Breakdown Sports

Against Northwestern's primarily two-high defense, Michigan State found a wrinkle that was effective for their run scheme out of a 3x1 formations (three receivers to one side of the formation, one receiver to the other side). Primarily a zone team, MSU attacked the Wildcats with a mix of Zone Windback and Counter OT . Let's take a quick look at their use of Counter.

 Down G is a play that once featured heavily in a lot of prostyle offenses, only to go out of vogue in the modern spread era. But as teams have begun incorporating more TEs back into the formation, and have felt the need to implement more gap schemes back into the zone dominant offenses, Down G has been a play that has allowed them to get there. I've previously written about Down G , and how it acts as zone on the backside, and guard kick out on the front side. It is essentially a frontside version of pin and pull, and many will even run it that way if the Center is also uncovered and free to pull. Against Michigan State in the opening game of the season, Northwestern to get outside the Spartan defensive ends setting the edge. With a mismatch also on the interior of the OL, Northwestern started dabbling in Down G to utilize the DE's momentum upfield and out, and pin the defensive front inside. From their TE-Wing look, they were also able to sequence the play with a vertical pla...

In the first half of the Michigan-Northwestern game, the Wildcats repeatedly dialed up crucial  gains on simple slant plays. From Michigan's Base Cover 1, this caused coverage problems, especially in the slot where a safety matched up on a WR. In this post, we're going to look at why the early problems existed and what Don Brown did to stop the success of slants while staying within his scheme. Maize and Blue News

This is intended to be a look at the B1G players participating in the NFL combine (and a couple others that I think may get drafted). I include combine results, though that is only a small part of the equation for me. I put much more value into what I've seen on film rather than by how well someone has been taught to run the 40 yard dash. I try to give a basic overview of strengths, weaknesses, fit, and where I'd expect them to be drafted based on "norms". What that means is that I'm not really looking at mock drafts, I don't have my ear to the ground for what Mel Kiper is saying about a guy. It's just based on what I've seen on film. This will be five parts long, with teams coming in alphabetical order. MARK DAVIS/THE WORLD-HERALD Part I Part II

Even with an offense that has sputtered lately in Northwestern, there are still some really cool intricacies and chess matches that can be found from game-to-game. In my opinion, most casual fans get caught up with “is it working or not?” Obviously, in the end, that’s ultimately what’s important. But the issue that I believe catches fans is when they try to figure out “Why?” Often, they converge to mostly meaningless catch-phrases such as “predictable”, “not innovative”, “stupid” and the like. The idea being that they see, they actually see with their own two eyes, a team execute a certain thing with ease and they assume “it must be the play design.” That’s because you can see the play design, you can see it develop in front of you and you can kind of understand it and when it works, obviously it works. Compounding matters may be video games, where many casual fans can call their own plays and feel some sort of ability to do what this guy getting paid a bunch of money can do. But ...

Northwestern threw a lot of cover 4 at Nebraska in an effort to get bodies down into the run game. One thing that Cover 4 allows is for the LBs to flow a bit more freely and quickly to the initial look, because the safety takes care of backside cutbacks . What we saw in the Nebraska vs Northwestern game was Northwestern initially having success bottling up Nebraska because of this. The safety crashing down from depth allows him to defend either the QB keep or the RB cutting back across the grain. Later on, however, we saw Nebraska adjust some of their play calls to take advantage of this scheme. In this post, we’ll look at just that.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images Northwestern D: 4-2 Nickel Over Cover 4 Nebraska O: 11 and 10 personnel. Nebraska D: Mostly Cover 4 and Cover 1, 4-2 Nickel Northwestern O: 11 and 10 personnel, mostly outside zone

Photo by David Banks/Getty Images Wisconsin D: 3-4 One gap or 2-4 Nickel; Mostly Cover 1 or Cover 4 Also, check out the PODCAST on the same topic.

Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images Minn O: Mostly 12/21 personnel, zone run, PA pass attack. NU D: Losts of 4-3 Under NU O: 11 personnel mostly zone run scheme with some gap/man counters. Minn D: Mostly Cover 4 with some Cover 1 mixed in.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT MAIZE N BREW Introduction There are many odd and unique things about Northwestern. They're the only team in the Big Ten that is private. They wear purple. Their home games are every other teams Chicago home game. These guys have been the most annoying team that hasn't been that good but somehow has been good over the past decade. They have two quarterbacks capable of starting... and they're nothing alike. I introduce to you: Kain Colter aka The Runner and Trevor Siemian aka The Passer. In the words of Vince Lombardi, "What the hell's goin' on out there?" Well, I guess I can at least try to explain some of their spread offense and how it starts to differ with their two QBs. The rest, well, not so much. The Run Game Bear with me, I just spent an hour thinking up bad section title puns from classic movies (‘Citizen Kain' anyone?) then spent the next hour trying to convince myself that they weren't as stupid as they seemed....

Last time we looked at how Michigan attempted to stop Nebraska’s speed option attack with a Cover 1 . Not finding much success, the very next week, facing Northwestern, they turned to more two-high coverages in the face of the Kain Colter lead spread attack. In this post, we’ll look at how Michigan utilized a two-high man under and Cover 4 to defend the speed option. How the Speed Option is Run Be it under center or from the shotgun, the speed option is essentially the same. The offensive line, in the case of most modern day offenses, will run their standard outside zone blocking scheme. The one difference is that the offense will bypass the defense’s EMOL toward the play and instead work to the 2 nd level. The defender left free with be the option defender, the player that the QB will read to determine if he will keep the ball and run it himself or pitch the ball to his RB. Here is how it looks: Northwestern will also occasionally run a true triple option from th...

Leaving the offense for a minute, perhaps the most aggravating thing from the Nebraska game was Michigan's inability to defend the speed option. Unfortunately, this has seemed to be a common trend for the Mattison defenses since his arrival back in Ann Arbor. But why? Is Michigan doing something inherently too difficult to accomplish? What are they really asking their defense to do? In this post, we will look at how Michigan has tried to defend the speed option in the past, what went wrong against Nebraska, and how Michigan will look to fix this issue this year. How the Speed Option is Run Be it under center or from the shotgun, the speed option is essentially the same. The offensive line, in the case of most modern day offenses, will run their standard outside zone blocking scheme. The one difference is that the offense will bypass the defense's EMOL toward the play and instead work to the 2nd level. The defender left free with be the option defender, the player that the QB ...

I realized the other day that I now have a fairly healthy dose of Power Run breakdowns and how they can be utilized from different looks. At some point I'll get to the open side looks, but for now, he's a collection of the resources I've written about Power blocking. Primer Closed Power O Power from the Spread Unbalanced Double Lead Inverted Veer, Power Blocking Schemes, 2nd Lead Adjustement

Introduction In the picture pages post today , I feel I noted something of some significance. This isn’t supposed to be a post to puff out my own chest, rather, I merely want to give the other side of the argument my side of the argument for what it really is. As an aside, there have been numerous people that have constantly misconstrued my argument lately. I understand that by taking a particular unpopular stance so strongly, that I have opened myself up to criticism. But within this article I also want to make clear up some of my stance, so towards the end I will get into some of that. Much of these will be related to the comments I made earlier (if not copy and pasted), the major difference is that I now have the opportunity to add accompanying pictures and diagrams to go with it. This is of importance because football isn’t really a sport that is best described with words. You can try to be as descriptive as possible, but there will always be a certain amount of failure to accu...

Iowa Lots of people will complain about that Iowa playcall (deep pass on 3rd and short), but you won't run into the mouth of an 8 man MSU front. Even w/ INC it makes MSU respect pass in future Iowa LBs doing a good job meeting MSU's pulling OL in the hole. MSU needs to do better taking LBs out with their momentum The lead blocker on that roll needs to peak inside earlier. As soon as you find no one up-field, you become lead blocker playing inside/out. Blocked air for too long and forced QB to throw it away. Iowa CB too high on that tackle. Wrap and drive the player OOB if you don't want to tackle, but never go high there. (On MSU 3rd down conversion on catch short of the sticks) Iowa has been very disruptive with DL, preventing MSU from getting to LBs, and LBs on meeting blockers on inside runs, MSU trying to get outside now but not getting into Iowa defenders well. That's the area to attack MSU's cover 4. Short/intermediate out. That's a realyl tough...

Introduction Over the past few years, Nebraska has done some creative things with the spread option run game. The veer play, once a staple of many triple option offenses as Nebraska fans know, has made its way into spread football via the "inverted veer". Once teams started figuring out the straight veer play, teams started incorporating a veer triple option, which one of the ways Cornhusker teams of the ‘90s moved the ball at will on over-matched opponents. It is no different in the spread system. In the past few years, I've seen Nebraska do two different things to counter the inverted veer version of the scrape exchange defense. In this article, I will highlight those two plays. Veer First, let's start with the basics of the veer read. I'm assuming I don't need to spend a large amount of time explaining the system to this fan base, so I'll only touch on the basics. From under center, the QB will step laterally at a 4 O'clock position. His eyes...

Originally I had thought Buffalo played this with Cover 6, which is essentially Cover 4 to the top of the screen (twins side) and Cover 2 on the bottom. But it's difficult to say. This could be Cover 3, it could Cover 0 with two drops underneath. Regardless, this is a play that was designed to attack both 2-high safeties and single high defenses, and at this point it seemed that Buffalo had begun running more 2-high looks to prevent the big plays. But a play shouldn't just work against a single kind of defense, and I'll try to explain why it worked so simply here as against this defense as well. What's interesting about this play is that it isn't originally a spread concept. I actually stems from many other offenses. In the West Coast Offense it's a scissor concept. You'll see it in run and shoot and other offenses as well. So both of these pass concepts are borrowed, but with the run threat provided by the spread, it becomes easier to read and predict the d...

Ceiling: 8                 Ranking: 6                  Floor: 3.75 ( Ranking Explanation ) School: Wheaton North (Wheaton, IL) Size: 6'4" - 195 lbs. Composite: 4 Star, 0.8973 ,  #15 Pro, #271 Overall 247 : 4 Star, 92, #11 Pro Rivals : 4 Star, 5.8, #7 Pro Scout : 3 Star, #43 Pro Favorites:  Northwestern (Commit) Other Notable Offers:  Boston College, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, NC State, Ole Miss, Penn St, Syracuse Strengths Strong arm on short passes, capable of firing ball in quickly Quick release and good at moving the pocket Underrated athlete that can keep defenses honest with his feet Strong arm, can really rocket a ball in there. Displays the ability to put some air on the ball and throw over top of defenses. Good height. Has a release point above his helmet, while still not with full arm extension, still gives him a high release point...

Ceiling: 8.25                 Ranking: 6.5                  Floor: 5 ( Ranking Explanation ) School: Ursuline (Youngstown, OH) Size: 6'4" - 230 lbs. Composite: 3 Star, 0. 8877,  #16 Pro, #319 Overall 247 : 4 Star, 90, #17 Pro Rivals : 3 Star, 5.7, #15 Pro Scout : 4 Star, #14 Pro, #239 Overall Favorites:  Michigan State (Commit) Other Notable Offers:  Cal, Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern Strengths Ball velocity and rotation, putting the ball on receivers fast Very good running ability Capable of threatening every area of the field with arm Has the ability to make throws to every part of the field. Has good pure arm strength and releases the ball with good arm and wrist snap, giving the ball pretty good velocity and puts it on the receiver fast. Quick release allows him to get the ball out of his hands fast. Capable of putting the ball in all areas of t...

Ceiling: 9                 Ranking: 8.25                  Floor: 5 ( Ranking Explanation ) School: De La Salle Institute (Chicago, ILL) Size: 6'5" - 290 lbs. Composite: 4 Star, #4 OT, #49 Overall 247 : 4 Star, 97, #5 OT, #42 Overall Rivals : 4 Star, 5.9, #13 OT, #97 Overall Scout : 4 Star, #6 OT, #52 Overall Favorites: Ohio State (Commit) Other Notable Offers:  Michigan, Michigan St, Notre Dame,  Arizona St, Arkansas, Cal, Florida, FSU, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Miss St, Nebraska, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Purdue, Tennessee, UCLA, Vandy, Virginia, Wisconsin Strengths Mammoth body that moves well, especially forward. Can pull around the line as his straight speed is good for his size. Great, great down blocker. Gets under pads of kids that are much smaller than him, get into body, latches on, and drives. Very physical player...