Breakdown Sports

 We've now had an opportunity to look at the general scheme and various run tags Michigan deploys , as well as how they can modify things post-snap . But as any football coach will tell you, all the scheme in the world can't make up for poor execution. Michigan, in their run game, was a well oiled machine. It was clear on film that they were well coached and I want to take a look at some of that now.

 Michigan only ran Counter to the wide side of the field approximately 25% of the time. But against Nebraska and their 2-high heavy, sky force favored defense, Michigan decided to aim their attack to the field more often than usual. This led to some sequencing in their Counter/RPO scheme. Counter + Short Motion In running Counter to the field, Michigan would bring the outside WR in short motion into the formation, giving him a better path to the safety and force the CB into run support. Michigan Strong Counter OH pic.twitter.com/ix4tuaKROv — TalkingDogBDS (@TalkingDogBDS) May 30, 2022 Notice how hard the safety tries to buzz down, and how delayed the CB is in their coverage scheme to commit to the run. This allows Michigan to maintain a numbers advantage at the point of attack and force secondary run defenders to clean up. They did this twice, though the second time Nebraska had on a unique coverage call. Michigan Strong Counter OH pic.twitter.com/pjIO2p1iVj — TalkingDogBDS (@Talk...

Quickly, I wanted to talk about how Wisconsin is so good at defending gap run schemes. In the video below, I talk about what makes the Badgers defense so good in that regard. Have gotten some love from Wisconsin, so here’s some love back. Watch how well the whole front plays this gap scheme. Box player keeps it inside. 4T holds up to down block. NT fights back on combo. PSLB scrapes right off 4T butt into hole. BSLB ball hits all the way outside PSLB pic.twitter.com/wO4wkAniak — Space Coyote (@SpaceCoyoteBDS) June 15, 2022

This post features a series of tweets discussing OL technique on a north/south (veritical) double team. PSU Watch the C. Watch his 2nd step (left foot) His eyes are on LB. He knows he needs to check him. But as he opens with his right foot, he lunges forward with his left, and now is off balance. If he moves his left foot laterally or with depth, he can stay square and redirect pic.twitter.com/1MZ901ULQK — Space Coyote (@SpaceCoyoteBDS) February 10, 2022

 Down G is a play that once featured heavily in a lot of prostyle offenses, only to go out of vogue in the modern spread era. But as teams have begun incorporating more TEs back into the formation, and have felt the need to implement more gap schemes back into the zone dominant offenses, Down G has been a play that has allowed them to get there. I've previously written about Down G , and how it acts as zone on the backside, and guard kick out on the front side. It is essentially a frontside version of pin and pull, and many will even run it that way if the Center is also uncovered and free to pull. Against Michigan State in the opening game of the season, Northwestern to get outside the Spartan defensive ends setting the edge. With a mismatch also on the interior of the OL, Northwestern started dabbling in Down G to utilize the DE's momentum upfield and out, and pin the defensive front inside. From their TE-Wing look, they were also able to sequence the play with a vertical pla...

 Jet sweep is one of the core concepts teams use to attack the edge with speed. It's relatively cheap to install, serves as a great constraint for your primary run game, and serves as a great tool to diagnose defensive coverage/rotation as well as trigger down safeties to support the vertical play action pass. But not all teams run it the same, and teams that lean on it more tend to treat the blocking of it a bit different. This post is going to examine some of the ways you see jet sweep blocked. Don't Block the 3-Technique The way I was always taught Jet Sweep was as simple as: Backside to the 3-tech, block the run fake Outside the 3-tech, arc to the 2nd level (seal) or alley, depending on defensive numbers This is a great way of selling the run fake to the backside of the sweep, while gaining back blocking numbers by not blocking the 3-Tech, who will struggle to quickly redirect (either vertically or horizontally) to be able to make a play on the ball carrier. Having it be th...

I previously addressed many of the good qualities that Justin Fields will bring to the Scarlet and Grey, but new Head Coach Ryan Day is getting far from a finished product. Instead, Day and new Passing Game Coordinator/QB Coach Mike Yurcich are going to have to get out their polish and work on a few areas where Fields can really improve as he likely steps into the starting lineup for the Buckeyes. Let's take a look. AP

Justin Fields has been ruled immediately eligible to play for Ohio State in the 2019 season.  Previously spending his one collegiate year at Georgia backing up talented signal caller, Jake Fromm, he enters a Buckeyes depth chart without much in the way of competition. In his freshman year, he never was really able to muscle away consistent featured series, but he did feature quite a bit in a specialized role and in a number of blow out games. At the end of the year, his stats read 42 runs from 266 yards and 4 TDs on the ground and 27/39 passing for 8.4 YPA at a 4-0 TD/INT ratio. But stats alone don't often tell the whole tale, and as such, it is fundamental that we look a little bit deeper. Let's take a look. Photo by Todd Kirkland/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The best concepts in football tend to build off of other known tendencies. In both the run game and the pass game (and the play action pass game), it is easiest to scheme success when telling the defense one thing, initially, and then turning it into something different. In this post, we're going to look at how Michigan has built off of established tendencies to force the defense to respect multiple things. Kirthmon F Dozier, Detroit Free Press

Twitter is a mean place. It's a place full of hot takes. It's a place, where if you mess up or are wrong, you're going to get killed for it. And on Saturday night, James Franklin and Ricky Rohne were wrong. They went against convention and decided to run the football on 4th and 5, and got stopped for a loss. So not only did they break convention and not succeed, they tried their best and failed miserably; the lesson is never try . But, here's the thing, it's not that there isn't logic to the PSU play call. There is.  And, in fact, I find it odd that if there wasn't logic to it, if it was so stupid to in fact be beyond reason and rationale, that Greg Schiano and the Ohio State Buckees would just go happen to dial up the perfect defense to stop it. "Huh?" you say. Yes, the RPO play call was in fact so logical, that OSU dialed up a play almost specifically to stop it. Better put: Schiano drank a delicious Penn State Berkey Creamery Milkshake . And...

Whoa boy is there some people given Franklin thee ole business for his call to go with an Inside Zone - Bubble RPO on 4th and 5 on his final possession last Saturday. I mean, his own fans were calling him out on the way to the locker room and he was ready to have a nice, pleasant, parliamentary debate about the grievance. So what were Franklin and offensive coordinator thinking Ricky Rahne thinking with that call? Let's at least try to give them the benefit of the doubt and take a look.

In the first half of the Michigan-Northwestern game, the Wildcats repeatedly dialed up crucial  gains on simple slant plays. From Michigan's Base Cover 1, this caused coverage problems, especially in the slot where a safety matched up on a WR. In this post, we're going to look at why the early problems existed and what Don Brown did to stop the success of slants while staying within his scheme. Maize and Blue News

If you've followed me elsewhere besides just my blog, you probably have an inkling that one of my biggest peeves is fans selecting specific play calls to complain about postmortem. It takes a conclusion - that a play was not successful - and applies no additional logic to apply a critique. Certainly, like wins, all that matters in the end is that you got one or you didn't; in the end it doesn't matter if it was close or it shoulda or coulda or woulda. But if you want to honestly evaluate anything, you need to dig deeper than that. You need to understand your own teams strengths and weaknesses and those of your opponent. You need to understand tendencies, again, both your own and your opponents. What have you practiced (and the success of what you practiced) and what haven't you. There are a lot of unknowns we can't glean, but if we take some time, we can better understand inputs and give a much more thoughtful, thorough, and accurate critique of "play calling...

I’ve fielded a few questions about my thoughts on the Shea Patterson situation. I did something similar for Jake Rudock when he transferred from Iowa to Michigan, so I figured I’d take a brief look at what he would bring to the table. In doing so, it is essentially not to just look at highlights, but also look at his weaknesses and his worst performances. Let’s make one thing clear, the primary reason, above all other reasons, that Michigan is looking to bring in Patterson is because he is incredibly talented. His game is far from without flaws, but in my opinion, bringing him in is much less about the current roster and the staff’s trust in that roster and much more about what Patterson potentially brings to the table. Let’s take a look, and hopefully this isn't all for naught. Photo: AP

Against Michigan, Penn State pulled out a nice wrinkle to their run action. While most teams that run out of gun incorporate an inside zone read, the Nittany Lions prefer more of a belly read approach. In this post we are going to look at the difference between the more common Inside Zone run , the Belly Option that PSU prefers, and the counter action off of it with the utilization of a speed option . A couple weeks later Rutgers tried to utilize a similar strategy but had much less success. We're going to poke at the difference between teams in this post as well.

Ohio State has been feasting through in the pass game with one of the core tenets of the Air Raid offense: drag routes. Go into any Air Raid passing playbook from Kevin Wilson (or Mike Leach), or looking back at Chip Kelly's Oregon offenses (the current OSU QB coach is Kelly's former QB coach) and you'll notice that probably 50% of the pass plays contain some sort of drag route. Go to your basic pass game concepts  and you'll see that these playbooks are littered with Over, Cab, Crash, Crease, Mesh , and NCAA concepts . Air Raid coaches love these concepts, and so they rep these concepts constantly, because in man coverage their better athletes can run away from LBs or safeties or get beneficial rubs to allow them to run away from CBs. Against zone you can find a void and settle there and wait for the QB to throw you open. In theory, it works against everything. Yet, it still has it's detractors, because if you don't practice it enough, if you don't put in t...

AP Photo/Al Goldis I got to rewatch the MSU-Iowa game in some detail. Here's my takeaways with some brevity (most of this comes from twitter with some edits, so sorry for it being poorly written. MSU D MSU DL did great job most of the game dealing with the Iowa stretch game. Did a great job getting helmet playside and limiting playside gaps  A bit of Iowa's success on ground game off gap schemes where DL overcommitted to what they thought was stretch; not really replicable for UM  Does mean something to UM tho: MSU is great at identifying/defending tendency. Need to strategically break tendency to get them out of pos (this is a common thing for all of Dantonio's good defenses, well schooled)  LBs/Safeties still flow very hard. Pursuit mostly disciplined but you can catch them out of gaps and can catch open grass away from action  And you can still play formation games to get matchups you want in secondary. Tight splits/TEs = knob adj = Safety on receiv...

At some point on Saturday, the Michigan vs. Purdue matchup turned into a battle of "who can out execute you" vs "who can out scheme you". Jeff Brohm utilized some wonderfully designed misdirection plays to get guys open in space, while Michigan was confident they could line up and wear the Boilermakers down via execution. But as the game wore on and the two teams continued to play nearly equally, Michigan pulled out a change up that allowed them to get a walk-in touchdown. In this post, I want to look at some little things that happen in the Michigan run game that impact the defense's reaction. Bryon Fuller/MGoBlog

From the recent Upon Further Review - Michigan Offense vs Florida Defense  a couple plays came up that I think could benefit from a bit more depth. In this article, we talk Duo And Counter Iso

AP Photo/ Darron Cummings For nearly a half of play, the Indiana Hoosiers looked poised to make the Buckeyes sweat out a potential early season massive upset. It wouldn't be the first time a team came out with a great gameplan earlier in the year and caught an opponent looking ahead to the supposed bigger challenge. With the Ohio State on defense, the Buckeyes wanted to come out in a lot of single-high defensive looks, predominately Cover 1 , put bodies near the LOS, and out athlete Indiana. In the battle of the DL vs OL, OSU dominated. But on the outside, despite relatively good position from defensive backs, Indiana executed nearly perfectly. One could argue that the execution was bound to wane, but repeatedly throwing one of two throws - a fade or a back shoulder fade to the boundary - allowed IU QB Richard Lagow to find an easily repeatable rhythm, particularly with big bodied and sure-handed WR Simmie Cobbs. In this article (and the next) we will look at the basic gam...