Option and Run Offense

G

GI56

Banned
First a quick refresher on Osborne's philosophy on the option:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hokies-journal/2009/10/option_offense_qa_with_nebrask.html

For those who don't want to read it, basically Osborne viewed the option like a pass- high risk/high reward. When looking at his run/pass breakdown he would basically consider option plays to be pass plays.

In this sense, the option served its purpose today. There were a few bad losses/fumbles, but the long TD runs came off of the speed option.

A quick calculation of the raw offensive efficiency of the 1st string offense (see http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2011/3/15/2050106/the-toolbox-offensive-success-rates) gives roughly 27/60 = 45%. Normally this is about average, but adjusted for the opponent would be quite poor.

That said, Nebraska ran very little play action today and no option-pass plays. By Nebraska's second drive, UTC players were selling out completely on the edge- on many of the options the line sealed the edge fine, but players from the secondary were rushing up to string the play out. The simplest counter to this is the option pass, which we did not see today.

Where the line obviously did poorly was straight handoffs out of the I and pistol. These are plays where you're looking to get leverage and need to make blocks, and it just wasn't happening.

Final thought: although the Mocs D was small, it didn't seem that slow. Did anyone watch Wisconsin's defense on Thursday night? Very little speed. No doubt Martinez can shred their D the same way.

 
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Agree that Wiscy looked vulnerable on the edge. They did get some penetration at times and hold the line of scrimmage though. They like to blitz it looks like, so that might come down to a guessing game.

 
The only person i didn't like on the offensive line was Tyler Moore. He kept getting beat on the edge and really drove me nuts.

 
GI56 said:
First a quick refresher on Osborne's philosophy on the option:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hokies-journal/2009/10/option_offense_qa_with_nebrask.html

For those who don't want to read it, basically Osborne viewed the option like a pass- high risk/high reward. When looking at his run/pass breakdown he would basically consider option plays to be pass plays.

In this sense, the option served its purpose today. There were a few bad losses/fumbles, but the long TD runs came off of the speed option.

A quick calculation of the raw offensive efficiency of the 1st string offense (see http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2011/3/15/2050106/the-toolbox-offensive-success-rates) gives roughly 27/60 = 45%. Normally this is about average, but adjusted for the opponent would be quite poor.

That said, Nebraska ran very little play action today and no option-pass plays. By Nebraska's second drive, UTC players were selling out completely on the edge- on many of the options the line sealed the edge fine, but players from the secondary were rushing up to string the play out. The simplest counter to this is the option pass, which we did not see today.

Where the line obviously did poorly was straight handoffs out of the I and pistol. These are plays where you're looking to get leverage and need to make blocks, and it just wasn't happening.

Final thought: although the Mocs D was small, it didn't seem that slow. Did anyone watch Wisconsin's defense on Thursday night? Very little speed. No doubt Martinez can shred their D the same way.
Click to expand...

Good observations. There are several counters, as you mention, that we didn't run to what they were doing (though we did do some things, such as some motion).

Paul Johnson is amazing at changing his blocking schemes to account for the Safety, who gave us problems most of the day.

Here's one example:

https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x9p495

He does it with a flex look there, but that could easily be a TE and we have a couple capable ones. We did some of that with the TE on a Backer and tried to option off of the Safety. Sometimes we'd pull a guard around and bring the tackle down. How Beck adjusts those things series to series is something I'm watching for as he gets more experience. That's when the option becomes really powerful.

All of that stuff out of the way, a lot of it was simple blocking as well. We really did have the right numbers most of the game, but we just need to tweak a few things. I really felt, overall, that this was a good play calling debut from Beck. I may be the only one saying that, considering the result.

 
Can you remember if we ran a triple-option look out of the full house set? I only remember speed options out of it.

 
That said, Nebraska ran very little play action today and no option-pass plays. By Nebraska's second drive, UTC players were selling out completely on the edge- on many of the options the line sealed the edge fine, but players from the secondary were rushing up to string the play out. The simplest counter to this is the option pass, which we did not see today.

i don't recall one roll out pass play all day......TM danced in the pocket when he threw the ball...not the same.

 
About blocking the DBs: am I right in thinking that Taylor was making the call for who the slot would block? On one of the last series he motioned to the slot who noded back and then he picked up the safety I believe.

 
I just liked that the play calling seemed to make sense. The plays were to our players strengths. I do think the line will get better so the straight ahead run can become more established. Do not need to be dominate straight ahead but need to get 4-5 yeards once and a while.

To me the problems looked very fixable and will get fixed as the season goes on. A lot of young guys gelling. It will be fun towatch.

 
TemporarySaint said:
3 runs accounted for 142 yards. The other 40 went for 86. I don't think that's exactly how Dr. Tom would have done it.
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I think this really tells the story of how ugly our game was today offensively, beyond the final averages, which look impressive.

To be clear, I am not a fan in the slightest of the "If you take away [all the best plays], yeah, he didn't do anything."

But what we can see here is that against a FCS team, we broke three very long runs because of pure athleticism (and broken defensive plays, you could argue). Either one is good to have, but those runs were going to be good from whatever point on the field the play started. So we have relied on that to beat an FCS team, which is not the bad thing, because it's expected that we can do that. The bad part is that you can take a look at the other 90% of our run plays and see a lot of our playmakers being stuffed. By UTC.

 
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