Colorado's Pass Rush

Now that I've talked about the basics of pass protection, it's time to look at our first PAC-12 pass rush. I'm going to start this series with Colorado, who led the conference both in overall sacks (35) and in sacks/game (2.7). In 2016 CU shot into the top-25 nationally in both of these metrics, and this improvement is partially responsible for their corresponding rise in the PAC-12 standings.

Colorado's Minimalist Pass Rush

When you look at most of CU's sacks, even against good teams, what jumps out is that they aren't getting to the QB with anything too exotic. In this post, we'll see this by looking at three pass rushes in which they were outnumbered by the offense's blockers, but got pressure anyway thanks to the way that their call worked against the offense's pass protection scheme.

vs. Michigan:

To start things off, let's look at a blitz call on 3^rd and 7 in the Michigan game. Here's the video and pre-snap look:

  On this play, it looks to me like Michigan is in a 5-man B.O.B. Protection. We can't know what their protection rules are for sure, but it looks like the LT should be manned-up on the rush end, the RG is manned-up on the DT, and the RT is manned-up on the DE. Neither the WLB nor the SLB are blitzing on this play, so we can't see how the OL would have picked either of them up, but it's probably the case that the LG and C are manned-up on the NT and one of those LB's.

After the snap, these assignments are going to change thanks to Colorado's blitz scheme:

  On this play, Colorado is slanting toward the short side of the field and dropping their Rush End into coverage. The NT is working outside to be the contain rusher to the offense's left, the DT and DE become the interior rushers, and the NB blitzes off the edge as the contain rusher to the wide side of the field. The coverage looks like Cover-1, with press-man coverage by the CB's on the outside WR's and the Y receiver being bracketed by the SS and FS down the seam.

Michigan's offensive line actually picks up the DL movement pretty well here. The LT sees his man (the rush end) drop into coverage, gets his head on the swivel, and looks for someone (the NT) to loop outside to replace him in the rush. The C sees the NT go away to the outside and looks for a player to replace him, eventually helping the RG with DT. The RG and RT are where things get interesting, though. Remember that they are manned-up on the DT and DE in this protection. In B.O.B. protection, this means that they have to block those players whether they rush to their inside or outside gap. Neither of them, therefore, can leave their man to block the blitzing NB on the edge.

As we saw in my post on pass protection schemes, that NB isn't unaccounted for in B.O.B. protection. If the QB would've spotted the blitz then he could've thrown hot to the space that the NB was coming from. He doesn't see it, though, and is fumbling the ball for a TD return before he knows what hit him. The best thing about this blitz, though, is that Colorado has gotten an unblocked pass rusher with only a four-man rush (the NT, DT, DE, and NB are the only four rushers, with the remaining seven players staying in coverage). If you scheme it right, you don't have to bring the house to get an effective pass rush.

vs. Utah:

Even if you can't scheme up an unblocked rusher, you can still use scheme to get favorable matchups with a minimal number of pass rushers. We'll see an example of this in the following play against Utah. Here's the pre-snap look:

To the left of the formation, Utah has both an in-line TE (Y) and a Wing back (H). Colorado's playing a 3-4 Under Front, with something like a 3-deep (CB's and FS), 3-under (ILB's and SS) zone coverage behind it. 

 

Here's what happens after the snap:

Post-snap, Utah has three receivers (X, Y, Z) out in the pattern, and they're keeping in seven blockers (5 OL, the Wing back (H), and the RB). Colorado is bringing the three DL and both OLB's, for a total of five rushers against these seven blockers. There's not much line movement or deception by Colorado here.

Utah appears to be in a full-slide protection to the right, which means that the entire OL will slide right, and the RB and Wing Back will be responsible for sealing the left edge against the SOLB and DE, who are rushing from the outside. These are both mismatches. The RB doesn't obstruct the rush of the SOLB and ends up in his own QB's face. The QB steps up and runs right into the DE, who has controlled the Wing back pretty easily and gets the sack. Meanwhile, the LT and C are largely wasted, as their slide assignments mean that they don't engage any rushers early in the down and only offer late help to neighboring linemen. Colorado has schemed up two mismatches on this play, and they pick up the sack despite the fact that they are at a two-man disadvantage and are essentially just rushing straight ahead into their lanes.  Here's video of the play.  Focus on how the RB and H-Back fan out in pass protection to the left, while the LT passes off the DE to them:

Talent Combined with Scheme:

Of course there's no substitute for having violent, high-motor players in your front, and when you pair that with some small schematic advantages, you have a recipe for a good pass rush. Here's a blitz that got CU a sack against Stanford on 3^rd and 6:

  Stanford's in a 3x1 formation here. The two receivers and TE to the left of the diagram are all running slants, and the single receiver on the backside is running down the sidelines. Colorado is playing press man coverage on all of these receivers, with a FS playing deep centerfield.

Much like the sack that we saw against Michigan, Colorado is slanting their DL in one direction (to the left, wide side of the field) and dropping a DE into coverage. In this case, that puts the dropping DE in position to cut the slant by the H receiver and discourage the quickest, easiest throw. They're then blitzing the WLB through the gap between the RG and RT. Stanford's running half-slide protection here, with the LT, LG, and C sliding to the left. On the backside, the RG and RT are manned-up on the NT and RE. The WLB is blitzing between these two players, and will be the responsibility of the RB.

Most of Stanford's blockers pick this up without issue, including a nice block by the RB on the blitzing WLB. Things break down with the man assignment of Stanford's RG against CU's NT, though. Remember that in man blocking, that RG has to block the NT whether he rushes inside or outside. This puts him in a position where he has to read and react to the NT's move, which puts him on his heels a bit. The NT steps hard inside, and the RG isn't able to step inside with him in order to establish a good base to stop him. The NT pushes him straight back into the QB. The QB tries to escape the pocket to the left and gets sacked by the contain rusher (the slanting DT). Once again, Colorado has picked up a sack with only a four-man pressure.  Here's the video of this play.  Focus on the DT over Stanford's RG.  Note how the C is sliding away from him in this protection, which leaves the RG all alone for the DT to manhandle:

 

This play is one where talent is definitely a factor in the sack. Cal's DL are manned-up on offensive linemen like this all the time, but they're rarely able to beat them like this. That said, Colorado's DL is getting an assist from their DC with the slant that's called, which keeps the RG guessing and makes it harder to block his man.  I haven't done a full breakdown of our DL play, but my sense is that this is something that our DL does less. This sack comes from a small schematic advantage, therefore, but it's augmented by better individual play along the DL than Cal usually gets.

Conclusion

I've only discussed three plays here in this post, but I've broken down every sack from CU's games against Michigan, Stanford, USC, UW, and Utah (these games account for roughly one-third of their sacks in 2016), and the plays that I've highlighted are pretty representative. In many cases Colorado is only bringing four rushers, but they're usually doing it with at least some movement along the line. It's not exotic movement with lots of twists and things like that, just slants where everyone's shifting over a gap. The only time that Colorado really brought the house was for one sack against USC. That was their only sack of the game, and so presumably they called it because their normal pressure package wasn't working and they had to go with something more desperate. In every other case that I broke down getting numbers like this wasn't necessary, as they were able to use relatively simple blitz schemes to create favorable one-on-one matchups for a solid (if unspectacular) front-7. 

For additional questions/discussion, head to the BI thread here: http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?104868-PAC-12-Pass-Rushes&p=842778989#post842778989