I promised you I'd get back to the #SpeedInSpace stuff Gattis was running in the Citrus Bowl and here we are. You may want to first go back and (re-)read Neck Sharpies: Can't Turn You Loose because it explains the rules and structure of Alabama's defense. That article then showed how Gattis messed with the Tides' coverage. Now we'll get into how he messed with their run fits.

Those run fits are comparatively simple. Saban's run defense is predicated on the fact that he has better athletes than every team he faces, especially at the three defensive line positions. The goal is to always stay balanced, so that the offense can't get numbers, and to bring five-man pressures to make sure any one-on-one victory in the front seven is rewarded.

It's not so different from Don Brown's philosophy in 2016-'17: bring pressure, set the edge, and push everything back to your meat-grinder inside, with hybrid players on the edges so you can quickly flip jobs when the offense moves personnel across the formation, ensuring your numbers are always even. Intuitively, "Rip" pushes those numbers to the (defense's) right side and "Liz" to the (defense's) left. Got it? Great. Let's fuck it up.

[After THE JUMP: Sure you're prepared for one guy to flip, but we have more than one guy]

1. Motion Flips the Numbers

This is a new take on Michigan's beloved Arc Read (the program calls it Zone Bluff), which you may remember from such plays as 81 yards versus Wisconsin or sealing the two blowouts over MSU. Part of Michigan's problem running this play in 2019 was Shea Patterson's reluctance to pull the ball, and various defenses that gamed to make that decision harder on him. So here they do it with a jet receiver.

I want you to pay particular attention to how this screws with Alabama's run system. The initial setup has three receivers bunched on the offense's left side. As a pattern-matching system, the defense is counting eligible receivers to each side of the formation from the outside->in: DPJ is #1, McKeon #2, Bell #3, and Haskins the #4 (responsibility of the LBs). Alabama's Rip/Liz call is easy: "Liz," which rolls down the field safety, blitzes the "Jack" and leaves the "Star" in coverage, because the offense has so much more material to Star's side.

That all changes a second after the snap:

Bringing both McKeon and DPJ across transfers two coverage responsibilities from the boundary to the field side. The Jack, who thought he was blitzing the edge, becomes an edge player being optioned, then sees McKeon coming at him, and last discovers actually he's in a footrace with Peoples-Jones. Cornerback #2 (Patrick Surtain) and the Star #5 (Shyheim Carter). The defensive line is slanting away from the direction of the play and the playside LB got sealed by Mayfield so there's a ton of space for DPJ versus 6'3/259 OLB/DE.

That guy made a great play to string it out but also gambled DPJ wouldn't cut back into all that green behind him. Also this safety (All-American Xavier McKinney) stayed high for a few extra beats, trusting his elite speed to make up ground quickly once the play revealed itself.

Just a two-yard gain from all that speed in space is disappointing, but there's also a message sent: Whatever you think your job was when you aligned, it might not be that in a snap.

2. Split Zone

Next drive we're running the thing that countered, a split zone with BEN MASON in place of McKeon. DPJ this time gets to Bell's old job of backside passing threat while Bell goes in motion. Again, that screws up Alabama's Rip/Liz call. Rather than flip the two safeties and leave the Star without a job again, this time the Star backs to be the high man when Bell leaves. When Mason also crosses the formation, that's supposed to be the high safety's signal to rotate as well. He's late.

The play got weird in a few ways—the NG got a super hold on Onwenu, and that and/or coming down the frontside held the MLB inside until it was too late to prevent a first down. Bama had the Jack shuffling tight to the line but Mason really dug him out to make room. With the backside safety swinging out to the numbers with Ronnie Bell and the Star reacting too slowly to Mason crossing the formation, this was one block from getting a lot of yards.

The key is what Bell's motion did to the assignments, particularly of the safeties. FS#21 is playing middle linebacker. Shyheim Carter, the hybrid space player, is the deep safety on a play where he's the guy who's supposed to rotate to the gap his guy, Mason, cracked open on the opposite side. McKinney the All-American is out chasing Bell in a spot where all he's doing is getting mixed up in his cornerback's fight with Collins. These are not the jobs they're paid for.

And we're not even to the place where it gets complicated yet.

3. Pin & Pull with a Bash Read

Now we are at the place where it gets complicated. In a play Gattis got from the old Split Backs sets he helped run at Alabama in 2018, we've got players running every which way. Really it's two plays in one, or at the very least made to look like it:

Again we have motion from the side with a potential four eligible receivers (Sainristil, McKeon, Mason, and Charbonnet), to try to get a numbers advantage on the backside. The play ends up an accidental Down G because Bredeson had to cut off his pull to stop the WLB's backside blitz. That's fine since the point of Bredeson on this play is to pull around and hopefully take out the WLB before that guy makes it to the playside. It also looks pretty planned: Alabama's five-man pressures were well-scouted.

Mason's job is again to kick out the edge, though by motioning away the only wide receiver to that side Mason's quarry is now a measly cornerback (not the good one). Onwenu's pull—if you remember your Pin & Pull/Down G/Counter rules—is about kicking out the edge, and because that was the tight end's side we get a 360*-pound dude blasting a player who was trying to play single-high free safety a moment ago.

As a little bonus, the MLB again got caught peeking, taking a step with Sainristil's jet motion instead of reacting to his guy, Charbonnet. That gives McKeon time to get downfield, meet the MLB, lock him up, and ride him downfield until they meet up with the safety.

About that safety:

The rotation from Liz to Rip causes the Boundary Safety to already have his momentum going away from where he's about to be needed, but as the single-high safety he's also not stretched between responsibilities that both demand he get on his horse ASAP to take care of them. Sainristil's motion gives the offense a numbers advantage on a QB keeper, since in that case the option would erase the Jack (purple because I used blue and red for the RB and QB) putting the Field Safety into a potential Patterson-Sainristil pickle. That leaves the playside blocker for every playside defender, each in an advantageous position. From the top:

• TE Sean McKeon: start two gaps playside of the MLB and seal him.
• RT Jaylen Mayfield: Start playside of a DE and block down on him.
• RG Mike Onwenu: Kick out a 191-pound hybrid safety trying to set an edge.
• C Cesar Ruiz: Block down or at least occupy the nose guard.
• LG Ben Bredeson: Get playside of the WLB, who's blitzing your backside gap by the way—thanks guy.
• LT Jon Runyan: Occupy backside DE.

I *LOVE* this play. The way to defend it properly from Alabama's defense is to have the safety reverse his course and attack when he sees the give, which would require the defense to have that safety know whether the Jack is going to crash on the RB and open up the Bash play to the backside. But with both the RB and FB stationary until it's almost too late, really that safety is frozen wherever he drifted back to. You could say Gattis lucked into that WLB blitz but that's a thing Alabama runs most plays.

It's such a great play in fact that they ran it again the same drive:

Again, watch Mr. All-American safety as he tries to react to all the horizontality in the backfield, albeit with the backside guard pulling instead of bringing Ben Mason.

McKinney again is too far back to help. A delay caused by the 259-pound Jack trying to anchor against Bredeson's kickout target (the Jack, Anfernee Jennings, who draws a +2 and refs-2 in a hypothetical Bama defense vs Michigan UFR) gives the CB and WLB time to converge, but Haskins ran through them, meaning it was up to McKinney to end things. He ultimately does—the guy is very good—but he lost his bonnet in the process so he can't be on the field for the next play, which is 1st and Goal from the seven. Can his backup survive one play? Find out in our next installment of…just kidding he does not.

4. Play-Action Off of All of That

Bama has a backup DE on the field to the play (offense's left) side, the safeties rolled up at linebacker depth, and the Jack standing over the Y tight end to ensure no quick and easy TE tosses to the end zone. Off the snap Michigan's blocking feels like they're going for split zone, goal-line style, where you use extended doubles on both DTs to move the pile a few yards closer to the goal. Saban's defense is ready to defend that or the Arc Zone with the boundary safety added to the box, relieving him of having to worry about motion.

Even as they get it, with DPJ jetting across to overflow the offense's right side, Rip/Liz is turned off, and the cornerback can travel across the formation behind the safety/linebacker level. The problem with that: he was that side's best pass defender.

It's not hard to see who's at fault—it's Boundary Safety #3, Daniel Wright (brother of Major Wright), a top-150 redshirt sophomore in for a snap for ol' Lost His Bonnet. But you have to understand, this was not the thing he was expecting.

Note the TE motion and the Jet motion counter each other this time. Alabama is 100% ready for an attack to that side, matching numbers with numbers by traveling the cornerback with DPJ. They're also set up to use the extra man in the box to solve the issue with the runs that got us here, delivering the backside safety directly to the running lane, unblocked, as soon as the ball gets there. They have a plan for the option, with the DE instructed to crash on the RB because the BS is there to back him up. Seeing Eubanks come across feels like confirmation of their biases. Looping past is understandable because the DE crashed on the expected handoff, and Bama knows Michigan loves to do that with their Arc Zone. Turning upfield and taking an easy pass, well, fudgsicles.

Things We Learned Today

This was the right kind of defense to play Gattis's #SpeedInSpace games with multiple motions across the formation, because of the way Alabama uses their safeties in run defense. One of them is always supposed to be high, which is why completing anything deep on them tends to mean throwing it down the sideline against coverage. They also will rotate their jobs with motion to match numbers to either side of the formation. These two facts make them vulnerable to motion, which changes up assignments, but they're built with hybrid capabilities to mitigate those.

Double-motion however starts to over-expose the Tide defense to matchup issues as those hybrids get pulled into tertiary roles. Their 3-4 OLBs are a DE who can linebacker if needed and a safety who can linebacker if needed, but one of Gattis's motion tricks put the S/LB in a position where he was setting the edge against a pulling guard—not an issue for the DE/OLB. Another trick moved the S/LB to the single-high safety role and gave him competing demands on both sides of the formation. A cornerback ended up blocked by Ben Mason. Safeties were routinely asked to fill gaps like linebackers because the dudes who demand pass coverage were flying to the other side.

Meanwhile Gattis kept those safeties constantly having to watch moving targets disappear and reappear across the formation to know what their jobs were. With read options adding the quarterback to the running numbers, and verifiable speed threats taking their eyes off their assignments, Saban's simple run defense rules for his safeties were thrown into a lightning round of odd situations. Then when they finally gave a guy a job like "sit here and make sure he doesn't leave," the guy's so focused he forgets—oh right—play-action is a part of football too.

And the best part: this was all done from Michigan's two favorite running plays, the same plays their experienced offense have been running since they were installed in 2018. Most of those starters are gone, but the people expected to replace them are 3rd-/4th-year players who've been doing the same things, and the skill corps is set to get even more dynamic. Gattis may have looked like a dud in the first half of last season, but after seeing what he did to Saban's best-laid plans I'm pretty excited to see what else he can come up with whenever football is played again.