Credit Where Credit Is Due – Herman’s QB Power RPO Scheme Against TCU

[Pogo 284]

3 hours ago, Zavala said:

Should just slide at the last second and try to get that mother fucker kicked out the game.

Not sure that's worth risking getting Sam's head bounced off the turf.

[Slacks 6860]

3 minutes ago, Pogo said:

Not sure that's worth risking getting Sam's head bounced off the turf.

Duh... that's why we'll do it with the backup.

[Rimbo 26054]

On 9/25/2018 at 8:25 AM, Katfid54 said:

I haven’t seen anyone talking about this, so I wanted to mention something that I noticed during the game on Saturday and that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed on the rewatch.  Also, given the flack our offensive staff gets (and the “credit” Orlando gets for scheming), I thought it was only fair to give credit where credit is due.

 

Against TCU, Herman showed a great package that our offense has never shown before, and it resulted in a lot of positive yardage, helping to jump start our offense in several critical moments of the game.

 

 

 

Here’s the scenario:

 

Texas has a TD on the previous possession, taking our first lead over TCU since 2013.  TCU has just punted (a crappy punt), downed by TCU at their own 47 yard line.  Texas has a short field to march.  On first and ten, Watson gets 6 yards on inside zone with an insert lead block from Beck.  Now, it’s 2^nd and 4.

 

 

 

Here’s the scheme itself: 

 

 

 

Play #1:

 

We show 11 personnel (1 TE/1 RB), with trips one side.  But the look is actually unbalanced—two of the trips receivers are on the line of scrimmage, meaning only two of the trips receivers are eligible receivers.  Beck is playing TE off the line of scrimmage, and the RB is shaded to the TE side.

 

Here’s a screen cap of the initial formation:

 

 

 

 

In this formation, Beck (TE), Josh Moore (who is playing slot WR), Duvernay (farthest outside WR), and Tre Watson (RB) are eligible receivers.  Collin Johnson is not.

 

After showing that relatively simple set, the QB then sends the RB in motion to the field side (away from the trips receivers), leaving himself in an empty backfield.  Here’s the post-motion set:

 

 

 

 

TCU still has, effectively, seven men in the box at this point.  One of their overhand defenders is lined up, at linebacker depth, just outside the shoulder of Calvin Anderson, giving him the ability to defend a pass to Josh Moore or stop the run.  In addition to that defender, TCU still has their traditional 4-2 front in the box, as well.

 

After the ball is snapped, Sam fakes the bubble screen to Josh Moore.  Now, the overhang defender who was playing both run and pass is screaming towards Moore, thinking he needs to shut down the bubble screen.  Duvernay and Johnson are both stalking the men over them, showing bubble screen looks as well.  But that defender has guessed wrong—the play is actually a QB power.

 

Back at the line of scrimmage, it’s just carnage.  Anderson has escorted his pass rusher up the field, walling him off completely from the play (and further selling pass to the edge defender).  Cosmi and Kerstetter have delivered a crushing double team on the playside defensive tackle, allowing Cosmi to break off and block the backside linebacker.  Rodriguez mauls the nose guard, and Beck effectively shadowboxes Banogu.  Vahe pulls, his target is Wallow (LB #30).  Wallow actually takes himself out of the play, jumping outside Vahe’s block.  Vahe actually turns upfield, looking to take on another man, because Wallow has appeared to totally take himself out of the play.  But insanely, Wallow still able to get an arm inside on Sam’s hip, tripping him up.  If Wallow misses that tackle, Sam might have scored because there is no safety help over the middle of the field.  Sam ends up with a seven yard gain. 

 

Here’s the full clip of the play (starts at the 40:45 mark on the full length YouTube video):

 

 

 

 

 

Play #2:

 

The very next play, we come out in an identical formation—with two minor differences.  First, Ingram has replaced Watson at RB.  Second, Ingram’s initial shade is to the opposite side of the QB (i.e., on the trips side instead of the TE side).  The motion action and eligible receivers all remain the same as in the first play.

 

Looking at the defense though, you’ll see TCU has already adjusted.  Instead of heaving three men accounting for the trips receivers (along with an overhang defender), TCU now has three defenders isolated on that, with a safety over the top of the box for the play.  They’re no longer asking the overhang defender to play both run and pass. 

 

The final pre-snap defense looks like this:

 

 

 

Texas runs the exact same play.  But this time, the nose guard shoots the A gap (crossing Rodriguez’s face) before he can be blocked.  Vahe does a tremendous job of recognizing the stunt and picking up the nose guard during Vahe’s pull.  In the meantime, Rodriguez has recovered, and he is able to lay a hat on Wallow, who is playing backside linebacker this time.

 

Because the nose guard has stunted, it has opened up a huge hole on the backside of the play, taking Banogu and the other backer out of the play completely.  Sam is able to get through the second level before he is brought down by the free safety (the additional defender who TCU brought into the box).  Sam ends up with a gain of eleven.

 

Here’s the full clip of the play:

 

 

 

 

Play #3:

 

Texas has now gained 18 yards on the same play, run twice in a row.  They hustle to the line, showing the same formation a third consecutive time.  In response, TCU devotes even more defenders to take away the run.  They’ve brought the overhang defender back in from his coverage of Moore, now requiring him to play both run and pass responsibilities.  And they’ve kept the safety over the top of the formation (on a pass play, it looks like he would have man coverage responsibility for Beck).  

 

Here’s the post-motion look shown by the 😧

 

 

On the snap, the players show the same look they have previously (other than Beck, who takes off the down the field on a vertical route).  Vahe’s pull is deeper, so that he can account for the DE who Beck is leaving unblocked.

 

This time, though, Sam does not fake the bubble screen, but he throws it to Moore.  But the two previous run plays have done their job:  Watch the hesitation shown by the overhang defender.  He doesn’t know if he should be playing run or pass.  He drifts closer to the line of scrimmage without actually committing to defend either play (compare this with the very first video, when the overhang defender screams toward Moore’s bubble screen).  As a result, the defender’s feet have almost completely stopped when he is locked up by Collin Johnson, who then rides him about seven yards upfield.

 

Jerrod Heard (who has replaced Duvernay as the outside eligible receiver) does almost nothing on this play other than shadow the cornerback from about five yards away.  If Jerrod Heard attacks that block, Moore has a lot to work with (and is basically one on one against the safety).  Instead, Moore has to take the route outside Heard and only gains five or six yards.

 

Here’s the full play:

 

 

 

 

 

New Scenario:

 

It’s the first play of the next offensive series for Texas.  Caden Sterns has just picked off the double-pass, giving Texas the ball back at Texas’s 38 yard line.

 

 

 

Play #4:

 

TCU has adjusted again.  After motioning out Watson, TCU still has seven men in the box itself—a four man line and two LBs and a strong safety who is playing over the top of Beck at linebacker depth (the strong safety likely has man coverage responsibilities for Beck).

 

But Texas has modified the look.  Now, instead of the trips receivers lining up to the boundary, they’re on the field side (wide side) of the formation.  TCU can no longer devote an edge player to having both run/pass responsibilities.  And when Watson motions out wide, he’s only about five yards split out from Calvin Anderson.  The cornerback covering Watson is playing off coverage at about 7 yards.

 

 

 

Here’s the post-motion defensive look:

 

 

 

 

After the snap, the offense shows a similar look.  But TCU has had enough of sitting around and letting Texas take the fight to them.  They’ve adjusted by bringing Banogu and the other DE hard off the edge.  They’ve also adjusted by having their LBs step up into the B gaps once the ball is snapped.

 

 

 

They guess wrong again.  And Herman has banked on an aggressive response from Patterson. 

 

 

 

Sam fakes the bubble screen to LJH, pulling the LBs toward the trips side of the field.  He then comes back and rifles the ball to Watson, who has run a stop route just behind the line of scrimmage.

 

 

 

Calvin Anderson ignores the playside DE and flies out to try to put a hat on the cornerback.  Beck is flying upfield, looking to block the free safety, who will be coming across the formation to tackle Watson (as a side note, although the strong safety over the top of Beck almost certainly has responsibility for him in the pass game, he totally lets Beck run by.  If the play had been a jump or pop pass to Beck, he would’ve had a 20+ yard gain.  Keep your eyes peeled, because that wrinkle is definitely coming in the future.).

 

 

 

Rodriguez’s block is a thing of beauty.  He makes it across the playside linebackers face, hooking up with him on the hash about two yards past the line of scrimmage.  He then rides him all the way to the numbers at the first down marker.  Kerstetter gets a decent piece of Wallow, but Wallow is able to wriggle free.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, much like Vahe’s near miss on Play #1, above, Anderson can’t quite seal the deal on the cornerback who dives outside the block, but is able to get a hand on Watson’s ankle.  If he doesn’t make that tackle, Watson would probably have gotten the first down (assuming Wallow would’ve been able to get to him).

 

 

 

Watson ends up with a gain of about six.

 

Here’s the full gif of the play:

 

 

 

 

 

Takeaway:

 

All in all, we ran this set three times in a row in the second quarter and gained 23+ yards, getting us into the red zone (ultimately resulting in Dicker’s one made FG).  We ran it again the next series and got another six yards.  These are solid if not very good results against a fundamentally sound TCU defense.  Against a defense less in “control” of their keys, one or more of these plays could’ve broken the D wide open.  Even so, they resulted in huge gains that were basically "free yards" resulting solely from scheme and decent execution of the scheme.  The plays' success are also almost entirely set up by the fact that we were able to run block effectively on the first two plays out of the package, requiring TCU to respect the run possibility each subsequent time we showed the formation.

 

 

 

If my memory serves, we ran the same set once or twice more in the second half, gaining positive yardage but showed no different wrinkles than those above.

 

 

 

This set is something very similar to a scheme that OU liked to run with Baker Mayfield and that they’ve continued with Kyler Murray.  Empty out the box and run RPOs or RPO “looks” that spread the defense out and force it to defend three things:  Space, the run, and the pass.  The defense has to guess the play correctly to beat you.  Even with TCU’s great pattern-matching scheme and technical soundness, they couldn’t stop it from being effective on Saturday.

Credit to Herman and Co. for unleashing this very effective wrinkle against TCU.  Because of the pressure it puts on the defense on all sides of the field, this package should continue to pay dividends down the road.

 

This might very well be the best post on Surly so far.

[NWAustinDude 2252]

7 hours ago, Casual Encounter said:

Was this an intended setup for mentioning your Mom’s deep pleasure last night?

Nope, it was just ez-bait to see who would invoke my Mom.

Mom died of illness years ago, but thank you for thinking of her vaginal depth. Were Dad alive, he would thank you also. 

Edited September 27, 2018 by NWAustinDude

[Eskimohorn 5642]

[Nick Diaz 107]

Nah fam, all you need is to run this play 50 times in a row:

 

[cochamps 1879]

19 hours ago, Rimbo said:

This might very well be the best post on Surly so far.

Rpongett lives?

[tbone_ 14147]

10 yards minimum

[Jkwellborn 6724]

Nah fam, all you need is to run this play 50 times in a row:
 

A and Y were money.

[cdain3 3454]

 

[atomheartbevo 89779]

On 9/25/2018 at 12:21 PM, LTtxfan said:

I wish replays of an All22 view of College FB Games (like coaches get) were made available on YouTube..... Would be interesting to study not only TEXAS , but also Bama and BlowU 's games.....

This.  Even just the videos from the skycams behind the QB would be great, since you can see sideline-to-sideline if they are zoomed out enough.

On a related note, even though it wasn't our game, hopefully somebody will someday upload an HD copy of 77-0.  That is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[Pogo 284]

I saw us run this formation a few times mostly near the goal line.  We probably did it more, but these are the ones I remember.  The first is on the first drive at 3:25.  I think this should have been the formation, but we got called for formation because Eagles wasn't on the line.  It looks like a zone-read, so maybe that wasn't supposed to be the formation.  Next play was PI so we got it back.  Then in Q2 at 15:45 on 2nd and 2 at the ou 8 after the pass to Sam, we snap it quick and catch them shifting coverage.  We have 7 to block 6, run a sweep (new wrinkle) and Sam walks in for the TD.  At 20:51, we line up unbalanced on 4th and 2 right after LJH gets shoved 8 yards by our OL scrum.  This time the ou coaches see they're outnumbered at the LOS and call timeout.  It didn't make a shit.  1st down on QB power from a different formation.  Then on 1st and goal after LJH catches the pass while wearing #25 as a cape, we go unbalanced again at 22:02.  Beck motions to the boundary, but ou still leaves 4 to cover 3 on the field side.  Sweep again.  Cosmi looks like he takes out 2 dudes, and Sam hops in for the TD.

If anyone wants to take over from there, go for it.

[Pogo 284]

We did do it some more.  At 25:29 after the ewok fumbles and Hager gets a hand job, we have 1st and goal at the 7.  QB sweep to the boundary even though ou has 8 in the box this time.  Sam cuts back for 5.  Next play, same formation ( both times here Beck started on the boundary side).  They now have 4 defenders lined up over Cosmi and Beck and it STILL DOESN"T MAKE A SHIT!!!!  Sam cuts back for the score.  They knew where we were going and they still couldn't stop it.  Fittingly, we did it again on the last drive on 3rd and 3 at 39:57.  They're again lined up right on defense, but it's clear by this point they want nothing to do with defending it.  We leave the field side DE unblocked and he just trots toward the action.  The deep safety hides behind his LB and doesn't engage until Sam already has the first down.  4 plays later, Dicker cements his early legacy.

Conclusion:  We stomped their dicks all day long with this formation in short yardage, and we only had to add 1 more wrinkle that we hadn't previously showed, that being the sweep.  That leaves plenty more for us to do in the future.

[Katfid54 8635]

4 minutes ago, Pogo said:

1 more wrinkle that we hadn't previously showed, that being the sweep

We've been running this play (generally successfully) all year.  We've generally been able to automatically get 5+ yards/carry with this play all year.  Sometimes we've run it from unbalanced formations; sometimes not.  We hammered USC with it.  We only used it once against TCU, because their 4-2-5 safety look puts overhang defenders right where it would be really tough to block.  Instead of running the sweep out of this formation, we took the overhang defender out of the box by motioning out our RB and instead ran QB power up the middle at about 9 yards/pop.

The difficulty for the stuff in the future will be getting into a formation conducive to the play without tipping off that we're going to be running QB stretch.  I also expect we'll see a wrinkle off of it in the near future.  A pop pass to Beck could go for a lot of yards out of this formation, as could a wheel route throw to Ingram/Watson on their trajectory out of the backfield.

[Machinator 32099]

 

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

41 minutes ago, Machinator said:

 

We converted a 4th down I think from the same look. OU lined up what seemed to be 2/3’s of their defense to the right, and handed us an easy QB power run left. 

[Machinator 32099]

Joe Cook picked up on this, too.

http://insidetexas.com/texas-offensive-wrinkle-of-ineligibility/

[Thetexashammer 1062]

Please can we run this play. Pretty please. I wanna see Calvin score a TD on a lateral from LJH.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Thetexashammer

[Vertigo 20310]

40 minutes ago, Machinator said:

Joe Cook picked up on this, too.

http://insidetexas.com/texas-offensive-wrinkle-of-ineligibility/

I am 100% certain all of the 9.95ers real Surly. 

[Katfid54 8635]

1 hour ago, Machinator said:

Joe Cook picked up on this, too.

http://insidetexas.com/texas-offensive-wrinkle-of-ineligibility/

I'm excited to see his post on the potential for incorporating the Mills concept further into our offense.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

You know, there's a filthy long list of people on this site who know way more about how offenses are put together than I do, and even I noticed pretty much right away, "Hey, that WR is covered up. What's up with that?"

I'm not surprised one of the $9.95ers noticed.

 

 

 

 

 

Especially after they read about it on Surly.

(Edit: To be fair, when I saw it, I assumed an illegal formation penalty was coming our way, so it's not like I'm actually crowing or anything...)

Edited October 23, 2018 by Walden Ponderer

[Katfid54 8635]

3 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

You know, there's a filthy long list of people on this site who know way more about how offenses are put together than I do, and even I noticed pretty much right away, "Hey, that WR is covered up. What's up with that?"

I'm not surprised one of the $9.95ers noticed.

 

 

 

 

 

Especially after they read about it on Surly.

(Edit: To be fair, when I saw it, I assumed an illegal formation penalty was coming our way, so it's not like I'm actually crowing or anything...)

Definitely.  I was being snarky.  Cook has been talking about our unbalanced formations on twitter for a few weeks, so it's not surprising that he did a formal write-up on IT. 

I'm all for as much Xs & Os discussion as possible, and I'm glad there's such an appetite for it in football fandom right now.

[Slacks 6860]

(Edit: To be fair, when I saw it, I assumed an illegal formation penalty was coming our way, so it's not like I'm actually crowing or anything...)

I've been expecting an ineligible receiver downfield penalty... I think the covered WR gets too far down field... probably be on a 3rd down conversion... Late in a close game (because tags what kind of game we play).

[dingleberryswitzer 2724]

I thought it doesn't matter if the pass is caught behind the los.  

[Slacks 6860]

17 hours ago, dingleberryswitzer said:

I thought it doesn't matter if the pass is caught behind the los.  

So, we'll throw it 1 step ahead of the LOS, score a TD, and get called back.

/BatteredFan

[Bill Lumbergh 7180]

12 minutes ago, Snacks said:

So, we'll throw it 1 step ahead of the LOS, score a TD, and get called back.

/BatteredFan

But the penalty will only be caught on review of something else, not called live. 

[the idoit 165]

^^Triggered.

Katfid, this was a spectacular post. I appreciate all the effort that went into it. You have been awarded several internets.