LOVE articles like this. Cross-sport fertilization of ideas. Here basketball's Principle of Verticality in FOOTBALL! (also some positionless thinking). Synopsis:
Los Angeles "Chargers" head coach Brandon Staley saw the great Chicago "Bulls" teams play. "Hmm, MJ, Pippen and Ron Harper all 6'6" and over. They can play anybody at any position!"
In the National Concussion League the principal principle was the Principle of Speed. "You can't teach speed", Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson and, and, and, intoned. And so, at the receiver position, central to this article, was speed and quickness, extend the field, play horizontally as foo'ball's West Coast Offense philosophy prescribes, get the ball to your fastest players and let 'em burn.
The West Coast overturned the philosophy of, particularly the "Raiders", pro football's vertical passing game. Staley wants to bring the PoV back. He wants tall receivers. All tall.
“Now, if you’ve got two of those guys, what does it do?”
He keeps going …
“Now, if you’ve got three of those guys...that’s when it gets tough out there. The nickels in this league are 5'10", 5'11" at best.”
Quarterback Justin Herbert can put the ball almost anywhere, and if all of his receivers are bigger than all of the corners, he can almost certainly put the ball where your defense is not, even if the defense is playing it perfectly.
...The advantage for the Chargers [receiving corps] as a kind of positionless unit is the ability to match up one defensive back with three or four different receivers over the course of a game who each have a completely different way of getting open. On top of the built-in height advantage, there is also a stylistic one.
Good stuff. Good thinking by Staley.