Breakdown Sports

 I've put together some tweets, but didn't get as in-depth as I originally wanted to. That said, I believe I have enough for at least an initial primer of the Jim Knowles defense. Jim Knowles has a pretty diverse background, starting as a primarily 4-3 coach, growing into a 4-2-5 coach at Duke, and finally transitioning to the 3-high safety coach at Oklahoma State which he is known for today. Still, he didn't lose all the tricks in the bag that he developed over the years, so let's take a look. Ohiostatebuckeyes.com

Previously, we looked at why throw back plays work. Next, we looked at OSU taking advantage of the throw back in their play against Minnesota This post will look at different version of the throw back that can be added to your playbook. Elsewhere - Leak Everyone has talked about leak, but at least on my blog, I've never explicitly wrote about it. So let's say this is the chance. Here is a diagram of leak: 2016 Falcons Playbook There are lots of iterations of Leak now, but I want to point out a few things that I like better than others.

I talked previously about how teams sequence the throw back into their run and boot gam e. By threatening run, boot, and throwback, you maintain a threat over the full field. In the Buckeye's opening game against Minnesota in 2021, they actually started attacking Minnesota with the throwback plays before even really delving into the boot action. Seeing how Minnesota reacted to the stretch action and boot action, Ohio State felt that they could win their matchups with their WRs in a space. Let's take a look at how OSU attacked three of the four levels in their throw back game. RB Rail, TE Delay An inversion of the standard "Leak" concept . What I like about this is that the initial alert is the RB running the rail. I've often talked about how the most forgotten person on the field is the player that just received the fake handoff. Defenses naturally eliminate that player as an eligible receiver, and as such, he often becomes the most dangerous person on the field.

Introduction At the college (and high school) level, RPOs continue to grow more and more challenging to defend. With relaxed rules against linemen downfield, defenses have been forced to maintain coverage longer and longer following the mesh point. No play demonstrates this more than the “Bluff and Go” RPO.

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

I used to do more of these back in the day. Admittedly, this is more about Michigan and a response to some of the criticisms of Michigan from this game. So sorry it's light on the OSU POV. 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.

One of my favorite types of articles is discussing what one team does, and does well, and then seeing how other teams adjust to take advantage of that thing. I did it previously in the chess match between Wisconsin and Iowa that we saw in one game . In the future, I want to touch on Wisconsin's offensive gameplan against Iowa to see it from a scouting perspective. But this post is about the Michigan defense and how they tend to play a flat-back formation, and then the different responses we saw from it from OSU and Penn State. I love Don Brown. I want to run through a brick wall for Don Brown. THIS IS BETTER THAN THE FIRST. 🚨🚨🚨DON BROWN IS THE HYPE MAN OF THE YEAR🚨🚨🚨 (NSFW AT ALL) pic.twitter.com/mrPlA1yHoK — The Wolverine Lounge (@WolverineLounge) April 6, 2018 Ok, let's talk some football.

Everybody knows the basic zone read scheme. Block inside zone  (or one of many types of zone ) while leaving the backside DE unblocked for the QB to read. If the DE crashes the mesh point, the QB pulls and runs off the backside. If the DE stays home, the QB gives to the RB who runs basic inside zone. But as defenses get more athletic and more nuanced in their defense of zone read, making this "read" becomes more challenging for the QB. You now have games like scrape exchange, where the DE crashes and the LB fills behind. You have more athletic edge players that can force a give but get back into the play from the backside. One option is to change the read defender , another option is to utilize additional backs to modify the blocking scheme . In this post, I'll talk about an option that utilizes a little of both which dates back to Meyer's time at Florida, in the Book and Rifle schemes.

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/ 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...

Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of Urban Meyer's passing attack is how simplified he makes it for his QBs. Meyer understands the capabilities of his players and the capabilities of the defenses he is facing, and because of that, he is able to limit the amount of decisions his players have to make to allow them to play fast and make the correct decisions repeatedly. In his mind, there is no reason to complicate what doesn't need to be complicated; and that not only makes perfect sense, it also shows a lot of restraint that many coaches don't have. On this play, what we see is a very simple play for the offense to run, but also a play design that gives the defense a lot to think about. Simplifying the game for your team while complicating it for the opponent allows your team to execute at a higher level, and that's a constant theme throughout Meyer's playbook. Today we're going to look at how Meyer dials up what he calls a "Follow Pivot" as a fur...

The Game

A roundup of the BDS links for the Spartans/Buckeyes game. I'll have at least one more MSU post this week as well.

Illinois didn’t have a lot of success against the Ohio State defense, but they did have a really nice run-pass option (RPO, aka package play) that they went to in order to take advantage of the Buckeye’s base Cover 4 defense.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT MAIZE N BREW ON 7-25-14 In 2013, Ohio State had one of the best run offenses in the nation. Part of their success came from two-back sets, or more accurately, by motioning a slot receiver - their Percy Harvin role - into the backfield. They lost, in my opinion, the best college RB in football last year, but returning the dynamic Braxton Miller and all their Harvinites, two back sets will likely become more prominent in this year's offensive iteration. In this piece, we will look at why these sets are so difficult for defenses to defend, both from a pre-snap standpoint, and after the snap.

Larry Johnson Sr. has long been considered not only one of the best recruiters in the B1G and the nation, but one of the premier DL coaches as well. He came up at Penn St beginning in 1996, starting as a DE and Special Teams coach, before slightly changing his role to the coach of the entire DL from 2000-2013. While PSU continues to have a successful DL, they weren't able to retain Johnson on their staff with the hiring of Franklin, and Larry Johnson switched his allegiance to the Buckeyes in 2014. Sometimes the rich get richer. Ohio State had undeniable talent along the DL going into 2014, but their performance to begin the year was below their talent level. But there may not have been a single group in the B1G that improved over the course of the year and into the post-season as much as Johnson's defensive line. In this post, we're going to look at several DL drill that Larry Johnson incorporated at PSU, and how that makes his defensive lines so successful.

We talked previously about the variety of Cover 4 coverages that allow defenses to mix up their look and reaction to routes while still playing what is essentially the same basic scheme. This time, I’m going to move away a bit from what is done post snap and look at how a defense can be benefitted by pre-snap positioning; that is: leverage and depth. In this way, you can combat some of the offense’s strengths while still maintaining your base scheme. This article will focus on the position of the front 7 and what they can do to benefit the coverage scheme.