The Football Brainiacs

Image via 247sports.com

This past weekend the Sooners defense struggled with Tulsa’s Baylor-like offense. It’s an offense with a run pass option (RPO) on just about every down. It’s an offense with a precision passing attack including a deep attack with two formidable outside wide receivers. And it’s an offense that moves very quickly making it difficult to find the “perfect” call.

The Sooners were missing their first team cornerback and in his place they played a true freshman who didn’t receive the majority of the first team snaps during the week leading up to the match-up. Freshman cornerback, PJ Mbanasor, was replaced right at the end of the 3rd quarter so I decided to go through each play he was involved in in the third quarter and offer up some thoughts. Overall, I think you’ll come away with the same impressions I did; that the mistakes are more than correctable. Mbanasor made some mistakes within his technique but on a broader level, most of his mistakes can be attributed to him trying to do too much.

Had Mike been running primarily man coverage some of Mbanasor’s mistakes would have been mitigated. However, what you’ll note is at the start of the 3rd quarter Mike runs man coverage on the 2nd defensive snap. The receiver to Sanchez side gives him a slight hesitation (double move) and promptly beats Sanchez. The ball was simply over thrown. You see right away the issue Mike is facing. He’s trying to protect his defensive backs by calling more varied coverages but in doing so these Baylor-type offenses will create busts and space with the speed of their attack and the skill of the their attack respectively.

So due to the overthrown ball and a false start, Tulsa is in 3rd and long. This time Mike calls a rolled cover 3 – Sanchez playing a cloud technique. Mbanasor has deep 1/3 with help underneath…no less than Steven Parker himself, OU’s elite cover safety.

Mbanasor plays his guy with a man technique perhaps in order to disguise the cover 3 call. He hesitates on a short route when the receiver feints, which allows the receiver to get a little separation behind him. He also transitions out of his back pedal high. Knowing he had underneath help Mbanasor  just needs to give a little more ground here. What I like though, is that it’s not in his nature to play things loose. He ends up closing the space on the deep ball and the ball is underthrown. If he just turns around, he has an opportunity to pick off the ball. That is something he is going to get better at.

Again, if he turns his head. Instead of a PI call, he may have had an INT. Also if he gives more ground and plays his zone the receiver is probably forced to break his route off short. Both are correctable mistakes.

On the very next play OU is in man coverage. Check the pre-snap alignment below. It would appear the OU staff is giving their DBs a choice on where to align in this coverage call. Mbanasor has chosen to play it tight. Sanchez has chosen to align loose. Sanchez is a quicker smaller guy so his choice makes sense. What I like though is that Mbanasor’s WR is split wide, so he knows his safety help isn’t going to get there. But he isn’t scared.

The QB can’t find anyone open so the receiver to Mbansor’s side tries to improvise. Mbanasor stays with his man but the ball is thrown up anyway. Again, here, if he just turns his head around…he probably has an INT.

Here it is from another angle. The WR is giving him every indication that it’s time to turn his head and find the ball. But it’s just a muscle memory thing that he will develop with more snaps. Again, it’s correctable.

The next play Mbanasor is playing a cloud technique. So he has help over the top and his assignment is the zone curl to flat. There is so much to like and dislike about what happens here. In the past when OU played zone coverage their defenders would not play tight matching through the zone so opposing receivers would have so much space and quarterbacks had big windows to throw into.

Mbanasor refuses to give the quarterback and receiver that space. Firstly, look at the pre-snap alignment. Mbanasor is pressed up at the top…

Mbanasor’s receiver is going to run a slant. In this coverage, normally the cornerback would disrupt the receivers release and then release him to the LB, in this case Dom. The thing that would irk Sooner fan’s is that there would be a huge window between the CB and the LB in which to complete the slant and an easy first down would be gained.

Mbanasor tries to take this away by riding the slant inside. However, notice above that the RB is set to Mbanasor’s side. Mbanasor has a flat responsibility so if that RB releases out to the flat it’s PJ’s man. When the QB sees him ride the inside route, they simply throw the ball to the open man in the flat.

The RB catches the ball in the flat and gets the first down. Again, love that Mbanasor wants to take away the space. I wouldn’t want my CB to change that. But I’d want him to also be assignment sound and know how far he can ride that inside till he has to pass his man off to the next zone defender and then get back to his own zone. Had he peeled off a little sooner here, he stops the 3rd down. Again, correctable mistake…

The same thing is going to happen again later in the same drive where Mbansor rides the inside route a little too long leaving the back in the flat free. OU needs that kind of aggression through the zones to tighten the spaces but they just need to remain assignment sound.

On the next series Tulsa will score. I want to highlight a play from that series on 3rd and 4 that is very correctable from a team perspective but shows you what the little tricks these Baylor offenses do when they get you in man coverage.

Notice the alignment is to the fan base’ is liking. Everyone is aligned near the LOS…

The Sooners are in straight man coverage with a single high safety. Look up top at the trips (three WR) side. It should be obvious to everyone who each person’s assigned man is. But to confuse the Sooners and to test their communication (and to get a rub) Tulsa’s outside WR is going to create a stack with the number 2 (the middle) WR. He’s going to set himself just behind him. Right then the Sooners have to decide if they are going to play man to man or banjo the call, which means they pick up the man releasing into their respective zones and play man to man thereafter. Either a call wasn’t immediately made on the field or someone didn’t play it right because the result was…

The underneath slant running free and two DBs, Mbanasor and Parker both following the same man. If the call was banjo’d then the slant was Parkers man in which case they would’ve avoided the rub. If it remained man then the underneath man was PJ’s man and he would’ve needed to fight through the rub. I obviously am not in the film room or on the field so I can’t say for certain either way. But what you can see here is that to stop teams like this, you have to be perfect in the details.

The crowd watches this and thinks…”man, or DBs aren’t good…our scheme isn’t good…our alignments aren’t good…” But none of that is true in this case. It’s a simple communication issue. Mike made a good call. The DBs played good coverage. The problem is a tiny detail. But it’ a deadly one.

In the 4th Quarter

Marcus Green came in at the tail end of the 3rd quarter and played the entire fourth quarter. There really wasn’t much to assess. He was targeted three times which I’ll summarize below…

– First play Green was on the field Sooners were in 2 man under. Tulsa targeted Green on a 9 route (go). Green was beat on the turn. Ball was poorly thrown, otherwise this could’ve been a one hitter quitter.

– Second time Green was targeted he was also in man coverage. Tulsa completed a slant on him.

– Third time Green was targeted he was in man coverage and Tulsa threw a bubble and Green did a nice job of coming up immediately on the tackle.

It’s tough to assess Green’s performance at this point. Just not enough information to go on.

What was interesting to me was that OU played man coverage in the 4th quarter on every down but 1. Ultimately, I think OU is going to have to do that against teams like Baylor when they are in their 4 and 5 WR sets. They’ll need to decide where they want to outnumber the other team but it’s critical to limit busts. I also think OU may want to begin developing a particular personnel package when they face good passing teams that are in 4 and 5 WR sets. Right now, there simply aren’t enough cover guys on the field to hold up.

Twice when OU attempted to go man across (once in the 3rd and once in the 4th quarter), Mike tried to bring pressure…pressure promptly got in but the QB immediately threw the ball up and an inside WR was streaking down the field.

We’ll talk more about this later.