The Football Brainiacs

So here we go with the 2nd quarter:

1. This is a shot of us pre-snap on the 2nd and goal to start the 2nd quarter.  What really hurt us here is that we’re backed up after the unforced error of 12 men in the huddle.  We come back to the weak side of the formation (offense’s left) on the zone read.  This play just validates the numbers argument I’ve been talking about.  Baylor has far less players to our left.  One could argue that we do too, but the point is that you have more room to make a move on someone if you don’t block it as cleanly and there are less opportunities to make mistakes (less moving parts):

1. (cont.) Here, the small red arrow is pointing at Adam Shead, who misses the linebacker.  In Adam’s defense it’s a really tough block, and one I’d like to see Clay come and help on as he doesn’t get the ball.  If we make that block, Trevor may have scored.  Still like I said in that last picture, with less numbers you allow yourself not to block it as cleanly and still be successful.  While we didn’t execute it perfectly, it’s still a gain of four yards, because there’s more space.

2. On the 3rd and Goal play, Blake has to have better vision than this.  Adam Shead is pulling around right in front of him, but if you follow the red arrow, Nila has his guy kicked out, and Damien’s leading up in the hole.  Look at the gap that’s opening up to the right.  Blake has to see that!

2. cont. Here a tick later, you see the hole widening out to the right, and even one developing to the left.  Damien’s still looking for someone to block and probably wondering why Blake isn’t following him.  What’s more baffling is this…look at the bottom of the “Y” in the endzone.  Brannon green has his guy two yards deep in the endzone.  He’s shown good hands.  Why hasn’t he been playing all year?  He can drive a guy two yards deep into the endzone, but he’s not “physical” enough?  Please.

2. cont.  Here a tick later, you see lanes to both the left and the right that Blake could have taken.  Undoubtedly, he walks into the endzone if he keeps his eyes up and sees it.  So frustrating.  This is one of those holes to the right that “you could drive a truck through”. Of course the fans will blame this one on the O-line too.

3. Here again, they’ve got six guys strong and four guys weak.  It was hard to get a screenshot on this one because we were going up tempo here.  Again hoping to catch them off guard.  We’re the friggin University of Oklahoma!  Why are we trying to be cheap?!  Line up, see what they have and adjust.  Going pace on the goal line just tells your guys you don’t believe in their abilities to out muscle them and score.

3. cont. Running into numbers gives the opponent more opportunities to make plays.  More players = more chances.  Here, the safety makes a good play, and Damien doesn’t work “inside-out”.  Their safety number 8 is the left blue arrow and Damien is the right blue arrow.  I paused it here so you can see Damien having that oh-shat moment, where he sinks and tries to come back inside.  That safety is upfield in a hurry, and Damien has to be looking back inside on this.  He doesn’t, and 8 makes a great submarine tackle on Bell.  To further validate the numbers point, even if Damien makes the block here, you still have an unblocked defender.  He’s the player with the red arrow pointing to where his gap responsibilities are.  Stop for a moment and look back weak though.  If we bring Damien back across the formation here and run some switchblade action where Blake moves that way and hands it back to Damien coming left, we most likely score.  Heck you could even have Damien lead across for Bell.  Either way, there’s a lot less guys to the left here and we come away with zero points.

4. If you ever wondered what “in the box” means…I drew a box for you.  This defensive formation is a good example of how one play influences another.  The play before, we ran a quick out route to Jalen.  Baylor’s conscious of it on this play, so they back off of it a little bit.  They had just stopped us on a fourth and goal, so naturally we’re not going to have the stones to attack them running again.  They guessed right.  If you look in the box I’ve drawn, I put a line straight north and south through Irwin(the right guard), to show that they’re overloading our offensive left.  To our left, they have five guys in the box, and to our right they have four.  X marks the spot, and would be the area I would attack here.  Guard, Tackle, Tight End plus Fullback equals four on four.  Check to it in the booth and give it on a quick hitter to that side.  No way Baylor reacts quick enough here, since they’re too far back off of the line of scrimmage.  We end up throwing an incompletion here, but there’s a soft spot here we didn’t attack.

5. Remind me why we’re running the no huddle again?  What’s that you say?  Oh yeah, so we can check alignments and get to the best play based on what the defense gives us.  Copy.  Sticking with my box theme here, look on the left side of the offensive line.  There’s a nose, shaded to Ikard’s left, and a 5 outside of Thompson.  The middle backer is actually on the right side of the hash, and the other backer is walked out to the bottom left corner of the box.  This is just easy money if we check to a run play here and bring Clay across right behind Shead and Thompson.  Since that Mike backer is to the right a little, this would be an easy block for Shead after he combed the nose with Ikard, and Thompson would be one on one with the 5.  The only guy that Clay would have to beat would be that outside backer to the bottom left of the box. It would be a possible gain of five or six yards. Do we attack a soft run formation?  NOPE!  We throw a pass, luck out and get an unnecessary roughness penalty.  Remind me again why we run the no huddle?

6. What’s this?  Under Center?!  I Formation?! The beautiful simplicity of the I formation and being under center, is that you don’t tip your hand.  Teams have to line up over your blockers, but you aren’t tipping which way you’re going.  We do a great job on this play going back weak(where they have less numbers).

6. cont. Here a split second later, you see Rip has his guy on the ground(rt circle), Tyrus is blocking(left circle), and we’re off and running.  Clay ends up gaining nine here, and we could have easily gone back to this.  This is what I mean when I pose the question about why are we trying to be pretty and cheap?  We could get under center in the I formation, and gash people.  If we would throw the ball to the tight end once in a while, we could really chop em up (and no a last ditch attempt in the 2nd half on a deep pattern when we haven’t run the ball well isn’t going to work).

6. cont. This is just a great job blocking up front, and Clay getting north and south in a hurry.  We end up gashing them for a gain of nine.  See those Baylor defenders behind the red line?  That’s what I mean about them getting caught up in the wash.

7. Here on 3rd and 10, check the body language of the three Baylor defenders I’m pointing at.  They’re coming.  We only have 6 to block 7.

7. cont. Right after the snap, they’re full tilt.  This is cover zero.  Man coverage with no safety help.  Blake has no choice but to get rid of it quickly and he does.  Baylor decided they were going to dictate the pace against us and they did.