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Maybe know one knows, and I doubt Bo would give away the answer in a PC. But I'm honestly curious. When the opponent appears to be running the ball off-tackle, what exactly are the assigned responsibilities of the non-play side OLB and DE? Minnesota ran play-action bootlegs quite a bit, and Penn State ran more than probably any opponent this year. (Iowa may very well run even more.) At some point it becomes almost comical how quickly and totally we give up containment on the bootleg side. This results in the quarterback having way too much time to make a comfortable throw with no one blocking his vision, or being able to run for an easy 10+ yards. It does appear that someone is messing up in those instances, given Bo's reaction to Hackenberg's TD run: So here are the two theories I can think of: The DE and/or OLB on the bootleg side are supposed to keep contain until they visually verify that the RB has the ball, but they just keep failing to do this. This doesn't seem likely because (A) I don't think they would be so undisciplined to mess up so consistently, and (B) It really does look like they begin crashing towards the running back before the hand off/play fake is executed. The coaches have decided that we need all seven to effectively play the run, and therefore we can't afford to have the DE or OLB committed to containing the (potential) bootleg side. So we have to rely on the DE seeing that the RB doesn't have it and reacting quickly enough to chase down the QB, or a S or CB in a shallow zone coming up to contain him. Does anyone have any insight into how Bo's general schemes are meant to work on these plays, what is going wrong and what they might modify to handle them more effectively? I would really like to get some real discussion before we inevitably start this process: