Breakdown Sports

Preview Michigan State faces a very athletic defense on Saturday, when they meet Ohio State in Indianapolis for the Big Ten Title. For the past couple weeks, the Spartans have added several deviations of their base play calls, seemingly to set up and prepare them for the show down against the Buckeyes. In this post we are going to look at MSU's jet sweep package. *     *     *     *     *     *     * Jet Sweep Fake - Counter Trey So now you've forced the defense to flow both outside and upfield to protect against the jet sweep and the inside zone. Particularly when the inside zone looks to be going in the same direction as the jet sweep motion, it really pulls the defense in that direction and upfield. This really allows a defense to fairly easily get outside leverage and seal them inside as they get caught in the wash. This almost works similar to a reverse, in that you are heavily selling one direction and then ge...

Cook has been maligned as not being able to "hit the broad side of a barn" or "the ocean from a boat". Surely, there are other, more colorful phrases that have been painted on the young QB, some of them, at times, fairly accurate because of his inaccuracies. But, to Cook's credit, he has made improvement each week, as have the coaches in understanding simple passing concepts and reads to give him. It's become increasingly clear that, as the route concepts have simplified and his reps have multiplied, he has become more comfortable throwing the ball. In this post we'll look at a couple of the simple pass concepts that Michigan State deployed on Saturday, and why they are good plays for a young QB who has struggled at times putting the ball where it needs to be. Smash Concept Perhaps one of the most basic pass concepts in modern football, the smash concept was initially developed to take advantage of cover 2 defenses (or really any two high safety defe...

Introduction Michigan State is known for their use of the Cover 4 defense, pretty much all day every day. While they occasionally make forays into other defenses, it is more often the nuanced changes they make within their cover 4 that confuses offenses. Against Notre Dame, the Spartans rolled up their safeties and played them a bit tighter to the #2. We'll look at how this affected Notre Dame, how the Fighting Irish tried to counter this, and how Michigan State was still able to hold down their offense. Cover 4 - ND's Initial Attack Previously I have written about MSU's defense, both  their front and their  favorite coverage . Against Notre Dame, Narduzzi and Dantonio made a nuanced adjustment with how they played their safeties. One of the constraints offenses run on MSU's defense is the bubble screen to the field side. They attempt to draw the OLB in against the run and bubble outside, putting him in a quandary to defend both inside and out and be responsible fo...