Creating Matchups with Beau Baldwin

I've got another post up over at California Golden Blogs.  This one's on Beau Baldwin and the way that he moves receivers around to create matchups.  Here's a snippet:

When Sonny Dykes came to the California Golden Bears, he talked a good deal about his offensive philosophy. He said that there are a bunch of different ways to fool people. Pre-snap, you can use formations, motions, and shifts to get the defense out of their alignments. You can also use trick plays and post-snap misdirection to spring guys open. A third option is to use tempo to keep the defense from subbing and getting new calls in. This last option is, obviously, the approach favored by Dykes and the Air Raid guys. 

New OC Beau Baldwin hasn't made similarly explicit claims about his approach to offense. He says that his offense is “multiple,” but that by itself doesn't really tell us anything. In this post, I'm going to try to provide some answers with Sonny's quote in mind. In particular, I'm going to look at how the Eastern Washington Eagles used formations and alignments to create favorable matchups for their star receiver, Cooper Kupp, in their upset victory over WSU, and I'm going to compare these strategies with the Bear Raid in order to expand on how Baldwin's offensive philosophy will change the look of our offense in the post-Dykes era.