When Erik Kramer arrived as Bears quarterback in 1994, he had dismal games early against the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions, the latter being his former team. I asked Kramer why those teams were such problems, given that he obviously knew where their defensive players would be.
“The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know where their guys were going to be,” Kramer said. “It was that I wasn’t sure when OUR guys were going to be.”
The reason was simple. Kramer was coming into a West Coast system under coordinator Ron Turner and was required to execute more of a timing offense, throwing earlier to still-unfamiliar receivers.