Film Review: How Ohio State's Pressure Affected Wisconsin

By -
One of the questions stemming from last Saturday's Ohio State victory over Wisconsin  – especially after the first half – was why wasn't OSU consistently getting pressure on Wisconsin's quarterback, Joel Stave. With a team so loaded in the front four with pure pass rushers, it was expected that they would force Stave's hand a bit. Indeed, they did, even when they didn't necessarily get pressure. We'll look at a few ways that Wisconsin attempted to mitigate pressure, and how, eventually, the Buckeyes still overcame it to hurry the opposing QB for much of the game.

Max Protect

After Wisconsin got over the initial terror of the first few drives, they went back to the drawing board in a way. Rather than attacking Ohio State horizontally, they started going more straight ahead. Combined with that, they were able to start incorporating some of their max protection package, where they only send two or three receivers out in routes. What this means is that OSU's front four will initially be doubled, and every blitzer should theoretically be easily picked up. The key is that you have to maintain coverage behind it.

Or, you can beat the chip blocks (having the RB do an awful job also helps) and you see something like this:


So then how else did Wisconsin "avoid pressure"?

---------------

To see more ways Wisconsin schemed to try to avoid pressure, and how OSU overcame those methods, follow the link to Land-Grant Holy Land.

LINK

And spoiler alert: It ends with this...


And you know you love it

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football Fundamentals: Twins Passing Concepts

By -
Image
In this post we will look at some of the standard route concepts run from a twins alignment. Obviously, these can be paired with other routes (some I'll show including a RB), but this is to get the fundamental understanding of the routes. I'll try to explain the concept briefly, as well as provide names for what you'll hear the concept called elsewhere at times (these things get lots of names, some people use the same names but have different meanings too, so it can get confusing). If a number is visible near the end of a route, that is the nominal yardage the route will be run to. For more information on specific routes, we took a look at the  route tree earlier . In this article I will not discuss routes that utilize rub concepts close to the LOS (such as a switch concept). I will have a later article dedicated to rub routes from a Twins set. Many of these are similar to the TE-Flanker Concepts discussed earlier.
Read more

Football Fundamentals: The Tite Front Defense

By -
Image
The defense du jour against modern spread attacks is what is commonly known as the “Tite” front. Over the past couple years, you’ve seen Big 12 teams run it increasingly often, and SEC and other teams start to incorporate variants of the look more often as well as they begin to deal with an increasing number of spread formations. But what exactly is the “Tite” front? Like any front, say, a 4-3 Under, it isn’t necessarily any one thing. You can have single-high, two-high, or even three-high safeties. You can attach your overhangs differently. And with Tite, it may even mean different box numbers. And of course, there are multiple techniques that can be employed along the way. This post is a primer to the Tite front. At the end, I’ll link some of the better articles that get into greater depth for those interested, but for now, we need to understand the basics, so that we can understand how to attack it.
Read more

Football Fundamentals: 2x2 and Mirrored Passing Concepts

By -
Image
We are going to continue our look at various passing concepts, this time with 2x2 and mirrored passing concepts. In this post we are going to trim out the concepts that are designed to attack the middle of the field and put those into a separate post. 2x2 concepts allow an offense to attack a defense based on post-snap looks and coverages via a simple read of the safety. Completely mirrored concepts, when the same concept is run on the both sides of the formation (such as all-hitches), is something of which I'm not a huge fan, but there are advantages to it. You look at something like all-hitches, which overloads underneath zones, and you see a viable option in the short passing game against zone heavy teams; similarly, completely mirrored concepts can allow you to pick on certain defenders or to a certain side of the field based on defensive look. We'll also look at "base" concepts, which see the outside receivers run the same route, and a third receiver work the mid
Read more