The NFL is a copycat league. And there\u2019s an emerging trend that one new head coach believes will soon be copied.<\/p>\n
Browns coach Todd Monken has a prediction: There will be more downfield laterals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that laterals are going to be a bigger part of our game,\u201d Monken said during a Wednesday appearance on PFT Live. \u201cI believe that you get these zone looks. Now, you\u2019ve got to throw it to the guy you trust, because you don\u2019t want that damn thing on the ground. But I do think that is going to become more and more in vogue with teams as you see more and more success with your ability to, first off, get the ball in someone\u2019s hands as the defense starts to collapse, collapse, and get yourself an explosive play.\u201d <\/p>\n
Monken believes it won\u2019t be something that happens only in specific situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot just on third downs, not just on fourth down, not just as a gimmick play,\u201d Monken said. \u201cObviously, Ben [Johnson] started doing that a lot in Detroit. Give credit where credit\u2019s due. And then others have started to do that a little bit more. And it takes some stones to do it. If the ball ends up on the ground, you\u2019re gonna get critiqued for it, but I can see the game going that way, where plays have built-in laterals. It just feels like it can go that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an effective way to counter a defense\u2019s pursuit of the ball and, if\/when the defense is bracing for it, to get the defense a little wobbly and uncertain.<\/p>\n
Still, as Monken said, execution will be critical. A bad lateral potentially becomes a lost possession, followed by public and private questions as to the sanity of the coach who called the play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL is a copycat league. And there\u2019s an emerging trend that one new head coach believes will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-493535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}