Washington's Pass Rush

Washington is up next on our tour of PAC-12 pass rushes. In this post, we'll see how UW relied more heavily than other teams on straightforward, 4-man rushes to get production. We'll also see that, when they did blitz, they took advantage of their defensive ends' versatility and twisted them inside to the backside of their opponents' protection schemes, giving their rush a very different flavor from the relatively simple rush schemes that we saw from Colorado.

4-Man Rushes

When you compare Washington's stats to Colorado's, something that stands out is that UW's pass rush was much more uneven. UW had some huge games against Stanford (8 sacks) and ASU (6 sacks), but in conference play their median production was only 1.5 sacks/game. UW got only single sacks in five of their ten conference games, and for the most part, those were the games against any protection unit with a pulse (Oregon State, Utah, Cal, USC, and Colorado). The first question to ask, then, is why UW was so streaky.

When you look at UW's huge 8-sack performance against Stanford, you can start to see what separates an 8-sack game from a 1-sack game. Against Stanford, at least half of UW's sacks came on straightforward, 4-man rushes. Most noticeably they dominated Stanford's LT on the edge, but some interior guys got through as well. Here's a quick highlight video of Stanford's QB getting sacked a bunch of times by the 4-man rush:

When UW can't get this kind of production from their DL, their numbers go way down. Above, I pointed out that UW had five single-sack games against protection units that were average and above. Only one of those sacks came on a four-man rush. If UW wanted to get home against decent units, they had to blitz, and they were less effective at doing this than Colorado was. While Colorado only rarely got pressure with a straightforward 4-man rush, they were able to consistently get multiple sacks against decent protection units, which accounts for their more even numbers.

Using Folding DE's to Attack Man Protection:

UW's blitzes were most effective when they could attack man protection schemes, either against B.O.B. protection, or on the back side ofhalf-slide protection. They especially did this by folding their DE's inside on twists, which created pickup problems for opposing blockers. Here's an example on 3^rd and 11 from the Stanford game:

  On this play UW is bringing five rushers, and Stanford's in a 7-man B.O.B. protection. In this case, the OL will be responsible for the four DL and the SLB. The RB's are responsible for the WLB and the SS, and are releasing into the pattern if their blitzer doesn't come (this is called a “check release”). This makes things straightforward to the left of the diagram. The LT is manned-up on the DE, the F-back blocks the WLB when he blitzes, the LG blocks the NT, and the C has eyes on the SLB (who doesn't come). To the right side of the diagram, the RG is manned-up on the DT, and the RT is manned-up on the DE.

To that side, the DT and DE are twisting. The DT is going first (rushing underneath the DE's path), and is working outside to contain. When he does this the RG, who is in man protection against him, follows him outside. The problem is that when the DE comes inside, that RG doesn't see the twist and gets stuck on the outside chasing the DT. This puts both the RG and RT on the DT, and leaves no one to block the DE. Furthermore, the H-back is manned up on the SS, and is check-releasing off of him. When the SS doesn't blitz, the H-back releases to run a pass route, and the DE runs straight past him for an easy sack.

Here's the video. Look at the right side of Stanford's protection and watch the RG get pulled outside by the DT, opening up a nice lane for the DE to run inside and right past the releasing H-back:

UW got another sack on a similar blitz against WSU (this time on a four-man pressure). Once again, watch the twist on the right side of the protection. The RG and RT will pass off the two DL reasonably well, but the RB misses his one-on-one block on the WLB coming through:

Against Colorado in the conference championship, UW put an interesting wrinkle on this:

On this play Colorado looks like they're half-sliding protection to the left, which puts the RG, RT, and RB manned-up on the DT, DE, and SLB to the backside.

There's sometimes a stigma against zone coverages, which are often seen as antithetical to blitzing, but here UW zones off the three-receiver side of the formation to get a nice benefit. Because the SS is in zone coverage instead of man here, he's able to act as the contain player to the right side of the diagram (as represented by the dotted line). If he were in man coverage he'd have to chase his receiver wherever he went, but because he's in zone he can drop to his spot and keep eyes on the QB. This removes the need for a front player to contain on the edge, and lets UW overload the inside of the protection.

On this play, the DT is just going to rush straight ahead into his B-gap outside the RG. This will occupy the RG, who is manned up against him, and will prevent him from leaving the DT to block the twisting DE. Meanwhile, the SLB is blitzing, and is picked up by the RB, as he should be. Colorado picks up this part of the blitz just fine, but when the DE loops inside, the C is sliding away from him because of the half-slide protection call. With the RG and RB occupied with their man protection responsibilities, there's no one left inside to block the DE. Here's the video. Watch the right side of the protection, where the DT is going to bullrush the RG, the RB is blocking the SLB, and the DE is getting a free run-through:

UW certainly had the ability to scheme up some nice pressure when their base 4-man rush wasn't cutting it, and on these plays we see how it works when it's gameplanned and called well. Nonetheless, these kinds of plays make up less of their production than you might like, and it seems that they had trouble using scheme in these ways to get consistent sacks against the top half of the conference. There were flashes of good pressure scheme, but it never really got over the hump. It will be interesting to see how the Huskies do in this part of the game in their playoff matchup against Alabama, where they could have trouble if they try to rely on their base 4-man rush to generate pressure.