As we gain access to more advanced data in football, we’re learning more about how our perception of certain types of plays may by skewed.
One of the types of plays that NFL coaches may be using inefficiently is the play-action pass. We’ve known for years that the play-action pass works, but it’s typically deployed only a handful of times per game under the assumption that defenses will adjust if it’s used more frequently. Essentially, it’s treated by coaches as a quasi-trick play.
However, recent data supports the theory that you can’t overuse the play-action pass—or at least no one has overused it yet. FiveThirtyEight’s Josh Hermsmeyer recently released an in-depth study using Next Gen Stats which demonstrated that if there’s a point of diminishing returns with the play-action pass, no NFL coach has reached it.
This finding turns traditional play-calling theories on their head. Old school football minds will tell you that you have to run the ball to establish the play-action pass, and if you run it too often, the defense will stop being tricked by it. Perhaps there’s some truth to those theories, but if so, NFL coaches have yet to reach those limits.
With that in mind, every offensive coordinator should be trying to increase their play action usage to push those boundaries because, as Hermsmeyer discovered, defenders are getting tricked by it almost every single time.
Fortunately for the Browns, when Freddie Kitchens took over for Hue Jackson and Todd Haley, he began to push the Browns offense in that direction.
According to Sports Info Solutions, under Jackson and Haley, Baker Mayfield attempted 19.3 percent of his passes from play action, which ranked 27th out of 34 quarterbacks through Week 8.
After Kitchens took over in Week 9, Mayfield’s play-action rate increased to 23.2 percent, ranking 15th out of 33 quarterbacks in the second half of the season—that’s a 20.2 percent increase in the rate at which the Browns were using play action.
Unsurprisingly, Mayfield was more efficient on those play-action passes, as is the case for the vast majority of quarterbacks:
The question now is: did the Browns improve simply because Kitchens brought them back to a league-average level of decision making? Or does Kitchens have the potential to elevate his playcalling to an elite level?
Even under Kitchens, Mayfield was only running play action near the league-average rate, while others such as Jared Goff were throwing well over a quarter of their passes off of play action.
So while Kitchens was able to use play action to modernize the Browns offense, he can probably continue to increase his usage in 2019 to elevate their passing game to even greater heights.
