Why have the Bucs’ defensive quality control coach talk about 11, 12, 13 (etc.) personnel? Listen in to find out exactly how a defense identifies who’s on the field and what plays to call in addition to a breakdown of the most common offensive personnel sets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you think you know football, come find out straight
from the source in the Booth Review podcast, where we
take you inside the offices of the box assistant coaches
to talk some football fundamentals. Get your white boards ready.
Here's Buccaneers staff writer Carmen Metality. We are joined today
by to Me, the Atkins, defensive quality control coach for
(00:24):
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tim, thank you so much for
being here with us. No problem. That's my first podcast,
your first pod ever, your first podcast ever. You've never
been on a podcast. I've never been on a podcast.
Usually they tell me down the hallway there on the
defensive side of the ball, not to speak. Well, let's
get into what defensive quality control means, because that's not
(00:46):
exactly as cut and dry as say, outside linebackers coach,
inside linebackers coach. What does your job entail? It entails
keeping a bunch of coaches all organized and on the
same wavelength. So how do you do that? Because that
is sounds like a tall task. It is a tall
(01:08):
task and I usually fail at it. But my job
entails doing all of the breakdowns for opponents as far
as the video stuff goes. So I go and I
talked to our defensive coordinator, Coach Bulls, and I asked him,
you know, for the upcoming opponent, what games should we
(01:28):
break down? How many do we want? He gives me
the list and then I go and take that and
with the assistance of our defensive assistant, Cody Grimm, him
and I break down those games for the opponent. Then
we run the cut ups, so how the coaches have
games that they can watch of the opponent and those
(01:48):
are the ones that we're gonna mainly focus on. So
that's part of my job. Then the other part is
draw the playbook, so the computer program and the computer Uh,
Coach Bulls comes up with a new scheme or blitz
or coverage. Then he's like, here you go, and I
(02:10):
take a picture with my phone and I bring it
back to my computer and draw it out and manipulate
it and adjusted out. And we got to do this
for this or this formation might give us an issue
or a problem or motion does this to that, and
so do the do the playbook stuff. And then uh,
just a bunch of little odds and ends to make
(02:30):
sure everybody's organized. And I mean that goes like scripts
and uh, any kind of copies. What are scripts? Scripts are?
I don't think that's something that's known. What we take
to practice, what coaches take to practice. So, UM, right
now we're in O, T A. S. And so the
offense gives us down distance, HASH and the offensive personnel,
(02:53):
and so coach Bulls takes that and he'll script out
like what we've installed, what we have defensively in He'll
make a list of what we want to what he
wants to run against those places and against that defense.
So if let's say, UM, our offense is coming out
with eleven personnel, we're gonna probably blee come out in
(03:17):
nickel and run one of our nickel coverages or pressures. Well,
that's an excellent segue because we're here today to talk
about what exactly eleven personnel means, what what personnel sais
even are when it comes to the offense, UM, and
I wanted to talk to you about this despite the
(03:37):
fact that you are on the defensive side of the ball,
you're the defensive quality control coach. Uh, this is something
that we'll get into it a little bit, but this
is something that's very crucial to your job. So tell
me about offensive personnel sets. What are they and how
are they structured. So when you say, for instance, eleven personnel,
(03:57):
are you here twelve personnel? Thirteen personnel's when one personnel?
What does that mean? So it's a combination of two
numbers which represent two different position groups for the offense.
So we talked about eleven personnel. The first number refers
to the number of running backs that are in the game,
(04:18):
and the second number refers to the number of tight
ends that are in the game. And it probably goes
back a long time ago when teams were running mainly
two running back sets with at least one tight end,
or you know, two running backs and two tight ends.
And so you would just then take away that number
(04:40):
from five because there are five eligibles receivers on every
offensive play, and so that would create the number of
wide receivers. So probably there were more running backs and
tight ends being used on the field back uh when
they were initially doing this, and obviously now we got
(05:02):
way more receivers out on the football field. Well, yeah,
so that's kind of there's been a little bit of
a shift, and that's maybe why you here eleven personnel
more most most of the time is because and so
eleven personnel then would be one running back, one tight end,
and then by process of elimination, if you have to
get five, that means there's three receivers on the field
(05:24):
with them three receivers. And this is all something that
I've noticed when if if you know, anybody watches Monday
Night football, they've now inserted a ticker at the bottom
that will identify the personnel set that's on the field
for the offense for the audience, which is really interesting
for me. Um Well, and then now they do that
(05:45):
based on probably the chip that's in the shoulder pads.
Nowadays there's a chip in the shoulder pads. We should
maybe cut right here, can't. We don't want to talk
about that part of it all right? Um So, why
is it that you see eleven personnel so more often? Now?
(06:06):
What are the benefits? Are there? Are there pros and
cons to certain personnel sets? Does it go based on
team tendency? What? What is the reason that you say
we see eleven personnel all the time? Did I say that?
You didn't say that. You said that's the most common.
So why is it the most common? So? I think
(06:27):
we see eleven personnel most frequently now because the offense
is wanting to spread the field out and get the
faster players out onto the field. Um, you know, obviously
if you've got you're running backs, they could kind of
be receivers, but some of them aren't nearly as adapt
to catching a football as receivers are. So and I
(06:51):
think the college game has moved to that. So college
is now you're mainly gonna see when you watch the
college tape for the draft or just you and to
get ideas, you're gonna see eleven personnel. I would say
probably of the time on a college tape on a
college shape. So those players are coming into the league
(07:12):
with that background and it's familiar to them and and
so it's making the transition now into this the NFL level.
What are maybe the benefits to other personnel sets or
is there are there personnel says that you guys see
as the Bucks defense. Does the Bucks defense see a
(07:35):
personnel set more than others, even if it's eleven personnel,
maybe what's the second most? Twelve personnel would be the
second most that we see. Eleven is by far the most,
and then twelve personnel. Now, some of that is because
of how our defense is made up, and our defensive
line is really really good. Outside linebackers are good, I'd
(07:55):
say so, and our inside linebackers are probably top notch
and maybe possibly even overlooked by national media. No, I
don't think anyone's ever heard me say that someone like
that before, has that Lavonte David might be the most
underrated player in the NFL. Now I've never said that before.
Do you have a Twitter account? But it's true. So,
(08:17):
and those players make up the front seven. The front seven. Yes,
So if you're going to come into the game as
an offense against our defense, and you're gonna bring in,
say twelve personnel, which would be one running back and
two tight ends, you're gonna more than likely see our
base defense, which means that we're going to have seven
(08:41):
front guys like we're just talking about, and four defensive
back so to safeties, two corners. So when you do that,
you're probably gonna run into a run heavy defense. And
so now you're gonna be forced to, you know, defensively,
(09:02):
we're going to force you to throw the ball then
or try to write you seem to be pretty effective
at it the last two years we have been. And
so now you have just taken off an athlete. If
if you're going from eleven personnel a twelve personnel, you've
now just taken in fast, speedy Scotty Miller. We can
(09:23):
go um, Chris Godwin type receiver and you've a B
you've taken them off the field, and now you've put
a tight end onto the field, and now you're asking
them to run a route against Devon White or Lavonte David,
which usually doesn't end well for people, or one of
our safeties. And no, that's if you're game planning against US,
(09:47):
that's probably not something that you would put high up
on your list to try against US. So personnel, that's overall,
to recap a little bit, what we've learned, hopefully you've
learned something from this conversation so far, is that the
way they're structured across the board in all of profit ball,
(10:08):
they are the first number is number of running backs
on the field. Second number is the number of tight ends,
and then that has to be taken away from five
because there are five eligible receivers on the field at
all times. So say you have eleven personnel, one running back,
one tight end, that means you'll have three receivers on
the field. Five is that magic number, and that is
(10:28):
how it is structured across the board for the most part,
just like anything in football, like the English language. First,
there's there's an exception to every rule. In Tampa, on
our defensive side of the ball, we refer to that
as eleven personnel. Let's just say with the one one
(10:51):
running back and one tight end. I've been other places
where offensively they will refer to eleven person now as
a word. So now you're having to translate. Yes, Like
so if we go the West Coast terminology for eleven personnel,
(11:14):
they call it zebra. Okay, I'm glad we established that
there's no rhyme of reason to this so far. Okay,
says zebra. Maybe it's got only two syllables or you know,
and eleven is three. I'm not sure, but so that's
what West Coast refers to it. As I've been with
(11:38):
another offensive coordinator um in the a f C East
that referred to eleven personnel as kings. And so that
at least I can see why that would make that's
more and and that kind of terminology refers to more
of of a deck of cards. So there's there's there's
Kings twenty personnel as queens, so on and so forth.
(12:01):
So depending on where you're at, two may differentiate some
of the terminology, but but it all boils down to
the same thing. All goes back to how many running
backs and how many tight ends do you have in
the football game? Okay? And as I mentioned before, I
wanted to talk to you specifically about this because you
(12:23):
have to actually identify this for the defense on game day.
That is your job on game day is to sit
up in the booth and relay what personality offense is
in for the defense so that Coach Bowls can call
the play. I need you to take me through this
process because it happens incredibly quickly and there are so
(12:46):
many moving parts to it, and I don't think people
realize how this works. So please walk me through this, okay.
So you first take forty seconds of sheer tear okay,
where your heart is pounding, you're sweating, and you probably
have a lump in your throat. Okay, and you do
that seventy times a game, give or take. So as
(13:08):
soon as the play the previous play is over, the
forty two play clock begins for the offense. To then
snap the ball again. So my job is too And
now even though I've had lasix surgery, I have to
use binoculars for the most part. So but so I've
got my binoculars. Forty second play clock has started, so
(13:32):
I am surveying the entire field to see who is
leaving out of those five eligible that we talked about,
who's leaving and who's coming in, And it can be
a mixture of all that. So you can have I mean,
we've had crazy you can have if you get down
to the goal line, you're gonna go twenty three personnel right,
two backs, three tight ends out in the field. You
(13:55):
can have anything from eleven, which is obviously, like we
talked about, the most free quent, but we can get
a mix up of twelve ten, you go twenty twenty pony,
So you can get all kind of things. Well, pony
would be if let's say we're playing the New Orleans
(14:17):
Saints and they're twice a year, which and they're gonna
come out and they're gonna put Camaro back there, and
they're also going to have let's say eight Montgomery back there,
so not not a true fullback, but an extra tailback.
Half back, whatever you want to call it. So now
(14:39):
they've got two of those out there, we have to
we decipher that differently than if that guy is a fullback.
That's a different athlete, so we clarify or classify him differently.
And so that's where the pony interesting. Yeah, because you're
right there. When there are these hybrid athlete eats now
(15:02):
and New Orleans happens to have a couple of them,
I have to imagine that New Orleans is a little
bit harder to call than most. New Orleans probably has
been known as one of the harder teams to personnel,
at least in the last probably ten years. Um. I
know obviously we play him twice here every year. Um,
(15:23):
which is just is lovely. You are thrilled about this.
I must get them least amount of sleep on a
Saturday night before we play the Saints. And why specifically
is it because of those hybrid athletes, like because we
talked about Camara, you talk about Montgomery, which who has
(15:44):
an eight eight number, which now the NFL has now
allowed Jersey numbers to increase. So you're in Tom Brady's
camp with this, you are Tom Brady was not thrilled
with the number of changes that have now opened up
for these skill players. I wasn't either. I might as
well have been posting those on Instagram along with Tom.
(16:05):
Did you like them as fast? I mean I might
have been one of the top first five people because
it makes your job higher. So you call this into
the headset you finally you finally identify it. Okay, yeah,
So second clock counting down. The other team is deciding
now usually based on the down and distance, what personnel
(16:26):
they're gonna be going to. So now I have to
wait for those people to leave that are gonna leave
in the new group to come in, and then once
I figure it out. As soon as I figure it out,
I then spit that information back out and let the
coordinator know what it is. So if they're going from
(16:49):
eleven personnel and then let's say they got eight yards
on the first and ten play so now it's second
and two playbooks wide open for him. Maybe they're gonna
bring in twelve personnel, try to do something different, something crazy,
mix it up a little bit, so receiver runs off,
the tight end comes on, everybody else stays the same.
Then I will tell Coach Bowls that twelve personnel twelve personnel.
(17:13):
So now what we've got to do as a defense
is go from probably Nickel the base and we'll get
into nick Nicole and bass and what those terminologies mean
actually in another episode. Um, but we're focusing tonight today
on personnel. So that then gets relayed to coach Bowls
and then he has to figure out what play that
(17:36):
he wants to run from the game that week's game plan.
So the more time you give him, the better the better,
which is an always easy thing to do for the
same reason, like if the Saints were pulling some weird stuff,
especially with the athletes they have, you don't know who's
(17:56):
acting is what, and you don't even know sometimes who's
coming into the game because as soon as that play
is over, I got my because then let's say we're
we're in New Orleans, I mean at the at the
Mercedes Benz Dome. You're you're at the highest point in
the press box, so you're looking down. I got my
binoculars out, and I'm looking at Coach Payton who's calling
the plays, and he can have two or three players
(18:19):
standing there and it looks like he's making a call.
So then you you might think you're safe to give
out a personnel group in the coach bulls, and then
for whatever reason, it seems like maybe one to three
of those guys all of them run onto the field.
And so you know, if three guys run on, three
guys got to run off. And so now you've got
to as quickly as you can figure out what personnel
(18:42):
grouping that is gonna be. That seems very stressful. I
understand the lump in the throat. And to do that
seventy times a game, I want to ask you how
often then you're wrong? How often do you make the
wrong call? What game is it? Who are we playing against? Well,
I mean we've been doing the Saints, but I don't
who Who's another team? That kind of makes it difficult. Well,
(19:03):
now that gets into another can of worms, because teams
can do one or two things when they're doing their
personnel groupings, right. They can just on the sideline, be
like the Saints and just yell it out, you know,
And so people on the sideline are gonna know where
they're gonna hear it in their headsets. So the coaches
kind of release them from their little position groups. Other
teams signal and so they'll have a coach or or
(19:27):
a set of coaches that are designated personnel guys that
make the signal, and so they'll usually be towards the
front of the sideline and they'll you know, put their
arm up and be able to loudly signal to the
whole offense what they're going to or what they're staying in.
And if a team does that, it makes my job
a lot easier because then I can rely on that
(19:50):
signal to tell me what it's gonna be and get
that to coach Bulls. So can you kind of go
in a little bit prepared from watching table, Will you
know a little bit of what you're looking for? You can?
And like Carolina, we play them twice a year, but
last year they got a new head coach, new offensive coordinator,
and so we're able to take or I'm able to
(20:13):
take the two games that I have played against them
last year, and any notes that I've written down or
jotted down or seen in real time, I can use
now to prepare for their games this year. Same with
um Like the Rams, we now this will be the
third year in a row that we're going to play
the Rams, and so I've got a little bit of
(20:36):
cheat sheets, so to speak, of of of what they
do or how to be more prepared for that game,
a little bit more of their tendencies, like you know,
a little bit more of their tendencies because you're a
little bit more familiar with them. So that brings me
back to my question is how how often are you
wrong seven he plays a game? I would say per season, Yes,
probably under ten per season. That is mind boggling to
(21:01):
me out of hundreds and thousands. But however many plays
there are in it's in a single season, you're right
less than ten or you're wrong less than ten times.
That's impressive, but it's those ten that always stick out
your your own worst critic. Yeah, you know, it's uh,
you know, we go back to we go back to
last year against Chicago. I had one that um, I
(21:23):
just I lost a guy, could not find him in
the huddle, could not see anything. And coach bull is
one that needing it. I thought I saw a smaller
guy was a bigger guy. And and so you know,
we had a different personnel grouping on the field and
we probably would have in that situation. Now the call,
we could have executed it better, but it ended up
(21:45):
being a big game. So you remember that one. I
remember one from way back in two thousand eleven, geez,
ten years ago. Same kind of a situation where you
just you lose a guy for whatever reason. You gotta
watch if you know you're watching the whole whole field.
Maybe sometimes depending on if the last play was a pass,
(22:06):
and there are guys down the field, maybe they're tired,
they want to come off, so they run off way
down you know, where they finished their route, and you've
got another guy coming on. You gotta you know, be
able to decipher that. So I missed one, uh there,
and and that was a twenty five yard game. And
then uh, I mean, you know, I was in the
(22:28):
a f C East for a while, so we would
play New England, you know, And and one time up
in New England, they had a running back who looked
like he was coming off the field, spreading off the field.
So I call a personnel grouping that was gonna be
without a running back on the field. And I would
say a yard or two before the sideline, he stopped,
(22:49):
turns around, lines up right on the line, and takes
off on the snap for a route. Okay, my point
in asking how many times you're wrong is because I
think it is really impressive. I get that those ones
sick with you, but the general percentage of HU being
right is impressive. So it's a big thanks to Tim Atkins,
Bucks defensive quality control coach, for taking us through all
(23:11):
of that having to do with personnel sets. I'm hoping
that the next time you guys watch these games on TV,
now you can count the number running backs, count the
number of tight ends for yourselves, and know what personality
offense is in before ESPNS Monday Night Football slashes it
on the screen, and now maybe you also know a
little bit more about the process it takes to not
only call the personal in the field for the defense,
(23:32):
but how they're about to react. I'm Buck staff writer,
common Vitally. Thank you so much for listening, and don't
talk to you soon.
So you think you know football, come find out straight
from the source in the Booth Review podcast, where we
take you inside the offices of the box assistant coaches
to talk some football fundamentals. Get your white boards ready.
Here's Buccaneers staff writer Carmen Metality. We are joined today
by to Me, the Atkins, defensive quality control coach for
(00:24):
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tim, thank you so much for
being here with us. No problem. That's my first podcast,
your first pod ever, your first podcast ever. You've never
been on a podcast. I've never been on a podcast.
Usually they tell me down the hallway there on the
defensive side of the ball, not to speak. Well, let's
get into what defensive quality control means, because that's not
(00:46):
exactly as cut and dry as say, outside linebackers coach,
inside linebackers coach. What does your job entail? It entails
keeping a bunch of coaches all organized and on the
same wavelength. So how do you do that? Because that
is sounds like a tall task. It is a tall
(01:08):
task and I usually fail at it. But my job
entails doing all of the breakdowns for opponents as far
as the video stuff goes. So I go and I
talked to our defensive coordinator, Coach Bulls, and I asked him,
you know, for the upcoming opponent, what games should we
(01:28):
break down? How many do we want? He gives me
the list and then I go and take that and
with the assistance of our defensive assistant, Cody Grimm, him
and I break down those games for the opponent. Then
we run the cut ups, so how the coaches have
games that they can watch of the opponent and those
(01:48):
are the ones that we're gonna mainly focus on. So
that's part of my job. Then the other part is
draw the playbook, so the computer program and the computer Uh,
Coach Bulls comes up with a new scheme or blitz
or coverage. Then he's like, here you go, and I
(02:10):
take a picture with my phone and I bring it
back to my computer and draw it out and manipulate
it and adjusted out. And we got to do this
for this or this formation might give us an issue
or a problem or motion does this to that, and
so do the do the playbook stuff. And then uh,
just a bunch of little odds and ends to make
(02:30):
sure everybody's organized. And I mean that goes like scripts
and uh, any kind of copies. What are scripts? Scripts are?
I don't think that's something that's known. What we take
to practice, what coaches take to practice. So, UM, right
now we're in O, T A. S. And so the
offense gives us down distance, HASH and the offensive personnel,
(02:53):
and so coach Bulls takes that and he'll script out
like what we've installed, what we have defensively in He'll
make a list of what we want to what he
wants to run against those places and against that defense.
So if let's say, UM, our offense is coming out
with eleven personnel, we're gonna probably blee come out in
(03:17):
nickel and run one of our nickel coverages or pressures. Well,
that's an excellent segue because we're here today to talk
about what exactly eleven personnel means, what what personnel sais
even are when it comes to the offense, UM, and
I wanted to talk to you about this despite the
(03:37):
fact that you are on the defensive side of the ball,
you're the defensive quality control coach. Uh, this is something
that we'll get into it a little bit, but this
is something that's very crucial to your job. So tell
me about offensive personnel sets. What are they and how
are they structured. So when you say, for instance, eleven personnel,
(03:57):
are you here twelve personnel? Thirteen personnel's when one personnel?
What does that mean? So it's a combination of two
numbers which represent two different position groups for the offense.
So we talked about eleven personnel. The first number refers
to the number of running backs that are in the game,
(04:18):
and the second number refers to the number of tight
ends that are in the game. And it probably goes
back a long time ago when teams were running mainly
two running back sets with at least one tight end,
or you know, two running backs and two tight ends.
And so you would just then take away that number
(04:40):
from five because there are five eligibles receivers on every
offensive play, and so that would create the number of
wide receivers. So probably there were more running backs and
tight ends being used on the field back uh when
they were initially doing this, and obviously now we got
(05:02):
way more receivers out on the football field. Well, yeah,
so that's kind of there's been a little bit of
a shift, and that's maybe why you here eleven personnel
more most most of the time is because and so
eleven personnel then would be one running back, one tight end,
and then by process of elimination, if you have to
get five, that means there's three receivers on the field
(05:24):
with them three receivers. And this is all something that
I've noticed when if if you know, anybody watches Monday
Night football, they've now inserted a ticker at the bottom
that will identify the personnel set that's on the field
for the offense for the audience, which is really interesting
for me. Um Well, and then now they do that
(05:45):
based on probably the chip that's in the shoulder pads.
Nowadays there's a chip in the shoulder pads. We should
maybe cut right here, can't. We don't want to talk
about that part of it all right? Um So, why
is it that you see eleven personnel so more often? Now?
(06:06):
What are the benefits? Are there? Are there pros and
cons to certain personnel sets? Does it go based on
team tendency? What? What is the reason that you say
we see eleven personnel all the time? Did I say that?
You didn't say that. You said that's the most common.
So why is it the most common? So? I think
(06:27):
we see eleven personnel most frequently now because the offense
is wanting to spread the field out and get the
faster players out onto the field. Um, you know, obviously
if you've got you're running backs, they could kind of
be receivers, but some of them aren't nearly as adapt
to catching a football as receivers are. So and I
(06:51):
think the college game has moved to that. So college
is now you're mainly gonna see when you watch the
college tape for the draft or just you and to
get ideas, you're gonna see eleven personnel. I would say
probably of the time on a college tape on a
college shape. So those players are coming into the league
(07:12):
with that background and it's familiar to them and and
so it's making the transition now into this the NFL level.
What are maybe the benefits to other personnel sets or
is there are there personnel says that you guys see
as the Bucks defense. Does the Bucks defense see a
(07:35):
personnel set more than others, even if it's eleven personnel,
maybe what's the second most? Twelve personnel would be the
second most that we see. Eleven is by far the most,
and then twelve personnel. Now, some of that is because
of how our defense is made up, and our defensive
line is really really good. Outside linebackers are good, I'd
(07:55):
say so, and our inside linebackers are probably top notch
and maybe possibly even overlooked by national media. No, I
don't think anyone's ever heard me say that someone like
that before, has that Lavonte David might be the most
underrated player in the NFL. Now I've never said that before.
Do you have a Twitter account? But it's true. So,
(08:17):
and those players make up the front seven. The front seven. Yes,
So if you're going to come into the game as
an offense against our defense, and you're gonna bring in,
say twelve personnel, which would be one running back and
two tight ends, you're gonna more than likely see our
base defense, which means that we're going to have seven
(08:41):
front guys like we're just talking about, and four defensive
back so to safeties, two corners. So when you do that,
you're probably gonna run into a run heavy defense. And
so now you're gonna be forced to, you know, defensively,
(09:02):
we're going to force you to throw the ball then
or try to write you seem to be pretty effective
at it the last two years we have been. And
so now you have just taken off an athlete. If
if you're going from eleven personnel a twelve personnel, you've
now just taken in fast, speedy Scotty Miller. We can
(09:23):
go um, Chris Godwin type receiver and you've a B
you've taken them off the field, and now you've put
a tight end onto the field, and now you're asking
them to run a route against Devon White or Lavonte David,
which usually doesn't end well for people, or one of
our safeties. And no, that's if you're game planning against US,
(09:47):
that's probably not something that you would put high up
on your list to try against US. So personnel, that's overall,
to recap a little bit, what we've learned, hopefully you've
learned something from this conversation so far, is that the
way they're structured across the board in all of profit ball,
(10:08):
they are the first number is number of running backs
on the field. Second number is the number of tight ends,
and then that has to be taken away from five
because there are five eligible receivers on the field at
all times. So say you have eleven personnel, one running back,
one tight end, that means you'll have three receivers on
the field. Five is that magic number, and that is
(10:28):
how it is structured across the board for the most part,
just like anything in football, like the English language. First,
there's there's an exception to every rule. In Tampa, on
our defensive side of the ball, we refer to that
as eleven personnel. Let's just say with the one one
(10:51):
running back and one tight end. I've been other places
where offensively they will refer to eleven person now as
a word. So now you're having to translate. Yes, Like
so if we go the West Coast terminology for eleven personnel,
(11:14):
they call it zebra. Okay, I'm glad we established that
there's no rhyme of reason to this so far. Okay,
says zebra. Maybe it's got only two syllables or you know,
and eleven is three. I'm not sure, but so that's
what West Coast refers to it. As I've been with
(11:38):
another offensive coordinator um in the a f C East
that referred to eleven personnel as kings. And so that
at least I can see why that would make that's
more and and that kind of terminology refers to more
of of a deck of cards. So there's there's there's
Kings twenty personnel as queens, so on and so forth.
(12:01):
So depending on where you're at, two may differentiate some
of the terminology, but but it all boils down to
the same thing. All goes back to how many running
backs and how many tight ends do you have in
the football game? Okay? And as I mentioned before, I
wanted to talk to you specifically about this because you
(12:23):
have to actually identify this for the defense on game day.
That is your job on game day is to sit
up in the booth and relay what personality offense is
in for the defense so that Coach Bowls can call
the play. I need you to take me through this
process because it happens incredibly quickly and there are so
(12:46):
many moving parts to it, and I don't think people
realize how this works. So please walk me through this, okay.
So you first take forty seconds of sheer tear okay,
where your heart is pounding, you're sweating, and you probably
have a lump in your throat. Okay, and you do
that seventy times a game, give or take. So as
(13:08):
soon as the play the previous play is over, the
forty two play clock begins for the offense. To then
snap the ball again. So my job is too And
now even though I've had lasix surgery, I have to
use binoculars for the most part. So but so I've
got my binoculars. Forty second play clock has started, so
(13:32):
I am surveying the entire field to see who is
leaving out of those five eligible that we talked about,
who's leaving and who's coming in, And it can be
a mixture of all that. So you can have I mean,
we've had crazy you can have if you get down
to the goal line, you're gonna go twenty three personnel right,
two backs, three tight ends out in the field. You
(13:55):
can have anything from eleven, which is obviously, like we
talked about, the most free quent, but we can get
a mix up of twelve ten, you go twenty twenty pony,
So you can get all kind of things. Well, pony
would be if let's say we're playing the New Orleans
(14:17):
Saints and they're twice a year, which and they're gonna
come out and they're gonna put Camaro back there, and
they're also going to have let's say eight Montgomery back there,
so not not a true fullback, but an extra tailback.
Half back, whatever you want to call it. So now
(14:39):
they've got two of those out there, we have to
we decipher that differently than if that guy is a fullback.
That's a different athlete, so we clarify or classify him differently.
And so that's where the pony interesting. Yeah, because you're
right there. When there are these hybrid athlete eats now
(15:02):
and New Orleans happens to have a couple of them,
I have to imagine that New Orleans is a little
bit harder to call than most. New Orleans probably has
been known as one of the harder teams to personnel,
at least in the last probably ten years. Um. I
know obviously we play him twice here every year. Um,
(15:23):
which is just is lovely. You are thrilled about this.
I must get them least amount of sleep on a
Saturday night before we play the Saints. And why specifically
is it because of those hybrid athletes, like because we
talked about Camara, you talk about Montgomery, which who has
(15:44):
an eight eight number, which now the NFL has now
allowed Jersey numbers to increase. So you're in Tom Brady's
camp with this, you are Tom Brady was not thrilled
with the number of changes that have now opened up
for these skill players. I wasn't either. I might as
well have been posting those on Instagram along with Tom.
(16:05):
Did you like them as fast? I mean I might
have been one of the top first five people because
it makes your job higher. So you call this into
the headset you finally you finally identify it. Okay, yeah,
So second clock counting down. The other team is deciding
now usually based on the down and distance, what personnel
(16:26):
they're gonna be going to. So now I have to
wait for those people to leave that are gonna leave
in the new group to come in, and then once
I figure it out. As soon as I figure it out,
I then spit that information back out and let the
coordinator know what it is. So if they're going from
(16:49):
eleven personnel and then let's say they got eight yards
on the first and ten play so now it's second
and two playbooks wide open for him. Maybe they're gonna
bring in twelve personnel, try to do something different, something crazy,
mix it up a little bit, so receiver runs off,
the tight end comes on, everybody else stays the same.
Then I will tell Coach Bowls that twelve personnel twelve personnel.
(17:13):
So now what we've got to do as a defense
is go from probably Nickel the base and we'll get
into nick Nicole and bass and what those terminologies mean
actually in another episode. Um, but we're focusing tonight today
on personnel. So that then gets relayed to coach Bowls
and then he has to figure out what play that
(17:36):
he wants to run from the game that week's game plan.
So the more time you give him, the better the better,
which is an always easy thing to do for the
same reason, like if the Saints were pulling some weird stuff,
especially with the athletes they have, you don't know who's
(17:56):
acting is what, and you don't even know sometimes who's
coming into the game because as soon as that play
is over, I got my because then let's say we're
we're in New Orleans, I mean at the at the
Mercedes Benz Dome. You're you're at the highest point in
the press box, so you're looking down. I got my
binoculars out, and I'm looking at Coach Payton who's calling
the plays, and he can have two or three players
(18:19):
standing there and it looks like he's making a call.
So then you you might think you're safe to give
out a personnel group in the coach bulls, and then
for whatever reason, it seems like maybe one to three
of those guys all of them run onto the field.
And so you know, if three guys run on, three
guys got to run off. And so now you've got
to as quickly as you can figure out what personnel
(18:42):
grouping that is gonna be. That seems very stressful. I
understand the lump in the throat. And to do that
seventy times a game, I want to ask you how
often then you're wrong? How often do you make the
wrong call? What game is it? Who are we playing against? Well,
I mean we've been doing the Saints, but I don't
who Who's another team? That kind of makes it difficult. Well,
(19:03):
now that gets into another can of worms, because teams
can do one or two things when they're doing their
personnel groupings, right. They can just on the sideline, be
like the Saints and just yell it out, you know,
And so people on the sideline are gonna know where
they're gonna hear it in their headsets. So the coaches
kind of release them from their little position groups. Other
teams signal and so they'll have a coach or or
(19:27):
a set of coaches that are designated personnel guys that
make the signal, and so they'll usually be towards the
front of the sideline and they'll you know, put their
arm up and be able to loudly signal to the
whole offense what they're going to or what they're staying in.
And if a team does that, it makes my job
a lot easier because then I can rely on that
(19:50):
signal to tell me what it's gonna be and get
that to coach Bulls. So can you kind of go
in a little bit prepared from watching table, Will you
know a little bit of what you're looking for? You can?
And like Carolina, we play them twice a year, but
last year they got a new head coach, new offensive coordinator,
and so we're able to take or I'm able to
(20:13):
take the two games that I have played against them
last year, and any notes that I've written down or
jotted down or seen in real time, I can use
now to prepare for their games this year. Same with
um Like the Rams, we now this will be the
third year in a row that we're going to play
the Rams, and so I've got a little bit of
(20:36):
cheat sheets, so to speak, of of of what they
do or how to be more prepared for that game,
a little bit more of their tendencies, like you know,
a little bit more of their tendencies because you're a
little bit more familiar with them. So that brings me
back to my question is how how often are you
wrong seven he plays a game? I would say per season, Yes,
probably under ten per season. That is mind boggling to
(21:01):
me out of hundreds and thousands. But however many plays
there are in it's in a single season, you're right
less than ten or you're wrong less than ten times.
That's impressive, but it's those ten that always stick out
your your own worst critic. Yeah, you know, it's uh,
you know, we go back to we go back to
last year against Chicago. I had one that um, I
(21:23):
just I lost a guy, could not find him in
the huddle, could not see anything. And coach bull is
one that needing it. I thought I saw a smaller
guy was a bigger guy. And and so you know,
we had a different personnel grouping on the field and
we probably would have in that situation. Now the call,
we could have executed it better, but it ended up
(21:45):
being a big game. So you remember that one. I
remember one from way back in two thousand eleven, geez,
ten years ago. Same kind of a situation where you
just you lose a guy for whatever reason. You gotta
watch if you know you're watching the whole whole field.
Maybe sometimes depending on if the last play was a pass,
(22:06):
and there are guys down the field, maybe they're tired,
they want to come off, so they run off way
down you know, where they finished their route, and you've
got another guy coming on. You gotta you know, be
able to decipher that. So I missed one, uh there,
and and that was a twenty five yard game. And
then uh, I mean, you know, I was in the
(22:28):
a f C East for a while, so we would
play New England, you know, And and one time up
in New England, they had a running back who looked
like he was coming off the field, spreading off the field.
So I call a personnel grouping that was gonna be
without a running back on the field. And I would
say a yard or two before the sideline, he stopped,
(22:49):
turns around, lines up right on the line, and takes
off on the snap for a route. Okay, my point
in asking how many times you're wrong is because I
think it is really impressive. I get that those ones
sick with you, but the general percentage of HU being
right is impressive. So it's a big thanks to Tim Atkins,
Bucks defensive quality control coach, for taking us through all
(23:11):
of that having to do with personnel sets. I'm hoping
that the next time you guys watch these games on TV,
now you can count the number running backs, count the
number of tight ends for yourselves, and know what personality
offense is in before ESPNS Monday Night Football slashes it
on the screen, and now maybe you also know a
little bit more about the process it takes to not
only call the personal in the field for the defense,
(23:32):
but how they're about to react. I'm Buck staff writer,
common Vitally. Thank you so much for listening, and don't
talk to you soon.
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