There’s no doubting it; Greg Roman’s offense wiped the floor with Steve Spagnoulo’s defense in a manner that I haven’t seen in the Patrick Mahomes era. All other recent wins over Kansas City have either come against backups or in an absolute shoot out where it was last score wins. This was a pillar to post victory where the Bolts won on both sides of the ball in a convincing manner that has been reflected in every single metric available.
The offensive performance was down to a blend of high quality player execution across the board, some elite performances and, most of all, the game plan set out by Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman. They had 8 months to plan for this game and whilst that’s not how it actually works as they’re busy installing a playbook and training technique, they would have welcomed the extra time to be ready for whatever Andy Reid had ready for them.
Greg Roman’s play calling
Justin Herbert was lights out and mistake free which is a combination that deserves plenty of credit however this game was more to do with Greg Roman. The amalgamation of the design of his concepts, the methods behind his game plan and the timing of his play calls, was absolutely exceptional. This was by far his best game in Los Angeles and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that was able to pull Steve Spagnoulo’s scheme apart as easily as he did.
โJust the totality of the game. He was creative. He was able to run it at the right times. He was able to throw it at the right times.โ
Jim Harbaugh on Greg Roman’s play calling
In this quote Jim Harbaugh has recognised one of the key elements of how the Chargers improved from an offense who couldn’t score more than 16 points against the Chiefs to one that scored 27 points on them whilst kneeling out the game. It’s something the inner coaching circle has clearly spoken about this off-season which was needed as Roman’s play calling was an issue last season and that came to fruition in a dismal fashion against the Texans.
“One area where Roman has to improve more than anywhere else is how he strings together play calls. When he is on script Roman ranks as 12th in EPA/play compared to when he is off script he ranks 23rd.”… “Between these datasets and the tape it is apparent to me that his play design is good and he can manipulate defenses in the right ways but he struggles with how to stay with the game flow and adjust to what defensive coordinators are throwing at him.”
From my 2024 Analysis of the Offense
Well there isn’t a better way to answer criticism than how he called Week 1’s showdown with the Chiefs. As you can see below on the scripted ‘First 15’ plays the Chargers ranked 9th in EPA but when they went beyond the scripted portion of the game that increased to 5th in EPA. It’s a small sample size of course but it’s an incredible way to start the season.
What changed schematically?
Almost nothing. The game plan was built on the same offensive principles, designed the same ways with the same primary methods of attack. It was all there to see on tape last season. This may sound jarring as the Chargers were suddenly an all-out air raid college offense which is just not what anyone envisions when you think of a Jim Harbaugh led team. However that’s exactly who the 2024 Chargers were at the end of last season. I thought this was because the Chargers could not run the ball but I think this vertical method of attack is here to stay.
“I’d be embarrassed if I had a dynamic guy who could throw it all over the place and he is averaging 150 yards passing per game. There is an acknowledgement that Herbert is really f—ing good.”
An anonymous NFL coach referring to the Chargers’ Week 1 game plan in Mike Sando’s Pick 6
The Chargers have been a pass heavy attack for the past nine games as Mike Sando has rightly highlighted in his article in The Athletic this week. He has used a metric called the Cook Index which measures how frequently teams pass on early downs in the first 28 minutes of games (before time remaining and score differential exert greater influence on play selection) to ascertain how aggressive and modern an offense is. It essentially asks how far away an offense is from the old mentality of establishing the run to set up the pass. As you can see below, the Chargers are second in the league since the mid point of last season.
Sando wasn’t the only person to highlight the misconceptions around Greg Roman’s offense. Matt Harmon, curator of Reception Perception, has been trying to tell people all off-season that Greg Roman’s passing game is more accomplished than people perceived it to be prior before Week 1’s coming out party.
“Harbaugh and Roman havenโt called this Chargers offense like a run-heavy unit in neutral situations since before their early bye week last year. Los Angeles ranked second in neutral pass rate from Week 6 on in 2024. Prior to that bye week, Justin Herbert was still working his way back from plantar fasciitis and a high-ankle sprain he dealt with in the offseason.”
From Matt Harmon via Yahoo
It wasn’t just the volumes of passing and the timing of when they called those passes which were consistent. The concepts have all been a part of Greg Roman’s playbook for over a decade. Here are just a few examples of the two and three man games that the Bolts utilized to torch Kansas City’s secondary.
A few decade-old play calls that broke the Chiefs
One thing about Roman’s playbook is that almost every single route has options built into it based on the defensive coverage. Last year you could see star players like Ladd utilize this freedom to improvise a few times a game at the most, against the Chiefs it was all over the tape from all contributing players. It’s clear the offensive weapons have been given license to expand their game to all corners of the playbook. The missed connection to Ladd featured above illustrates reads from all four downfield routes and they all got them right to give Herbert a window for a big touchdown which would have stretched the lead to 14 points just before the half.
The final touchdown throw to Johnston came on the Gash concept shown above. It was a brilliant call at the time even though it’s a relatively simple concept. This design put QJ in a 1-on-1 position against the Chiefs’ weak side safety, Jaden Hicks, who had been struggling to fill the shoes of Justin Reid who left in free agency this off-season. Sometimes late game play calling is about putting your hot players in the position to succeed and this was a nice example of how to do it by attacking a weak link with the type of dynamic player that Quentin had proven himself to be on Sao Paulo.
Roman ran a version of Squire from Trips Bunch as the playbook extract show, but instead of the F running a Sit route designed to put the strong side hook defender in conflict, the concept has been evolved to have the F run a Shallow Cross to pull the Middle hole defender out of the window to the Dagger route from the Z. The backside route is the last read on this third down play call yet it’s still designed well enough that Herbert has the option there once he sees that both crossing routes were shut down. This is a mature play design that is built to give Herbert flexibility on multiple levels between the hashes which is very quarterback friendly especially on third down.
Now there were some changes but they came as developments built from the foundations of the concepts that Greg Roman implemented last season. All of the cross field concepts, the innovation in flooding in ways that break the defensive rules and the dynamic redzone route combinations are all in Roman’s 2014 49ers playbook and were present to see on tape last season.
Maybe we, both the fans and the media, should have been more patient in waiting for the realization of the vision for this offense. It was all there waiting to be unlocked and perhaps it was naive of me to think that a 788 page playbook could have been installed in one off-season.
So what actually changed?
The execution of all moving parts were elevated to a degree Chargers’ fans haven’t been familiar with since Schottenheimer’s peak. Bear in mind this is a one game sample size but if the level of accuracy in all facets of the offense continues at this standard we are in for an absolutely incredible season.
Receiver route details
Last season I admired the blossoming partnership between QJ and Ladd when they operated in stacks and bunches as their natural play styles complimented each other. However beyond that the receiver room lacked the cohesion required for Roman’s passing scheme which predicates success on the ability to manipulate coverages using two and three man combinations.
Every one of the iterations we saw last week was successful. McConkey and QJ continued in their development, Quentin and Allen had a few nice reps together but the zenith was clearly the pairing of Keenan and Ladd. Their partnership was outstanding and this culminated in the detail shown on the play below which resulted in an easy touchdown catch for Keenan to mark his return to the Bolts.
This may have seemed like a coverage bust but it was a forced error thanks to the genius of small details that are shown by true masters of their art like #15 and #13. This is a classic example of Roman’s Coffin concept (a Fan route from the slot with a Circus route from the boundary) but how each of them starts their routes breaks the Chiefs corners’ Banjo call. Ladd does the customary one step fake inside stem with his outside foot but then takes it further by committing his hips by bringing his inside foot level. There are very few players in the league who can twist out of facing the complete wrong direction and get back outside without messing up the timing so the safety rightly starts to follow him.
Then Keenan brushes past the outside shoulder of the safety to further delay him and to fool the corner into thinking that this was a pick attempt to set up Ladd in the flat forcing him to peel off the vertical stem. On their own these details would have been very effective, together they created a chasm of separation that resulted in what looked like an easy score.
The scheme wide details
It wasn’t just the timing of Roman’s play calls that defined how this game went. It was the detailed incremental changes he has made that pushed this offense from well executed to borderline dominant. This first example was seen on 2nd & 4 on the first drive where the Bolts ran a version of Play Action Flood with QJ running behind the line of scrimmage on the snap which is called a Drag motion. The detail which makes it more successful is that Roman pairs this with a zone ‘Spider’ blocking action to reduce depth of the offensive line which allows for QJ to scrape right underneath whilst going at full speed. Kellen Moore ran a version of this where the receiver fell flat on his face as he tripped over the lineman’s legs, details like this matter a lot when you’re trying to beat the reigning AFC champions.
There was also some clever use of personnel trickery by having Ladd align as a Y tight end and Scott Matlock as part of a stack out wide. Roman and his staff designed this Switch concept very well with Matlock’s motion allowing him to sift block the play side end which clears a throwing lane for Herbert to hit. That’s layering concepts to maximize opportunities which is not something this staff were able to achieve last season.
It wasn’t just the passing game that showed signs of some growth. The play below illustrates how Greg Roman has maintained the core principles of his concepts whilst being fluid enough to run this from a different personnel and with spread out alignments to match how defenses are presenting on early down looks.
Roman has adapted his Cross Force concept to fit the modern era with a shift to running this out of Trips LT Gun but maintaining the Ted (Y Tight end blocks down and Playside tackle pulls) and Wipe (Center pull) features that freed up Alt and Bozeman to clear out a lane for such a big gain. The modernization of this is found in the adaptation to take it from an under-center (Tank) formation in 12 personnel to a shotgun (Trips) formation in 11 personnel presentation. This is a good reflection of Roman’s development to match how the game is being played now compared to a decade ago, he’s not being left behind.
The athletic skills of the new weapons
It wasn’t just the starting trio of wide receivers that had an impact on the game. The additions of Keandre Lambert-Smith, Tyler Conklin and Tre Harris enabled the offense to push the Chiefs’ secondary further into their zones. So whilst they didn’t light up the box score, their impact was keenly felt. The interplay of the underneath routes can only be effective with genuine vertical threats and the new additions provided this sufficiently.
In this game Herbert had an average TTT of 2.94 with an aDOT of 10.2, that’s only an extra 0.07 seconds for a full extra yard which reflects the additional speed of the connection between him and his receivers.
That’s with a drop in pressure rate from 40.6% across both games against Kansas City last season, down to 36.5%. That’s proof that Justin had more time to throw thanks to his protection but he got the ball out just as quick and to deeper targets, that’s all a shining example of how much a positive step the offense took in terms of its cohesion. The receivers ran routes they are familiar with at a faster pace. To me this says that Herbert was earlier in his decision making and committed without hesitation when he found his read, that’s indicative of sustainable development and it should excite Chargers fans.
Conclusion
The offensive philosophies that Roman has been installing over the last 20 months provided the foundations of the offense we saw march up and down the field for 394 yards of offense. It wasn’t anything new and it wasn’t Roman having to adapt his concepts to attack the Chiefs specific weaknesses. This is the 2.0 version of Greg Roman’s Chargers offense and all the signs are that this is here to stay. His playbook is deep enough to adapt to whatever the defense does to adjust and the amount of options built into the routes means that they can stay one step ahead of the curve.
Once again such a great post. Genuine thanks Ryan!
The drawings of the plays. Did you make or figure these out yourselves? Or are these widely available?
https://www.footballxos.com/download/49ers-offense-2014-greg-roman/?ind=1610831220522&filename=2014%2049ers%20Greg%20Roman%20Playbook.pdf&wpdmdl=6512&refresh=678a54c4d04a71737118916
I found this a while ago and after talking with some coaches I know that have insight into the league they told me that despite this being a decade old a lot of it won’t have changed. They were most certainly right! So this has proven to be an incredibly useful tool for my work. The biggest issue is learning where to look as this is an install playbook and not a call sheet style one so the organisation is hard to get your head around.
Damn that’s cool. My footballbraon is already spinning after reading a couple of pages.
Crazy to see how meticulously everything is taken care of. I never even considered that a huddle would be so specifically organized.
Thanks for sharing. Enjoy your beers with Andy tonight!
Joe Burrow out for the majority of the season – back mid-December (at the earliest). Crazy how much time that dude has missed.
Similar to Slater, this is a good player that cannot seem to stay on the field. Baffling how many pre-season QB rankings rated him so highly. I guess national media figures value the 2022 SB season over consistent quality play and the ability to stay on the field.
Clowney signing with the Cowboys. I wish the Chargers had shown some interest, but they must feel good about the players they have
Broncos getting all kinds of calls from the refs.
But not quite enough lmao.
Good job, Colts and Eagles!! Now let’s go whup some Raiders ass!!!
Chiefs are 0-2. Fuck yes. Unfortunately, they play the Giants on Sunday night football next week.
The Giants did show some signs of life and the game is in NJ, so maybe they could pull off an upset? That might help Daboll keep his job.
Nice article, Ryan. Thank you!
I said post-Brazil in another thread how shocked and pleased at the way he called the game and didn’t turtle up with the lead.
At least for me, I allowed the talk of bruising run-first team to overlook some of last year’s transitioning. Until the run blocking is consistently better, I think the offense will continue to flow primarily thru Herbert’s arm to set up the run, not vice versa.
Good point Buck, it took some Cajones to keep passing the ball deep into the game despite leading the whole way especially with Harbaugh probably tell him to sit it down haha.
It’s a great opportunity to let the run game grow as the season goes on too. If Hampton starts to see light boxes I believe he’s going to thrive. The Raiders haven’t got the talent to play light box defense though so we’ll be waiting until the Broncos for a proper test of that theory.
Yes! Excellent read.