Ask Farmer: What about play-calling duties and logos at midfield?

Have a question about the NFL? Ask Times NFL writer Sam Farmer, and he will answer as many queries as he can online and in the Sunday editions of the newspaper throughout the season. Email questions to: sam.farmer@latimes.com

What are the factors a head coach considers when handing play-calling duties over to an offensive coordinator?

Derek Grey, La Cañada Flintridge

Farmer: For some insight on this, I went to a couple of Bills in the Hall of Fame — executive Bill Polian and coach Bill Parcells.

“Being a head coach and calling the plays is not easy to do, because you have to manage the game,” Polian said. “There are a lot of things that go into that, particularly in the era of replay. So I have no problem with coordinators on either side of the ball making the calls. However, there has to be a clear delineation between calling the play and game management. So, for example, if you’ve got two minutes to go before the half, and you’ve got the ball on your opponent’s 35-yard line and you are not the superior team, the head coach may want to say to the coordinator, ‘I want to run the ball here, and if we get a field goal that’s just fine, but I do not want them to get their hands on the ball.’ I would not look kindly on the coordinator saying, ‘Well, they’re giving us a pass look, so we’ve got to pass it.’ No. The head coach controls the game.”

Parcells handled both duties when he won two Super Bowls as coach of the New York Giants, and he agreed on the final word.

“You know what my coaches in the press box used to say about me?” he said. “They used to say there’s crickets in the phone. ‘Run it, run it, run it.’ They thought I sounded like crickets. They used to say, ‘Uh oh, the crickets are on the phone.’ Ron Erhardt was our offensive coordinator and he’d say, ‘Is it cricket time, Bill?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, it’s cricket time. Let’s go.’”

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The New York Giants and Jets and the Carolina Panthers do not have their team logos displayed at midfield. Rather, their home fields have the NFL shield logo painted at midfield. Why do only the Giants, Jets and Panthers have the NFL logo displayed at midfield when the other 30 teams get to have their team logos?

Pete Tashima, Torrance

Farmer: Teams are given a choice as to whether they want their logo or the NFL shield at midfield. As the league’s only teams who share a stadium, the Giants and Jets have opted for the shield. According to Pat Hanlon, Giants senior vice president of communications, they change the end zones at MetLife Stadium depending on which team is playing there at the time, but leave the center of the field intact.

“We do not want to create any unnecessary seams in the field by switching out the midfield logo too,” Hanlon said.

As for the Panthers, owner Jerry Richardson explained it in 2008: “We have the NFL logo on the 50-yard line for reasons we have talked about before — we want to reemphasize to our fans that this is NFL football and not something else.”