So got busy and didn’t have time to do a full My Thoughts (Long) this week. Planning to do a double feature with BC and Syracuse games next week.
But a couple things I noticed last week that I’ll be interested in looking for tonight.
Firstly, against BC we used a lot more presnap motion…for a while. In the first quarter, by my count, we ran 18 plays and 12 of them had a presnap motion. Early in the 2nd quarter though the motions tapered off and we wound up running the same amount (12 plays) of plays with presnap motion in the entire second half.
The motions were pretty elementary, typically just shifting the TE from one side to the other. But it was easy to see that that alone impacted their defense and helped us create numbers advantages. It’s no wonder that our offense looked less dynamic once we stopped doing it.
Secondly, DJU continues to make bad choices in who he throws the ball to. There were several times where we had underneath crossing routes that worked exactly like they were supposed to, but instead of hitting a crosser DJ threw downfield, often into tight man coverage. DJ consistently chooses to make the harder throw, which is also the harder catch.
That said, after NCST I talked about the lack of back shoulder throws vs inside leverage in man coverage, and against BC DJ showed he can absolutely make that throw. He put a beautiful ball right in Ngata’s back shoulder only for it to be dropped in what probably would have been a touchdown. It was a picture perfect throw. DJ showed off his arm on a few other throws, including a big 3rd down throw that was an absolute laser beam to Ngata late in the game.
DJ’s accuracy has been off at times, but to my mind the major thing holding the passing game back is DJ’s decision making and then some drops by WRs.
Lastly, and most significantly, we changed our blocking schemes vs BC. A lot of attention has been paid to the OL personnel last week and especially Bockhorst’s performance at guard, but the change in how we block was also a significant factor in our OL’s performance.
We are pretty much exclusively a power zone running team. This means on inside zone we do double teams on down linemen with someone peeling off to get the linebacker. Against BC we ran a ton of standard, old schools, Alex Gibbs style stretch zone. Everyone take a step play side and get your hat on whoever is there and then run your feet and stay on them.
This made a lot of sense against BC because they crowded the LOS and liked to walk LBs up into gaps. But it also served to greatly simplify our blocking scheme and create less thought on the OL.
As the game went on BC adjusted and began running more laterally at the snap, which resulted in plays being stretched out more but we still did a pretty good job of keeping hat on hat. Once they did this we did go back into some of our power zone game, especially on the QB runs.
One of the big positives about the stretch zone is it can be run against any defensive front. I’ll be fascinated to see if this is a more permanent change or if it was specific to BC.
Go Tigers!
But a couple things I noticed last week that I’ll be interested in looking for tonight.
Firstly, against BC we used a lot more presnap motion…for a while. In the first quarter, by my count, we ran 18 plays and 12 of them had a presnap motion. Early in the 2nd quarter though the motions tapered off and we wound up running the same amount (12 plays) of plays with presnap motion in the entire second half.
The motions were pretty elementary, typically just shifting the TE from one side to the other. But it was easy to see that that alone impacted their defense and helped us create numbers advantages. It’s no wonder that our offense looked less dynamic once we stopped doing it.
Secondly, DJU continues to make bad choices in who he throws the ball to. There were several times where we had underneath crossing routes that worked exactly like they were supposed to, but instead of hitting a crosser DJ threw downfield, often into tight man coverage. DJ consistently chooses to make the harder throw, which is also the harder catch.
That said, after NCST I talked about the lack of back shoulder throws vs inside leverage in man coverage, and against BC DJ showed he can absolutely make that throw. He put a beautiful ball right in Ngata’s back shoulder only for it to be dropped in what probably would have been a touchdown. It was a picture perfect throw. DJ showed off his arm on a few other throws, including a big 3rd down throw that was an absolute laser beam to Ngata late in the game.
DJ’s accuracy has been off at times, but to my mind the major thing holding the passing game back is DJ’s decision making and then some drops by WRs.
Lastly, and most significantly, we changed our blocking schemes vs BC. A lot of attention has been paid to the OL personnel last week and especially Bockhorst’s performance at guard, but the change in how we block was also a significant factor in our OL’s performance.
We are pretty much exclusively a power zone running team. This means on inside zone we do double teams on down linemen with someone peeling off to get the linebacker. Against BC we ran a ton of standard, old schools, Alex Gibbs style stretch zone. Everyone take a step play side and get your hat on whoever is there and then run your feet and stay on them.
This made a lot of sense against BC because they crowded the LOS and liked to walk LBs up into gaps. But it also served to greatly simplify our blocking scheme and create less thought on the OL.
As the game went on BC adjusted and began running more laterally at the snap, which resulted in plays being stretched out more but we still did a pretty good job of keeping hat on hat. Once they did this we did go back into some of our power zone game, especially on the QB runs.
One of the big positives about the stretch zone is it can be run against any defensive front. I’ll be fascinated to see if this is a more permanent change or if it was specific to BC.
Go Tigers!
