Picture Pages: Why People Scrape
MGoBlog's relentless quest to post something that links to Smart Football's explanation of the scrape exchange every week… continues!
Okay. Picture Pages has shown you three different counterpunches to the scrape exchange over the first couple weeks of the season. There's throwing a wide open bubble screen. There's shooting a blocker into the backside of the play and galloping through the gaping hole that results. And there's peeling that same blocker around the back to pick off the scraper and get the quarterback into acres of space in which Tate Forcier should run straight upfield until murdered by a safety no matter how many people disagree with me in the comments. Michigan broke out the second of those several times against Eastern, picking up a bunch of first downs and one ninety-yard touchdown.
So why bother doing this stupid thing that just results in various big plays in your face? Well… because it's better than the alternative. Meet the alternative, presented to you by Ron English:
Okay: Michigan is in a trips set on their second drive of the day. English sets up in soft coverage and plays his linebackers off the line of scrimmage. Michigan will run the most basic play in their arsenal: the zone read.
Here's the exchange point. (Sorry about the crappy quality; I was working with an SD torrent at this point.) Two points: 1) with trips to one side of the field and soft coverage, the bubble is open here. Two: Forcier gets to honest-to-God read the backside DE. He is maintaining outside contain, so he hands it off.
Eastern's defensive line has slanted hard to the frontside of the play and Ferrara has gotten blown back a couple yards. Brown has nowhere to go and must cut up. But he can.
Because of the heavy slant, which was required to cut off the frontside of the play, there's plenty of room between the defensive end and his compatriots on the line. Because of the bubble threat, the weakside linebacker has been held outside. EMU basically destroyed the play but because of the design and EMU's lack of aggression they still don't stop it.
Eastern Michigan defended this about as well as they could here, forcing Brown behind every offensive lineman and into the unblocked backside of the play. It still gained five yards. This is really hard to prevent if you let the backside end get read and he's not a superfreak. Thus, the scrape.
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Two: Forcier gets to honest-to-God read the backside DE. He is maintaining outside contain, so he hands it off.He's moving outside to keep Forcier from taking off, which is why Forcier hands the ball off to Brown. Which is the whole premise of the zone-read, having the QB essentially "block" the backside DE with the threat of the keeper and slowing down backside pursuit. Which is why the scrape-exchange was developed, which is why RichRod has shown multiple ways to make the scrape exchange hurt even more than playing straight up. It actually would have been better if Brian had done this picture page first. This is the zone read beating a straight up defense every time. If the defense decides to game the offense with the scrape-exchange instead of playing straight up, the previous picture pages this season show the constraint plays used to punish the defense for not playing straight up.
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