The Football Brainiacs

Image via newsok.com (Chris Landsberger)

We all remember last year’s Sugar Bowl and while the defensive performance was far less than perfect, at times it was down right nasty. And, of course, Trevor played out of his mind, but the lasting image for me was Eric Striker sacking AJ McCarron in the picture you see above. For the first the first time in a while, the OU defense was the talk of the country and a defensive player was the face of the program.

Those of you who read my posts or have engaged with me in the comments section below know that I love defense. So for me this sort of a renaissance was an exciting and welcomed one. I really believe a lot of you are like me in that you really want the identity of Oklahoma Football to be built on defensive excellence.

If you ask Mark Dantonio what the identity of his defense is, he’d say something like: we are an attacking style defense that seeks to suffocate opposing offenses. If you watch a little Michigan State, you can see that in everything they do, including their alignment. The question I’ve been trying to ask myself, and answer by watching this OU defense is, what is Oklahoma’s identity? Whether it’s from a broad perspective or more specific, I’m still looking for that answer. But I want to talk about one broad aspect of what appeared to be Oklahoma’s defensive identity earlier this season, namely an attacking style defense.

Coming into the year OU got right back to where it left off in the Alabama game…attacking. While Tennessee obviously had an inexperienced offensive line, Oklahoma put more pressure on them than anyone I’ve seen play them since. Once OU stuffed the run on 1st and 2nd down…the dogs were unleashed.

Since then however, it seems the OU defense has been tamed. And it seems to have affected all aspects of the defensive approach, including the overall swagger and general edge of the defense. I wanted to specifically address a few things that I believe have played a big roll in subduing Oklahoma’s defense, and once again it’s Dana Holgorsen who laid the blue print.

Max Protect

Mike Stoops built a defensive front that could get after the quarterback. In fact, one of his primary reasons for moving to an add front was in order to better disguise his pressure (well, that, and two years ago DL depth looked to be in issue, however now it’s easily the deepest position group on that side of the ball & in no small part to the work Jerry Montgomery has done since arriving in Norman). And to his, or really Montgomery’s credit they’ve amassed some tremendous pass rushers.

So what exactly did Dana Holgorsen do to counter this? Exactly what Mike Stoops would seemingly want, he added more blockers and removed receiving threats. Mike had made a chess move that necessitated a response. That’s the position you want to be in, dictating your terms to the offense. You want to spread us out? Fine, but we’re going to break your quarterback in half. However, when you make a good move, it has to be for the purpose of getting your opponent’s King. In other words, you have to anticipate the move you’re going to force them to make and then capitalize on it. The advantage you have at that point is you’re forcing the change, so you can anticipate the response and suffocate the team when they go to it.

So what was Oklahoma’s response to these extra blockers? Well initially it was to bring 4 to 5 rushers for 7 to 8 blockers. While not necessarily an overly conservative pass rush, it also wasn’t all that aggressive either. This allowed Clint Trickett time in the pocket and as a result, he hurt Oklahoma a number of times from this look. It also forced OU’s edge rushers, who are their best pass rushers, to come from farther away in terms of the angles they were having to take to Trickett. So as time has gone on, OU’s response to this type of look has been to drop more and more guys into coverage. This only got worse as OU faced more mobile quarterbacks these past three games, because it seemed to make Oklahoma feel like they couldn’t send A-gap pressure and their rushers became even more conservative (I’m sure some would say “disciplined”) in their pass rush.

In response to a reader question/comment yesterday, I mentioned that it seems to be the tendency of most defensive coordinators to reduce the ratio of pass rushers to blockers as those numbers of blockers increase. But I don’t know exactly why that is. It may simply be because of the distance the pass rushers now have to come (as I noted earlier). The other possible issue kind of cuts two ways. One could argue that with all the protection and additional pressure, you vacate the field for two receivers to move around in space and also potentially show the coverage right away (man-to-man). This could lead to bigger gains. Others would argue that you take away the easy pick routes, crossing routes, etc. and force the quarterback to make difficult throws against unimpeded DBs.

How should a great pass rushing team deal with this scenario?

I’m sure the OU defensive staff has ideas far superior and better researched than mine, but these posts wouldn’t any be fun (at least for me) if I didn’t offer some thoughts. Or if I didn’t get to read your ideas in the comments section below.

1. I think the first thing to do is get past the traditional idea that running QBs have to be contained. Against great running backs the worst thing to do is allow them to get a head of steam. You want to get them moving side-to-side.

2. Secondly, I think the response depends on the team, but I’d always test with pressure first. Obviously, with a team like WVU you’ve got to be really mindful of the screen game since it’s a staple of Holgorsen’s offense. But I don’t want to get bogged down with details in this post. Early pressure can keep a quarterback from getting in a rhythm and it can create pass rushing ghosts later in the game. I don’t want to give the quarterback any scenario in which he feels comfortable. Even a running quarterback that is pressured still has two unknowns: a) is he going to be able to find a receiver before he gets sacked and b) if he can’t find a receiver, can he find a lane to run through without getting dragged down?

I also don’t want the offensive linemen to get comfortable. Starting your pressure packages with disguised blitzes that don’t actually come allows an offensive line to get settled. Giving them an all-out-blitz and then following it up with disguised pressure packages may be more effective. In the Alabama game, that offensive line was playing on their heals so much that by the end of the game, it looked like OU could have sent one guy on a blitz and the whole line would’ve crumbled.

3. A-gap pressure. OU shows a double eagle look at time,s but I recall very, very few times when they’ve actually shot those two eagles or shot double A’s. If teams want to slow your edge pressure, start making life difficult on their interior linemen and get pressure up the middle.

4. Drop in coverage. OU does that but because the quarterback gets comfortable early, even when OU shows pressure and drops in coverage they can’t seem to get quarterbacks to get rid of the ball early. Instead, they’ve got a quarterback who is settled and waits on his wide receivers to find holes in the zone. So while I like the idea of dropping in coverage, I think it needs to be after the quarterback has had a healthy dose of pressure in the first couple series.

5. More split safety coverage. Perhaps my favorite coverage is the ‘trust 2 man under.’ OU employs this coverage at times on 3rd down and it just works more often than not.

6. Delayed pressure. Set their blockers up with an initial conservative pass rush, show them a full field, and then bring some delayed pressure to hopefully get a clean shot at the quarterback or to force him to get rid of the ball before he wants. A well-timed delayed blitz can be one of the most disruptive forces without sacrificing too many of your cover players.

7. Get more out of your front three. Yesterday, in post practice session, Tapper said, “as a defensive line (on 3rd down) we’re not as active as we were last year…we’re not flying off the ball like we were last year.” I know these guys are getting doubled and tripled, but they’ve got continue to fight through these blocks. I think giving them some delayed pressure could motivate them to really keep making the offensive linemen work.

Man-to-Man Coverage

One of the first times in the WVU game Mike Stoops sent a man coverage call in, Trickett hit Kevin White on a deep touchdown pass. It happened so fast, but White is also proving to be arguably the best receiver in the country. White gave Sanchez an outside move and got him (Sanchez) to open up right away. He cut back inside, ran straight up field, and it was over.

What Holgorsen did that day was something really simple. He knew OU only plays their corners to one side of the field respectively, so he simply put his big, fast, physical wide receiver on the left (offense’s right) and lined him up against OU’s smaller corner (Sanchez). And he put his small, shifty, quicker wide receiver on the right (offense’s left) and lined up against OU’s bigger corner (Wilson). So true to form, Snyder lines up his quickest receiver, Tyler Lockett, against Wilson this past Saturday.

How to combat this?

1. Move your corners around to create the optimal match-ups. That’s what OU did last week.

2. Let Julian play press the entire game. I truly believe Julian is a press corner. As is the case with most big corners, off-coverage is much more difficult to play. Now you might be saying, ‘well what about when OU is in another coverage like quarters?’ It’s still a match-man zone coverage and while he may have to pass off his route at some point, I still want him close to that defender at the snap.

Wide Splits

If you want to know what OU is and isn’t good at it, just watch whether a strategy employed one week by an offensive staff is used again the subsequent week by another staff. One thing you’ve probably noticed is OU continues to see these wide splits that they first saw against West Virginia.

Myself and some of the other guys have talked about this the past couple weeks, and it seemed pretty clear it was creating issues for OU. Primarily because it was creating huge running lanes and yet at the same time, it was also slowing down OU’s edge rushers.

In Stoops’ postgame presser this past weekend, he was asked about how those splits are affecting his team and he essentially said, not at all or minimally. But anyone can see that just isn’t the case. Yesterday, in the post practice media session both, Mike Stoops and Charles Tapper actually brought this issue up. Mike said they do indeed realize they are going to continue to see these splits until they can give their players some clear direction on how to attack them, and he put the onus on the staff. While Tapper spent almost his entire interview time talking about the splits and the problems it has created for the defense.

Since I had already intended on addressing this issue (despite what Bob Stoops said) before it was brought up yesterday, I reached out to a coaching friend earlier this week and he agreed to take a look at some of the plays. I have a particular way that I’d attack it, but I’ll hold off for now and offer those thoughts along with my buddy’s ideas (though I suspect they’re going to somewhat coincide).

Among other things, one of the issues the wide splits raises is that it forces your edge rushers to come from farther away. And of course everyone is trying to remain disciplined in their rush, but the lanes are just so huge! If you stay in your base alignment and send guys through the A-gaps, there is the threat of overrunning the play and leaving a huge hole for a ball carrier, or opening up the middle screen, or perhaps getting the interior rush chipped and you leave yourself open to the outside run or a potential pass against reduced coverage.

Again, I’ll address this with some thoughts from myself and a friend at a later date. But for now, these are some of my thoughts on the current issues I’m seeing with this OU defense. What are your thoughts?