Inside the Playbook: Indiana Breaking Tendencies to Run Outside the OTs
Indiana, predominately, was an Inside Zone Read based team with Tevin Coleman. Coleman’s ability to pick through traffic and utilize his power allowed him to churn out a bunch of yards between the tackles, and his vision and cutback ability made him deadly to turn a modest frontside gain into an explosive cutback run. But what I enjoyed most about Indiana’s scheme when utilizing Coleman was their changeup plays for getting outside the tackles. When talking about Inside Zone, you’re looking for vertical displacement of the defense. You punish the first level defenders with powerful double teams and release into the second level defenders to form multiple run alleys along the LOS. To counter this, defenses are forced to start shooting down in an effort to form a wall at the LOS. This makes it so OL have to get off doubles earlier, and so doesn’t allow for that vertical displacement. But through Outside Zone, Pin and Pull Zone, and OG Sweeps, the Hoosiers were able to take advantage of t...