Saturday, January 21, 2017

Film Study: Breaking Down Texas Tech's Offensive Game Plan vs Baylor


With draft season gearing up, I decided to start looking at the crop of quarterbacks in this year's class. I wanted to start with Patrick Mahomes first for a few reasons:

1. I love watching Texas Tech's offense. While still staying true to the classic air raid principles, Kliff Kingsbury further emphasizes getting the ball into his playmaker's hands in advantageous situations. Whether it be a one on one in the open field, or getting a receiver behind the defense. 

2. Mahomes has rare arm talent. He makes throws that few other QB's in this year's class can make




 Texas Tech featured a few concepts that work in conjunction with each other. The next video shows one of their base plays out of the trips formation, the stick concept:

Tech calls this play a few times a game, and surely defenses practice it when preparing to play them. This next play is meant to take advantage of a defense keying in on the stick concept. Out of a trips formation, Tech calls the "Levels" concept. They adjust the #3 receiver to run a quick sluggo. The defender on the #3 receiver will trigger on any inside break, allowing the receiver to get outside leverage with the defender leaning forward.

This ends up being a great call against Baylor's Cover zero. The play is diagrammed below, preceding the video clip.





Baylor came into the game with the intention of taking away the outside throws, especially to the boundary. This next video shows Baylor calling cover 2-trap into the boundary on a third and short, with great success.


Texas Tech takes advantage of Baylor's game plan. Tech attacks the middle of the field, specifically taking advantage of the boundary safety's aggressiveness. The first example shows Tech running "smash split". The diagram shows the "split" route having an option. In this case, the route converts to a post route to split the safeties. The boundary safety is occupied with the smash concept, leaving a giant window for the split route (A detailed breakdown of how Tech teaches this play can be found if you click HERE).



The second example is a "sting" route from the boundary slot receiver. The safety takes the bait, and leaves the middle of the field wide open. The backside combination to the boundary occupies the other safety. With Baylor playing quarters coverage to the boundary, the safety drives on the dig route. This is a neat backside combination that flows nicely into the quarterback's vision if the sting route is taken away. (Kudos to the TV broadcast for the great view of these plays!)




To put a bow on this game, Tech's offense had a good game plan and executed at a high level.

Mahomes will be an interesting project for whoever drafts him. They will need to take the good with the bad, and try and break some of his bad habits with his feet. He would be best served to sit a year or so to acclimate to the NFL.

Amazon lowered the price on my book. CLICK HERE to get your copy. It is a great offseason resource for any coach or fan of the game!





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Thursday, January 5, 2017

A Great Four Vertical Adjustment



Since this play seemed to interest the fine folks on twitter, I shall elaborate:




This play is taken from page 41 of my book. Click here to see what it is all about. The play is a version of four verticals with a few twists:

1: The importance of using two TE’s. This encourages the defense to roll a safety down to help defend the extra gaps created in the run game.

2: The option route from the X receiver. This will give the quarterback a quick option against the blitz. The wheel-snag combination will place the flat defender in a bind, and can be especially lethal against a fire zone blitz.

The pass protection component of this play must be carefully considered. Using a 5 man protection with a long developing concept can often spell “S-A-C-K” in many coordinators heads.

There are two ways I would go about accounting for this:
1: Using a man protection scheme, and call out the Mike (defender on #3) as the 5th rusher. 

2: Half man, half slide. Have the left side of the line in man, and the Center, RG and RT slide to their right gap.

Either of these pass protections will leave the Will unaccounted for (or a third rusher to the left of the center). This third rusher will be accounted for by the option route of the X receiver. When this player blitzes, they will vacate the area that the snag route will settle in. If the corner comes down on the snag, the wheel will have outside leverage on any defender trying to find him.

The rest of the play centers around 4 verticals, and can be adjusted to fit how you teach it. Having #3 curl over the ball at 10 yards, or bend horizontally at 10 yards on a crossing route are both good adjustments against two high safety looks.

My book has many other plays like this diagrammed and broken down. I wanted to give a glimpse of my thought process when I see a play on film. Get your copy here!



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