Greg Olson Got Confused

December 07, 2009 at 12:46pm by Scott   •  2 Comments »

John Lynch went on and on about how Greg Olson called for Chris Pressley to run the ball on third and one at the beginning of the second quarter when he had never run the ball in a professional game before. According to Roy Cummings, he didn’t know Pressley was the one getting the ball.

Another miscue: Offensive coordinator Greg Olson failed to realize that he had rookie Chris Pressley in at fullback on a play in which the Bucs called for a fullback run on third-and-1 from the Carolina 3.

“We would have rather had Earnest in there on that,” Olson said of the second-quarter play in which Pressley was stopped for no gain, forcing the Bucs to kick a field goal.

It sure sounds like Olson is saying that he didn’t know the personnel grouping going into that play and that he thought Earnest Graham would be the one getting the ball on a fullback dive, which would have made that seem like a much smarter call. Mistakes happen, but that’s kind of a big one. Of course, if they had converted, Josh Freeman may very well have thrown an interception in the endzone and the Bucs wouldn’t even have gotten the field goal. So Olson’s mistake may have actually saved the team three points. Thanks, Greg!

A lot of people are picking on Olson for putting the ball in Freeman’s hands so much near the endzone, but I think it only seems that way because of all the picks. Inside the red zone, the Bucs ran the ball eight times and attempted to throw it six. Inside the ten, they called six running plays and three passes. That’s not unreasonable. The first time they got inside the red zone, it was at the Carolina 12. They ran the ball three times (including Pressley’s run) and got nine yards, so they took the field goal. That may have had something to do with the decision to pass a little more, especially considering how well they had done in the red zone in previous games.

This is a team that gained 475 yards yesterday. I’m not going to get on Olson for his playcalling too much.