Quote:I think the idea that changing playbooks ruins a player's progress is a myth. We have seen over and over again teams switch offenses and in one season improve dramatically. I also think the idea of continuity is overrated. Many times an offense will come out hot the first year and then in later years go stale.


IMO it's really a matter of playcalling and execution. Switching from playbook to playbook doesn't make that much of a difference since all the general football concepts are the same. The difficult part is learning new terminology. Success comes from calling the right plays at the right time and players executing. So, no, I don't think they start back at square one.


Look at the Bears last year. All the Bears homers were predicting Jay Cutler to win MVP because "wow another year under that Trestman offense". As if there was some magic recipe in the back of their playbook Cutler had not discovered yet. Then look at the results. An extra year in the offense did nothing and he played significantly worse.

You rarely see developing players flourish with changing offenses. Most young players need a bit of stability in order to effectively raise their game.

 

Veteran teams can make the switch and flourish. Individual young players not so much.

 

You are more likely to see a young player regress with a scheme change than see one flourish.

 

The more you switch things up in a learning process the longer it takes to fully grasp the concepts and this isn't unique to learning football. This is a common theme to all forms of learning from elementary school to learning any sort of profession.

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