering that he regularly throws the ball farther downfield than most quarterbacks. Faulk is equally dangerous as a runner and as a receiver and presents more matchup problems to a defense than any other player in the league. The Rams’ complementary receivers alongside top targets Bruce and Holt — Hakim, Proehl and Conwell — could be starters elsewhere.
“The Rams’ offense may be the greatest of all time,” said Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who ran the St. Louis system when Zampese was New England’s offensive coordinator in 1998 and ’99. “When they’re playing, I’m like everyone else: I like to watch. It’s fireworks.”
Then there’s Martz, who isn’t bothered by turnovers and remains aggressive in his play-calling at virtually all times. But he is not reckless. In last Sunday’s NFC championship game, he leaned on Faulk’s running to beat the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Mike Martz has as good an offensive attack as I’ve seen in the league,” Belichick said. “It’s brutal to coach against.”
The Patriots know they must try to hold the ball for long stretches Sunday and put pressure on Warner with their pass rush. They know they must keep the St. Louis receivers from getting behind them, and make the Rams patiently piece together lengthy drives. And when they get a chance at a sack or interception, they have to capitalize.
“They’re going to make a bunch of plays,” New England cornerback Terrell Buckley said. “We have to make some, too.”
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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