Let's dive into some fun concepts and examples we saw from OU in their game against Tulsa last week.
Lot of positives to take away from tulsa, including this takeaway by Gentry and the coverage in general. This is a 4 man front look with Bowen in the cheetah spot, removed out over the trips. Tulsa running vertical patterns out of ten personnel. Trips can be a tough alignment for defenses in the secondary due to the amount of stress it puts in the back end - it generally forces a defense into a tough single high look that forces a bunch of defenders onto an island, but theirs ways to mitigate it. Here the Sooners opt for something of a quarters “match” look - match simply means if the corner back to the trips and the SAM linebacker (or cheetah in our defense) read a certain patter out of the outside receiver and slot, the coverage converts from a zone to a man coverage.
These rules can vary, but in this particular scenario it’s safe to assume the rule is if the outside receiver runs vertical 10 yards, they convert the coverage into man. The smaller of the 2 linebackers will pick up the #3 receiver, and the boundary safety (or the safety to the single receiver side) plays a “sky” technique (remember from last week?) where he stays low in a hook zone allowing the single receiver corner to stay over the top of his man and play the deep responsibility. We also mix up the front here by dropping an end into coverage and sending a LB to complete the man rush. We do a good job here of creating pressure and gentry does a fantastic job of hand fighting the receiver, disrupting his running rhythm, and staying over the top of the route for the takeaway. You can guess the only knock on this play, it doubles as a pretty apt life lesson - sometimes, you just gotta get out of your own way.
Classic Jeff Lebby trickery, the Sooners come out in essentially a double tight look with a wing and a tight end, call andrel into motion and fake the jet sweep, set up a midline read option on the three technique - only to have the wing run a buzz route the other way for an easy pitch and catch. It’s the typical red herring misdirection that makes this offense go in critical spots, faking not one but two plays in quick succession to stress the defense and force everyone in the box only to leak one out at the last second.
Everything we do on offense is all about constant stress testing - tempo, alignment, fakes, reads, it’s all in play to try to force the defense to play a perfect rep, and a slight mental lapse or loss of discipline on their part is our gain, and boy do the Sooners make it look easy. The best part about this is the first two fakes - the jet sweep and the midline read - are still both very much viable and in play, meaning future DCs have to account for both when breaking down this tape, and what’s that cause? You guessed it, even more stress.
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