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Hope everyone out there is doing well this week. Well the Notre Dame video review is a particular challenge, because so much happened in this game and it's almost impossible to condense it all into a mere 10 clips. So the clips we have chosen represent some of the important themes that unfolded over the course of the game.
Let's get to it:
-- Right out of the gates, Deshaun Watson has that big run and this play certainly calls for some dissection. First of all, it wasn't like they drew up the play specifically for Watson to run it. He had several options on the play, which featured four receivers, one tight end and no running back. Deon Cain and Charone Peake are on the left. On the right, they run bubble action to Artavis Scott with Jordan Leggett and Germone Hopper in front.
We asked Jeff Scott to give some background on the play. Here's what he said:
"I've just got to be careful, because one of our deals is we don't really diagram a play or go into detail about a play. But what I would say in general is I think Deshaun, we've got some plays where we can give him multiple options. So whenever we go to empty, he has options to the field, he has options to the boundary, and he has options in the box."
Let's stop there to show you what Watson was seeing in the box:
Well, that's rather inviting.
It's a four-man box, largely because there are five receivers split wide. The linebacker cheats over to the field side, likely anticipating the bubble to Scott. Thus, the read is pretty darned easy: Attack the soft box.
And attack he did:
More Scott:
"With Deshaun, one of his strengths is his decision-making. And maybe some quarterbacks couldn't handle three different options. Defensively, especially when you're in your empty set and you spread them all out, there's a lot of things to cover. They have to kind of choose what they're going to defend. So for us, we felt like one of the three options would be successful. And that's really what we wanted to do on the first play was get off to positive yardage and try to get some momentum going.
"They had no linebacker in the box. Typically most people will leave a five-man box, with four linemen and one linebacker. But I think probably because of the respect they had for our screen game and how much screens we've thrown previous, they widened that one backer out of the box to the field to take away the quick screen to Scott. So it ended up being a four-man box."
-- Shaq Lawson was a major force in this game, particularly in the first quarter. One of the misconceptions about Lawson's dominant early showing was that he dominated stud left tackle Ronnie Stanley. Lawson did have some big-time plays against Stanley, but they came later. In the first quarter, Stanley spent a lot of time blocking inside guys and left Lawson to tight ends and pulling guards. Not a good move to try to block that dude with a tight end, as you can see here:
-- There aren't many defensive ends out there who can play both the give and the keep on the zone read. Right here in the Palmetto State over the past few years, we've had Vic Beasley, Jadeveon Clowney and now Lawson. Excellent job here:
This could be rather important Saturday when Justin Thomas runs the triple option Lawson's way.
-- Wayne Gallman is ascending, and not just because of his running. He has become a powerful blocker as well. This block right here is not the result of talent, athleticism or any other gift. It's the product of desire and effort:
We chatted with Gallman about this a few days ago to get his perspective. He said student assistant Terry Allen has played a role in helping him become a punishing blocker.
"Any question I have, I come to him or Coach (Tony) Elliott. Even C.J. Spiller, me and him contact each other. He texts me probably before every game. You know, that's what they look at. Especially NFL teams, they want to see how you are without the ball. That's a pretty big thing."
What kind of blocker were you two years ago?
"Probably not as good as I am now, nowhere as good. Blocking also involves knowing a defense, and knowing the full offensive play."
As a Wing-T back in high school, you weren't doing too much blocking were you?
"No. Probably faking and running into someone, pulling someone away or something like that. But nah."
Is that something that's been missing from this offense the last few years, having that powerful lead blocker and blitz-pickup guy?
"I don't think so. I think maybe some of the plays have changed. But Coach Elliott has always told the running backs, 'Know who you're blocking. Know this. Know that.' That's pretty big in his room. He's not going to play you if you don't know what you're doing and if he doesn't trust you 100 percent, and especially if he knows you're not going to play 100 percent without the ball in your hands."
Is that a lost art nowadays for running backs?
"In college, every team is different. But when you look at the NFL, that's something that they value and it's something they like and something they need. In college maybe not as much."
I asked Gallman about this block of Sheldon Day. It came on Watson's throw to Hunter Renfrow on the second touchdown drive. Does the block play a vital role in the play? Probably not. But it gives you a good indication of Gallman's nastiness without the ball in his hands.
Do you remember that block?
"Yeah. I busted his butt."
-- As we've noted, a huge, huge part of this game was Clemson's success at shutting down Notre Dame's running game in the first half. Brian Kelly couldn't get comfortable as a play-caller and that was the biggest reason why. Brent Venables did an excellent job of not only run-blitzing at the right time, but also bringing an extra guy into the box late -- after DeShone Kizer had already made his read of the defense.
Case in point is here with T.J. Green sneaking up and shooting through a gap:
And here:
What an asset to have two big, physical safeties in Green and Jayron Kearse. It's pretty much death for a team's running game when Venables makes the right call.
-- More on those first-down run stuffs. Check this out. Christian Wilkins, grown man.
-- So we can now universally agree that the loss of Mike Williams was a very big deal. It wasn't just on the deep ball that got picked, a sequence that probably would've been different had it been Williams instead of Peake.
We also see evidence of it on third-and-medium, conversions that were so often automatic the past four years when they'd throw it up for Nuk Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant or Williams.
Here's where that kind of receiver would've come in handy:
-- So yeah, that fourth quarter on defense. Not good. We could show you a bunch of videos on that, but we'll rely more on Venables' perspective from a chat we had with him earlier this week.
The conversation started off by asking him about the late rub route they ran for the touchdown that made it 24-22. It looked similar to the play Notre Dame ran last year at Florida State for the presumed victory, until the refs threw a flag for an illegal pick.
The fatal flaw of that play was the receiver just straight-up blocked a defensive back. Can't do that. You have to at least pretend you're making yourself available for a throw. Irish did a much better job of it on the play at Clemson.
The difference between the two plays was that at Florida State, the Irish went trips right and sprinted out Everett Golson to throw to an underneath receiver:
At Clemson, it was a two-receiver rub and a toss to the corner of the end zone:
Venables: "The one guy decides they're going to play it the way they shouldn't play it. Obviously that didn't work out very well. We don't give that kind of autonomy. That's not what we called.
"We called zone. Play zone. One guy has got the outside, and one guy has got the inside. And there's a safety coming over to help, so we have three over two. And they changed it. So that's why it worked, because they put themselves in a very compromising position. That's not the call. It's disappointing."
Sure enough, you can see Mackensie Alexander walking over to give Ryan Carter some last-second instructions. Guessing that's what Venables was referring to.
We asked Venables was play bothered him the most from that fourth quarter.
"Couple of the underneath routes. And I don't know if it was the fourth quarter, but the wheel route late in the third or whenever that was. It's a stupid play. We're in a man coverage and our key is the back. The quarterback is doing whatever he is doing, and the guy just immediately took off. I thought maybe there was a pause and a hesitation. We owned it right away, but we're giving stuff away.
"Another time, we have a coverage where we're over the back and then we just let hte back run right by us. That was 24 yards. The 56-yard wheel route. They ran a 33-yard underneath route. We had been telling them all week they've got to cut, split, get inside, they're going to try to run away from you. The blitz was a little bit late. We're unblocked. He does a nice job of holding it, holding it, holding it and dropping it late. But we should have never gotten to that position.
"We were in another zone coverage, and these two guys run underneath and another is running back. We kind of chase it too deep, and there he goes 36 yards later. They out-leveraged us.
"The drop in the end zone they had, we're in a coverage that's a mirrored coverage. They get 2 by 2, they run a little bait concept. This side does it perfect, and this side over here does it exactly opposite of what you're supposed to do. And the guy is wide open. And they drop it.
"You work it, work it, work it and you eliminate all the gray area on what your key is and what you do. When they do this, we do that and that's it. There's no -- again, autonomy. 'Hey, if you think you should do this, go ahead and do that.' We don't do that. We're very defined. And if we're wrong, then we know how to correct it. That's a bad call for that. But if you execute it the right way, it's set up for success.
"Those are learning opportunities. We won the game, fortunately. Our guys, the positive thing is they immediately knew what happened. And that allows for the growth and improvement. If they don't get the concepts, if they don't take responsibility, you have a problem with the maturation as the season goes on.
"That won't be the last time we see those concepts. So when we're faced with them again, we've got to play them better. Hopefully we will."
Hope everyone out there is doing well this week. Well the Notre Dame video review is a particular challenge, because so much happened in this game and it's almost impossible to condense it all into a mere 10 clips. So the clips we have chosen represent some of the important themes that unfolded over the course of the game.
Let's get to it:
-- Right out of the gates, Deshaun Watson has that big run and this play certainly calls for some dissection. First of all, it wasn't like they drew up the play specifically for Watson to run it. He had several options on the play, which featured four receivers, one tight end and no running back. Deon Cain and Charone Peake are on the left. On the right, they run bubble action to Artavis Scott with Jordan Leggett and Germone Hopper in front.
We asked Jeff Scott to give some background on the play. Here's what he said:
"I've just got to be careful, because one of our deals is we don't really diagram a play or go into detail about a play. But what I would say in general is I think Deshaun, we've got some plays where we can give him multiple options. So whenever we go to empty, he has options to the field, he has options to the boundary, and he has options in the box."
Let's stop there to show you what Watson was seeing in the box:
Well, that's rather inviting.
It's a four-man box, largely because there are five receivers split wide. The linebacker cheats over to the field side, likely anticipating the bubble to Scott. Thus, the read is pretty darned easy: Attack the soft box.
And attack he did:
More Scott:
"With Deshaun, one of his strengths is his decision-making. And maybe some quarterbacks couldn't handle three different options. Defensively, especially when you're in your empty set and you spread them all out, there's a lot of things to cover. They have to kind of choose what they're going to defend. So for us, we felt like one of the three options would be successful. And that's really what we wanted to do on the first play was get off to positive yardage and try to get some momentum going.
"They had no linebacker in the box. Typically most people will leave a five-man box, with four linemen and one linebacker. But I think probably because of the respect they had for our screen game and how much screens we've thrown previous, they widened that one backer out of the box to the field to take away the quick screen to Scott. So it ended up being a four-man box."
-- Shaq Lawson was a major force in this game, particularly in the first quarter. One of the misconceptions about Lawson's dominant early showing was that he dominated stud left tackle Ronnie Stanley. Lawson did have some big-time plays against Stanley, but they came later. In the first quarter, Stanley spent a lot of time blocking inside guys and left Lawson to tight ends and pulling guards. Not a good move to try to block that dude with a tight end, as you can see here:
-- There aren't many defensive ends out there who can play both the give and the keep on the zone read. Right here in the Palmetto State over the past few years, we've had Vic Beasley, Jadeveon Clowney and now Lawson. Excellent job here:
This could be rather important Saturday when Justin Thomas runs the triple option Lawson's way.
-- Wayne Gallman is ascending, and not just because of his running. He has become a powerful blocker as well. This block right here is not the result of talent, athleticism or any other gift. It's the product of desire and effort:
We chatted with Gallman about this a few days ago to get his perspective. He said student assistant Terry Allen has played a role in helping him become a punishing blocker.
"Any question I have, I come to him or Coach (Tony) Elliott. Even C.J. Spiller, me and him contact each other. He texts me probably before every game. You know, that's what they look at. Especially NFL teams, they want to see how you are without the ball. That's a pretty big thing."
What kind of blocker were you two years ago?
"Probably not as good as I am now, nowhere as good. Blocking also involves knowing a defense, and knowing the full offensive play."
As a Wing-T back in high school, you weren't doing too much blocking were you?
"No. Probably faking and running into someone, pulling someone away or something like that. But nah."
Is that something that's been missing from this offense the last few years, having that powerful lead blocker and blitz-pickup guy?
"I don't think so. I think maybe some of the plays have changed. But Coach Elliott has always told the running backs, 'Know who you're blocking. Know this. Know that.' That's pretty big in his room. He's not going to play you if you don't know what you're doing and if he doesn't trust you 100 percent, and especially if he knows you're not going to play 100 percent without the ball in your hands."
Is that a lost art nowadays for running backs?
"In college, every team is different. But when you look at the NFL, that's something that they value and it's something they like and something they need. In college maybe not as much."
I asked Gallman about this block of Sheldon Day. It came on Watson's throw to Hunter Renfrow on the second touchdown drive. Does the block play a vital role in the play? Probably not. But it gives you a good indication of Gallman's nastiness without the ball in his hands.
Do you remember that block?
"Yeah. I busted his butt."
-- As we've noted, a huge, huge part of this game was Clemson's success at shutting down Notre Dame's running game in the first half. Brian Kelly couldn't get comfortable as a play-caller and that was the biggest reason why. Brent Venables did an excellent job of not only run-blitzing at the right time, but also bringing an extra guy into the box late -- after DeShone Kizer had already made his read of the defense.
Case in point is here with T.J. Green sneaking up and shooting through a gap:
And here:
What an asset to have two big, physical safeties in Green and Jayron Kearse. It's pretty much death for a team's running game when Venables makes the right call.
-- More on those first-down run stuffs. Check this out. Christian Wilkins, grown man.
-- So we can now universally agree that the loss of Mike Williams was a very big deal. It wasn't just on the deep ball that got picked, a sequence that probably would've been different had it been Williams instead of Peake.
We also see evidence of it on third-and-medium, conversions that were so often automatic the past four years when they'd throw it up for Nuk Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant or Williams.
Here's where that kind of receiver would've come in handy:
-- So yeah, that fourth quarter on defense. Not good. We could show you a bunch of videos on that, but we'll rely more on Venables' perspective from a chat we had with him earlier this week.
The conversation started off by asking him about the late rub route they ran for the touchdown that made it 24-22. It looked similar to the play Notre Dame ran last year at Florida State for the presumed victory, until the refs threw a flag for an illegal pick.
The fatal flaw of that play was the receiver just straight-up blocked a defensive back. Can't do that. You have to at least pretend you're making yourself available for a throw. Irish did a much better job of it on the play at Clemson.
The difference between the two plays was that at Florida State, the Irish went trips right and sprinted out Everett Golson to throw to an underneath receiver:
At Clemson, it was a two-receiver rub and a toss to the corner of the end zone:
Venables: "The one guy decides they're going to play it the way they shouldn't play it. Obviously that didn't work out very well. We don't give that kind of autonomy. That's not what we called.
"We called zone. Play zone. One guy has got the outside, and one guy has got the inside. And there's a safety coming over to help, so we have three over two. And they changed it. So that's why it worked, because they put themselves in a very compromising position. That's not the call. It's disappointing."
Sure enough, you can see Mackensie Alexander walking over to give Ryan Carter some last-second instructions. Guessing that's what Venables was referring to.
We asked Venables was play bothered him the most from that fourth quarter.
"Couple of the underneath routes. And I don't know if it was the fourth quarter, but the wheel route late in the third or whenever that was. It's a stupid play. We're in a man coverage and our key is the back. The quarterback is doing whatever he is doing, and the guy just immediately took off. I thought maybe there was a pause and a hesitation. We owned it right away, but we're giving stuff away.
"Another time, we have a coverage where we're over the back and then we just let hte back run right by us. That was 24 yards. The 56-yard wheel route. They ran a 33-yard underneath route. We had been telling them all week they've got to cut, split, get inside, they're going to try to run away from you. The blitz was a little bit late. We're unblocked. He does a nice job of holding it, holding it, holding it and dropping it late. But we should have never gotten to that position.
"We were in another zone coverage, and these two guys run underneath and another is running back. We kind of chase it too deep, and there he goes 36 yards later. They out-leveraged us.
"The drop in the end zone they had, we're in a coverage that's a mirrored coverage. They get 2 by 2, they run a little bait concept. This side does it perfect, and this side over here does it exactly opposite of what you're supposed to do. And the guy is wide open. And they drop it.
"You work it, work it, work it and you eliminate all the gray area on what your key is and what you do. When they do this, we do that and that's it. There's no -- again, autonomy. 'Hey, if you think you should do this, go ahead and do that.' We don't do that. We're very defined. And if we're wrong, then we know how to correct it. That's a bad call for that. But if you execute it the right way, it's set up for success.
"Those are learning opportunities. We won the game, fortunately. Our guys, the positive thing is they immediately knew what happened. And that allows for the growth and improvement. If they don't get the concepts, if they don't take responsibility, you have a problem with the maturation as the season goes on.
"That won't be the last time we see those concepts. So when we're faced with them again, we've got to play them better. Hopefully we will."
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