Table of Contents
I. Introduction 1
II. Run Game Primer 2
Power Running 2
Zone Running 4
Run/Pass Options
(RPO's) 5
III. Cover-4 Primer 6
Read Coverage 6
Trips
Adjustments 10
IV. First and Second Drives 11
Matchup #1: EWU's
Screens and Flat Passes vs. WSU's Safeties 12
Matchup #2: EWU's
WR's vs. WSU's CB Alignment 14
V. Third and Fourth Drives 15
Matchup #3: EWU's
Empty Sets vs. WSU's Short-Side Coverage 15
Matchup #4:
Protecting Matchup #3 with a QB Power Sweep Read 17
VI. Fifth Drive 18
VII. Sixth Drive 19
Matchup #2
Revisited: EWU's WR's vs. WSU's CB Alignment 19
VIII. Seventh Drive 21
Matchup #3
Revisited: EWU's Empty Sets vs. WSU's Short-Side Coverage 21
IX. Eighth and Ninth Drives 24
Matchup #2
Re-Revisited: EWU's WR's vs. WSU's CB Alignment 25
Matchup #5: EWU's
Passing Game vs. WSU's Downfield Coverage 26
X. Tenth and Eleventh Drives 27
XI. Twelfth Drive 28
Matchup #6: EWU's
4x1 Empty Set vs. WSU's LB's in Coverage 28
Matchup #7: EWU's
RPO's vs. WSU's Coverage Options 29
XII. Formations and Personnel 35
11 Personnel 36
00 Personnel 37
10 Personnel 38
20 Personnel 38
12 Personnel 38
21 and 31
Personnel 39
XIII. Personnel Usage 40
Running Backs 40
Quarterback 40
Outside
Receivers 40
Inside
Receivers/TE's 41
XIV. Pass Protection 41
XV. Situational Play-calling and
Stats 43
XVI. Conclusion 45
I. Introduction
When I sat down to write about Eastern Washington's offense, I
initially had a tough time. This wasn't because of multiplicity or
anything like that. It's easy to watch games and to see what
personnel a team's using, how often they run or pass, and what kinds
of plays they run. The problem comes in trying to pin down what
makes a coordinator different. There are only so many formations,
run plays, and passing concepts out there, and giving a catalog of
the features that appear in a coordinator's system mostly leads to
superficial comparisons to other coaches. High School OC's across
the country will tell you that they run a spread offense “like”
Chip Kelly's, but that doesn't make them Chip Kelly. There's a lot
that happens after a coordinator prints his playbook, and that's all
of the stuff that determines his success. So what are you actually
getting with a new coordinator, and how can you tell?
To answer this question, it's important to get beyond the playbook
and to dive into some actual game-plans. It's not just about the
highlights, but the ebb and flow of the game, and the many ordinary
plays that make each highlight possible. It's also about
unsuccessful calls and understanding why they didn't work. It's
about seeing how a play-caller responds and adjusts. This game
report aims to give this kind of description of Baldwin's offense by
taking a close look at EWU's upset victory over WSU in 2016.
There are some difficulties in writing such an analysis of Baldwin;
in some ways, no game from 2016 can give us a clear picture of
Baldwin as a play-caller. He has said repeatedly that last season
he gave more control to Troy Taylor than he'd given to anyone before,
and that Taylor really was the OC. Given what I've said about
game-planning, in-game adjustments, and the “ebb and flow of the
game,” it's fair to ask how much any of these games can tell us
about Baldwin himself, and I could've gone back to a game from 2015
or 2014 for this breakdown. I ultimately decided against this,
however, since Baldwin specifically hired Taylor because he didn't
want his offense to become stagnant. While 2016 might not show us
exactly what Baldwin's offense would've been if he'd been the sole
play-caller, returning to an earlier season would have meant
returning to an offense that Baldwin himself considers out-dated. In
addition, as the HC Baldwin contributed plenty of his own ideas and
had direct access to Taylor's train of thought, and so 2016 seemed
like the most updated version of his offensive thought despite the
difficulties that I've mentioned here.
Structurally, this report is divided into several sections. The
bulk of it is a drive-by-drive description of EWU's offense versus
WSU's defense. In this section I don't attempt to describe every
single play. Instead, I identify the key matchups that explain each
drive's success or failure. Instead of breaking down a few plays out
of context, as is necessary in shorter blog posts, I want to give a
coherent schematic narrative of the game from the first kickoff to
the final whistle. I should add that the full game is available on
Youtube, and that I've given the time for each play that I discuss,
so you can check out all of these plays for yourself if you'd like.
For the most part, I have tried to introduce scheme and technical
points only as they become relevant, but there are a few concepts in
EWU's run game and in WSU's defense that permeate much of the
narrative, and so I have placed a quick discussion of these points
before the game report itself.
After
the drive-by-drive description of the game, I have included more
concrete data in a number of brief sections, divided up by topic.
The first looks at the formations and personnel groupings that EWU
used in the game, and includes a short analysis of why certain plays
were run out of certain formations. I have then provided a brief
description of how EWU used each of their skill position groups
(RB's, QB, Outside WR's, and Inside WR's/TE's). Next comes a
discussion of the pass protection schemes that EWU used, including
the frequency with which each protection was employed. Finally, I
give some general playcalling statistics for different situations.
The report concludes with some broad conclusions about what EWU's
offense actually was in this game, and about its translatability to
Cal and the PAC-12.
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