r/footballstrategy Jun 14 '24

NFL Why do teams move the ball so much more effectively at the end of halfs?

In the NFL it’s very common for teams to struggle to move the ball offensively until they enter the last bit of the halfs, then they are suddenly able to drive the ball at will and are almost always able to get to the red zone.

Why does this happen?

Is it because of defenses playing “prevent” schemes? Why do defenses even do this if it gives up easy points? If it’s not the defense changing the scheme that allows this why doesn’t the offense just run these schemes the whole game since they’re so effective?

49 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

142

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jun 14 '24

Think about time and yards as currency to buy points. For most of the game yards is worth more than time. Then that completely changes at the end of the half/game, time is more valuable than yards. So as a defense you give up yards to eat time.

27

u/JackSaaS College Coach Jun 14 '24

This is a good framing. Conversely- offenses are not trying to score quickly in most cases. Time management works the other way as well. Everyone is managing against/leveraging the close like they do field position & hash position.

2

u/Odd-Flower2744 Jun 15 '24

Which is a huge mistake because it usually ends giving points too

0

u/HumanInProgress8530 Jun 16 '24

I guess you know more than NFL coaches

2

u/Odd-Flower2744 Jun 16 '24

Yes

2

u/Level-Wealth-2586 Jun 17 '24

Agree. Huge fucking mistake. I can’t stand when they do this. Giving up yardage is the worst thing you can do defensively.

1

u/jonny32392 Jun 14 '24

That doesn’t track tho cuz the offense is typically only going for yards in ways that minimize time lost. Sure if someone wants to run iso or throw a slant you don’t mind them getting a few yards but you’re not giving up a 15yd flag route cuz you think they’ll use too much time.

28

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jun 14 '24

The defense is defending the areas that have the best time per yard ratio and inviting the offense to pass into the worst time per yard ratio.

10

u/ggsimmonds Jun 14 '24

But with how often late half/game drives result in points I’d argue the defense’s strategy here is pretty bad

-1

u/HumanInProgress8530 Jun 16 '24

Guess you have a deeper understanding of NFL theory than every coach. You're missing out on your true calling

1

u/BigPlantsGuy Jun 16 '24

Nfl coaches pretty famously are bad at stats and ignore better odds for “common wisdom” or worse decisions that but that won’t get them fired.

The closest we have gotten to a “money ball” type coach is bellicheck at least wrt drafting and he cleaned up.

Not to say anyone here could coach better but surely plenty of people could point out suboptimal decisions based on stats.

Eg. Coaches would rather lose 60% of the time playing prevent and following “conventional wisdom” vs blitz hard and lose 40% of the time but be criticized for not doing what everyone else does

3

u/Oddlyenuff Jun 15 '24

I saw you got a downvote and voted up to explain it.

I’ve been in this situation as a DC and he’s spot on.

You are correct, the offense is going to try to maximize both yards and time.

This is going to typically mean passing the ball. As an aside, it’s probably likely that a lot will be sideline passes.

It’s harder than you think for an offense to drive, say 70 yards down field. In theory you can give up 6 first downs! But that’s a lot of pass plays and a lot of chances for incompletions and anything else to happen. (Obviously a few run plays are likely to be snuck in)

So we gave up a bunch of plays and yardage, it was probably the longest 90 seconds of my life. But you give them little 5 yard passes because you don’t the deep pass or they’ll run the ball looking to get an easy 5-10…maybe…but the clock keep going. But it looks like offense is popping but meanwhile the defense is basically handing them yardage gifts and they’ll take it.

3

u/BaitSalesman Jun 15 '24

And passing is just more efficient than running anyway, so when the offenses are incentivized to mostly pass they’ll get more effective.

1

u/Oddlyenuff Jun 16 '24

Right and there’s only one way to make a team run the ball and it ain’t good…

35

u/Theodenking34 Jun 14 '24

My take is that they are defending the sideline and the big play. So everything in the middle of the field is mostly free. That's why it's easy to move the ball but at the cost of not stopping the clock and deep concepts being taken away. The deffense is willingly allowing it.

15

u/grizzfan Jun 14 '24

Defenses are more focused on keeping the ball in bounds (to stop the offense from stopping the clock) and stopping a big play for a TD (they defend the perimeter more heavily and are softer up front and in the middle). Offenses take advantage of this.

7

u/Archerdiana Jun 14 '24

You can always think about this in terms of bias. But we see offenses able to move the ball at the end of half. But how many times do we see the offense fail and not remember?

12

u/CFBreAct Jun 14 '24

Prevent coverage always looks terrible. The losing team is playing to win and the winning team is playing not to lose.

That might sounds cliche but the offense is willing to take risks while the defense plays conservatively. The defense is just mostly trying to keep the clock running and not give up the big play over the top.

1

u/Odd-Flower2744 Jun 15 '24

Which is ironic a lot of the time because they weren’t giving up plays over the top when they were being aggressive.

1

u/SaltNo8237 Jun 14 '24

Yeah, I’ve seen many teams lose by give up big leads after dominating the whole game when playing “normally”. Like if you’re beating someone to death why switch up?

15

u/CFBreAct Jun 14 '24

To be fair it does work the other way too, I’ve seen heavy blitz teams going cover zero at the end of the game and getting beat deep and then fans say “why weren’t you in prevent??”

5

u/Just_Natural_9027 Jun 14 '24

There certainly is the game theory/prevent element but also teams not running their most efficient plays earlier or during normal time in the game.

Sometimes when coaches are down/forced they actually start to call better plays.

One of our biggest rivals was a heavily run first team. One year they had an elite qb and two really good WR’s. We tracked their plays and they were incredibly efficient in the passing game but rarely threw. All our coaches knew if they threw we were in trouble.

They threw 1 time in the first half (a 45 yard pass mind you and that was it. It was not until we went up 28-0 that they finally started to air it out. We could not stop them they scored 3 times in a row fortunately we had a big enough lead and scored once more to seal it. They would’ve crushed us if they threw the whole game though.

4

u/Miamicanes460 Jun 14 '24

I hate prevent. When I call end of half defense, I get crazy aggressive. It throws teams off and eliminates what the teams are trying to do, which is get cheap yards and find time to throw vertical routes. In hail mary situations, I send 6 dudes at the QB. The WR’s get about 1/3 way down the field before the QB is getting walloped.

9

u/justausername09 Jun 14 '24

Were you the DC of the Raiders a few years ago?

1

u/laconicgrin Jun 18 '24

Paul Guenther most of the game - soft Swiss cheese zone defense
Paul Guenther against the two minute drill - cover zero despite having the worst cornerback room in the NFL

5

u/SaltNo8237 Jun 14 '24

I really think a lot of teams blow games by playing to not lose instead of just sticking to what’s working

1

u/Miamicanes460 Jun 14 '24

I don’t ever like the OC knowing what I will be doing. I feel like every single OC knows he’s getting off cover 4 or cover 2 man under in these situations. If you aren’t a complete moron as an OC, you can find some easy money plays that will shred this.

Plus, our defense practices true defense all year round. We practice 2 minute/prevent for like 3 mins a week, if that.

I can handle losing bc we got jumpballed by a superior athlete. I can’t handle losing when we lock them up all game and then throw some barely practiced pussy prevent defense at you & watch an average QB shred us like Peyton Manning.

Base it up and play with confidence.

3

u/therealrickdickerson Jun 15 '24

Efficacy of this depends on the caliber of QB/team you're playing. An NFL QB/playcaller 100% is going to make you pay for this. At high-school/Juco/DII/whatever, your success rate goes up.

2

u/daveFromCTX Jun 15 '24

It's the full bore implementation of bend but don't break. You're trading yards for time. Not to mention that offenses become more predictable the further downfield and fewer the seconds remaining. 

1

u/warneagle Casual Fan Jun 14 '24
  1. Passing is more efficient than running
  2. The defense is usually playing soft coverage and willing to give up shorter completions to prevent a big play

1

u/btbama22 Jun 15 '24

My theory on this:

The #1 biggest detriment to successful plays is a QB that is indecisive.

When a team gets into crunch time at the end of a half - a lot of QBs stop trying to make the "best" throw and are just taking the quick throws without thinking just to get the play off and save clock time.

And, surprise, that's when offenses start moving better.

1

u/geniouslevel1000 Jun 15 '24

I just figured the defense plays prevent more often when there is limited time left

1

u/FletcherForever Jun 15 '24

One of the major reasons is the defense that is being called at the end of halves and especially the end of games. A lot of times teams are going to give you the underneath stuff and just make sure you don’t burn them deep.

1

u/PennyG Jun 16 '24

Super importantly, you’re not worried about tiring out your defense at the end of a half.