offensive strategy

It came from behind! [Bryan Fuller]

This series is a work-in-progress glossary of football concepts we tend to talk about in these pages. Previously:

Offensive concepts: RPOs, high-low, snag, mesh, covered/ineligible receivers, Duo, zone vs gap blocking, zone stretch, split zone, pin and pull, inverted veer, reach block, kickout block, wham block, Y banana play, TRAIN, the run & shoot

Defensive concepts: The 3-3-5, Contain & lane integrity, force player, hybrid space player, no YOU’RE a 3-4!, scrape exchange, Tampa 2, Saban-style pattern-matching, match quarters, Dantonio’s quarters, Don Brown’s 4-DL packages and 3-DL packages, Bear

Special Teams: Spread punt vs NFL-style

So counter trey and its counter, BASH, are a pair of offensive concepts we're going to see more of, possibly from and certainly against Michigan. While things like it were part of the Single Wing offenses of the early 20th century, Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams really made Counter Trey a staple of power running. Michigan ran a bunch of counter under Drevno, and while they moved away from it last year, it has come up often lately in opponent scouting, most prominently in the Maryland offense when Mike Locksley was the OC. Since Locksley is now their HC, and because I know Gattis saw it plenty under Locksley last year, and Ohio State was doing it a bunch last year, I figured it would be a good time to cover these concepts so you can ID them when they come, starting with the ol' favorite, Counter Trey.

THE CONCEPT:

Counter Trey is a slow-developing counter run where you block down on the playside tackle and pull multiple guys from the backside for the two crucial frontside defenders: a guard to kick out an unblocked edge defender, and another guy from the backside (usually a TE or a tackle) to lead block into the frontside linebacker, with the back cutting off that block in the hole.

image

The plan here is to 1) Block down on the playside tackle, doubling to the MIKE, thus setting the inside wall of the gap. 2) Kick out the playside DE with the backside pulling guard to pry open the other side of the gap, 3) Bring a second puller (backside TE or OT) as lead blocker through the gap to take out the playside LB, and 4) Have the running back take a false step to freeze defenders to the backside, then cut behind the second puller and follow into the gap.

This definition gets controversial because it has expanded over the years. Voters in my informal twitter poll were split evenly between the definition above and any play with counter action and a puller, with a pedantic handful who stick to Osborne's original terminology. For our purposes I use the definition by Ross Fulton…

…plus counter action.

"Counter" in this sense refers to the initial motion of the back(s)—the running back will start the play with a short step counter to the flow of the play, serving as a fakeout to freeze any linebackers reading backfield motion, plus something to do in that second while the blocking is getting set up. "Trey" came out of Osborne's terminology for combination blocks: "Trey" meant a tackle+TE double-team. "Deuce" was a guard+tackle, and "Ace" was center+guard combo. I'm sure you can dig up a coach who swears a T/G double-team is "Counter Deuce" but to most "Trey" means backside guard->kickout+backside lead puller, kind of like how "secondary" has lost its meaning as "second level of defense" and become synonymous with defensive backs. As you can see in the drawing above, Osborne's terms made sense in a world full of fullbacks and tight ends. As we're about to find, this concept is so adaptable that you see it all the time today with no such things.

[After THE JUMP: How to spot it, how to defend it, what they do with it]

This series is a work-in-progress glossary of football concepts we tend to talk about in these pages. Previously:

Offensive concepts: RPOs, high-low, snag, covered/ineligible receivers, Duo, zone vs gap blocking, zone stretch, split zone, inverted veer, reach block, kickout block, wham block, Y banana play, TRAIN

Defensive concepts: Contain & lane integrity, force player, hybrid space player, no YOU’RE a 3-4!, scrape exchange, Tampa 2, Saban-style pattern-matching, match quarters, Dantonio’s quarters, Don Brown’s 4-DL packages and 3-DL packages, Bear

Special Teams: Spread punt vs NFL-style

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hoeglaw

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The Play:

So this is a zone/power hybrid that Michigan ran last year instead of outside zone, and had it run consistently against us in the latter half of the season. We call it “Pin and Pull” but it also goes by “Packer Sweep” or “Double Power” or “Student Body Right.” It’s really old, and was all the rage at the top levels of football until the less extreme/simpler to install outside zone occupied most of its niche. But pin and pull is still popular, and made a comeback in recent years as power blocking came back in vogue and offensive coaches searched for a way to punish defenses for putting smaller coverage dudes around the edges of the box.

WHAT IS IT?

The concept seems simple enough: block down everyone you can, and pull everyone else around. Pin and pull. Based on the defensive front any guy on your line (and you want your line extended to tight ends and beyond for this) might be pulling, or blocking down, or executing a reach block or combo block.

image

Ideally, you’re getting all of those dangerous DL blocked with your own heavy OL and TEs from advantageous positions, then swinging more meat to the point of attack to meet the smaller defenders—cornerbacks, safeties, OLBs, hybrids, etc.—who hang out there. From there it’s a matter of your back reading his blocks, and physics.

Given Michigan’s TE-heavy roster and power run orientation this looks to be a bigger part of our own future—right now it’s the basis of those sweeps we pull out from time to time. We’ll also see it a lot on defense, since even without Peppers Don Brown is often going to leave an open invitation to try it.

[Hit the jump to see how it’s run, and how it’s beat.]

Hello, this series is a work-in-progress glossary of football concepts we tend to talk about in these pages. Previously:

Offensive concepts: RPOs, high-low, snag, covered/ineligible receivers, Duo, zone vs gap blocking, zone stretch, reach block, kickout block, wham block, Y banana play, TRAIN

Defensive concepts: Contain & lane integrity, force player, hybrid space player, no YOU’RE a 3-4!, scrape exchange, Tampa 2, Saban-style pattern-matching, match quarters, Dantonio’s quarters, Don Brown’s 4-DL packages and 3-DL packages, Bear

Special Teams: Spread punt vs NFL-style

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We’ve been using this offseason to learn about some of the tools in Harbaugh’s inside running game toolbox, and have so far neglected one of my favorites: Split Zone. This play today is a mainstay of Rich Rod’s offense and its derivatives, since the blocking is almost exactly the same as a base inside zone read right up until the guy who thought he was forming up to play an option gets blindsided by a large, laterally moving TE.

But it originated in under center two-back offenses, and remains an important curveball for I-form teams like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan State. If you’re going to be running inside zone, like, at all, and you’re not in a 4- or 5-wide formation all the time, you probably run this play and variations on it at least 3 or 4 times a game.

Let’s draw it up.

image

ignore McDoooooom—he’s just there to get the fans yelling “McDooooooom” and distract from what’s really going on

No, that line from the “T” to the “M” isn’t Hurst blocking Devin Bush—it means the guard and center will combo the the DT and the middle linebacker. This is true for most zone plays so I might just start drawing things up this way from now on.

This particular example from the Spring Game had some motioning and a fake jet, and the defense threw a few curveballs at it that the blocking handled as they were supposed to. We’re going to ignore those for now then come back and discuss them later when we’ve established the basics of what’s going on here.

How it works

Split zone is a riff on inside zone but flips the attack order: rather than reading outside-inside-backside like on most zone plays, Split Zone wants to hit that north-south cutback lane first, only going to frontside gaps when that’s not available. They do this by flipping the backside blocking tree, so that all of the usual gaps defenders think they’re going to be defending are not really the gaps they’re defending. That leaves an unblocked backside defender who gets whacked by a catchy-blocky fellow coming from the other side  of the backfield.

Its strength is that at first blush it’s inside zone, which threatens a bunch of gaps to the strongside, with a backside cutback. But split zone is attacking the backside first, leaving the frontside gaps as a Plan B.

split vs iz

looks like inside zone

The key difference occurs with the backside blocking. Rather than kicking out the EMLOS (end man on the line of scrimmage), the backside OT will ignore the edge and check the gap inside of him, moving downfield if nobody shows. The backside guard and center are still going to combo the nose tackle, but they’re trying to get around the opposite side, so a nose tackle who tries to get to the frontside of the center is just putting himself in the wrong hole.

Now for the kicker. Remember how we left that EMLOS on the backside unblocked, right where the play design is going? Don’t worry we’ve got a plan for him: a fullback or tight end should be coming across the formation, then using that latitudinal head of steam to bang open the hole (the orange block in the above gif).

If the offense is lucky, the defensive end, upon realizing that the tackle inside him isn’t trying to kick, will think he’s getting optioned and form up outside to force a tough read while the middle linebacker fears play-action and stays back to read the backfield action.

[Hit THE JUMP for what happens when they don’t get lucky]