Apparently, Buddy Ryan had a scheme when he was with the Houston Oilers in which he’d use 14 players on defense in a goal line situation, intending to stop the run while drawing a penalty to burn time off the clock. The amusing part of this is that, ever the slave to detail, Ryan actually illustrated the formation and showed where the extra players should be positioned.
Could it work today? Hard to imagine the play not being blown dead before the snap. But after some of the calls we saw in the 49ers-Lions game, one never knows.
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Buddy Ryan’s “Polish Goalline” tactic [Smart Football]
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- medtxpack - Oct 19, 2011 at 8:07 PM
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the only thing they ever got right was Sausage….
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- rubbernilly - Oct 19, 2011 at 11:45 PM
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Why would it be blown dead before the snap? Defensive players have until the ball is snapped to get off the field, and the “12 men on the field” penalty (or, 14, in this case) is only called after the play is finished.
So the idea is, knowing you are going to draw the penalty anyway, go for broke and put a lot of guys in there just to make sure that you stop the run. Yes, you give them another chance, but if you’re confident in *14* guys going against 11 to stop the run, you haven’t really given them an extra down at all. They just get their 11-on-11 try later… because you’ve managed to burn however much time off the clock.
You wouldn’t want to employ this strategy to end the game, necessarily, because the game can’t end on a defensive penalty… unless you wanted to force the offense into a 1-down situation (by getting the clock to run down to 0, but the offense still gets one untimed play). Still, there are some strategic elements to doing this… and some elements that run counter to the notions of fair-play, too.
