Thursday, July 28, 2011

Options would be good

I remember reading a story http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2011/03/08/4d77073d39a21


several months ago by Sam McKewon (former NebraskaStatePaper reporter who has since joined the Omaha World Herald in covering Nebraska football) about the fundamental difference in the passing philosophy of former offensive coordinator Shawn Watson as opposed to the concepts of since named OC Tim Beck.


For starters, I have great respect for McKewon’s work. He is a former cohort of mine from the mid-1990s at the Daily Nebraskan. I thought he was a bright young man then and think the same of him now. Well, he’s not so young now but you get the point.


One thing that I don’t think the Huskers have ever done (at least in recent memory) is give their wide receivers option routes. If Brandon Kinnie had the ability to break his slant route to a slant and go during the last fourth down of the Big12 title game, it could potentially been an easy first down.


I know the West Coast Offense cynics would say the WCO based on option routes but Nebraska has not run a true version since BC. However, it should also be noted that the last team that ran a pure form of the WCO was Bill Walsh’s San Francisco 49ers.

The biggest problem the last couple of years with Nebraska’s offense was the fact that you had at was the parts of the WCO mashed together with power running schemes, then last year which became largely an offense of “watch Taylor Martinez run the zone read.”


Anyway back to the original point of running patterns that feature option routes? Yes, it requires a savvy quarterback to know what route the wide receiver is going to choose based on the defensive look. The last Husker QBs that ran the WCO were Zac Taylor and Joe Ganz but it never appeared even in those days that wide receivers were ever given that degree of freedom.


In order to execute option routes, the quarterback has to have an understanding of the different route options that his intended receiver has, and also has to have a sense of which one he will take depending on the defense. So if you take that aforementioned fourth down pass in the Big 12 title game as an example, ideally the quarterback would see that Kinnie’s DB is playing tight press coverage to take away the slant or hitch, so he would anticipate that Kinnie would instead break the route into a fly pattern and hit him in stride as he passes the defender. Instead, what happened was Kinnie ran a slant, got jammed, and Martinez threw it towards him anyway even though there was no way in hell the ball was going to be caught.


Most people who gripe about playcalling and the offense late last season don’t realize that Martinez couldn’t operate any sort of offense that required decision making in the passing game. That makes you a one-route offense with no chance for audible. That makes you extremely easy to defend. The ability to spot a rush and flip out a short pass to an outlet receiver was gone. No screens to slow down the rush. No running threat from the quarterback that kept defenses honest earlier in the season.


Hopefully Martinez can develop enough to operate a competent collegiate attack this season. If not, don’t expect too much. Option routes are not exactly brain surgery. High school teams all over the country run spread offenses with option routes.

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