Coaching Points: JSU vs MSU, 2014

By -
(Photo: Kevin W. Fowler | for the Lansing State Journal)

Disclaimer: I watched the first half of the MSU vs JSU game

Offense: Lots of 12 personnel, single back Power O with Inside Zone constraint
Defense: 4-3 Over, Double A gap blitz heavy early. 3-3-5 Nickel



Cook
Cook picked up where he left off last year. He was on target perfectly on a fade route and got the ball off with great timing on a 3rd and short spacing concept to the hitch route (the Bench receiver was late on his route, but by that time Cook had made his reads appropriately). Cook continues to look more and more consistent with his mechanics, but taking much more from this game is difficult. The important thing was that the throws he had to put in a window on time, he did.

Run Game
I thought Langford, for the most part, did what he could with the blocking provided to him. However, the OGs in this game simply underperformed. They often got caught up in the wash when trying to pull, they got stalemated too often when down blocking, double-teaming, or zone blocking, and in general looked hesitant in the hole when they arrived to clean someone out. I thought most of the issues with the run game, and the reason why Langford seemed to bounce quite a bit outside, was because the OGs didn't adequately perform their job. That'll need to be cleaned up, and may have been made even harder by recent injuries.

Defensive Line
The defensive ends continue to look like one of the better units in the B1G. Calhoun flashed a great inside swim move to force the second MSU INT of the game. They were disruptive on the edge, both in the pass and the run game, which, when facing a mobile QB that gets the ball off fairly quickly, is impressive. I thought the DTs looked quite a bit like last year, not great, but kept the LBs clean. I still think they lack some of the technique and explosiveness to be great penetraters in the run or pass game. But if they can keep LBs clean, then they can do their job well enough for the defense to be good.

LBs
The LBs were aggressive and hit well. It seemed to me that Narduzzi called more blitzes than he typically does on early downs, favoring the double A gap blitz he has become known for. Clearly, MSU was very comfortable with their ends in run support and thought that the could run blitz the interior and pressure the QB simultaneously to make things difficult. What does this actually mean for the LBs though? It's hard to say in one game. It could be a gameplan thing, or it could be that Narduzzi wanted to slim down some of the early down reads so that the LBs played a little faster rather than having to make reads. We'll find out more next week.

Coverage
Let me start by saying that I thought JSU had a very good gameplan going into the game on offense. They didn't put up the points in the first half, but they called plays that exploit some of the weaknesses of the coverage and had plenty of opportunities to move the ball. I think the communication, both verbal and mostly non-verbal, needs to be better from the LB to DB level right now. In my mind, inside routes weren't being effectively rerouted, and the timing of passing off receivers seemed off as players were too easily able to get past the safety or LBs in coverage. This meant that JSU had some opportunities, especially in the middle of the field. I talked recently about the difficulty of playing safety in a cover 4 scheme , but the job can be made easier in some ways by how the OLBs play the slot receivers. I think there was still some wrinkles that need to be ironed out in this facet of the defense.

What does this mean for Oregon next week? I honestly think it only helps MSU. Oregon was going to attack these same things regardless of what JSU did. It's better for MSU having it on tape and having it serve as coachable moments so that they can improve on it (while still winning the game handily). It's much better, in this case, to have that bit exposed a little early so you can clean it up by the time you go into the more competitive game. And it isn't one of those things that is a wrinkle that Oregon wouldn't have tried to exploit. If someone is going to expose the weakness first, you'd rather it not be Oregon. So I think this will really help MSU get better on the backend, even if it's only with a week of practice.

Special Teams
I only say this because MSU was great at kicking last year, but this was kind of a rough outing for those guys. Kickers are weird animals. I expect Sadler to bounce back and wouldn't expect much different from Geiger.

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