The Football Brainiacs

Image via Dallas News

I’ll begin this brief piece by a quote from Gary Patterson, one of the great defensive minds of this era (even in spite of having very recently given up 1 60+ spot to Baylor):

“In this day and age of college football, offenses have become very explosive and complex in the number of formations and plays used in a game. To combat this problem, defenses must have enough flexibility in their scheme to limit offenses in their play selection, but be simple enough to be good at what they do.”

In the past couple weeks we’ve seen Oklahoma give up plays due mainly to assignment breakdowns and while that quote may not be as relevant to the play I’m going to discuss below, it is relevant to a broader philosophy that I believe in. Namely, that with all the limitations on time that coaches can spend with players and the need to play younger and younger guys, I believe it’s imperative to find the right balance of simplicity and multiplicity while focusing on skill development, as opposed to scheme complexity.

When Coach V was at Oklahoma, we repeatedly saw OU players turning to the sideline trying to figure out the call. This was particularly true in the secondary. Since coach Mike has been back, that practice has disappeared…up until recently. Breakdowns up front are bad, but not lethal. However, breakdowns in the secondary are absolutely lethal. The breakdown against TCU cost Oklahoma the football game. If it weren’t for Alex Ross’ kickoff return, the breakdown against Texas may have cost Oklahoma that game as well.

In last week’s game, outside of the wheel route Shipley had on Ahmad Thomas, good things happened when Oklahoma played man coverage on 3rd down…including Zack Sanchez’s pick six. Remember a few things that OU knew going into the Texas game: 1) Texas had an inexperienced offensive line 2) Texas had a new center 3) Texas had a young and erratic quarterback.

A defensive priority on first and second down is to stop the run. Some folks do this by calling coverages that get as many defenders in the run game as possible. KSU runs a lot of quarters coverage giving their safeties two reads, thereby allocating nine potential guys to defend the run. We can debate my philosophy in this regard later. But for now I want to specifically talk about 3rd downs. To me, if you’ve got the players to do it, 3rd down is man coverage and pressure. And against Texas, I’m going to be pressuring that center (and really most of their entire o-line) all game. A green center with a linebacker flying up into the A-gap repeatedly is going to, at some point, give you some bad snaps.

The play I’m going to outline below was on 3rd and 12. Obviously, this is a passing down. To me, against Texas, this should be a pressure/man coverage down. I wouldn’t even try to disguise it. I’d simply say, we’re locking you down and we’re going to pressure you.

Before I break this play down, I’m going to tell you that everyone…the Oklahoma media…even the television announcer blamed Ahmad Thomas for the bust on this play. But Thomas didn’t bust. However, the point of this post isn’t to find out who busted. It’s to question why you’d run such a complex coverage against an inept offense on 3rd and long when you have four legitimate cover guys on the field, two young safeties, and are facing three WR set.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the coverage here and finally came to the conclusion that it’s what I call a Cover-3 Mamba. Patterson had something similar back in the day he’d run that looked like this but, it’s the first time this year I’ve seen Oklahoma run this coverage.

Let’s begin…

This is the look, pre-snap. We’ve got a double eagle front (2 LBs lined up in the A-gaps over the center). These guys are going to drop, but as I said, I would have played man and blitzed at least one of these guys. This look freaks a green center out and bringing quick guys like that, along with all the pressure points these OU pass rushers create, would make things really tough.

On the back end, you’ve got split safeties with the corners playing off about 7 yards. It looks somewhat like quarters coverage pre-snap and at a certain point, when watching this play transpire, I thought maybe it was a modified quarters coverage.

What’s going to happen (and I’ve made some notes on the image below) is Shipley (in the slot with Q.Hayes lined up in front of him) is going to run a wheel route. The WR1 on the two speed side (same side Shipley is on) will run a post. The local media and the announcer assumed the call was a Cover-3 and Thomas busted by not dropping deep middle. If this was a traditional Cover-3, then that would be correct. But if you begin to watch more closely, you’ll see that it’s actually a modified Cover-3 where:

1. Julian is playing his deep third on that far side, but he’s going to essentially man up the receiver even though he’s technically in zone. I call it match man or zone with man principles…whatever.

2. Thomas’ assignment is actually not the deep middle third. In reality, he correctly broke to the near side. His assignment was the deep third on the near side (left side from the defenses perspective).

3. You’re probably thinking…wait a minute…Sanchez was deep third on that side?!? And I totally understand why you’d think that (I initially thought the same), but if you watch the totality of the play progress you start to pick up some clues that he’s actually playing underneath coverage in a type of bracket call with Thomas. You could perhaps call him a curl zone defender, but really he’s just going to continue to sink because there isn’t an underneath release as the play goes on. But you will note later in the play that he’s actually going to stay underneath the route as it breaks.

4. The assumption is probably also that Q.Hayes is a curl/flat defender who simply carries the wheel route all the way. But I don’t believe that’s the case either. I think his assignment is actually to be a lock on Shipley. So he’s a man defender in this zone call.

So who is playing the middle third?

 

As the play progresses you can see Q.Hayes at the bottom (image below) manned up on Shipley. You see Julian, at the top, play that match zone on the far side. You see Sanchez starting to linger underneath the route. You also see  Thomas (who the announcer circled in yellow) breaking over into the left 1/3. The two ILBs that were initially showing blitz are going to drop back. The WILB (Franklin) is in a hook zone and Evans is going to drop into the hole. It actually looks like he’s playing a Tampa-2 technique.

The person who was supposed to play the deep 1/3 was in fact Steven Parker. I’ve drawn an arrow from him to the deep middle 1/3. Instead, he plays it like he would in a more traditional Cover-3. And you can understand why he’s confused. There’s an appearance that no one is accounting for a possible release from a TE on the far side (unless the rushing OLB on that side was supposed to read him). If that TE releases, there appears to be no one to pick him up. And of course Parker is not a traditional deep middle player. On top of that, he’s got Jordan Evans dropping in what initially appears to be a fairly deep middle zone.

Below you see the Texas WR breaking open and Thomas trying to turn and run with him. In my opinion, Thomas has to run with this guy when he sees the deep middle is uncovered. You see Q.Hayes below running with Shipley with Sanchez continuing to get deep. And you see Parker at the top of the screen playing a hook/curl.

Below, you see where Parker would have been and where the Texas receiver broke open.

Let me be clear again. The purpose of this post isn’t to call out a player. It’s to say, with all the craziness that’s happening in a game, why such a complicated coverage call? I mean even if you want to get this creative on 3rd down…save it for Baylor.

I believe on 3rd and 12, you pressure and play man on the back end. Oklahoma has the good fortune of not only having two cover corners, they’ve also got two very legitimate cover safeties in Steven Parker and Q.Hayes. Both have cornerback-type cover ability. You can see that coach Mike knows it, as he’s moved Parker to one of the starting safety spots in the nickel package (Hatari Byrd was the the replacement safety up until this past week). OU just needs to simplify things a bit and let those guys do what they do best.