NFL playcallers are football's version of relief pitchers

There are many different coordinators who I could lead in to this piece with, but I’m going to start with Joe Brady.

Brady was my No. 1 candidate to take over as Texans head coach in 2021 after his work with the Panthers and LSU — I liked the idea of having an offensive-minded head coach and he seemed to have a lot of helium. The Panthers fired him before the year was over. He had to work his way back up to offensive coordinator again in Buffalo after a stint as quarterbacks coach.

On Sunday, Brady made a nigh-inexplicable playcall when the Bills, brimming with the mythical concept of momentum, tried a trick play and got thoroughly owned. Josh Allen got banged up on the play. The Bills turned it over. The game was over.

Brady said: "It was a pretty bad play call. There is no other way to sum that up. Ultimately it cost us a football game." And I think that might be stretching the bounds of truth because I’m not sure the Bills were winning that game either way at that point, but it definitely finished the job.

I think Brady is a pretty solid NFL playcaller. I lamented his hiring with the Bills because he shut down the Stefon Diggs fantasy points valve, but that doesn’t mean I think poorly of him as an offensive mind.

But the more I have thought about NFL playcalling, the more I have come to consider it extremely volatile. I can give you many current examples happening today. Andy Reid is obviously one of the two most distinguished offensive playcallers in the NFL today, but the Chiefs haven’t scored 28 points in a game since last November. You couldn’t have a much better start on an offensive resume than Mike McDaniel’s first two years as Dolphins head coach. Now they seem utterly incapable of doing anything without Tua Tagovailoa.

Ultimately the comparison that hit me — one I’ve been saving for mostly private conversations but that I’m finally floating as a full-fledged theory — is that NFL play calling is like relief pitching in baseball. There are definitely relief pitchers who we have established are very good, but the volatility of the profession is off the charts. There’s a Mariano Rivera here, a Kenley Jansen there. There’s a pitcher who goes back to the drawing board (in this case let’s comp it to heading to Driveline) and comes back with four extra miles an hour on his fastball, or a sharper drop on his breaking ball.