H-back Position Disappearing ?

[freddyg12]

Originally Posted by warriorzpath

This may be the case, but I doubt that they would hire Saunders as another assistant on offense. I would think that Saunders was brought in to be in charge of the offense, which was similar to the role he had in KC.

I agree that gibbs is a great strategist, but he was and is doing so much now that he needed to free himself of some of his duties. What better coach than Saunders. He's a guy who learned the same offensive philosophies and is a great offensive mind in his own right. It was perfect timing with his situation.

Gibbs is great at what he's doing now, but he was spreading himself too thin. Saunders is taking over the offense. It wouldn't make sense to me to give him another role on this team. This role is where he has proven success in and what he is great at.

Understood, My main point is that Gibbs & co. would not come out & say "Al Saunders will control all of the offense." They want the rest of the league (& us for that matter) to keep guessing as to what the offense will be. Don't be surprised if there are some hybrid plays & some old gibbs' plays, especially the counter trey & wideout screen.
I'm just saying that at this point we don't know the specific involvement that Gibbs will have & he probably doesn't either. Later in the year he may take a more active role. The strategy at this point is for them now is to send a lot of smokescreens. That stuff on redskins.com about the h back may just be as bogus as a lot of draft rumors that teams put out there.

[warriorzpath]

Originally Posted by freddyg12

Understood, My main point is that Gibbs & co. would not come out & say "Al Saunders will control all of the offense." They want the rest of the league (& us for that matter) to keep guessing as to what the offense will be. Don't be surprised if there are some hybrid plays & some old gibbs' plays, especially the counter trey & wideout screen.
I'm just saying that at this point we don't know the specific involvement that Gibbs will have & he probably doesn't either. Later in the year he may take a more active role. The strategy at this point is for them now is to send a lot of smokescreens. That stuff on redskins.com about the h back may just be as bogus as a lot of draft rumors that teams put out there.

I agree that it would benefit the redskins if they did not annouce strategic details, but as soon as a part of a game or practice becomes publicly accessible - it would be obvious who the wizard is behind the offensive curtain. It gets to the point where the misinformation gets counterproductive; I don't like the secretive stuff so much because it takes away some of the focus on improving in performance and execution. Not to mention that some egos need to be fed at least a little, like giving Saunders the respect of publicly acknowledging what he does with the team. They probably wouldn't want to belittle him by saying how little he does or (going the other way with it by) announcing that he has more duties than he really does, which would put more pressure and expectations on him.

All I am doing is reading between the lines and assuming what little they are saying is actually the truth. And they have announced in the story(ies):

.... Al Saunders taking over the reins of the Redskins' offense this year ...
(part of the first article posted in this thread)

The point of the whole thread was: initially the redskins seemed publicly unsure of how the offensive leadership was going to be directed. To me, by reading between the lines, I am speculating that no matter what they have said about Saunders's role, the "disappearing h-back" signals the confirmation of his role as THE offensive coaching leader.