Up until the UCLA game, our defense had
never given up more than 5 ypc against the rush, and had only given
up more than 4 ypc twice. We'd only given up 150+ yards one time (to
Colorado), and had held everyone else under 120. In the UCLA game we
gave up 237 yards at 5.04 ypc. Why the sudden change? It's tempting
to say that they're just better than the teams we'd played up to that
point, but on the season they aren't that far ahead of UA. As
always, it's a lot more complicated than the size, strength, and
speed of your opponent.
I've always found UCLA's offense under
Noel Mazzone/Brett Hundley to be dreadfully boring, but no one can
deny that it's been effective. It's been said that Hundley is the UCLA offense, and earlier in the year he was getting Heisman consideration, but he's never been as dominant as all that. The UCLA offense has stood out in two
main ways in the last three years: (1) in 2014 and 2012, they've had RB's in the top-15
nationally, and (2) Hundley's completion percentage is #2 in the
country this year. I don't think that anyone has ever called a
mobile QB in a spread offense a “game manager,” so let me be the
first: Hundley is the A.J. McCarron of spread offenses. The
yards/attempt, total yards, big passing plays, 3rd down QB
rating, and passing TD's just haven't been anything to write home
about. That's not to say he's not good. A.J. McCarron had some huge games and won multiple NC's. Hundley's consistently one of the best QB's in the conference, but he's certainly not being used like a Heisman candidate in UCLA's offense.
Philosophically, UCLA's offense is a
lot closer to a RichRod or Urban Meyer offense than to other types of
spread out there. The offense starts with a strong zone running game
by the RB. Everything else mostly exists in case teams overload to
stop those runs, which is why the passing game is more efficient than
it is productive. Because of this philosophy, the best way to
measure Hundley's true effectiveness is not to look at his own stats,
but to look at how effective their zone running game has been. To
get into our problems with the run against UCLA, this post will look
in depth at zone running. I've introduced the basics of zone schemes
elsewhere, so in this post I'll go more in depth into them before
building toward understanding the kind of complex problem solving
that goes into stopping a rushing attack like UCLA's. Also, I won't
look at our offense in this particular post, but we run both zone
plays a lot, and if you get the reads and assignments given here you
can easily transfer that knowledge into breaking down our rushing
offense.
Finally, I should note here that
explaining why an offense is difficult to stop doesn't excuse a
defense for failing to stop it. The point of a post like this is
that the solutions that need to be found are more complicated than
they might seem, and that there's a lot more to it than just putting
more men in the box or having a good idea for what play is coming. The better the DC, the better they are at this kind of complex problem solving.
History
But first, a few words on the
development of the zone running game. Zone runs gained popularity in
their modern form in the NFL in the mid-90's with Terrell Davis and
the Denver Broncos. The concepts existed long before then, but the
zone play really took the league by storm starting from that point.
From there these schemes have entered the college game in at least
two ways. One way is through college staffs with NFL connections
implementing the scheme with their college teams. A classic example
is Carroll's decision to make USC into a zone team about halfway
through his time there. Alabama also runs a ton of zone, which is no
surprise given Saban's links to the NFL.
Additionally, spread teams started
using zone plays in combination with a QB read. In the mid-90's, as
zone running was becoming more trendy in the NFL, Rich Rodriguez was
trying to run it at Grambling State. His team was struggling, his QB
came up with the idea of reading the DE instead of trying to
block him, and the “zone read” was born. The influence goes from
college to the pros as well as from the pros to college, though, as
evidenced by the best free source you could ever want on zone
blocking:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3fRunvq4hA&list=UUeHB5VbZYLMBbiAsEEyw4LQ).
Here you see Alex Gibbs, then the Falcons' OL coach, leading a
clinic with Urban Meyer's Florida staff. It's like 8 hours long, and
it's awesome. Why would a well-established NFL line coach meet with
a college staff? As you'll see if you watch the video, he's
intrigued by the QB run game off of zone blocking. If Vick hadn't
gotten into dogfighting, Gibbs very well could have brought the zone
read to the NFL half a decade before the likes of RGIII, Wilson, and
Kaepernick. The point of all of this is that there's a tendency to
see zone running as a “spread” play and Stanford's power run game
as “pro-style,” but that's not the way it is at all (and in fact
I've seen Stanford run a lot of zone this year). Zone running is an
essentially pro-style concept that's continued to develop in both
college and the pros through dialogue between spread and pro-style
coaches. It's no surprise that Carroll, who made the decision to
convert USC into a pro-style, zone running team, was also one of the
first coaches to bring the college-style “read” element into the
NFL.
Zone Blocking
So what are these schemes? At its heart, a zone play is called
“zone” because the entire offensive line steps in the direction
of the play and blocks whoever shows up in front of them. On these
plays there isn't one specific hole that the RB is supposed to head
to, but instead he has a series of reads that takes him to openings
in the defense. We'll start out looking at outside zone:
I've drawn this from a normal I-formation against an Under front.
This is the idealized version of this play. This is outside zone to
the left, which means that the TE and all of the OL will step to the
left, but who do they block? Before the snap, the OL are asking
themselves if they are “covered” or “uncovered.” A “covered”
lineman has a defender on the LOS to the playside of him (to his
left in this diagram). An “uncovered” lineman has no one on the
LOS to his left. So, in the diagram above, the TE, LT, C, and RT are
covered, while the LG and RG are uncovered. As a lineman, if you're
covered, you're trying to “reach” the guy who's covering you.
This means that you want to come across them to seal them off
from the outside. If you're uncovered, you're double-teaming with
the guy next to you. To see this, we can look at the LT and LG in
the diagram. The LT is covered by the DE, and the LG is uncovered.
The LT is going to try to “reach” the DE and drive him back
inside to the LG. They'll double-team that DE until the MLB
threatens to come downhill. If the MLB works outside, the LT will
come off the double-team and block him while the LG stays on the DE.
If the MLB flies inside and downhill, the LG will come off the double
team and block him while the LT continues to reach the DE. We'll say
that they're combo-blocking “from the DE to the MLB.” Similarly,
the C and RG are combo-blocking from the DT to the WLB.
Communicating and executing these combo blocks well is one of the
hardest parts of teaching the zone play for the OL. If the two OL
don't read the LB in the same way, there's a risk that both of them
(or neither of them) will come off the DE, which is obviously a
problem. Even if they read it correctly, on a bad zone team (or a
team that's getting whipped by the front-7) guys can start to come
off the double team early, leaving their partner high and dry against
the DL, or too late, letting the LB run through for a TFL. It takes
a lot of work to get good at this part of the scheme, but this system
also gives the scheme its versatility. Note that I've said nothing
about opening up a specific hole. The defense can play whatever
front they want and (theoretically) can run any stunt they want. The
OL always blocks in accordance with these covered/uncovered
principals and things sort themselves out from there, giving zone
plays an advantage over runs that try to open up one specific
hole; when a run (like power or ISO) tries to open one specific
hole, it becomes vulnerable to fronts that line up with a DL in that hole
or that run a stunt into it.
This covered/uncovered system works its way down the OL until you get
to the backside edge, where the FB kicks out the backside edge player
to prevent him from crashing down the line. Remember this role of
the FB for later when we talk about the zone read.
That's what the OL is trying to do ideally. If everything goes
according to plan, then the RB will aim outside the TE and take the
ball around the edge. This is how big gains (15+ yarders) happen,
because if the SLB/DE gets reached and the MLB gets cut off, the RB's
not going down until the safety gets to him.
This idealized version hardly ever happens, though. It's hard to
pull off a reach block on the edge, especially because defenses will
widen their edge defenders against teams that like to run zone. Add
to that the fact that the blocker has to get all the way across the
face of his defender to pin him inside, and it just takes a
significant advantage of quickness and lateral agility to pull off.
Most coaching time for the RB goes into what happens if the edge
defender doesn't get
reached:
Let's talk about RB reads in the context of this diagram. As
mentioned above, the RB's aiming point is outside the TE. That's
where he'll aim on every single outside zone play. It's important
that the RB not attack the LOS immediately, because once he goes
downhill the LB's will come downhill. He needs to keep them flowing
laterally for a few steps so that the offensive linemen making their
combo-blocks have time to get out to the LB's before they shoot their
gap. The longer it takes the LB's to come downhill, the longer the
offensive linemen can stay on their combo-blocks and get the level 1
defenders under control. Getting back to reads, the RB aims outside
the TE, and his first read is the edge defender. If that defender
gets reached, he continues outside for the big gain. If that
defender doesn't get reached, then the TE will just keep driving him
outside to the sidelines, and the RB will look to his second read,
which will be the next down lineman inside. He reads him just like
he read the edge defender. If the SLB works hard outside and the DE
gets reached, then there will be a big hole in the C-gap between
them. That's what I've drawn in the diagram above.
From here the process simply continues down the line until the RB
finds a crease. If, at any point, the RB sees that the hole that
he's aiming for is closed for any reason, he just keeps working back
across the formation:
The RB keeps reading down linemen, but this cut-back philosophy
theoretically works just as well even if a LB fills the hole. Here
I've drawn the WLB overpursuing. The RB will see his seam closing
and will cut back to his next read, cutting into the space vacated by
the WLB. This all sounds very methodical. In practice, if you can
get your RB to look to his third read, you're doing a fantastic job.
Oftentimes it'll be Read 1, Read 2, instinctive cut to daylight. The
big thing for the RB is that he can't keep running laterally
indefinitely if nothing's there, or he'll get tackled for a loss. At
some point early in the down he has to at least get back to the LOS,
because zero yards is a lot better than -2. You also want your RB to
be a good cutback runner. When you hear people talk about young RB's
“trusting their speed too much” and always going for the edge,
it's often in the context of outside zone. If you see a RB run
toward the edge, hesitate/cut/dance, then try to get outside again,
don't even bother watching, because you're almost certainly looking
at a TFL. This happens when the RB's first read tells him that the
edge isn't open, but he tries (late) to outrun the defense instead of cutting
back. It's not so much about "trusting his speed" as it is not trusting his reads. This was a big problem for us on these plays last year, and Lasco's improvement in this area has been huge for us.
Inside zone is the same in a lot of ways. For the OL, the blocking
assignments are basically the same, but the technique is different.
Now, instead of trying to reach their defender, they're drive
blocking him and trying to get a push north and south. The big
difference between outside zone and inside zone comes in the RB
reads. In inside zone, instead of aiming outside the TE and reading
the edge defender first, he'll aim at the playside guard and read his
block first:
Now for the minor differences: If you're a covered lineman, you're
still going to block the guy that's covering you. The big difference
is for the uncovered linemen. Since this play is aiming at the
playside guard, uncovered linemen need to make the blocks that keep
defenders away from that part of the line. So, the TE doesn't want
to reach the DE here, he just wants to get motion on him and keep him outside. Also, because the TE's angle is naturally good due
to alignment, we don't need to double that DE, so the uncovered LT
will release straight to the SLB instead of comboing up to him. The
LG's block is the RB's first read. The LG is still trying to hook
the DT inside, much like in outside zone. If he does so, the RB will go outside him (the
leftmost arrow in the diagram). If that outside gap gets filled, the
RB will go inside of the guard (the middle RB arrow in the diagram).
If both of those gaps are filled for whatever reason, he'll look for
the cut-back (the right-most RB arrow in the diagram). The C is
uncovered but needs to keep the DT to his right away from the RB's
aiming point, so he and the RG combo from the DT to the MLB. The RT
works out to the WLB, and the FB kicks out the backside DE. Once
again, remember the FB's backside responsibility for when we talk
about the zone read.
Defending
UCLA (or not, as the case may be)
Now that we know how zone plays work, we can talk about defending
them, and the way that the threat of other offensive plays impacts
our ability to defend zone runs. The UCLA game is a great case study
in this, so I'll have plenty of video from that game to illustrate
this section. Above I drew these plays out of a pro-style look. How
does that adjust for UCLA's version of the spread? The most obvious
difference is that they'll add the QB read to the zone play. You can
do this on either inside or outside zone, but we'll focus on inside.
The other difference is that they run it out of spread formations
with either 3 or 4 WR's. This combination creates a few additional
problems in defending the zone play. Here's the 4 WR version:
Let's look at a video of UCLA running this:
What exactly is going on here? Remember the OL assignments and RB
reads that we talked about above for IZ. The playside in this video
(and the diagram) is to the right. That's where the RB will aim
initially. On that side, the RG is uncovered, and there isn't even a
LB immediately threatening him (since the WLB is aligned outside), so
he combo-blocks with the RT from the DE up to the WLB. The C blocks
the DT covering him straight up. On the back-side the LG is
uncovered. Because this is inside zone, and they want to open up
inside running lanes, his assignment here is to help the LT get the
DT blocked. They're combo-blocking from the DT up to the MLB. If you really want to understand this play, go back and watch this combo-block specifically, because that's where it all happens. Since
this is a run to the right, it might look like they have an awful
angle to keep that MLB from getting to the playside, but remember
that if he flows hard to the playside that will give the RB a cutback
read. The combo-block of the LT and LG doesn't need to stop the MLB
from getting to the right side of the diagram, therefore. They just
need to stop him from getting back to the left side of the
diagram in the event that the RB decides to cutback, and they have a
great angle for this. The RB's aiming point is for the RG. There's
no space outside the RG on this particular play. Because the RG and
RT are double teaming the DE, there is no longer a gap between them.
Inside the RG, Perkins sees Trevor Kelly taking up an awful lot of
space, so he cuts it back. Nickerson actually does a decent job of
shooting the backside A-gap (to the left of the C) and the DT is
occupying the gap outside the LG, so Perkins cuts it all the way back
inside the DE for a 6 yard gain. In the diagrams it might not look like it's easy to cut the ball back all the way across the formation, but this video shows just how fast a RB can cut it back and get downfield.
Pre-snap this really doesn't look like it should go for 6 yards.
Remember: if X = the number of offensive blockers and Y = the number
of defenders you need to stop the run (or, put another way, the
number of gaps you need to defend), Y = X + 1. They have five
blockers and we have six defenders in the box here, so according to
conventional wisdom, we have enough guys. Looking back at
the last diagram, from right to left, the DE should have the C-gap (if that term is unfamiliar, check out this post),
the WLB should fold into the B-gap when he reads run, the DT should
take the A-gap to the center's right, the MLB should take the other
A-gap, the DT should take the other B-gap, and the DE should have the
left C-gap. You've also got a SLB as a D-gap player/bonus run
defender on outside runs to the wide side of the field.
The QB read element of this play throws conventional wisdom out the
window, however. Watch the video one more time. This run is getting
cut-back into the backside C-gap. Why doesn't the DE make the play?
Because he's slow-playing the QB keeper (or “keeping contain,” to
borrow the cliché about zone read defense). In the early years of
the zone read in college, defenses tried to make this work. They
tried to make that DE the C-gap player and ask him to play either the
QB run or the RB on the cut-back into that gap. More recently the
NFL made the same mistake, because they thought that the zone read
was a gimmick, and that more disciplined and athletic defenders would
be able to shut it down. Wrong. The DE can't move in two directions
at once. If he stays put, he's going to be late to the cut-back.
Remember when we looked at the pro-style diagrams and I told you to
keep the FB's backside responsibility in mind? By reading that DE
and forcing him to stay put to defend the QB, the offense uses the QB
to do that FB's job. It's as if the offense has one more blocker
than they actually do. So, when the QB is a run threat, we have to
modify the equation above to read Y = X + 2. If you truly want to
match numbers on the backside edge, you need both a cut-back defender
AND a QB defender, much as you would in defending any other kind of
option. This also explains why you can't just hit the QB on every
play. If the DE hits the QB, he takes himself out of the play and
leaves the cutback even more wide open than it was in the last video.
Against UCLA, we opted to have our DE sit on the QB. Here's a video
showing Jonathan Johnson (who's come on very strong over the UCLA,
UO, and OSU games, by the way) on his QB responsibility, who was by
far our best DE against this play:
Great play, right? The bummer is that he was also the guy dragging
down Perkins after a 6 yard gain in the previous video. It's just
exceedingly difficult to do both tasks well, even if you're a
smaller, more athletic DE like Johnson.
OK, so you need an extra defender. Once again, let's look at the
last diagram. Didn't we say that the SLB is there as a bonus
defender? Isn't he precisely the kind of guy who could be a QB
player, freeing up the end to take the RB off-tackle? This is
something teams (including ours) will try to use to get a 7th
defender against the run. Enter the bubble screen, our Achilles'
heel from the UCLA game:
If the SLB plays hard outside here, we'll be able to defend the
screen, but we won't have a QB defender. If he comes inside to be a
QB defender, we won't have the numbers to defend the screen. UCLA's
going to put a bubble on just about every run play they call:
Look at Hundley's eyes in that video, looking straight at the nickel
back. UCLA wasn't calling all of those bubble screens and outs, they
were reading them on the field. That's why they always looked like
great calls. This is also why OSU didn't run as many bubble screens as UCLA even though they were successful when called. OSU calls the bubble screen, so they need to guess right on what the defense will be. Teams like UCLA, Oregon, UA, and USC read the bubble screen, and can throw it whenever it's there.
One way to swing numbers in your favor while still defending the screen would be to change up the
coverage. Cover-1 (Man with a FS deep) isn't going to solve your
numbers problem in the box. You'll need four defenders to cover the
4 WR's man-on-man + 1 safety deep = 5 dedicated pass defenders, still
leaving you with a 6-man box. Your best bet might be Cover-3, and we
ran some of that. The problem is that UCLA would just use an H-back
to give themselves a sixth blocker:
And the video:
Once again, watch it while thinking about assignments and reads.
I've drawn the diagram flipped from the video because it's easier for
me to just draw all these plays from the same hash, so in the video
the playside is to the left, but in the diagram the playside is to
the right (everything's mirrored). I'll talk about assignments in
terms of “playside” and “backside” players so that my
discussion is translatable to both the video and the diagram. The
playside tackle is covered by the DE and blocks him. The playside
guard has a LB threatening him, so instead of combo-blocking with the
tackle he tracks straight to that LB. The C is covered by the NT and
blocks him, and the backside guard and tackle combo from the DT to
the LB (once again, the crucial block to watch). The RB is initially aiming for the playside guard but, once
again, Kelly does a great job of occupying the A-gap. In general, we
defended the playside very well in this game, so Perkins hardly ever
took it. This means, of course, that he cut it back all game, and we
defended that decidedly worse. Our LB gets blocked out by the
backside OG combo-ing up to him, the H-back blocks our seventh man in
the box, and UCLA picks up a big 4th and 3.
If you can't get a numbers advantage by pulling a safety in to help
against the run (as in Cover-3), your only other coverage option is
to go Cover-0 (straight man coverage with no safety deep). Then you
only need to pull out four defenders to cover 4 WR's, leaving 7 in
the box as run defenders. This is what Pendergast did against Oregon
in 2010. Hardly any college DC's will show the fortitude needed to play their
DB's in Cover-0 the whole game, though.
In another post, I wrote about our gameplan for stopping UA's zone
read/screen combinations. If you check out the diagrams and video in that post, you'll see that our gameplan for that game was much more
aggressive about stopping certain parts of these plays. Look at
the diagrams in that post, and note how we employed stunts to shut
down the playside and scraped LB's around the edge as QB players on
the backside. As I mentioned in that post, this made us vulnerable
to the cut-back because, in order to work outside for the QB, the LB
had to leave his spot behind the DL on the backside. If the DL gets
beat in that scenario, there's no one behind him to make the tackle.
While Wilson hardly ever burned us on the cut-back, Perkins was happy
to take it all day. My guess is that we knew he was that kind of
runner going into the game, which accounts for the difference in our
gameplan. Against UA we didn't think Wilson could kill us with the
cut-back, so we only nominally covered it and sold out to stop the
playside run and QB keeper. The result was a bad running day for the
Wildcats. Against UCLA we felt that we had to cover everything.
There are a few ways that our gameplan would've worked better without
any schematic changes. The first is just about how well our
individual players executed their assignments.
Once you start talking X's and O's everything turns into a numbers game. If you have more guys than they do, you'll stop the run. If you don't, you won't. That's obviously not how things go on the field, though, and at some point you'll just need one of your guys to beat one of their guys. Check out the guy labelled MLB in this diagram (it won't always be
the MLB with this assignment, though it often was). If that guy can
attack the line of scrimmage instead of making it easy to combo up to
him, he can cause a lot of damage. First, remember the rules of the
combo block: Double-team the down lineman until the LB threatens,
then whichever OL is in the best position to block that LB will leave
the double team. If the MLB can trigger quickly and aggressively
attack the LOS, he forces the OG to leave the double team early,
making it easier for the DT to get penetration in the B-gap. The
more penetration and disruption these two can cause, the flatter the
RB's cut-back has to be to the line of scrimmage, making it take
longer for the run to get donwhill and funneling it toward the DE
who's been slow-playing the QB keeper. Now all of the sudden, that extra defender doesn't seem so important. When that LB is slow to get
downhill, on the other hand, our DT's are getting pushed back several yards by the
double-team, giving the RB a great angle to get downhill inside of
the DE. We could also ask our DT's to hold up better against the
double team, but it's probably easier to ask our LB's to impact to
play more at this point. On this strategy it's not about getting
more bodies in the box, but messing up blocking angles so that you
can win more of your match-ups.
Another way to improve your match-ups would be to stunt any
combination of the DE, DT, and LB on the backside. You could, for
example, pinch the DE and DT into the A and B gaps and bring the MLB
around as the QB player. If you do that and your DE and DT aren't
able to get across their blockers' faces, however, you're left
without a LB behind them (because he's scraping outside to the QB).
Still, by doing that you're testing the OL's ability to quickly pick
up and execute assignment switches. In this case, that more
aggressive gameplan on the backside might have paid off. We didn't
go that route, though, and the result was kind of interesting. On
the one hand, by failing to attack on the backside, we had our worst
game of the season up to that point against the rush. On the other
hand, by limiting the big play we held Perkins to his worst game in
their last five, so there's both a glass-half-full and a
glass-half-empty way of looking at it.
At any rate, even leaving the scheme the same, the problems I've
discussed in this last section are exactly the kinds of things that
improve with more experience. You don't have to speed up the LB's
trigger time and instincts that much to make a major difference. If
a good MLB emerges for us, it'll help our D a ton.
For discussion, see the BI thread here:
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