The Football Brainiacs

Greetings TFB readers. I’m writing to you from London. I’ll be in the UK for about two weeks on business but I should be able to chime in and hopefully catch the game this weekend and offer up some notes.

I was busy much of the week so I didn’t get a chance to review the Kansas State game in detail but wanted to pass on a couple notes and one recruiting note.

– Chris Daniels | Recruiting: You may recall last week we mentioned that 2016 DT and OU target, Chris Daniels and Texas A&M (a school he was high on) parted ways. I was able to ascertain the reason for this sudden happening. Apparently, Texas A&M is getting a late arriving DT from the 2015 recruiting class and as such they’ve met their numbers at the position. In other words, this had nothing to do with TAMU’s perception of Daniel’s talent. It was simply a numbers issue. This should really help OU’s chances with Daniels.

– Quarters Coverage | Kansas State Review Note: One of the things that I noted when I watched the OU vs. KSU game through the first time is Oklahoma relied heavily on their palms/quarters coverage. They did that even in their 50 front. For those of you who don’t know, Oklahoma usually plays a lot of cover 3 or cover 1. Their quarters/palms coverage is a pattern match zone coverage. I really like OU giving their guys some additional experience in this coverage because I do think it may be helpful in matching up with Baylor’s pass and run game. OU plays palms but they don’t do it very frequently.

I couldn’t get a great angle but here is the underneath pre-snap look against KSU when OU was in palms coverage. Notice that even against 4 WRs OU is cheating 7 guys in or around the box. Jordan Evans is playing at the edge of the box because he’s going to carry that number 3 receiver to the safety (or man up the drag). The reason this is significant is because theoretically this gives OU a lot of men to stop the run against a team like Baylor but as you’ll see below, the pattern match zone coverage also allows OU to essentially play man coverage against the pass:

So below you can see that the quarterback is looking at Dom dropping into some kind of hook zone and PL appears to be dropping curl to flat. But you may also notice that Jordan Thomas below is staying with his man on the inside route. You may be asking then, “what if that running back (near the x) runs a wheel route up the sideline…shouldn’t Jordan Thomas being there to cover him in a cover 4?” The answer is PL will actually have to run with that guy on the wheel route as it will turn into man coverage. I really like the pre-snap look and the ability to match up numbers against the run and the pass. It also allows OU to disguise a lot of pressures and of course gives the quarterback the sense that he’s looking at a man and zone combination coverage – note Dom is in a zone but JT appears to be in man even though it’s technically a pattern match zone. The thing OU is going to have to be mindful of is personnel mismatches – LB on the RB and getting pressure on the QB.

I’ll be very interesting in seeing if OU plays a lot of this coverage against Texas Tech and seeing how Tech attacks it. It’s a coverage TCU plays a lot.

– Personnel Note | Kansas State Review Note: Speaking to my point above regarding potential mismatches I wanted to add a note about both Will Johnson and Marquise Overton and how they can be very beneficial moving forward.

I’ve been asked on here, what OU can do to slow Baylor down. And my first response has always been a need for personnel change. With Thomas and Byrd on the field, Baylor can isolate either of those two in man coverage and the result would not be good. Baylor’s receivers can give fits to true inside and outside corners so matching them up on oversized safeties is a recipe for disaster. Whether Will Johnson is the answer remains to be seen but I’d be willing to bet my bottom dollar (or pound over here) that he can hold up far better than Byrd or Thomas.

One of the big problems Baylor presents is the run pass conflict. They are too good in both areas of the game and so when you try to get numbers against the run they gash you with the pass game. If you try to cheat the pass game, they’ll gash you on the ground. Additionally, they’re WR splits are so wide, they force your safety to declare early. I think some of that can be helped with OU employing more palms coverage but the team is going to need more live reps and that still may not be enough.

But another thing that helps is having some dominant defensive linemen. In the days of Tommy Harris or Gerald McCoy, OU could’ve protected themselves in the pass game and removed numbers from the box because they knew could stop the run even when outnumbered. OU hasn’t had those guys for a few years. I wanted to mention though that Marquise Overton really flashed against KSU. He did a nice job of anchoring down against the run and he was sudden off the ball. Hopefully that is a sign of things to come from the true freshman as he gets more experience and gets older. I mentioned before the Texas game that OU was going to need to reinforce the interior part of their defense because I had noted how easily WVU was able to clear out the nose guard on occasions. I’m hopeful that in a year or two, Overton and Gallimore will create serious mismatches in the trenches which should give OU a lot more flexibility than they’ve had in recent years. Guys like Gerald McCoy make a defensive coordinators job way easier.

Have a good rest of the day friends. I’ll check in again soon!