Inside the Playbook - Michigan's Counter Game Part 4 - Sequencing and Protecting Tendencies

By -

We've now looked at the basic scheme, the run tags, and the post-snap modifiers. We've also spent some time digesting how Michigan executes their Counter techniques. Now we're going to look at how the scheme is protected from defenses over-playing it. This protection is both built into the scheme itself, and is also done elsewhere in the playbook. Let's take a look.


Protection via Alignment and Defensive Tendencies

Alignment and motion can also help protect the scheme. Against Nebraska, Michigan attacked the wide side of the field because they were confident in how Nebraska wanted to utilize the safety as part of the fit from their Cover 4 base.

(short motion)

Many times you saw Michigan attack how teams defended Nub formations as well. Or how they check for unbalanced. Or eliminating pulling OL to avoid provided the defense keys.

They also have built in rules they can include, based on defense or as a standard principle. This includes pulling the Center instead of the guard, or running "short" counter vs odd fronts.


Protection via Post-Snap Reads

Buzzing safeties in the box or bringing edge pressure? The threat of RPOs can be built in to protect that. Linebackers scrapping hard over the top, again, backside RPOs can be added to protect that. 

(RPO)

Michigan also utilized some run-run reads in the offense, and BASH concepts, to force defenses to defend both sides of the LOS and not over-key the pullers

(BASH Counter)


Protection via Pulling OL

Two key ways the play is protected is specifically with how Michigan blocks the Counter.

If the defensive EMOL is squeezing hard at the sight of the front side down block, Michigan will change the kickout block to a log block. 

(Log Block)

If they are regularly over aggressive trying to spill, they will still kick out the EMOL in an effort to get a two-for-one if the LB is quickly setting up inside. They can assist this in lining up in ways they are confident they will pull the Center, in order to get to the edge quicker.

(Kick the spill)

Protection via Combo Blocks and RB Technique

I said this a few times over the course of the year. Michigan did not take a counter step in their counter scheme. In fact, they ran Counter like Power, a down hill, A-to-B-to-C-to-D gap run play.

A counter step adds to the misdirection element of counter and also provides a brief pause from the RB, allowing for some separation between himself and the puller so that he can better read the pulling and wrapping blockers and react off of it.

Michigan did not do this. Instead, they had a very down hill running style that often times ended up relatively tight to the puller. The obvious upside is that they very rarely had negative plays. This also served to work better within their sequencing with split zone, which I'll get to in a second. But the third benefit, and probably most important for the sake of this article, is how it allowed Michigan to attack over-aggressive defenses. 

By incorporating slower backfield footwork, you generally force the play to work more playside. But the harder you hit down hill, the faster you force the defense, particularly the linebackers, to react. This actions really open up the cutback across flow, which Michigan freely attacked. This was paired with how Michigan executed very patient, North-South Combo blocks on the front side. Rather than rush to seal the backside LB to the backside, if LBs over flowed, the releasing OL would let them cross face and then wash them past the ball. 

(video)


 Sequencing

The idea of sequencing is building off of plays, so that initially they have similar traits and force the defense to react to those initial traits, and punish them for doing so. Some of that is built into the structure of RPO, but you also do it through intentional play calling. The simplest way to look at it is play action. You have the run play, then you have the play action that initially looks like that run play. But it comes in more varieties.


Split Zone

Split zone served as Michigan's most run play in 2021. Split zone and counter tie together because the frontside of Counter looks very similar to the backside of split zone. I go into more detail here about how it makes gap integrity difficult for defenses:


Insert

Michigan generally had a strong Counter tendency, with the H or F aligned to the same side as the RB. Michigan understood that tendency, and used it to hit with insert, which has a similar initial movement from the H-Back.


RB Sweep

 This is a play that initially looks exactly like Counter from a blocking standpoint, but is intended to get outside. Similar to Counter Bounce, but with less initial vertical push from the RB. Notices how the pulling guard here bypasses the defensive end because of the DE's hard charge inside.


End Around

 This utilizes Counter Sweep Blocking, but initially presents the RB on his standard Counter path. In this way, the interior of the OL is threatened, causing the defensive front to work vertical, before getting leveraged to the outside.

 

Gift

 While "Gift" didn't work well for Michigan, it serves to break a key tendency. Michigan could align in several ways, but most prominantly, if the RB and H-back were on opposite sides of the center, it meant Zone or Power. When they were on the same side, it meant Counter. This put the RB and H-Back on opposite sides, but allowed them to still execute their Counter scheme.

Play Action

Michigan had two primary play actions off of counter action. One was a simple sideline roll out, high-low read.


The other was a post-wheel read that attacked vertical.


Backfield Action

Pistol Frontside

Pistol Backside

Same Side

Hand Back

Reverse

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