It took me awhile to start getting through the tape against Alabama but I am seeing some encouraging things that go right back to the specific things we were most excited about when Gattis arrived. That is: how he weaponizes speed. I was particularly interested in the way he used Giles Jackson to exploit mismatches created by Alabama's base defense.

Alabama's Defense: Pattern-Matching

It's been so long since I broke down Saban's coverage system this would be a good opportunity to refresh that. Pattern-Matching is to Cover 1/Cover 3 what Quarters is to Cover 2/Cover 4: a way to use the offense's keys to switch within the same play between different coverage rules. By switching on certain routes they can play a base Cover 3 without giving up the things Cover 3 is weak against.

The simple way to describe the rules for pattern-matching is you're in Cover 3 until the route you're over stems—if it goes outside you convert to man coverage, and if it goes inside you call out to convert the inside guy into a zone and carry your man until you can pass him off. The linebackers or "under defenders" are listening for those "UNDER!" calls, sometimes from the other side of the field. More specifically:

For example in a Cover 3 the curl/flat defenders cover seam routes off the snap but only on their way to the "Curl/Flat" zone. In a Pattern Match those defenders stick to the #2 (counting outside->in) receivers on anything outside. The switches really do look like those in basketball zones.

Note: "Rip" and "Liz" are right/left calls, denoting which side has a blitzing OLB and a safety rolling down to the curl/flat zone, as opposed to the safety taking the overhang job while the OLB plays that side's curl/flat zone. This way they can line up two-high without sacrificing the efficacy of their single-high coverages.

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Tripping Them Up

Everything you do in football is some kind of tradeoff. As all the text in the right column suggests, part of Pattern-Matching's tradeoff is it's complicated. And of course offenses are going to think of ways to compound that. You'll notice with any kind of pattern match (by lowercase I include Quarters) defense the opponent will use a lot of trips formations. If you want to run a balanced defense, we're going to stack threats to one side.

Michigan starts their second offensive drive in a trips formation, and Giles Jackson at running back. Alabama sees it's trips and calls a five-man pressure and sets it to the right side ("Rip").

Setting the coverage to the trips side gives them numbers to that side. If Michigan's running, say, a Flood concept, the Pattern Match rules will essentially turn this into man to man with a deep safety over the top to assist.

However it also turns the "Jack" (a hybrid DE/LB) into the curl/flat defender to the backside, converting one of the inside linebackers into the outside rusher instead. Saban's tendency in these cases is to add the other ILB as a rusher, with the WLB converting his rush to coverage if the running back comes out as a 4th RB to that side. You're giving up one of the Under defenders but in Alabama Math that's usually fine: the Jack is Anfernee Jennings, an all-SEC/Butkus semifinalist fifth-year senior who was rated the 177th best player in his class in 2015. Even at 6'3"/259 Jennings can keep up with most running backs.

But you know the thing about Giles Jackson is he's not most running backs.

You really can't play that much better than Jennings did, and Jackson and Patterson play this one pretty conservatively—there are yards to be gained by turning on the jets instead of downshifting for the safe pass—and it's still seven yards on 1st down. The MLB's blitz clears out acres of space, and the trips formation has pulled the other under defender—the strong safety over Ronnie Bell—way out to the sideline.

It's clear that Gattis had his offense prepared to pick on the backside on this play. Shea is reading McKeon down to Jackson, and every route but the latter is going outside to clear space for Giles to break one big. Gattis has his former boss's tendencies downloaded, and dialed up this mismatch specifically to exploit it.

And what if the defense breaks tendency? If they get a "Liz" rotation Shea will spot it immediately because the FS will be rolling down over McKeon. That should put Ronnie Bell's route into a speed race with the WLB:

You'll take that all day, after you check to see how the roll-down safety dealt with Jackson, because when you can shake a free safety you're gonna have a real good time.

On Notice

This might be taken for a bit of modern frippery—changing out a running back for a receiver then running him in a receiver route. As we'll see in the next installment, this was only the beginning of a suite of scatback stuff Gattis prepared for this game, not to mention a future that includes the return of Chris Evans, the debut of AJ Henning and Blake Corum, and a bright future in space for rising sophomores Mike Sainristil and Giles Jackson.