You could be right. I don't have any proof about that being a trend and wouldn't even know where to find it. I still don't think the Packers' offense is very well built for a lot of end runs, though. One criticism I agree with is that they seem to run behind Clifton and Colledge way too often, although they are our worst run blockers.

---

Of course if it is the trend in the league to not run wide, maybe that means it is an especially good time to bring it back. After all, if I recall correctly, wasn't that what Lombardi did originally, make the sweep a key component when no one else was doing it?

Of course, it requires good offensive linemen of a particular sort to pull it off. But then again, it isn't as if we don't need OL anyway.

Was the Packer sweep successful in the 60s just because DL were slower? I'm not sure it's that simple.

Partly because I don't think we know how fast/slow LBs/DLs were "back in the old days." (When did people start being obsessive about 40 times?)

Partly because to the extent that speed does matter, what matters is the *difference* between speed on offensive and defensive sides of the ball. How much has the speed difference between a LB and an OL changed, for example? If the difference was half a second in 1960 and .48 of a second in 2010, would that matter?

And partly because they didn't have a lot of speedy backs back in the day either. Neither Taylor nor Hornung nor Anderson nor the others had the speed of today's backs. Travis Williams did, but he wasn't a great running back. Can you imagine what a Barry Sanders would have done behind Kramer and Thurston? That NFL rushing record would be out there so far no one would ever approach it.

And partly because the success of the sweep was made by a lot of things, not just by the ability to get from point A (initial stance) to point B (somewhere else) in a given amount of time.

One of the things that blew me away in the HBO special on Lombardi was the comment by another coach, I forget who, who was talking about being a young up-and-coming coach and "knowing it all" and then going to a workshop and being blown away by Lombardi talking for EIGHT HOURS on execution of the Packer sweep.

It seems to me that if a Hall of Fame coach can offer eight hours of "blow me away" instruction to another NFL head coach on one play without being repetitive or otherwise boring, there's a heck of a lot more determining that play's success/lack of success than mere speed of DL/LB.

---

Wade - interesting point you made about not the speed but the difference in the speed between O and D. Let me just throw this back at you though. Imagine you're a D player. You take one wrong step in the wrong direction. You got top of the line speed. You can correct your mistake whereas someone with average speed cannot.

That's one of the reasons why Deion Sanders was so good. He'd sometimes even intentionally make a mistake because he was saying he was sometimes getting bored in coverage as nobody threw in his direction. This is an extreme case, but I wanted to use it to illustrate a point.

The sweep works when it's blocked properly, not just the RBs themselves. Neither Taylor nor Horning were speedsters. I think in their cases (this is all hearsay as I never got to see them play), the blocking was so good that Taylor had the opportunity to run over someone in his way whereas Horning was more shifty and elusive.

So this may contradict what I said earlier. It may not be due to our RBs, but more due to our OL not having the ability to make the key blocks to make the sweep work. Let's not forget that one missed block with a Packers sweep and you got a 4 or 5 yard loss and 2nd and 14 or 2nd and 15. You either have to be able to make it work or don't do it.

I'm not saying I'm right as this is a guess. Something to consider though.

---

That makes sense, but do we really think that the back wouldn't have at least as much chance (not) to get that one yard running to the edge as they do running up the middle into the teeth of the defense? Wouldn't it at least have the effect of keeping defenses on their toes looking for possibilities besides the up-the-gut run?

And Wade raised a point I was going to mention: If it's really true that no one else is doing it (an assertion I find questionable in and of itself), wouldn't that be the perfect time to be doing it?

---