Second opinion from SFGate reporter: I know Raiders fans want to blame Greg Knapp for everything, but there’s a big misconception about the no-huddle offense going around. People think that quarterback Carson Palmer calls the plays instead of the offensive coordinator when the offense starts humming like it did in the second half Sunday. Not true …
Knapp calls three or four plays and Palmer chooses one based on what he sees at the line of scrimmage from the defense.
“There’s communication between him and Greg Knapp,” coach Dennis Allen said. “Carson makes the final decision based off of the game plan and what we feel like we can do to exploit their defensive structure.”
Knapp, after chewing out the offensive players at halftime, flipped the switch to the no-huddle to start the third quarter. I asked Allen what took so long (since I couldn’t ask Knapp, who is only available to writers on Thursdays).
“We’ve used it in the first half of other games,” Allen said. “It’s something that we’ve always got in our game plan and we look for the right opportunities to use it. Whenever the situation dictates that, that’s when we’ll break it out.”
So, the Raiders see the no-huddle as a change-up … but what if your change-up is your best pitch? I am sure Allen will be asked again about this at today’s news conference. Also, Knapp may deserve some criticism for his play-calling but the last time I checked he doesn’t block. And that’s the big issue now. The Raiders run game didn’t get anywhere on power or zone blocking plays yesterday. And Palmer has taken a beating the last two weeks.
“(The Jaguars) won the battle up front — there’s no question about it,” Allen said. “We weren’t able to run the ball effectively. We had too much pressure on the quarterback, so that’s going to be something we’re going to have to look at and we have to get that corrected moving forward.”
If not, we’ll be talking about Matt Leinart’s use of the no-huddle soon.
http://blog.sfgate.com/raiders/2012/...use-it-sooner/