Moorhead/Gattis playbook entries for a couple of Michigan pass plays

James Light on twitter puts out a lot of good stuff. He tweeted a couple of play Michigan pass play highlights with corresponding playbook entries from an old Joe Moorhead PSU playbook that Gattis has incorporated into his arsenal. I found them fascinating.

https://twitter.com/JamesALight/status/1475162242341560324?s=20

I drilled into the second play package he clipped, which is a "cap" concept and appears to be the concept used on the long Andrel Anthony TD against MSU. Fascinating to get a good look at this.

https://twitter.com/JamesALight/status/1475166326230437888?s=20

It's a fascinating glimpse into what sort of details are built into plays. We see the different route assignments, and whether or not there are adjustments attached to them for certain coverages. We see the alignment rules (note that the play is designed for the left hash, and the boundary receiver is the one going long).

The QB progression entry is, of course, fascinating. It reads:

Drop: Big 3

PROGRESSION:
1-HIGH ZONE/"CHEAT" SAFETY: Torque (1), Back (2)
2-HIGH ZONE/WEAK INVERT: Pull (1), Curl (2), Basic (3)
MAN: Off-Coverage To Match-Up (Run Away, Run, T/A)
BLITZ MAN: Off-Coverage To Match-Up (Run Away, Run, T/A) (Poss. Play √ or Protection √)

The QB read rules (notable, Michigan's are probably/certainly not identitical) are really interesting to dig into. We see four different pre-snap reads and their corresponding instructions. For example, when the QB sees 1-high safety, his first read is the Torque route, which is the vertical route up the boundary. We also see that when there is man or blitz man coverage, the progression is "Off-coverage to match-up," which I presume means that the first look is to where there is softer coverage, and then the QB is responsible for picking optimal matchups. 

How this looks in person? Remember Penn State's offense under Moorhead is actually helpful here. Some of us remember griping about how a lot of their offense seemed to be "chuck it to Chris Godwin," and Moorhead at one point publicly grumbled that the play was so often successful because it was designed that way, and indeed that is often a first read. And we recall that a progression rule that encourages the QB to look for an optimal matchup also benefits from alignments that produce favorable matchups. For example, Saquon Barkley on Mike McCray. 

The upshot is that there are concepts that build QB reads like this, and Cade is a pre-snap read guy in part because that's how the plays are designed to work. And, often, he looks at the defense and knows where he's going because there's man coverage and he knows the match-up he wants (matchup preferences are probably determined during the week in meetings). 

This 1-high rule is probably what Cade used when he threw that TD to Roman Wilson against PSU, for example. Saw the coverage on the vertical route and then moved to the other side's route combos and drilled it to Wilson.

Anyway, some fun football stuff on a football week.