So far I've been going into our
concepts in detail, talking about how they're supposed to work and
how they might look against different coverages. In this post we'll
step back and look at what all this means for individual players at
specific positions.
Overview of the Positions
One of the unique features of the Air Raid, and the first step in
defining the different positions, is that we don't flip receivers.
Most other offensive philosopohies will call their formations either
to the left or to the right, and players will travel based on that
directional call. So, say that we have a team running Y-cross:
The call here might go something like this: Split Gun Right 95, with
“split” giving you the backfield alignment (split backs), “Gun”
telling you that the QB is in the shotgun, and 95 giving you the play
that we're running (95 is the number for Y-Cross in Air Raid
playbooks). The key word here for our purposes is “Right,” which
sets the strength of the formation (the side with 2 WR's) to the
right. In most offenses, you could also get Split Gun Left 95:
Here all five potential receivers have moved with the strength call,
with Z, Y, and F going to the strength while X and H go away from it.
This means that when you change the direction of the strength, you
also change the direction in which the receivers are running their
routes. When strength was to the right, Y was running the cross to
the left. When Strength is to the left, Y is running the cross to
the right, and everyone else was flipped as well.
Well, we don't do this. This is unusual, but not necessarily unique.
The premise is that for any given route, the WR has to master a
number of aspects of technique. If he's going to run that route in
either direction, he has to master the route twice. If he only runs
it in one direction, he cuts his work in half. This is also true for
QB timing with individual receivers. If we're running slants on the
right side of the formation, the QB knows exactly how the slants will
be run and how they match up with his footwork, because the same
receivers are always running them on that side of the formation.
Lots of teams do fine without this simplification and so I'm not sure
how crucial it has been to successful Air Raid teams in the past, but
that's how we do it.
The consequence of this is that a guy's position is largely defined
by where he lines up on the field. We have four WR positions: X, H,
Y, and Z. X is the left outside receiver, H is the left inside
receiver, Y is the right inside receiver, and Z is the right outside
receiver. F is the RB.
Y
I'm going to start with Y (Richard Rodgers, Stephen Anderson). As
mentioned above, Y is the right inside receiver, but he's not
identical to H. The key difference between the two last year was
that Y is always the inside-most receiver. This is mostly relevant
in trips formations. Y and H are the only receivers that move to get
us from a 2x2 to a 3x1 formation, with X and Z always staying on
their own side. When we go to trips, no matter which side we go to,
Y will be on the inside, H will be outside of him, and X/Z will be
the outside most receiver:
So,
Y doesn't play like an on-the-line, pro-style TE. He doesn't block
DE's or engage in combo blocks with the OL. He's still tremendously
important in our run game, and is often responsible for a key block
on a LB in the box. In the run game, the responsibilities of Y are
probably closest to those of a pro-style 2nd/wing
TE.
In the Air Raid more generally, Y is primarily characterized by the
routes that he runs, and the system can accommodate some fantastic Y
receivers. Sometimes Y will have more of a WR body-type; Danny
Amendola and Tavon Austin both had 1,000+ yard seasons at this
position. Y can also look more like a traditional TE, with Jace
Amaro gaining 1,352 yards last season and Rob Gronkowskie obviously
flourishing as a Y at Arizona (when he wasn't injured).
The big question for most fans after last year was, why wasn't
Rodgers more like those guys? Rodgers' season was quietly productive
(608 yards, top-10 among TE's for YPC), but like our offense as a
whole he didn't have many explosive plays or TD's. I'll get to the
latter issue in a minute, but let's start by looking at where he was
productive. In the first three games, Rodgers was targeted six times
in the quick game. I've discussed these concepts in detail in
another post, but here are the diagrams for the two most common plays
so you can see what kinds of concepts we're talking about:
Y-Stick
Y-Out
We can also run these plays to the left (H-Stick and H-Out), in which
case Y is running a short slant, like H in the diagrams above. On
these plays to Rodgers we were 5/6 for 34 yards in the first three
games, which was better than both Treggs and Harper on similar plays.
This isn't surprising, because the outside receiver to the playside
(the right side in the diagrams above) is running a clearing route,
and will probably never get the ball. If these plays are going to an
outside receiver, it's going to be to the backside on the slant (X in
the diagrams above). The throws to the inside receivers are much
easier and much more likely to be completed in the quick game.
The big problem with all this, and the first thing that's going to
separate Rodgers from the great Y's listed above, is that the
yards/reception are kind of low for plays like this. This is the
kind of thing that will, hopefully, get fixed this summer. These
plays are pretty easy completions the second they're installed, but
making them explosive takes a level of precision that we didn't see
last season. Let's take Y-stick, for example. It's a given that
there will be defenders around the ball here, because it's a short
route in LB territory. When Y turns to catch the pass, the QB is
supposed to know where the nearest defender is, and throw the ball to
the opposite shoulder of Y. So if, from the QB's perspective, the
nearest defender is a LB to the left of Y, the QB will throw the pass
to the right shoulder. This tells Y to spin in that direction, away
from the LB and into space so that he can get up field. I'm not
sure I ever saw that level of precision on this concept, but you can
imagine that if Rodgers were catching five out of every six passes
and gaining 10 YPC instead of 6 on these plays, the offense would've
looked a lot different. If you see Y catch a short pass and either
fall down or get led straight into a defender, we aren't running this
play well. The Bear Raid is easier than
other offenses to install, but it still takes real work to get it
right. If our coaches are any good, we should expect significant
improvement in this part of our offense starting with the first game
of next season.
The other thing holding down big plays and TD's for Y is that we were
using a simplified version of the already simplified Air Raid passing
game. In the early games of last season, our only viable deep shot
to Y came on Y-cross:
There are two problems cutting into Y's productivity here: (1) we
only completed 5/14 on this concept, and (2) Y was only targeted
twice (2/2 for 86 yards and 1 TD, although that was all against PSU).
This play really is meant to feature Y, but for whatever reason we
targeted the curl by Z (Harper/Lawler) six times (2/6 for 26 yards).
I don't know if this is an eccentricity of TF, if Goff is less
comfortable throwing over the middle, or a combination of the two
(Franklin coaching the reads differently because Goff is less
comfortable throwing over the middle or because of protection
concerns), but without this play clicking Y is going to lose a lot of
big-play potential.
There are reasons for cautious optimism going into next season. The
first is that in the spring game Goff hit Anderson for a beautiful
20-yard completion on Y-cross (you can thank the PAC-12 network for
cutting off the first second of the play):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-j7VJZkg5E&t=8m1s.
The second is that in the spring game we were putting in work on
Shallow, a concept that we didn't use as much as we could've last
year. I'll talk about that more in the section on the H-receiver,
but for now, check out these highlights to get a better sense for
what a Y can be in this kind of system:
Jace Amaro vs. ASU (note at least 4 receptions on Y-cross):
Tavon Austin vs. Texas:
H:
H
is sometimes the forgotten position in the Air Raid. First, whenever
a team goes to 2-backs (which some Air Raid teams do a fair amount),
H is the receiver that gets removed. Second, most of the passing
game to inside receivers is meant to feature Y. Our top-3
H-receivers combined (Powe, Bouza, Bigelow) barely outgained Rodgers
by himself (and remember: Rodgers missed time with injury). I'm not
sure how many of Bigelow's receptions came when he was playing F
instead of H, but if we take those catches out then all those guys
combined probably don't even beat Rodgers. Last season, harsh as it
sounds, this position was basically a waste of an eligible receiver.
That's slightly unfair because Harper spent a lot of time at the
position, gained a ton of yards, and took opportunities from the
other guys, but that in itself emphasizes that the staff didn't feel
good about the production coming from that spot. Powe got the most
work by far, and at 6'3” 220 lbs., you can guess that the coaches
initially wanted this position to be a second big-bodied possession
receiver to mirror Y. They kept fiddling with the lineup throughout
the season by putting Bigelow and Harper at H, but I don't think they
were ever completely happy with the result.
Nevertheless, this is the position I'm most interested in for the
fall, because I think that moving Treggs here is a great, great move
for the offense. If we'd seen more from him at the spring game I'd
be downright ecstatic, but I think the potential is high regardless.
Harper proved last season that H doesn't have to be a dead spot for
us, and Treggs is a better receiver than our other options at the
position. I think that the staff deciding to moves Treggs here opens
up the door for a ton of creativity, and makes the position much more
dangerous.
Above
I mentioned that the staff initially wanted a second big-bodied
receiver here. That's all well and good, especially since H is
involved in some run blocking (although not to the extent that Y is).
My hope is that Sonny reached into the past in moving Treggs here,
though, because the most famous H-receiver, by far, is Wes Welker,
who is only 5'9”, 185 lbs.
as a 33-year old NFL player. At Tech, he gained over 3,000 yards in
four years and scored an NCAA record eight
TD's on punt returns, giving you a sense for how quick he was in
college. Not to knock Treggs, but I highly doubt he'll be that good
(consider that a challenge). Nevertheless, I think we can use him in
similar ways to significantly increase his impact this season.
Why is H good for Treggs? Let me count the ways.
(1)
The screen game. Last season, we were never going to throw screens
to Bouza or Powe regularly. They weren't quick enough, and Treggs
didn't block well enough for them. If we were going to throw a
screen to the left side of the field, it was going to be to Treggs.
All that a team would have to do to take that away is play the CB in
a press alignment or play man. If we put a fast but more physical X
receiver like Trevor Davis (6'2”) on the outside, we add a lot of
multiplicity to our screen game on that side of the field, because a
bigger outside WR can both block for Treggs on the bubble screen and
catch screens of their own and hopefully break some tackles.
(2) Match-ups. Last season Treggs had to match up against teams'
top-2 CB's, often guys who were fast enough to cover him OK but also
bigger and more physical than he is. By moving Treggs inside, we
significantly increase the chances that he'll be matched up with a
safety or a LB. If he does draw a CB, it'll probably be a nickle
back, who will be less experienced and closer to his size and
skillset.
(3) More space, more routes. By lining up farther inside, the
outside of the field will open up for Treggs. From the outside
receiver spot, Treggs could basically run fades, posts, and slants.
By moving him inside we leave a lot more room for outs, seams, and
corners. So, not only will a safety be responsible for covering him
deep, that safety will legitimately have to defend the entire field.
Also, by moving him inside we open up the middle of the field, which
lets me talk more about the “shallow” concept we ran during the
spring game:
Some variation of this concept is in just about every offensive
playbook, and in our offense it will help both Y and H, in my
opinion. The key feature is that one receiver runs a shallow cross,
and the inside receiver on the other side of the field will run a dig
at 10-12 yards behind him. Meanwhile, a post by an outside receiver
will hold any safety in the middle of the field to keep him from
coming up on the dig by Y. You can do different things with the
other receivers, but I've drawn what we did in the spring game. I'm
not sure we hit this during the spring game, but you can see the
basic distribution of the routes here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-j7VJZkg5E&t=8m50s
The first benefit of this concept is that crossing routes are just
plain hard to defend when a quick receiver runs them. It's hard to
stay over the top of a receiver who could threaten you deep, and then
to have to cut all of the sudden and chase him across the field. As
a result, these routes are traditionally good against man coverages.
This concept also works well against zone, where it turns into a
low-to-high read on the LB's. If the LB's jump the shallow, you
throw to the dig behind them. If they sink, you hit the shallow
cross and let your speedy H go to work. I say that this will help Y
in our offense, because on Y-cross (discussed above) we're usually
relying on a play-action fake to suck the LB's up and spring the Y
free. The effectiveness of this is obviously tied to the
effectiveness of our run game, and we all know where that stands.
Shallow is a nice wrinkle because it still brings Y across the field
behind the LB's, but it also gives the LB's a threat that they
actually have to worry about (H on the shallow). As with any play,
well-disciplined defenses can still get this sorted out, but Shallow
makes that process a little more difficult for the LB's than Y-cross
does, and increases the number of things the defense has to worry
about. My biggest concern is that in the spring game I saw no
evidence that we're good at this concept yet. As I've said above, we
really need a productive summer and fall.
(4) More creativity in the run/reverse game. By lining Treggs up
closer to the ball and by pulling him off the line of scrimmage, we
tremendously increase the efficiency of running him on shovel passes
and reverses. Once again, this isn't something we were going to do
with Bouza and Powe on a regular basis, but it's something we've
already done with Treggs (most notably in the USC game). This move
will integrate plays like this into our base offense much better:
With those things in mind, check out the H position the way it's
meant to be played:
Wes Welker highlights (including the most dated highlight song ever):
Jakeem Grant's TD's vs. ASU:
X/Z:
What
do Michael Crabtree, Justin Blackmon, Stedman Bailey, and Quinton
Patton have in common? They all gained a ton of yards playing
outside receiver (X/Z) in Air Raid offenses. Two of them were also
over 6' and 200 lbs. in college, and got drafted in the first round.
These are the guys who can be #1 receivers in the NFL. Above, I
mentioned that outside receivers run a lot of fades, posts, and
slants (also some hitches/curls). Well, that means that they're
going to catch a lot of contested balls, and that body-positioning
and athleticism are going to be important parts of their game. These
guys still need to be fast, but they can be more fast than quick, as
they only need a good amount of straight-line speed to push the
envelope. Mostly, what they need to do is dominate. That requires
certain physical characteristics to be sure, but it's also about
understanding exactly how to play each of our downfield concepts.
In our first three games our primary outside receivers were Chris
Harper (Z) and Bryce Treggs (X). We got our best production by far
out of these positions in the first three games, and in later posts
we'll talk about how things developed throughout the season. That's
one of the more interesting storylines that we'll look at, but for
now it's worthwhile just to talk about how they were used when they
were operating at their highest level at the beginning of the year.
In the first three games Treggs got 45 targets. Ten of those came on
packaged plays (8/10, 31 yards), with an additional six coming on
backside slants in the quick game (5/6, 30 yards). The screens on
the packaged plays aren't going for a ton of yards, but remember that
those are run plays that turn into passes depending on what the
defense does. Treggs had more yards per attempt on these plays than
our RB's did on their runs, meaning that we were actually better off
throwing screens for 3.9 yards/attempt than running the ball more.
That's kind of pathetic, but that's where we were in terms of
offensive execution in some of our best games of the season. On
downfield throws, we were 4/10 for 142 yards and 1 TD to Treggs (two
receptions and 89 yards of that were against Portland State, the TD
was against tOSU). Of those four completions, two were posts and two
were fades. The yards per reception are obviously fantastic here
(and would be better; his TD reception only went for 14 yards), and
the completion percentage is solid for downfield throws. Treggs also
had nice production running curls, jailbreak screens (4/4, 35 yards),
and slants on concepts other than the quick game. His production was
never the same after these three games (strong showings against UW
and, to some extent, WSU not withstanding), so bookmark these stats
and routes for when we talk about the rest of the season.
On the other side of the field, Harper saw 34 targets in the first
three games. He was 5/6 for 33 yards on packaged plays and 2/3 for
25 yards on backside slants in the quick game. On downfield routes
he was 2/8 for 58 yards and 2 TD's. A lot of that completion percentage is that Goff
forced more throws to Harper than he did to Treggs. Of the
completions, one came on a post-wheel concept and the other was a corner
route out of the Bone, both against Northwestern. Like Treggs, he
also saw a fair amount of production on slants, jailbreak screens
(3/4, 79 yards, 1 TD, 2/3 for 70 yards and 1 TD vs. tOSU), and curls.
Later in the season Harper was often lined up at H with Lawler
taking over at Z, so that'll be something to watch for in later
posts.
Here are some videos of Air Raid outside receivers:
Michael Crabtree (usually Z, but they move him around a bit in the
first part of the video):
Stedman Bailey (X):
Balance:
I've
found an article written by the Texas Tech coaches when Sonny and
Dana Holgorsen were there. The takeaway is that balance means
something different for Air Raid teams than it does for other teams.
Just for fun, I'll quote a few passages from that article and then
we'll look at our stats and see how we matched up in the first three
games. Of course, we aren't running exactly what they were running,
and stats will vary from year to year depending on who your best
players are, but this comparison can help to point out where our
offense is relative to another Air Raid offense.
“Our
main offensive objective is to get the ball to all five skill
positions as many times as possible throughout the course of the
game. We feel that if we evenly distribute the ball to all skill
players, this will stress the defense and force them to account for
the entire field. We keep a close eye on how we are distributing the
ball both during the game and throughout the season...The three main
categories we focus on are:”
1.
Total Touches
“The amount of times the entire
position touched the ball throughout the course of the game either by
rushing the ball or catching the ball. Naturally the “F”
position will handle the ball the most because the majority of the
rushes will come from this position. Also, it is easier to get him
the ball because he is closer to the quarterback. The “H” and
“Y” positions will touch the ball a little more than the “X”
and “Z” positions because of proximity to the quarterback...We
also want to get between 60-65 touches in a game spread out between
the five positions.”
Here's how we stacked up in the
first three games of last season (179 touches, 59 touches/game):
X:
28 (15.6%)
H:
10 (5.6%)
Y:
14 (7.8%)
Z:
27 (15.1%)
F:
100 (55.9%)
In
the season discussed in the article, Texas Tech had the following
distribution:
X:
14%
H:
16.5%
Y: 11%
Y: 11%
Z:
13.5%
F: 34%
F: 34%
The
surprising feature here is that F is getting the ball way, way more
often in our offense than any of the other positions. The numbers for X and Z are
pretty much on par, and Y and H are lagging. H is clearly the least
productive position.
2.
Total Yardage
“The
amount of yardage the entire position accounted for either by rushing
the ball or receptions. Here, again we want the yardage distribution
to be as evenly [sic]
as possible with “F” getting a few more yards due to the
proximity to the quarterback. Also the wide receivers, “X” and
“Z,” should get more yards as they are more of a deep threat than
the inside receivers.”
Our
stats (1,652 total yards):
X:
317 yards (19.2%)
H:
135 yards (8.2%)
Y:
169 yards (10.2%)
Z:
386 yards (23.4%)
F:
645 yards (39%)
Texas
Tech:
X:
21%
H:
18%
Y:
14.5%
Z: 19%
F: 25.5%
Z: 19%
F: 25.5%
Once
again we se that X and Z aren't that far off the mark, F is getting
the ball a lot, and H is the most significant underperformer.
3.
Total TD's (10 TD's)
Our
stats:
X:
2 (20%)
H:
0
Y:
1 (10%)
Z:
4 (40%)
F: 3 (30%)
F: 3 (30%)
Texas
Tech:
X:
19%
H:
15%
Y:
16.5%
Z:
13.5%
F:
29%
This
is the biggest difference between our team in the first three games
of 2013 and Texas Tech's season. In this category X and F are almost
exactly the same as Tech's players, but Z is scoring a
disproportionate number of TD's while H is completely off the board.
Using
these three categories as a rubric, we see that X and Z are, for the
most part, about where they should be in terms of balance. It might
look like we favor them disproportionately compared to the inside
receivers, but in reality the inside receivers are losing a lot of
touches to F, a distribution that the talent of our RB's probably
didn't merit. In our offense Y was only a few percentage points
below the Texas Tech numbers, but H was the position that really fell
off the board. Given what we know about balance in the Air Raid, if
we're going to achieve it we need to get better at throwing the
routes that are meant to feature Y, and we need to find an answer at
H.
Conclusion
That
does it for this multi-post introduction to our offense. My next
post will look at the strategies that defenses used against us in the
first three games, and then we'll (finally) be on to the rest of the
season, looking at how things changed and developed in three game
chunks.
Discussion: http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=842329492#post842329492
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