-Bumped. BN Eds.

For background, read parts on philosophy, the base zone key game, the snag/quick passing game, protecting base concepts, putting base concepts together, and dropback passing.

One major criticism of spread offenses is that they struggle in the red zone. I think there's some truth to that - you need to be able to run the ball downhill especially when you're inside the 10-yard line. Spread offenses are meant to create space and attack voids, but as you approach the goal line, you lose space. There's no vertical threat when you're inside the 5, so defenses can concentrate on stopping the run and the short passes.

Feel free to chime in with a comment below about this either way, as the stats aren't really all that conclusive - there was a mix of "spread" and "pro-style" teams in the top of the red zone efficiency rankings, so make of that what you will (also keep in mind those stat factor in FGs as red zone "success" - count only TDs and the rankings look fairly different). I think that plenty of other things affect how well you do in the red zone, as no matter what you run it's hard to overcome missed blocks, penalties, turnovers, etc in the red zone.

Either way, when you're inside the red zone, you have to change up your offensive philosophy no matter what you do. Mazzone's short-yardage/goal line package is going to look familiar as he uses the pistol formation, specifically with 3 backs in what is generally called the "pistol diamond".

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-Bumped. BN Eds.

So far I have posted about spread philosophy, the base zone key run/quick screen concept, snag, screens, and the quick passing game, and offensive adjustments (protecting the base concepts). That's enough to get the base stuff going, and it can be enough to put together some drives. Last components, X's and O's-wise, are the dropback passing game and the short-yardage game.

Many of the passing concepts used by ASU last season were fairly standard across college football - nothing groundbreaking or overly complicated. Like Air Raid teams, ASU liked to run plenty of shallow crossing routes, which helps to spread defenses across the field.

Unlike Air Raid teams, I wouldn't consider ASU a pass-first team. They threw it around when the ground game wasn't working, but their bread and butter stuff seemed to be the stuff I've covered so far - when they had problems running, like against Oregon and especially Boise State in the bowl game, they usually struggled. They seemed to want to work the inside run and the quick outside screen, and take a few shots downfield when the defense focused on stopping the short stuff. Osweiler generally wasn't putting the ball up in the air more than 30-35 times a game, and many of those passes were things like quick screens or short passes.

I don't have a lot on Mazzone's downfield passing game as TV camera angles are usually too tight to see receivers downfield, but I'll go into detail on a few.

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-Bumped. BN Eds.

Just heard Pagano is staying in SD, so here's to hoping that Mazzone does actually end up at UCLA as it has never been officially announced. Recap so far:

• Base philosophy - The point of the spread is to force the defense to widen laterally in order to run inside and throw downfield. They can align players out wide to force the defense to also line up wide and/or threaten the perimeter almost every play with the quick screen or swing route which means you'll usually have either a quick way to get the ball to the edge or a defender running full speed away from the middle of the field, which you can attack.
• Zone Key combines the quick screen with the inside zone game, so you force the defense to cover both the perimeter and the inside run. It's effective until the defense starts to bring DBs down to stop the run or the quick screen, which then you can go to the
• Snag/Quick passing game, that takes advantage of defenses that spread too far out - if they widen with the swing route, the QB can hit easy throws in snag routes and double slants/ins behind these guys jumping the swing routes
• When the defense tries to get cute and overplays inside run, outside screen, and short passing game, you can protect these base plays by attacking other areas of the field off of the same concept.

That's not the whole offense, but you've got a lot to choose from with just a few concepts and its enough to start putting an offense together. What makes this effective is how everything is integrated. These plays can be run out of the same formations, with the same motions. You force the defense to cover sideline to sideline in the underneath areas and put a lot of stress on the edge defenders.

ASU had a couple drives this season built entirely off of these concepts, with the quick screen in the flat showing every time (also, keep in mind ASU was far from the only team to show this - both teams last night, WVU and Clemson, combined their zone series with a quick edge screen, as did Oregon in the Rose Bowl). I've posted three series below where they ran nothing but zone key, snag, and some minor tweaks off these concepts - very simple stuff. They mix in some up-tempo mode, and tire out the defense by making them run back and forth across the field chasing the same swing routes over and over again; sometimes they throw it, sometimes they run inside, sometimes they throw snag, sometimes they run playaction and throw downfield.

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Bumped. -BN Eds.

In our first year in the pistol, pretty much everyone knew where we were going when we motioned a receiver across the formation (fly motion). We almost always faked a jet sweep to him and ran veer away from motion, and as the season went on, defenses realized that they could just load up to stop Franklin/Coleman up the middle or Prince/Brehaut to the outside. By itself, pistol veer is a fine concept, but you can't run it every play without throwing in some kind of constraint that prevents the defense knowing exactly where you're going to attack each time. We got better at this over time by mixing in some playaction, but that first year was painful when our opponents realized that they only really had to defend two players on the field.

You've got to be able to protect the base concepts. If you spend a lot of time practicing pistol reads, footwork, the mesh with the running back, and feature it in the offense, you want to be able to run it as much as possible. When you run your base concept, whether it's pistol veer, zone key/snag, or the old power O from I-backs, you need to have adjustments that allow you to put the ball in other players' hands and/or attack other areas of the field off of the same look. With the pistol veer this can include handing the ball off on the jet sweep or some kind of shovel pass to the F-back, or simple playaction, reverses, HB/WR passes, naked bootlegs, counters, whatever. If the defense wants to sell out to take away your base stuff, you've got to go attack the areas that they concede. You might get a big play, but more importantly, you let them know that they need to play you honest, and you can get back to running your base stuff.

This is where the offense starts to get fun. So far I've gone over philosophy, the zone/bubble series, and snag/quick passing game. That's the basis of the short offense - you can attack inside with the run, and when the defense gives up the flats in order to crash down on the inside run, you can hit the edge quickly with the key screen to widen them back out, and when they widen too far and overplay the swing route, you can hit the short pass, snag (there's a downfield passing game that I'll get to later, but this post ties the last two together). These three concepts protect each other as they distribute the ball to different players and attack different areas of the field, but Mazzone goes even further with a few other wrinkles. Below, I'll show a few examples of how Mazzone protects his base concepts by attacking other areas of the field off of the same look in order to prevent the defense from cheating.

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Bumped. -BN Eds.

Read Part I on Philosophy and Part II on the Zone With Bubble.

Snag is what Noel Mazzone was famous for long before he got to Arizona State. Here is Philip Rivers running it in his last college game, over and over and over and over. For a more in-depth look, check out the following articles:

• Snag Route: Noel Mazzone (NY Jets)
• Snag, stick, and the importance of triangles (yes, triangles) in the passing game
• West Coast Staples: Snag, Spot and Y-Stick
• Tressel’s new calling: Ball control . . . passing?

I'd suggest reading the first article to understand how snag works - I'll give a brief summary, but there's not much more I can add to that. Instead, I'll focus more on how snag fits in line with the base philosophy with the offense and other concepts in the quick passing game.

Snag can be run with two or three receivers. For 2-man Snag, it's a horizontal stretch of the perimeter defender - same guy that is attacked with the zone-bubble combo, same guy who has to adjust against spread formations. The back swings out of the backfield, similarly to the bubble screen look that Mazzone runs often. However, instead of blocking, the receiver steps inside as if running a slant, but plants his feet and settles once he crosses the first linebacker/safety. The read defender will either widen with the swing route, leaving the WR in open space, or stay with the snag route leaving the back with grass to the outside.

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Bumped. - BN Eds.

Part I on spread philosophy.

The zone read is usually a staple play of modern day offenses that are looking to spread defenses laterally in order to run the ball (Urban Meyer, Rich Rodriguez, Chip Kelly-type offenses). You can find breakdowns and video clips of this stuff all over the internet - pretty standard. It's usually either the back heading to one side or the QB to the other. One issue teams have faced, when playing against athletes with freakish acceleration on edge, is that the read player is athletic enough to play both options, by showing the QB a "give" read and then running down the back from behind. The angle between the DE's two options above is fairly narrow.

ASU (and other teams, including Oregon, Baylor, Iowa State) ran a variant of the zone read with a bubble screen on the backside in order to spread the defense even further. The base zone read used by ASU last year wasn't the typical read of the DE, where the QB decides to either give the ball to the back or run it himself. Instead, Mazzone combined the handoff to the back with a quick screen to the outside - bubble or outside "key" WR screen. Mazzone forces the defender to declare towards either the back up the middle, or the bubble/key screen to the sideline, which can span a distance of 20 feet or more. Note how much wider the angle is between the two options.

Either way, the goal of the play is in line with Mazzone's base philosophy - remove defenders from the box to allow him to run inside. With 5 OL, ASU was typically able to handle 6 defenders in the box. Backside DE was sometimes left unblocked, and sometimes it was a frontside LB - not sure what his blocking rules are vs each front, but the RBs seemed to be cutting off a defender and then looking to get upfield.

*Note: Hard for me to say definitively what Osweiler was reading on each play, all this is just my best guess based on watching the TV broadcast, checking his actions vs what the defense showed, and what makes sense. The offense is more complicated than what I have below, including checks and adjustments made by the OL and QB depending on what they see (but not too complicated - 18 year old kids are able to learn this stuff).

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Bumped. Mazzone to UCLA is not official yet but we may as well start delving into our new OC's offense. Great stuff in this post and we are looking forward to more. GO BRUINS. - BN Eds.

I'll be putting up a series of posts about Noel Mazzone's offense over the next week or so. Not sure how many parts or exactly what this will cover, but probably the base concepts, some playcalling stuff, some guesses as to how he'll implement his system into our offense next season.

I think the biggest change between Mazzone and what we've had in the past with Norm Chow and Mike Johnson running the pistol will be that Mazzone has an actual offense - one you can buy here. What I mean by that is that he's got an offensive philosophy, with a plan on how to stress and attack a defense, with plays that complement each other and adjustments to deal with defensive responses to stop his base plays. He doesn't carry many plays but they all are built off of each other. I don't think that we had that with the previous OCs as both Chow and Johnson had to learn the pistol offense on the job and each only had one season of experience running it. I'm not sure how big a role he plays in supporting his packaged offense, but typically (yes, other coaches do this with their schemes) it means that he's got experience installing it with various teams and has helped troubleshoot problems that teams around the country have when a certain concept is not working - all this is good experience.

On paper, I think it's a good hire, but on paper, Norm Chow looked great so we'll see. Having a great system is nice but you still have to be able to teach it and get your players to execute it - that's what coaching is. I do believe that the system works and that Mazzone is a talented and knowledgeable coach, but that's only part of the battle. I just watched Boise State destroy Arizona State in the Vegas Bowl - the plays made sense and the calls were good, but the players were missing blocks, making wrong reads, and committing dumb penalties. No matter what kind of offense you run, you're not going to succeed with those simple problems. I know no one is impressed with the ASU offense after watching tonight's game. But even Oregon's offense was held to 152 yards, 8 points, and 2 turnovers against Boise State in '09, and Chip Kelly's offensive scheme isn't bad.

Is the ASU offense the type of offense we'll see at UCLA next season? My guess is that it may look different on the surface - Mora seems to favor more of a "multiple/pro-style" attack, whatever that means - but under the hood, I'm fairly certain the philosophy and method of attacking defenses will remain similar. I'll put up a post with plenty of speculation and guessing towards the end of this series but I want to get the concrete stuff (what ASU actually did last season) out of the way first.

So that being said I'll start with Mazzone's offensive philosophy and the why.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Everyone probably knows by now what the pistol formation is supposed to look like ...

... but I don't think we actually got to see how the offense should look like until last Saturday. I'd argue that we haven't really gone full "pistol" (or revolver) offense until this week. I don't know if anyone noticed, but we didn't even get into the pistol formation until the 2nd or 3rd drive of the KSU game and we opened up vs Stanford with Prince under center, throwing off the "spacing" concept, which is something that Coach Chow has used in the past. Against Houston, I believe we were in pistol for every snap, minus a QB sneak. More importantly, we were running the basic bread and butter running plays within the scheme which I'll break down below.

I don't know if it was Nevada's performance over Cal on Friday that gave the coaches the confidence to sell out to the pistol, but I'm thankful they did. I don't think that it is a scheme that you can dabble in, I think that it's one that you've got to rep over and over and that you will live and die by. If you pick one scheme, a series of plays that complement each other and work together, and master it, you will do well, but if you try to mix and match and try to do too much, I think you will struggle.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Previous: 3-Deep Coverage: Basics, 3-Deep Coverage: Keys, 3-Deep Coverage: Technique

This should be the last installment on the 3-deep system. If you read and understood the other three parts, you should have a good idea of the basic system, philosophy, and technique used to cover the field. But to summarize:

1. Deep zones divided into thirds with players also covering underneath
2. Defend the field inside-out - protect the middle
3. Weak against 4-verticals, seam routes, a lot of crossing routes, and in the flats
4. Defenders will use pattern-read principles to figure out the most dangerous threat to their zone

If you are a 3-deep team you can't run the same thing over and over. So in this last part, I'll show some of the ways you can change things up to present the offense with different looks while still using this framework. NCAA regs put pretty strict limits on practice time - even HS coaches have more time to work with players - so the more multiple you can be while still using the same technique, the better. You can move guys around and swap assignments among positions, but it's all still the same system and based on the same technique.

Of course, none of this matters if you can't get the basic fundamentals down - pursuit, tackling, block destruction, and coverage. Below are some cut-ups of basic 3-deep covered in the past 3 posts - see if you can spot where the breakdowns occur on the plays where the offense has success against our defense.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Previous: 3-Deep Coverage: Basics and 3-Deep Coverage: Keys

If you read the last two installments on 3-deep coverage, you should have a pretty good idea of what this looks like. However, I didn't really touch on technique at all, which is the most important thing. You can't do anything unless you can teach it and make it work on the field.

To keep things simple I'll work with the basic cover 3 below. Against the run, to the 2WR side, you have "sky" force (strong safety) and to the TE side you have "buzz" force (linebacker). Since UCLA usually showed the 2-deep look and rotated a safety down at the snap we'll go with that. The interior 6 defenders (boxed in green) fill the gaps and force the ball to spill outside (defending the middle of the field first), and the free safety rotates to the deep middle. Rough pass drops are in blue, the basic 3-deep and 4-under.

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Previous: 3-Deep Coverage: Basics

Below are what I believe to be the most important keys of running a successful 3-deep coverage. These are mainly related to pass coverage - the only major keys in stopping the run are that the middle needs to be solid and that the force players cannot get beat outside, which is pretty much universal. 

Keys

1. The middle of the field has to be covered.

If you can't defend the middle of the field in 3-deep it will be a long day. The big picture is to defend "inside-out", which means you must be solid in the middle and push the offense outside. The ball travels further when the QB throws outside. 

A throw outside to the WR has to travel further than one to the TE over the middle. Longer distance = longer time = more time for you to get there. So you want to worry more about the slot receiver doing deep and cover the immediate vertical threat (see Key #2 below) before dealing with the WR to the far left on the bench route. Against this play (and I'll explain technique in another post), you'd want the CB squeezing the deep route with help from the FS to the inside, while the OLB to that side would be preventing the immediate throw to the slot and then sliding underneath the out route. As he is in the passing lane, the QB cannot fire a quick "bullet" pass. The only way he can hit the out is by putting some air under the ball and taking some velocity off the ball; this gives both the OLB and the CB time to react to the out route. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Defense is as simple as:

1. Coverage (how do you defend the pass)
2. Outside Run support (how do you defend the outside run game/screen game and force the ball back inside to the other 10 guys, who will be the outside "force" defender)
3. Interior Run fits (how do you fill each interior gap up front with a defender - if there is an open gap, then the offense has an easy path to the secondary)

Coverage determines the defense - a coverage sets the play of the front, tells your guys how you will defend the pass and also tells them how they will defend the run. Below are the three components of a defense.

1. Deep defenders cannot have run responsibility - they are coverage first. If your safeties are aligning at 15 yards to defend deep halves of the field in Cover 2 Zone, you cannot also ask them to come up hard against the run - it's just too much ground to cover.

2. The outside underneath defenders are the "force" defenders who cannot be beat outside and are the outside run support - who they are depend on the coverage. If you run Cover 2, you'll need corners who are strong enough to hold that edge and squeeze outside runs back inside, where the help is. However, if you run Cover 3, then your corners will have no run responsibility and it will be a safety and an OLB that will have to be the force defenders.

3. The other defenders are left to cover the remaining 6 gaps up front (Center-Guard, Guard-Tackle, and Tackle-TE) on each side and are interior run defenders. You will also need a cutback defender backside - in Cover 2 this will probably be the 7th man in the box, and in  Cover 3 this will probably be the backside force defender.

Your force defenders depend on the coverage. Corners may be force in Cover 2, but you cannot ask them to play force in Cover 3 since they are dropping deep. From there you can figure out the gaps you have to fill and which players will fit into each gap. And then you can figure out where and how to line 'em up and put your players in alignments where they will be able to do their job. Doesn't matter if you're in a 4-3, 3-4, 3-3, 4-4, 5-2, 6-2, whatever. You can call a guy a defensive end or a linebacker, and put him in a 2 or a 3 point stance, but what really matters is what you are doing with him after the snap. If you say you run a 4-3 defense, but base out of Cover 2, it will play differently than if you base out of Cover 3. If you line up in a 3-4 and run Cover 2, it will look pretty similar. It starts with the coverage and ends with the front/alignment, rather than the other way around.

So what does this have to do with UCLA?

Last season I saw two primary coverages - 3-Deep and Quarters. It's pretty tough to pick out coverages from watching from a TV broadcast but that's what it looked like to me. We ran others besides those two but those seemed to be the most common. It appeared that we started out the season with more Quarters and shifted to more of a 3-Deep team (there are some similarities, technique-wise). For a little bit about Quarters you can check this writeup from the EagleBank Bowl. This is what we were running when we gave up that long pass on the first drive of the EagleBank Bowl, as well as Jahvid Best's rushing and receiving TDs against us last season. Maybe those of you who check out spring ball will be able to tell what we will open up next year with after reading through some of this stuff. Since we ended the season with 3-Deep I'll go through it below and probably throughout the next week. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

This is the third part of a video of Coach Rick Neuheisel giving a clinic on how he teaches his QBs to break down coverages. Also see: Part 1: 1-High Safety Defense and Part 2: 2-High Safety Defense

Vertical Reads

Coach Neuheisel discussed how he used a vertical read (high-low or low-high) against a 2-high safety defense that has 5 underneath defenders. In this clip he talks about how he uses a vertical read against a 1-high safety defense in a flood to one side of the field. This is very similar to what Norm Chow was talking about here. You have one deep defender that is ran out of the play by a streak (can be a CB in man or a deep 1/3 defender). That leaves the 2 on 1 with a corner route and a flat route. There are three receivers that are more or less in a vertical plane and the QB just works his way down the sequence. Peek at the streak if the QB likes the "one on one-ness of it", as Neuheisel says, and then throw off the SCIF defender. 

See below for the videos.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

This is the second part of a video of Coach Rick Neuheisel giving a clinic on how he teaches his QBs to break down coverages. Also see: Part 1: 1-High Safety Defense and Part 3: Vertical Reads and Trigger Drills

2-High Safety Defense

via smartfootball.com

2-high safety defenses are coverages that have the middle of the field open and at least two deep defenders. If you are running cover 2 with two deep safeties then you will probably have 5 underneath defenders, so the thought process has to be different than if you were attacking cover 3 as in part 1 of the video. 

If you have 3 deep and 4 underneath then you can work the underneath zones and find a 2 on 1. If you have 2 deep and 5 under then you have to work vertical as it is a lot harder to get 2 on 1 matchups - the defense has as many defenders as you have receivers, and they are not spaced out as far. However, there are usually only two deep players. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

This is the first part of a video of Coach Rick Neuheisel giving a clinic on how he teaches his QBs to break down coverages. Also see: Part 2: 2-High Safety Defense and Part 3: Vertical Reads and Trigger Drills

This post about Norm Chow's clinic talk discussed his basic philosophy on the passing game by putting a defender in such a position where he has to defend against two routes. It is a 2 on 1 situation and the QB simply has to read one defender to figure out how to throw it to. However, most of the time things aren't as simple as a 2 on 1 - sometimes you will get a 5 on 4, and it's more complicated to figure out where to go with the ball. I have a great video of Coach Neuheisel, from when he was the coach at Washington, putting on a clinic in Arizona on QB reads.

The complete video is about 40 minutes long so I split it up by coverage and I'll post each segment over the next couple days (there are 5 total) with some markup to help you figure out what's going on. I think that Coach Neuheisel already does a great job of explaining things so I don't have much to add.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

I read the transcript of this AFCA presentation by Coach Chow about BYU's old passing game awhile back, but as I've been looking over tapes of the 2009 season (didn't have a lot of time during the football season but now I've got too much time) I figured it would be a good idea to go back and take a look at what Coach Chow's done in the past.

From the AFCA presentation, here are Chow's basic tenets of the passing game.

1. Protect the QB. No surprise here as Chow is a former lineman, and it all starts up front. We've had problems with this in the last two seasons, as last season we were giving up about 2 sacks a game, although my gut feeling is that we were better than in 2008. Chow is a believer in making sure you have enough guys staying in to protect. Last season we seemed to often err on the side of caution in this regard - there were many times when we had more blockers than rushers - although there were also times when we had the number advantage but we were just flat out beat. The TE, backs, and QB also have to be a factor in protection. Keep in mind the defense can always potentially rush one more player than the offense can block (10 blockers + QB vs. 11 rushers) so the QB has to be smart enough to figure out who the potential unblocked defender will be and throw hot.

2. Control the ball with the pass. Doesn't mean you pass 50 times a game, although Chow's BYU offenses were pass-first. They had a fairly limited running game that was mostly draws, counters, and traps to use when the defense was selling out against the pass. If they drop 8 and rush 3 then you have to be able to run and force the defense to play you honest, so you can go back to the pass. Last season it seemed that Chow shifted more towards the run to maintain possession, especially towards the end of the year when Chane Moline got a lot more touches - carrying the ball as well as in the short passing game.

3. Maintain balance with the run and the pass. You have to be able to do both...I don't think anyone would argue that.

4. Take what the defense gives you. I really like this quote by Coach Chow, and I think that this is the most important thing for any coach to remember:

We’d be lying if we said we sat up in the box and knew what coverages were being run. What we try to do is take a portion of the football field, the weak flat for example, and we will attack that until we can figure out what the defense’s intentions are. Then we try to attack the coverage that we see. It is very difficult to cover the whole field. We are not going to try to fool anybody. We are going to take little portions of the field and try to attack them until the defense declares what it intends to do.

You can't know everything that the defense is going to do. It would be foolish to think that you can figure out exactly what the defense is doing and attack their weaknesses. All you can really do is focus on the small, manageable things and break up the field into portions to attack. 

You can line up in a certain look, such as two receivers to a side, and see how the defense reacts to that - do they flip a corner over, do they bump a LB out, do they drop a safety down? How do they react to routes over the middle by the receivers? You poke and probe to see what they intend to do - this is the purpose of scripting plays at the beginning of a game - and see how they react. If you notice that the safety and underneath defenders are very aggressive on the shallow cross, then you run drive, with a shallow cross and a 12-yard dig route over top in the space that was vacated by the safety. You are only attacking that area with a vertical stretch of the safety. Your QB may peek backside to see if he has a favorable one-on-one matchup, then he will read the drive concept, then he will dump it off to the back for three yards or scramble if things do not look good.

5. Keep it simple. Doesn't necessarily mean simple plays, but simple assignments as well. There's such thing as being multiple and complex to keep the defense guessing, and there's being multiple and complex to keep your own players guessing. As with the point above, you don't want your QB standing back there and trying to figure out every aspect of the defensive coverage - that's not practical. All you really need to do is focus on the area of the field that you're attacking. I think it serves you better to be able to do a handful of things and do them well. Chow: 

A few years ago, I was talking to a former NFL coach who has since retired. He said, "What is the comfort level of your quarterback in a critical situation? Third and four situation, what is the comfort level...Simply, how many throws does your quarterback feel confident making when it is third and four and you have to make the first down?" I said, "Maybe seven or eight." Then I turned and asked him, "What about you and your quarterback?" He said, "Two." This is an NFL coach coaching an NFL quarterback. That has always stayed with me. We really feel strongly that we need to KISS our offense.

You still present a complex offense to the defense by running the same concepts but changing personnel groupings, formations, motions, and by tagging a play (changing one route from the base concept). With all the possible permutations, an offense that features only a handful of passing concepts can appear to have hundreds of different plays. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

This is a follow up to the Overview of Zone Blocking.

As I wrote before, zone blocking is probably the most common run blocking scheme in football today. It's a big part of most offenses, but every team uses it differently in their offense. I'm going to take a look at how a few Pac-10 teams use the zone concept. This will include the standard IZ/OZ (inside/outside zone) and some of the stuff Oregon and other spread-to-run teams have done out of the shotgun with the zone read and the gun midline option. But first, some general theory.

The defense always has a man advantage on the offense. Each side has 11 guys, but the offense always has one ballcarrier. If you lined up 10 OL and a back, and snapped it to him and let him run, every defender would be able to be blocked except for one (see image below). There will always be the back's counterpart who is unblockable on paper. You are successful running the ball if you can control who this unblocked defender is and stash him so far away from the ball that he cannot make the play. In the first play below, the FS is the unblocked defender. If everyone hits their blocks the FS will be able to reach the RB for little gain. In the second play, the FS is forced to respect the backside passing threats due to alignment is able to be blocked by a WR, so the unblocked defender is now backside up on the LOS - it will be very hard for him to make the tackle.

If a team uses a quarterback, then there are now two unblocked defenders - the ballcarrier and the QB who hands off. Below I've got a picture of the 2-back power we ran against Cal last season. Everyone is accounted for in the box, and there are 2 WRs and 4 DBs - 2 of them will be unblocked. Notice how the WRs are not split out very wide - for a defense this is a pretty good indicator that they are looking to block inside on a linebacker or a safety. Sure enough, they head inside to block the two safeties, and the CBs are left unblocked, and Franklin goes 74 yards.

So how does this relate to the zone? Assuming that you're not doing anything fancy, there is the one natural unblocked player deep, the free safety. The backside end is the second unblocked player, since everyone is stepping to their playside gap. However, on IZ, you need to find a way to block him, since the ball is looking to break inside and possibly cutback - he can easily make the tackle in the backfield if he's unblocked. One of the major differences in how teams use the zone comes to how they deal with this backside EMOL, and since he is basically the QB's counterpart, many teams use the QB to "block" him.

One of the early adaptations to force this backside DE or LB to "stay at home" was the bootleg by the QB. When the Denver Broncos were famous for popularizing the zone scheme, they began to bootleg the QB outside to prevent the EMOL from crashing down on the back. The threat of a bootleg allowed the QB to "block" the DE, even if he didn't have the ball, because the Broncos did in fact leave the ball in their QB's hands many times. If the DE is respecting the QB bootleg he cannot crash down on the back, and you can instead block the safety instead of worrying about the backside DE. They would run zone until the backside defender started to crash down, and then leave the ball in the QB's hands on the bootleg to do some damage and force the DE to play "honest". See here, here, here, and here and watch how this unblocked player crashes down on the back - he is essentially taking himself out of the play without the offense committing a blocker.

I got a pretty good idea of what you will see out of the Pac-10 teams in regards to the zone play from watching this season, as I got to see every Pac-10 team play at least once except for Washington State. Below are some of the wrinkles teams commonly use with the zone and some examples of these teams running them. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

I'm going to explain the zone blocking scheme that is probably one of the most common, if not the most common, run blocking scheme in football today. Zone blocking is nothing new and there are countless articles and videos floating around the internet and in football broadcasts that have given great explanations, so much of this will probably be familiar to those of you who watch a lot of TV. I will attempt to give a general overview of zone principles as well as some general keys to defending them. Next time I want to take a look at specifics of the zone play in the Pac-10, especially the Oregon run game as it was requested by another poster, and responses to the ways teams have used this concept. But before that, I would just like to give the big picture of what zone blocking entails and why teams have moved to this concept in the run game.

The basic premise behind zone blocking is that every blocker is responsible for a gap rather than a man - its the same principle behind zone pass protection. In a nutshell, each offensive lineman has to block the man who threatens his playside gap. I'll get into more detail into how this works below the jump. To get an idea of what this looks like in practice, here is an example of an outside zone play being run by the Texans against the Colts from a few years back. If you are watching a game on TV and you see the whole OL step one way on a run play like in the video, then it's probably a zone play. Watch how they all step to the left and try to "reach" the defenders to wall them off from the back. 

Notice that the DE and DT to the left both slant back inside. The TE arc releases downfield to block the safety (the FB is probably assigned to block the first LB). LT #74's first responsibility is to block the man threatening his playside gap, the DE over the TE. Since he slants across his face backside, he passes him off to the next guy, LG #69, and climbs to LB level. The LG would originally block the DT since he is shaded in his gap, but that DT slants inside as well and so he passes him off to the center. The center has no one in his playside gap but sees the DT slanting in and picks him up. On the backside, the RG blocks the guy in his gap, and the RT has no one so climbs to LB level. Notice the DE all the way to the right is unblocked and runs laterally down the LOS and almost makes the tackle. If you've watched any college football over the past few years you probably know how offenses have dealt with this guy but I'll get into him later on.

Below are the blocks on paper (left) and how they actually played out (right). I'm not sure how the Texans would have played a 6 tech DE that did not slant. It looks like to me that the TE was set to arc release no matter what. Either way the offense would probably try to kick him out towards the sidelines since it is impossible to reach him with either the LT or the FB. You can see the OL still take their first steps to the same area even though they ultimately end up blocking different defenders depending on how the defense moves at the snap.

Below I'll be talking about 1) inside and outside zone differences, 2) blocking rules in detail and some general coaching points, and 3) how to stop it.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Since this post turned out a lot longer than I expected, I'll break it up into two parts - Part I dealing with the offensive side of the ball and Part II dealing with the defense.

Defense

Now that you've seen how this play is run from the offensive side, I'll take a look at what needs to happen to stop this play. However, I'll first explain how run defense is supposed to function and how the moving parts work together, as things are a little more complicated than "everyone chase the guy with the ball". I'll try to keep this short and simple (maybe look at it in more detail some other day). 

Some think that the only way to stop the run is to "load up the box", put "8 in the box", drop the safeties down, etc. If you do some counting in the diagrams below and in part I, you'll notice that there are 7 defenders in the "box" and 7 blockers (5 OL + 1 TE + 1 FB). All things being equal, and assuming the offense hits all their blocks correctly, the offense should have a blocker for each defender. The ball will be in the secondary if none of your guys can shed their blocks. They are not going to run a play where there is a defender accounted for. So as a defense you need to figure out a way to a) occupy two blockers with one player, and/or b) use players outside of the box as part of the run defense scheme and funnel the ball towards them since they are not accounted for by the offense. To get an idea of what that looks like in practice, peek at the diagrams below and imagine the NT occupying both the guard and center to prevent them from reaching the MLB - you've just exchanged 1 for 2 and you have a free man at the point of attack. Or imagine every defender hitting his block, but maintaining inside leverage to force the ballcarrier to bounce the ball outside where you have a waiting defender, or keeping outside leverage to force the ballcarrier to bounce back and reverse his field, where you have a safety waiting.

While it's not necessary to simply have 8 players aligned in the box before the snap, you need at least that many responsible for run support if you want a sound defense (three interior gaps to each side of the center, an "alley" player, and a "force" player - explained below). To stop the ball, you need to have your defense working together to close the interior gaps - generally every gap is accounted for by a defensive player depending on where the ball goes (what kind of "flow" the defense reads). 

Many modern defenses are looking to "spill" the ball outside to the force player, and defend inside-out, which means that you force the ball to move east-west. As athletes have gotten faster I think more teams have gone to this model as you have 230 pound linebackers who are fast enough to scrape over top on the spill. The opposite of this is to "squeeze", which means to force the ball north-south.

Squeezing is in blue and spilling is in green. The LBs read direct flow to the weakside B gap as it is an iso play. In the first example (blue), the WLB hits the FB at or beyond the LOS with his inside shoulder, taking away the outside and squeezing the ball back inside. NT must feel the double team quickly as they are looking to combo him to the MLB. If NT can split the double he can make the tackle as the ball is squeezed to him; otherwise he needs to sacrifice himself and create a pileup to keep the MLB clean. He cannot get driven back - if he can't beat the double team he needs to drop to a knee and create a pile, hopefully taking out both blockers.

In the second example (green), the defense is spilling the ball outside. WLB contacts the blocker using his outside shoulder to take away the inside and spill the ball outside. The MLB scrapes over the top outside to avoid the double team (it will be tough for either OL to block him since he is moving quickly outside) and makes the tackle as the ball is spilled outside of the WLB. Spilling takes more speed on defense but the beauty of it is that it allows you to string the ball laterally which buys you time for the secondary to close down. However you just need to make sure you have someone outside to catch the spill.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Since this post turned out a lot longer than I expected, I'll break it up into two parts - Part I dealing with the offensive side of the ball and Part II dealing with the defense.

Now that the season is over and I have some spare time, I'm going to go back to take a look at the 2009 season, starting with the run game (offense and defense). The power play is one of the most common and versatile run plays at any level of football, so I'll begin there. This is the general principle used on Johnathan Franklin's 74-yard TD run against Cal this season and was fairly common throughout the '09 season. I'll explain how it is blocked in part I and then how to defend it from the other side of the ball in part II.

Offense

Here is what it looks like on paper:

The basic idea is that you have everyone blocking "down" (away from the playside) except for the fullback, who kicks out the end man on the line (EMOL) and the backside guard (BSG) who pulls and leads through. EMOL and the first linebacker are usually left unblocked for these two players to pick up. The hole is supposed to open up off the FB's kickout block, as the playside tackle and guard (PST and PSG) combo a defensive tackle to the second backer (the first is picked up by the guard). Everyone else just blocks down as you'd expect, although sometimes the BST has to make a tough fill block vs a 3 tech backside with a covered center (the bottom right diagram). Basically you have a wall of blockers blocking down one way and your two players kicking out and leading through the other way, creating a hole for the back. If you have 6 OL and a FB = 7 blockers and the defense has 7 in the box, everyone is accounted for; if they have 8 in the box then you will have an unblocked man backside and probably need some sort of bootleg action to keep him honest.

This is just the basic premise of the concept - one to kick out, one to lead through, everyone else blocking backside - you can take this idea and run it in any way you can dream up. You can run it out of an I-formation as shown above, or as a counter play (in Franklin's TD the FB was offset weak and the guard instead kicked out and the FB led through), as the famous "counter trey" made famous by the Redskins in the 80s, without a FB but with an H-back pulling across, out of the shotgun, with your QB as a counter from the shotgun, as part of the Wildcat series, and in a video game. You can switch up assignments and have tackles, guards, H-backs, fullbacks pulling and/or lead blocking for you with this concept. Very simple and very versatile, and almost everyone runs it in some form or another. There is also a one-back variant that does not feature a fullback; the guard typically does the kickout and there is no lead-through.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Happy New Year everyone. After a 2nd viewing of the EagleBank bowl I wrote this up. Like everyone else I was curious as to the "adjustments" made by the coaches at halftime vs Temple. So I imported the UCLA defensive snaps off of the play-by-play data into my scouting spreadsheet as well as some info from the tape.

From watching the game live, I noticed that we tended to stay in either "quarters" or "sky" coverage throughout most of the game (hard to tell with the camera angles). Generally that means we had a safety rolling down looking to play run support for at least 8 in the box. Sky is meant to get 8 in the box with a safety rotating down into the box and 3-deep behind it (although there are many ways you can do it). Quarters is a flexible coverage that can get you a 9-man front with the ability to also cover 4 vertical routes; the safeties are run-first players and only bail to deep coverage if their key goes vertical.

One change I saw in the second half is that we ditched quarters (or what looked like it - TV angles were tough to tell). It's my favorite coverage, but it is very practice-intensive as players need to "pattern read". For a clinic on that watch Alabama in the BCS Title game as Nick Saban is a guru.

I think that the deep pass down the middle on the first drive really set the tone defensively for us. We gave up the deep pass early on the first drive on quarters, a pretty aggressive call. You're not sending extra guys across the line but you are still playing with fire, looking to stop the run with 9 in the box which is a sensible call vs Temple. Safeties make it work as they have to read #2 (2nd man from the outside) The safeties both were playing run, both stepped up due to the playaction, as both were reading the TEs and Temple kept both their TEs in to block. They released the back on a wheel to the left which Rahim Moore picked up, while Anthony Dye, the other safety, dropped down to cover a crossing route, leaving the middle wide open. Quarters became an invert-2, with a post right down the middle - a bad situation if you have two deep safeties, even worse if you only have two deep corners.

I have no way of knowing what each guy was supposed to do, but if I'm coaching the D and we run quarters I would like Moore at free safety to look at #1 on the post and pick off that pass rather than chasing the back on the wheel - that should be the Sam backer's (Ayers) responsibility to carry #3 out of the backfield and wall him off until help gets there. Dye does what he should've done and picked up the crossing route; once that receiver declares that he is not going vertical then the CB should be looking at deep half, which he does, and he (Price) eventually makes the tackle.

Other than this breakdown our first drive was not all that bad. The TD pass was against a pretty generic cover 2 with a stunt up front, they just threw a corner route to the TE in the space between the corner and the safety, ran a basic smash concept which is perfect against that look. I think that giving up that big gain early might have made us play a little more tentatively.

Charts and more after the jump.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

This is a follow up to this. I was finally able to get ahold of Temple game footage - Temple vs. Penn State back in September. After skimming through the Penn State game (an away game when PSU was ranked #5 in the nation at the time and Temple lost 31-6), I came away even more impressed by Temple. 

Offensively, they showed more than they did vs. Buffalo as they passed quite a bit towards the end when they were down by a few scores. Their QB showed the ability to get the ball downfield although he struggled to complete some short passes to the flats (also due to some drops by his backs).

Defensively, they struggled to stop the run of Penn State, and gave up 31 points, but their defense looked solid at times and played tough. I wrote about how they are good at stemming their defense pre-snap and timing blitzes - below is a look at some of that.

Special Teams impressed me in the Buffalo game and they looked very well coached in this one as well, especially on the coverage units. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Temple isn't on TV a lot around here...the only game I could find was the Buffalo-Temple game back in September, on ESPN 360. I skimmed through the first half to get a feel for Temple and imported play-by-play data from ESPN into Excel to crank out some graphs.

Basic Info:

The first I heard of Coach Al Golden was when his name was mentioned in the UCLA coaching search a few years back. He is a defensive guy; has experience coaching linebackers. Temple looks pretty solid defensively; as you would expect. Offensively, they are pretty run-heavy. In the game I watched, they ran the ball 10 straight times to open the game, and didn't pass until a 3rd-and-long. They didn't open up the playbook a bit until the 3rd drive, when they threw twice and then a busted play on 3rd down that looked like an attempted screen but led to an awful throw and interception. Their special teams are better than ours - they have some great effort guys on coverage and get downfield in a hurry. They block well; their returners had some space to work with - against Buffalo they ran back a kickoff for a score.

Tendencies and Statistics:

Temple likes to run the ball, for the year they have run about twice as many times as they have passed the ball. They rotate a few backs in but they do have a 1,000 yard rusher (more on that below). Their QB looks a little shaky and has thrown a few bad picks. I took data off ESPN.com from the first two games that I was able to get (Penn St. Buffalo) and their last three leading up to the bowl (Kent St. Akron, Ohio).

More below the jump.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

(Forgot to actually post this a few days ago)...I didn't get to see the USC-Stanford game - had no idea what had happened until later on that day. But from what I heard, Stanford had run all over the SC defense. So I went back to take a look at how Stanford was able to rack up 325 yards against SC. I tried to compare the SC run defense to what they did against Cal, but Cal rarely ran the ball as they fell behind early and there isn't really any good film of that. The Stanford is the only complete game I've seen this year of SC, but it's the worst I've seen a Pete Carroll-coached defense play.

Stanford didn't really do anything special - the bulk of their running plays were just a simple power play that everyone runs, including us in the Wildcat, and a run play out of shotgun where they pull the backside tackle and lead through in front of the back. Overall, though, it was just basic stuff where USC did indeed just got driven off the ball (that's what I heard although I did not really believe it until I saw it). Two things that really stood out to me was Stanford's brute power on the line, combined with the use of the unbalanced line and substitutions, and SC players getting out-leveraged/taking weird angles/etc. 

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

I meant to do this last week but I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of the UCLA-Washington game until now. So here's a look at some of the plays UCLA ran against UW and earlier from the Wildcat package. I did not get to see the WSU game, and don't have a copy, but from what I heard they used it there as well. For some background see this article on the Power, Zone, and the Wildcat - what Cal did against USC is pretty much what UCLA has been doing the past month or so.

What the Wildcat Is and Is Not

Against UW UCLA lined up unbalanced - with a tackle uncovered.

QB.................................TE...T...G...C...G...T...................

...........WR.......................................................................................RB

.........................................FB

.........................................................RB

The right tackle is eligible, the TE is not as he is covered by the QB. Some teams will swap the RT for the TE, to hide the TE on the right side and two tackles on the left for extra muscle. From what I saw UCLA did not, as this way you are not committing 100% to running to the left.

Fly motion is the speed sweeper coming across, timed so that he crosses the man receiving the snap just before the ball gets there. He is the key to the Wildcat, as without this, you just have a back lined up in shotgun. With this player there is an immediate threat to the outside the moment the ball is snapped, and the defense has to respect that.

The most obvious trait is the running back behind center and the QB split wide. The reason why teams leave the QB on the field is that it doesn't tip off their hand until they line up. However I think that this is the least important aspect of the series. If you have an athletic QB, you can leave your QB behind center and run the Wildcat, or you can take him off the field completely and run the Wildcat - doesn't matter, he does not make the series go. You just need someone who can not only run but take a hit back there to receive the snap. On TV they will call Wildcat every time a back is lined up to receive the snap, but that doesn't automatically make it a Wildcat - for example, some teams just snap it to a back and let him run, that's just called getting the ball to an athlete and letting him work.

The least obvious trait, but the most important, in my opinion, is the series-based approach. You have plays that complement each other. The Wildcat is not a formation, play, or substitution package; it's a series. Much like you have the series of inside zone, outside zone, bootleg off a zone look, playaction rollout off a zone look - you have plays that begin with the same action (fly sweep across the formation) and several different options afterwards. The Wildcat works because you can run your base play of power up the middle a few times until the defense cheats in, give on a speed sweep to force them to respect the outside, run counter to force them to respect the backside, and then pound it up the middle on your base power play again. If you have a PA pass installed you can use that as well, but for a series like this I don't even think you need to go that far unless you plan to use it heavily.

The Wildcat is not a trick play or a gimmick - it is structurally sound, possibly moreso than a inside zone run play where you are bootlegging your QB out and counting on him being able to draw attention from the backside DE. It uses all the same basic schemes that teams use, like power and zone. I think that people who don't really understand what is going on are against it because they don't really understand it - but if you take a look it isn't really a giant shift from what teams have been doing the past decade. If you watch the Dolphins at all, they have almost brought the Wildcat series full-circle, and brought that 4th trait to what almost looks like a conventional NFL offense minus the personnel substitutions, and if/when Pat White takes over it basically will be a conventional NFL offense based on the speed sweep with an athlete at QB.

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