Kevin O'Connell & The Play Calling Guessing Game

Can anyone be good at Rock-Paper-Scissors?

That sounds like a nonsensical question. Assuming random choices, you have a 33% chance of picking the winning option, a 33% chance of picking the losing option, and a 33% chance of picking the tying option. One choice is no better than another.

But choices in Rock-Paper-Scissors are not random. Humans cannot simulate randomness — no matter how hard we try, biases will show.

As the famous legend goes, a professor divided his class into two groups. One was instructed to flip a coin over and over and record the results. The other group was to write down fake results meant to trick the professor into thinking they were real. 

The professor could easily spot the fakes, since most of them lacked major streaks. The students’ desire not to show a tendency was itself a tendency. True randomness is messier, and harder to believe.

With that psychology in mind, think about Rock-Paper-Scissors. Imagine we will play 100 games in a row. What would your strategy be? Would you play rock a few times in a row, then switch to scissors if your opponent thinks they’ve caught on? Would you alternate? Try to be random?

In the early 2010s, a Chinese research team studied several large-scale Rock-Paper-Scissors tournaments and found a pattern: winners tended to repeat their throws, and losers tended to change them up.

Subverting that tendency turned out to be a good strategy. Say you throw paper and your opponent throws scissors. They’re likely to throw scissors again, so throw rock. If you throw scissors and your opponent throws paper, anticipate that they’ll switch to rock next time, and throw paper yourself.

It’s explained well in this video by Numberphile: 

This strategy assumes a large pool of players will behave with average human tendencies, with no organized strategy of their own. What if you showed everyone that Numberphile video, then had them all play? How would your strategy change? 

Would you stick to the instructions in the video, or do what beats a player who is doing so? If you lose to scissors with paper, would you throw rock according to the strategy? Would your opponent expect that and throw paper themselves? Would you anticipate that, and throw scissors?

You could bury yourself in iterative layers of reverse psychology forever. Ultimately, the context matters. A Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament among friends you know well will play out differently than a tournament among strangers, which will play out differently than a game against a true random number generator.

Take that same idea and add the layered complexity of NFL football, and you can see how Ben Johnson lost himself in that same sauce. Imagine yourself as a play caller, and that Rock-Paper-Scissors psychology can quickly take over. Your team has plays that beats theirs, but they bring plays that beat your plays that beat their plays, and so on. 

It comes down to sequencing, finding tendencies, and hoping you’re in the right play at the right time. Even optimal strategies rely on luck. The best thing you can hope for is an edge on more plays than not.

So if you were Kevin O’Connell, constructing a gameplan for your Week 3 opponent, Todd Bowles and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers, how would you approach that proverbial game of Rock-Paper-Scissors?

Further, how did that gameplan go so wrong?

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers seem like an easy enough team to prepare for. They entered their Week 3 tilt with the Vikings as one of the most Cover 3 and Cover 1 heavy teams in the league. 

That is to say, the Vikings could expect man or zone interchangeably, but they will see a lot of deep safeties in the middle and corners playing deep outside. The other reliable thing about head coach Todd Bowles is his own tendency to blitz.

There is, of course, the Buccaneers’ run defense to contend with as well, but for the sake of this piece, let’s focus on the passing defense. To oversimplify, there are two questions to contend with: How do we beat Cover 1/Cover 3, and how do we contend with the blitz?

The Vikings’ plan hinged on seeing a lot of Cover 3, and they were right to anticipate that. The Bucs ultimately ran Cover 3 54.5% of the time, 7th most of any game this season.

The Vikings were right to attack Cover 3. Take Minnesota’s very first play of the game: play-action Dagger. They run Dagger a little differently than Shanahan/McVay systems typically prefer.

That “Thru” route is a sight adjust: a route that changes based on what the wide receiver sees. The quarterback has to be on the same page.

To run a Thru, the receiver has to read the safeties. If the middle of the field is open, split it. If it’s closed, cut the route off underneath that safety, drawing him out of the window for the “Dover” route, which is functionally a dig.

Jordan Addison runs the Thru right at the safety, forcing him to deepen. That leaves Justin Jefferson one-on-one with the corner, playing with outside leverage against an in-breaking route.

Paper, meet scissors.

Problem is, this is a long-developing route concept. There’s a big chunk of yardage as a reward if you block it up, but that carries risk. What if Todd Bowles blitzes, as he is wont to do? Just in case, the Vikings add extra blockers. Bowles can blitz all he wants — the Vikings will have the numbers.

This first play reveals their strategy. Occupy the middle safety, get Justin Jefferson one-on-one with a cornerback on the outside, probably Jacob Parrish or Zyon McCollum, and hope their star receiver can win that matchup. Everyone else will block up the blitzes. 

Without the benefit of hindsight, it’s perfectly sensible. Blunt the blitzes and try to isolate your star receiver on their average-at-best cornerback group. But with the benefit of hindsight…

On the first possession, Justin Jefferson went down with a mild ankle sprain. He’d miss the rest of the game. 

That left the Vikings in a bind. Now Jordan Addison is far and away the biggest threat. Jauan Jennings and Tai Felton will have to win some of those one-on-ones to the outside while Addison gets a ton of attention from the rest of the defense.

Those one-on-ones to Addison can work, at least.