A Study in 4-Verticals: Cal vs. UCLA (2013 and 2014)

When Cal played UCLA at the Rose Bowl in 2013, the game was downright boring. Cal got shut out in every quarter but the second, and after scoring ten points in that quarter gave up twenty unanswered to lose the game 10-37. Goff threw for a near season low 215 yards with zero TD's and one awful INT. One year later, Cal was driving with a chance to kick a go-ahead FG in the final minutes of an exciting, back-and-forth 34-36 shootout. Unfortunately, we all know how that ended.

This post is going to answer two questions about the scenario that I just described. The first is, “Why was Cal's offense so much more successful in 2014 than in 2013,” and the second is “Why did we throw a deep interception on a play that didn't need a deep pass?” Conveniently, an answer to both of these questions is the pass concept “4 Verticals,” a concept I've discussed a few times on this blog. There are a ton of interesting specifics behind that general answer, though, and this post will focus on those details.

Turnovers and Field Position:

Before getting to 4-Verts, a brief note: While it'd be great to attribute the uptick in scoring completely to an improved offense, the biggest difference in the two games might have been the turnover battle. In 2013 Cal lost it 2-0, but in 2014 we won it 3-1. UCLA's TO's also gave us great field position, as they gave us the ball at their own 18, 20, and 32 yardlines. Three of our TD's came off of those three TO's. This was important, because we scored ZERO points on drives starting deeper than our own 46 yard line. It's safe to say that without three turnovers, a 4^th down stop by our D near mid-field, and a 45-yard kick return by Trevor Davis, this game would've been a complete blowout, because we didn't show the ability to drive the length of the field even one time.

Offensive Line Not a Major Factor:

Even though field position played a major role, it was still up to the Bears to put the ball in the end zone, something we consistently failed to do in the red zone in 2013.  As we'll see the increase in scoring can largely be attributed to a few key improvements from 2013 to 2014. Conventional wisdom says that our offense was better in 2014 because our run game and offensive line were better. After re-watching a number of games I don't think that that's as big a part of it as it seems (though it is definitely a part), and it had nothing to do with our better performance against UCLA. Our blockers got absolutely dominated in the 2014 game. The Bears had a total of 56 yards rushing (1.8 ypc) after rushing for 105 (2.8 ypc) in 2013. Goff got sacked three times in both games on an almost identical number of attempts. Even those abysmal stats can't show how bad it looks on tape. You really have to re-watch this game to understand the carnage. On the plus side, Goff's composure under fire is very good, but you probably already knew that. I will say that in this game Chris Borrayo was out, and his replacement (and one or two other starters) looked pretty bad.  If Borrayo had been healthy, it might've been enough to squeeze a little bit more out of the run game and tip the scales in our favor.

Despite a useless run game and porous pass protection, the offense was able to pick up the slack in the passing game. Goff's completion percentage was basically identical in the two games, but in 2014 he threw for 95 more yards and two more TD's. This means that our improvement wasn't all about field position, because Goff straight-up threw for more yards. This increase can be attributed to three points of improvement: (1) Goff himself was much better in 2014 than in 2013, and was able to complete passes that he couldn't complete the year before, (2) at outside WR, the trio of Davis, Lawler, and Harper was a significant upgrade over the duo of Treggs and Harper from the year before, and (3) our game-planning and play-calling were much better. This is all illustrated by a look at the 4-verts concept in our last two UCLA games.

Outside WR's and QB Play:

Improved QB and outside WR play go hand in hand in our system, and we can really see how they play off of each other in 4-verts. This is the main consistent downfield shot that we have in our offense, but it's adaptable, we can dress it up in a number of ways to get different things out of it, and we call it a TON. Tony Franklin might call it on every play if he thought it wouldn't get him fired. For this part of the post, we're only concerned with the outside receivers' jobs on this concept.

The name of the concept basically tells you what happens: four receivers run go routes, with the outside WR's taking outside releases down the sidelines and the inside receivers running down the seams. This creates a deep horizontal stretch on any coverage that doesn't play with two deep safeties, and the ability to run this concept is one big advantage of 4-wide spread formations.  In this diagram, you can see how it stretches the FS in a 3-deep coverage:

That looks simple enough, but there are a bunch of features that make it highly adaptable. The outside WR's, in particular, have two options. If their CB gives a cushion and stays over the top at all as the play develops (even by just one step step), the receiver will just stop and look for the back-shoulder throw, usually around 12-15 yards:

Here's video of Lawler catching one of these. Lawler's at the top of the screen. I'll explain the slightly different formation and route distribution in a minute, but for now take it on faith that this is 4-verts:

If the CB plays tight on the WR, meaning that he runs even with the WR on his inside hip or slightly behind him, then the WR sticks to the go-route. Obviously if he can get a step or two then that's awesome and an easy TD, but technique and length come into play when the coverage is tight. The CB is going to want to force the WR to the sidelines:

It's a little hard to picture this in 3D, but if the WR gets railroaded like this it puts the QB in a tough position. He can't underthrow the ball or float it inside, because the CB is sitting on the WR's inside hip and will pick it off. Obviously he can't overthrow the ball and still get a completion, and the sideline is taking away any outside throw. If this route's going to work for you, the WR has to establish body position a few yards from the sidelines:

This gives the QB some space to work with. When there's space available outside the WR, then the QB can float the ball deep and over his outside shoulder, so that the WR's body is between the CB and the ball. The WR can lean into the CB's body right before making his break, pushing off subtly with his shoulder and giving him a few feet of separation to make the catch outside. Here are two videos of the go-route, one with a nice sideline fade and the other with the WR faking the CB out off the line. Both are thrown to the WR at the bottom of the screen:

In 2013, our outside WR's were targeted nine times on this concept. Lawler and Harper caught one each for a combined 34 yards, and every other attempt was either incomplete or intercepted. This wouldn't be completely awful if the fade were the only option, but with the chance for a back-shoulder throw in the intermediate range this should really be more successful, and in 2014 it was; Goff only targeted outside WR's six times on this concept before the final drive in 2014 (we'll talk about the final drive last), but Lawler alone caught two for 64 yards, with Harper adding a third reception for 9 yards on a broken play on a key third down. Davis also caught a fade for 38, but it was called back for a chop block that didn't effect the throw or the route in any way. The outside WR's were more efficient on this concept in 2014, gaining more yards on fewer attempts, and with a better completion percentage.

Gameplanning and Inside WR's:

In the previous section, we saw that Goff threw to outside WR's three fewer times against UCLA in 2014 than in 2013. We actually called this concept four more times on the whole in 2014 (some of these ended in scrambles and there was a throw in the dirt thanks to pressure, so the number of plays where the concept actually developed was only 13).  Our Y receivers (Stephen Anderson or Darius Powe) were the beneficiaries. In the 2013 game inside WR's only caught three passes on this concept. Two of those were to Jackson Bouza on back to back plays in garbage time (less than 5 minutes to go in a 27-point game), when UCLA had gone into a conservative cover-2. Because of this, we were able to hit the Y receiver in the space between the LB's and the deep safety:

We did catch UCLA with this same throw to Rodgers one time in the 2^nd quarter for 23 yards, and there were a lot of questions about why we didn't go to it more often. As we can see now, though, we ran this concept thirteen times in 2013, but Goff only felt comfortable going to Y one time before garbage time.

In 2014 we threw to Y six times on this concept, and went 3/6 for 71 yards. All of that was obviously with the game on the line. Unlike with the outside WR's, this improvement had little to do with better talent or technique. The reason for this improvement is all in the game-planning. In 2013, we ran this concept exclusively out of 2x2 formations, as drawn in the diagrams above. In 2014, we ran it exclusively out of 3x1 formations:

I've drawn this against a 2-deep coverage, which is how UCLA started off the game. The diagram above doesn't look like 4-verticals, because Y isn't really going vertical. This is just the way it looks from 3x1, though. If you look at where the four receivers end up after the snap, the route distribution is the same as in the 2x2 version, with the outside WR's going down each sideline, and the inside WR's in each seam. But why does this work? It all has to do with the defense's coverage rules:

When we're 2x2, the coverage pick-ups are really easy. The safeties start out lined up over the inside receivers on each side of the field, and so when those receivers run deep, the safeties just stay over the top of them. The trips variant makes this harder for the safety who's aligned to the single receiver side pre-snap (for a much more detailed look at this issue from the defense's perspective, see this post, which applies to Cover-2 as well as to Cover-4):

Pre-snap, that safety doesn't know that Y is coming across to his seam, and because Y is on the other side of the formation, it's harder for that safety to keep track of him while also being on the lookout for Z running a post or something else that attacks him. The safety's responsibility to provide help over the top of Z puts him in conflict with his responsibility to pick up Y as he crosses the field in the intermediate range. 

Still, it's not totally up to the safety to take away this route. Y's running for a long time before he gets into the safety's zone. It's up to the LB's to drop underneath the crosser to close that window and force a high throw by the QB, which can in turn buy time for the safety to make a play:

This is where the second element of our gameplanning improvements came up. In 2013, by my count, we only ran this with play-action one time in 13 attempts. In 2014, we ran it with playaction on 8 of 16 attempts, including on five of the six times that we targeted the Y-receiver. Here's the impact:

If you check out the protection, you see where the real trick is here. The OL's initial movement, and especially the pulling guard, makes this look like a power run. Everything in the LB's keys, whether they're reading the backfield or the OG's, tells them to come up on the run, thus clearing space for Y coming across and making this an easy throw for the QB. Once again, it's not the threat of the run game that made this play more effective, because we didn't even run it with playaction in 2013. In 2014 we did, and the results were good. Here's some video. Watch the LB's after the snap:

Three times when we didn't use playaction in 2014, we did use motion, which we didn't do at all in 2013.  We did this on long-yardage downs where a play-action fake would've been less effective:

Pre-snap UCLA had adjusted to our 3x1 formation by bumping LB's out over the H and Y receivers (in the diagram, that's the position that they're in before the pre-snap motion indicated by the dotted lines). This is totally standard, and teams rep their adjustments against 3x1 formations all the time. You can note that before the motion and the defense's reaction to it there is an ILB lined up inside of the Y receiver, meaning that he would potentially be able to wall him off and disrupt his crossing route. When we put the RB in motion, however, the SLB and first ILB recognize that they have an extra receiver on their side of the field and bump out one more spot, so that the SLB is now over the RB and the ILB has now replaced the SLB inside of H. They have to do this because if they don't and we throw a screen or a wheel to the RB, they'll be outflanked. Note that this conveniently removes the ILB who was going to disrupt Y on his crossing route. The problem for UCLA is that the next ILB, the guy in the middle of the formation, is left all alone and isn't able to disrupt Y.  Because all of the other LB's to the trips side are being pulled outside by the motion and by all of the WR's already out there, he's left as the only LB in the middle of the formation, giving Goff space to make a nice tight-window throw.  If there had been an extra LB in the middle of the field here, this would've been compromised:

We also ran this play with a roll-out one time, meaning that we only ran it four times without some kind of backfield action.

So, to recap, in 2013 we ran 4-verticals 13 times, always from 2x2 formations, with no motion, and limited contributions on both the outside and inside. We only used playaction one time. The results: 6/13 and 98 yards, with two completions and 39 of those yards coming on back to back plays in garbage time. 4/11 for 59 yards is a little more indicative. In 2014, with 3x1 formations and action, before the final play we were 6/12 and 144 yards (46% of our total passing yards in the game), with better balance between targets for inside and outside WR's, and with another 38 yard reception called back for a chop-block that didn't effect the pass in any way. Surprisingly, we got another 28 yards from Goff scrambling on this concept, accounting for 50% of our rush yards. I'm pretty confident that this is the only time in the history of football that 4-verticals has been a team's most effective run play.

The Final Interception

In the post-game press conference in 2014, Sonny gave an explanation for why they called the play that they did on the final play. He explained that, ideally, the ball would have gone to one of the inside receivers. We were running 4-verts from trips on that last play, with Anderson coming across at 10-12 yards, as we've seen several times in the previous section, so the staff wanted the ball to go to him. The problem is that UCLA was playing man coverage with a single high safety. This meant that there wouldn't be any confusion in picking Anderson up; it's man, so one guy would line up across from him and run with him no matter where he went, so the defense wouldn't have had the kinds of problems that they had in other coverages with playaction or motion.  It's safe to say that UCLA called a man coverage here to take away this throw.

That's not the end of the world, though, because in man coverage with a single high safety in the middle of the field, the outside WR's are manned-up against a CB with no help down the sidelines. So, when Goff saw man pre-snap, he was immediately looking to Lawler on the outside. Remembering back to the first part of this post, there are options in this scenario; if the CB bails, we hit Lawler on the back shoulder throw for the first down, but if the CB stays tight we throw the fade. Here's the video:

Now you know how this play works, so you know what the QB and WR should be looking for. Look at the CB over Lawler. He's bailing from the beginning, which should signal a back-shoulder throw. As the ball's in the air, check out the massive void on the sidelines between the 20 and 25 yard lines. There's no way that Goff should've thrown a fade here. I can't see what Lawler's doing until it's too late, but his CB was never running even with him, and my guess is that Lawler (correctly) read the bailing CB and held up for the back-shoulder throw, which is why he's never really in position to catch the ball. You can see him looking back around the first down marker. In all likelihood, Goff had read fade pre-snap and didn't see the CB bailing, thus throwing a ball that looked overthrown. We have plays in the playbook that wouldn't have included any deep option at all here, and we could've called one of them instead of 4-verts. In this case, though, we were running one of our most familiar plays and, as far as I can tell, if it had been read correctly, we would've gotten the easy first down on the back shoulder throw, allowing Langford to kick the FG for the win. That's not meant to knock Goff, since his improvement on this concept is part of what made it so successful earlier in the game and had us in a good position to win in the first place, but on this particular play, we didn't execute on something that usually works for us.

For more discussion, see the BI thread here: http://bearinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?92875-Bear-Raid-Breakdown-UCLA-Games-in-2013-vs-2014