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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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

I haven't re-watched the Arizona or Oregon State tape yet - that's what I really wanted to take a look at - so I'll update this when I get ahold of copies of those two games, since I believe we ate about 4 sacks apiece in each of those games. The below is only for SDSU through the Cal game.

I believe that offensive success begins up front, so I put together some cutups of common pass protection schemes used by UCLA over a few games. Norm Chow is a former offensive lineman, so you know that he understands the importance of the OL. 

Gap vs. Man vs. Combo

Pass protections generally fall into two categories: zone or man, just like run blocking and coverage. Just like those there are also variations that combine the two. Gap protections have linemen responsible for a gap, and works well against defenses that like to stunt and twist. Man protections work well when you want to make sure that your linemen are blocking linemen, and your backs are blocking linebackers, instead of vice versa. Combo protections involve several linemen using gap principles and several using man principles.

At the top is an example of a 5-man protection that uses man principles, with the tackles locked up on the defensive ends and the interior linemen responsible for the 3 defenders. Generally they will "zone" those three defenders but it usually works out to the RG taking the DT and the C/LG picking up the NT and the LB if he rushes. The offense has 5 men in the route with 5 OL to block 5 rushers.

Next is a 6-man gap scheme where the line "slide" protects to the left, the TE releases, and the back replaces him. The problem is that you occasionally will end up with a back blocking a DE. Another problem is that the back cannot really get out into the route with this type of scheme - if you run a 6-man slide protection scheme, you will have only 4 men in the route, as if you release a back you will have a hole in your zone...the guys you decide to leave in have to stay in.

Combo protection at the bottom uses a half gap/half man system with the back reading linebackers. In this example, the offense locks up the LT man up on the DE. After the gap in the defense (red dashed line), the OL will slide protect away from the call side (right). There are 4 linemen to pick up 5 possible rushers. However the back will "check" the LBs and pick them up if they come - if not he can get out into the route on a "check release". If M comes and S drops, he can pick up M; if S comes and M drops, he can pick up S, and if both come, he will pick up the innermost guy, M. In this case the QB has to be aware that there are 5 possible defenders that could threaten the right side while he only has 4 potential blockers - if both M and S comes he needs to know that he has to get rid of the ball quickly as the back will be looking to pick up the blitz from inside to out (inside = more immediate threat).

Above is a good angle that shows Stanford running combo protection against us. We have 7 immediate threats and they have a max of 6 potential blockers; one must be accounted for by the QB's "hot" read (probably Ayers with something to the TE). We end up rushing only 4 with a stunt and they end up protecting with only 5, the bare minimum.

Note that 4 Stanford OL (LT to RG) step laterally to their left at the snap, while the RT moves backwards to block Korey Bosworth. We run a stunt against the "gap" protection side, and it gets picked up as no one is chasing defenders around, they are all covering their gap. Gerhart steps up callside, "checks" Kyle Bosworth and Reggie Carter, and sees them drop back, and then releases into the flat. Their QB sees that neither LB on the other side blitzes, and has some time to dump it off to Gerhart.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

I don't buy the argument that the scheme is too complicated for our players to understand, or that our players lack the talent to run them. I took a look at the three tapes I have, the losses to Stanford, Oregon, and Cal, and put together some cutups of the most common passing concepts that I saw.

A few observations:

1. The offense vs. Stanford looked a bit different than what we used against the other two teams - Kevin Craft was running the show at the farm
2. If you boil things down there are only a handful of concepts, and these are things that are common  all over football
3. It seems that we have had a lot more blockers in on passing plays lately - a lot of "max protection", a few times there were only 2-man routes, with 2 TEs and a back in to block (8 man protection). I think that goes to show you that even though the offensive line has improved, we are still paying the price in terms of protection to keep our QBs off their backs - on that handful of 2-man routes no one was really open.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Like everyone else I was surprised by this quote by Coach Rick Neuheisel.

"I understand their dissatisfaction, especially given the 3-0 start and that things were turning [around], and so on and so forth," Neuheisel said. "All I can tell them is that we're going to keep working at it. "It's too long and too hard a story to give all the details, and frankly I don't think they'd understand all the details. We have to keep working at it, no excuses."

I am kind of curious as to what he means by "understanding all the details" so I took a look at the tape from last Saturday's game against Cal. Keep in mind that I'm not an expert and that I do not know what's really going on in the meetings, pressbox, or the sideline - just taking a look and speculating on what's going on based on what I see from our defense.

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Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Coaching

The Arizona offense has connections to what the Texas Tech Red Raiders run, as well as the Oklahoma Sooners - both teams are run by a Stoops brother, who both went out and hired someone from the Hal Mumme coaching tree to run the offense. Not a whole lot recognizable names on that list outside of coaching circles, but there were some great offensive minds on that staff. Oklahoma had Leach in there, followed by Mangino, both who left to head their own programs, but the Sooners still have some residue from those two guys. Sonny Dykes spent a year at UK before leaving to Texas Tech with Mike Leach and ultimately ending up in Arizona. I was only able to get a copy of the game against Washington so all of this data comes from that contest (play-by-play down, distance, run/pass, and gain info copied from ESPN.com).

Splits

Their one difference is that Arizona uses wider line splits than normal, like other Air Raid and spread teams. This forces the defense to align wider than normal as well, opening up gaps on the inside. It can be easy to bust a long gain up the middle if you are able to hit a few blocks, as the edge players often are too far to make an impact. This also gives the defensive ends a longer distance to travel to reach the quarterback and wider throwing lanes when you do pass. The drawbacks are that it is tough to perform some of the combo blocks required in the zone running game, and your linemen are often asked to block man to man in pass protection without any additional help. Here's a comparison of Washington and Arizona's line splits from that game.

Trends

Arizona didn't really run the ball well against Washington. The bulk of their runs came on 1st and 2nd down, but even so they were about 65% pass and 35% run. However they use a lot of screens to their wideouts to get the ball outside quickly. Only time they really started to run the ball was inside the red zone and on the goalline. I could crank out some charts but there isn't really anything interesting there, their passing game is picking up more yardage per play than the run game, and they pass almost twice as much as they run.

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This is a follow up to Nestor's article about going for it on 4th down.

 

• First, already talked about going for the FG with a 4th and 2 at Cal’s 6 yard line. When it was pretty clear that Bruins needed TDs instead of FGs, CRN decided to play it safe.
  
  
• Second, we saw the same situation play out again later in the third quarter when with a 4th and 3 on Cal’s 28, Neuheisel again went with the Donahue mindset of playing it safe and going for three.
  
  
• Third, this is where probably many will not agree with me but I will share it anyway. Jahvid Best’s 93 yard run I thought was the game changing moment that pretty much decided the outcome of the game. However, the pivotal decision in my mind came right before UCLA punted in that second quarter. Bruins had 4th and less than a yard to go on their own 46 yard line. Up until that time Bruins were doing all right on offense (actually we had a decent day on offense against a slightly better than average defense yesterday). Anyway with a less than a yard to go and down by only 7 (14-21), Neuheisel took the safe route (the Donahue one) and decided to play for field position by depending on Locke’s leg. Well Locke did boom one (for 46 yards) but it didn’t do much good as the D got obliterated by Best in the subsequent big play. What I am saying here that’s the kind of moment when Neuheisel instead of playing by the conventional Donahue rules, could send his signal to rest of his team that he had enough trust in his young talent and offense to go for less than a yard.

 

Strongly recommend this whole 4 part article to anyone who has time and is interested in football strategy....anyway, the summary of it is that they calculated the expected points from each yard line, ran some probabilities of conversion percentages on 4th down and field goals from every yard line, as well as the expected points from punts. NFL data but the probabilities for NCAA ball probably isnt too far off.

I was North Campus but even I could follow and crunch some numbers (ie, read a graph), so all of you can understand this. I went ahead and figured out how these decisions played out according to the probabilities. Here are the three charts that are used.

4th and 2 at the 6-yard line: The expected point value of a field goal at the 6 yard line is about 2.2, maybe 2.3 points (3 points - almost guaranteed field goal from that range, minus 0.7 points, which is the expected points you will give up when you kick off following a FG). On the 2nd chart, a 4th-and-2 attempt at the 6 yard line will usually net you about 2.8, 2.9 points, factoring in the probabilities of converting that as well as the expected points for having a first down at the 4 yard line and subtracting the expected points that you would lose if the other team took possession on the 6-yard line. You can see here that having a 1st down backed up deep in your own territory actually gives you negative expected points, so if you go for it and fail, it's not all that bad to cough up the ball deep into Cal territory -  Cal is more likely to give up points down the road if they take possession backed up that deep (obviously, there are always exceptions, as Jahivd Best proved, and these are just odds). In this case, according to the numbers, going for it is a wiser decision.

4th and 3 at the 28-yard line: The expected points difference here is a little closer. A FG from that range will probably net you about 1.2 points (probability of converting a FG from that range, subtracted the EP for the other team receiving possession after the score/them receiving possession 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage on a miss), while going for it looks to be about 1.5 or 1.6 expected points. A little closer this time but going for it still looks to be the wiser decision.

4th and 1 at the 46-yard line: Here you go to the expected value of punts - factoring in the average distance of a punt from each yard line, and the expected points the other team will have from possessing the ball at that yard line. From the 46-yard line it's a little less than 0, maybe -0.1 expected points. From that distance the average is about 30 yards, giving Cal possession at their own 10, where their expected points for that drive is 0.1. If you look at the 2nd chart, the highest blue line is 4th-and-1, where the expected points are better than any other distance. At the 46-yard line, it's about 1.1 expected points to go for it, clearly better than the value for a punt. Again, this is a better decision according to the odds.

However, football isn't math, the odds are only odds. We punted, backed Cal up to the 7 yard line, where their expected points are actually about -0.5, or a positive 0.5 for us. In reality they scored 7. The odds don't always play out but they are the averages of what is expected to happen. Obviously there are going to be different depending on your team and players - Kai Forbath isn't getting 1.5 points on a field goal from the 28, he is getting almost guaranteed 3 points every time (minus 0.7 on the ensuring kickoff, the EP of Cal for getting the ball at the 27-yard line) because he does not know how to miss.

However I do think that we should have gone for at least the first and the last situation, short-yardage deals where the odds of converting are slightly higher (see the gap between 4th-and-1 and 4th-and-everything else on that middle graph). For what it's worth here is their graph of what to do/not do on 4th down, based on these findings. Here is a graph that has all three of the above ones merged, you can clearly see that there were higher expected points at the 6, 28, and 46 yard lines for going for it (colored lines) than kicking (black line). Interesting to note that 4th-and-2 is almost always a better decision than kicking from anywhere on the field, and 4th-and-1 is always a better decision, according to this data.

There's a ton of reasons why you don't go for it on 4th down - at that site they write about how people fear potential loss rather than prospective gain, even though a punt is considered a "loss" it doesn't really feel like it, while a failed 4th down does and is rarely considered a "good call". If you miss a FG that's a loss, but it's the kicker's fault - it was still a "good call". Job security is probably another, a guy like Pete Carroll is not getting fired anytime soon so he can afford to be more aggressive on 4th down. Going for it and not converting in a national championship Rose Bowl game that you end up losing would have fans calling for your job with almost any other coach. I feel like if Neuheisel had gone 0-3 on those 4th downs we'd be saying the other thing.

Addendum

Here is some more reading from the site (great insights into the game if you have time) on the topic of 4th downs in “no-man’s land” – area where you could either attempt a long field goal or a short punt – again, NFL statistics, but I don’t think that this matters as much, more of a general coaching thing.

On 4th down from identical field positions, coaches tend to attempt FGs more often with shorter distances to go and punt more often with longer distances to go. For example, when kicking on 4th and 1 from the 32, coaches went for the FG 100% of the time. But when kicking on 4th and long (7+ yds) from the 32, coaches went for the FG less often—80% of the time.

Interesting, that for something that does not matter at all if you punt or kick a FG (distance to go), there is still a mental effect on the decision. I’ll just copy since I can’t really say it better than they did. In 4th and 1 they kicked the FG about 85% of the time, compared to only about 65% of the time, from the same yardline.

It’s as if teams with 4th and short feel like they came so close that they really want to come away from the drive with points. And teams with 4th and long feel more resigned to giving up the hope for points, preferring to pin the opponent deep in his own territory. Any other theories?

The closer you are, ie, a 4th-and 2 near the goalline, coaches may feel that they need to at least come away with something. I went back and checked the drive charts for those two FG decisions – both were 50+ yard drive that started in our own territory. Maybe if we had started these drives as a result of a turnover, in Cal territory, we would have gone for a 4th down or two, as you would feel as if you hadn’t invested as much in the drive and would be more likely to gamble at the end. Studying field position vs. 4th down decisions would be an interesting study.

I think, NFL or no, that these statistics and numbers show that there is definitely a mental component to making these decisions, that it’s the result of either by the fear of coming away with no points, the perception of greater risk, pressure from fans and media, conventional norms, poor play by the offense, etc rather than simple probabilities and expectations of success. However I don’t think that going against these numbers automatically makes the decision “bad” – these other factors do exist and they do need to be taken into consideration.

These may be statistics from NFL games but I do believe that there are many of these “mental roadblocks” among most coaches at any level that prevent them from rethinking the norms – teams have been punting on 4th down for a century (even though it was a different game back then, when offense were not rolling up and down the field), so coaches tend to punt on 4th down when it would appear that this may not always be the wisest decision to score points according to the long-term odds.

I think that punting for field position is valid in cases, as in games where your offense isn’t moving well (a throwback to those old days when punting became the wisest decision).