The Passing Conundrum

This week I had a particularly scintillating conversation about our offense with a fellow colleague, friend, and Notre Dame graduate, Pat Scoggins. After re-reading what I wrote I thought it pertinent to the discussion I've been having as a whole and decided to include it here. Anything in italics is part of the actual conversation. I have tried to distinguish between the normal text and the conversation with this method.

The initial question from Pat was something along the lines of "Why can't we do anything on offense? Why do we have no identity?" My response was as follows:

"Let me discuss the typical installation of an offense/defense.

1) Terminology - First you have to define the language with which to speak. This is true on both sides of the ball and includes not only the formation terminology, but also packages, personnel, and types of plays (counter, draw, zone, man, inside-out, outside-in, etc.)

2) Base scheme - This is the base set of plays that you can always fall back on. It will normally include a few runs and passes out of basic formations and personnel packages. On defense it includes cover 2, cover 3, man under, and some blitz packages.

3) Formation tweaks - This takes the base scheme and adjusts it to different personnel packages. On offense for example, instead of running an offset I outside zone run you would substitute the fullback with a tight end, bring him in motion, and block with him instead of using the fullback. On defense, it might be running some sort of safety blitz package from nickel instead of the base 3-4 because you don't want a linebacker covering for the safety.

4) Situational plays - Not all offenses/defenses have this. Really it developed more in the pros than in high school or college. Actually, I shouldn't say that, it was more specialized in the pros. This is ultimately grouping the base scheme and formation tweaks and putting them into subsets of plays like 2nd and long, or 3rd and short, etc. More often than not though, they will add some additional plays into the mix that are specific to that situation and not part of the base scheme, even with formation tweaks. These types of situational packages are very much like a no huddle offense except that they aren't executed like the no huddle. When you are in the no huddle or hurry up you have a set number of plays you run that everyone on the team knows and you have signals etc. for them to be able to run the operation at the line. The only difference with this is that you don't have everyone memorize them all, they just recognize that on 3rd and long they'll probably be running one of the 3rd and long package plays.

5) No huddle - This may not come last but it is certainly it's own entity. Typically this is a particular formation for all of the plays. The plays can come from the base scheme or from additions to the base scheme. This typically doesn't change all year although a play or two may be added or omitted depending on the opponent. This applies to offense and defense.

For an inexperienced team all of this remains true. For the first couple of days of practice you do this. You install it all, all of the plays, in this type of a process to make sense of things. At this point they are just plays. The players have little idea (unless they are football savvy and/or have experience and understand the game) why you would run one particular play vs. another. They also don't have any idea of why the blocking schemes are set up the way they are (again, unless they are football savvy and/or have experience and understand the game). After the entire offense is in, or most of it anyway, you start to rep plays. Your focus as this point has to be two-fold. You want to rep the plays that you believe you have to have, plays you can always come back to, plays you believe in, that fit into your offensive/defensive philosophy. But you also want to rep the plays your personnel fit into. Combining both of these groups of plays they still have to be a manageable amount. You can't do too much. I believe you have to run a play 100 times in practice before you ever do it in a game. About 75% of those reps should come against no one, working on timing, with cones and/or dummies set up to simulate the defense/offense. But about 25% of those should occur against different looking defenses/offenses so you can see how to react to different things the opposition can do.

It seems that we are doing too much because we don't consistently execute anything very well. We aren't getting enough quality reps against good defensive/offensive competition in practice. This is further compounded by something said on NDNation here:

'Call plays that have low execution risk or that at least reward that risk. As I mentioned here before, Charlie calls plays that should work... but nothing can work with so many breakdowns. Part of his magic in the NFL was calling plays you didn't expect and you can do that and have it work if you're executing at a high level. Charlie calls plays you don't expect, but also that don't work. There's just not as much value in fooling a defensive coordinator when you're executing so poorly. It really is better in college to run plays they know are coming and still make them work. That's demoralizing.... then you out-trick them. BTW, I think the fourth down call was excellent last week.'

We can't simply run plays the opposition knows are coming and still have them work. That is where being precise, having a lot of reps, comes into play as well as will/determination/attitude. In the early to mid 90's everyone in the country knew Nebraska was going to run the football, but they still did it to the tune of 300 yards per game. And when they passed, more often than not, they were so wide open it was an easy completion and big gain. I don't know if I would say that it is better to run plays they know are coming and still make them work. I believe you have to be able to run a certain, small set of plays, and execute them a high percentage of the time regardless of whether or no they know it is coming. As you grow, mature, move through the year the number of plays that fall into that category increase and you have a larger set of things to work with. The trickery comes along with it, not separate or in spite of it.

I have said that Charlie talked about waiting to find out what our offensive identity was. That's fine for an experienced team who has had a lot of practice and played football at the college level. But for a young team you have to form that identity rather than waiting on it to surface. They don't have the experience to be able to do many things well and they certainly are no where near gelling as a unit. So you keep it simple, you develop the identity rather than wait for the team to do it, and you certainly don't try something new every week to give them that identity. You focus on one thing and rep the hell out of it."

This response was followed by a barrage of back and forth questions and answers:

Pat: "If you know this stuff, how does Weis not know this stuff?"
Anthony: "He probably does, he just didn't properly identify how much of a problem it would be. He is used to the NFL and has never had such a young, inexperienced group of players. Also, I don't know this. I'm speculating while talking in definitives."
Pat: "You talk about the team establishing an identity and I can't agree more. How are a bunch of freshmen and sophomores supposed to establish an identity if they don't know what they're doing at all. I think the coach needs to know his team, know their talents, and dictate to them what their identity is going to be."
Anthony: "Well Weis' philosophy has always been to tailor your offense to the strength(s) of the team. That is why he said he needed to wait on the identity. The problem with this is that it assumes you can execute on a high level with most of the offense, or in the very least, some of the offense. That assumption is not valid for a young, inexperienced team. So the first step isn't finding the identity, the first step is getting to the point where you execute on a high level. That is why you form the identity, not wait to find it. You still look at the personnel, and you decide what you can do well, then you work very hard on those things. You don't wait to figure it out, you dictate it. But you dictate it within the confines of what you know. You don't go out and try and learn and install a brand new offense like the spread zone read. That takes out the advantage you have of your experienced players, as few as they may be, of knowing the offense they are running. Weis effectively set us back even more by doing that rather than taking advantage of the limited experience he did have, i.e. Young, Sullivan, etc."
Pat: "It couldn't be more apparent that we have no identity on offense, and we are going into week 8."
Anthony: "Troubling to say the least."
Pat: "Even I can see we have no offensive identity and i don't know anything. You can just see that every play the offense runs they just have the body language that they're not "into it" or that they don't have the confidence to execute or they don't know what to do. There's so many blank stares after we run an offensive play."
Anthony: "Lack of reps and lack of quality opposition in practice."
Pat: "A team with an offensive identity lines up and runs a play confidently and in-sync. Now sometimes someone will blow an assignment, but if a team has an identity, they make up for it with a quick decision because they just know the play that well."
Anthony: "One person blowing an assignment doesn't kill the play. Normally it takes more than one person to ruin a play, unless that person is at the point of attack. We have multiple people blowing assignments every play."
Pat: "I think about watching Boston College's offense. When we brought heat, Ryan knew exactly who would be open and he delivered a nice catch-able 2-3 yard pass to a TE or RB before he got planted on his back. They have an identity because they just oozed confidence. And it wasn't just the quarterback, it was everyone on their side of the ball. They knew what they were doing on every play from top to bottom."
Anthony: "Those quarterbacks that can do that are few and far between. That is excellent QB play, not an identity. Boston College's offensive identity against us was a short, quick, passing game with screens to slow down the pass rush. It really shows you how much we miss Quinn. Boston College ran it all through Ryan. He was the centerpiece."
Pat: "I want to come back to our running game, and while I'm frustrated about it, I need to remember what you said yesterday I think about you can't run the ball if you have no threat down field because the defense will just stack the line and focus on stopping the run because they know you can't throw."
Anthony: "Well, you won't be able to consistently run the ball that way unless you have studs up front and a determined, hard-nosed attitude."
Pat: "Our running game isn't successful because the defenses don't have to guard the pass. My issue is that we're actually now taking shots down the field."
Anthony: "Ah, but we aren't being successful with it. You can't just take shots, you have to win a few. Let me explain. If I know a team can't run, I stack the of scrimmage on obvious running downs, playing normal zone or man coverage. On obvious passing downs I blitz the hell out of them and play press-man. If they don't win the down field battles why would I change? I've got man-to-man coverage, they aren't beating it, I'm still stopping the run and putting them into obvious passing situations, and I'm putting pressure on the quarterback in those obvious passing situations, keeping the process cyclical. Really, the only way the offense beats me is if they wein one-on-one battles consistently, my defense tackles poorly, or I give them first downs via penalties. It isn't until the offense wins some down field battles, and probably more than one, that I would switch it up and give help over the top. Only then is the run defense loosened up. But there is another aspect to this. When you start winning down field balls, you start making the defense think. The players become more aware and cognizant of it. And they hesitate more to come up to support the run."
Pat: "I remember you were mad about how much we tried to go deep without success yet we kept trying it. My issue is that I think Weis is trying to go down field to keep the defense honest, but our down field receivers are actually covered AND the defense still gets to stack the line and stop the run. How can that really be? Is it that we're only sending one guy deep at a time and it's easy to cover one guy? How are defenses able to afford to both stack the line and stop the run but also cover our guys who we are now attempting to send deep? They still only get 11?"
Anthony: "Think about my previous explanation."

This prompted a long series of questions/responses from Pat:

"OK, so you need to demonstrate some success down the field before they will respect it ... I see now. we are trying to go down field and they only need one guy to cover each of our guys and then each of their extra guys, they stick in the box and kill us if we run it or watch us throw an incomplete pass if we throw it. They can defend the run and the pass with this strategy. As a follow on question to this, I ask the following: we're talking a lot about throwing the ball down field to open up the run game so the defense is less likely to be up so fast in run support. To me, this means we're talking about taking shots of 20+ yards in the air, but what about the intermediate passing game? Would an intermediate passing threat help open up the run too? The only passing that we are successful in right now is the shallow passing game passes of less than 5 yards in my simple mind. What about the 5-20 yard passes? If we could be successful there, then that would have to help the run. I feel like we're unsuccessful/inconsistent in the 5-20 yard pass plays. With Sharpley, it seems like he can't hit the broad side of a barn in the 5-20 yard range. He over throws/under throws too much on those routes. With Clausen, he doesn't really even attempt passes in this range unless it's to Carlson on the sideline (and only occasionally at that). Seems like Clausen only throws the very very short routes and lately has taken some deep shots without success to date. I don't know what Clausen's issue is in the 5-20 yard pass plays. maybe those are the plays where he's not throwing it when the receiver is open for that split-second, he misses his chance at them, and the throws it out of bounds. Maybe you can elaborate on this issue."

My response:

"I think Clausen's deep ball is a strength/confidence/time issue. It seems, to me, that when he's given time, he can drop back, make the read, and not have to move too much, he can throw down field. I refer to the Carlson pass in the BC game, his accuracy in the 16-18 yard bench routes, and his deep ball to Tate in the Penn State game (called back on the Young hold). I don't think, at least at this point, Clausen has the athletic ability, speed, and/or strength to create things for himself in the game. He needs to have protection. I do not think the deep balls are as much about the receivers getting open only for a short period of time. My reference to those are more on routes where there are cuts: in's, out's, bench, curl, post, etc.

Sharpley has a live arm, but when he's pressured, even though he creates, his passes are often errant. He seems to see the field better and quicker but he doesn't have the accuracy.

I think the intermediate game can't really help because I don't think we can execute it. Let me explain again.

Difficulty of throw
Short: Low/Medium
Intermediate: Medium/High
Long: Medium

Difficulty of read
Short: Low
Intermediate: High
Long: Medium

Speed of execution
Short: High
Intermediate: Low
Long: Medium

A low difficulty of throw means it's easy, high means it's difficult. Low difficulty of read means it's easy, high means it's difficult. High speed of execution means it happens quickly, low means it happens slowly.

Now, let me explain in a bit more detail. The short passing game is a relatively easy throw, a low risk of reading, and a high speed of execution. The last of these three is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll explain the other two. On a three-step drop you do a pre-snap read on the field, based on the coverage you discern which side of the field to throw to. Then, you just pick your receiver and let it fly. The throws are typically easy although a 7 yard out can be a somewhat difficult throw and swing routes are no gimme.

The deep, or long, passing game is pretty even on all accounts. Typically the pre-snap read isn't as necessary. You will know which receivers are going deep and which are your safety valves. But the read occurs more during the play. You have to look at multiple receivers, usually two, but sometimes three, and sometimes on both sides of the field. In reality you look at the coverage and the way it rolls rather than the receivers but that is just details. The thows are fairly easy relatively speaking. But you have a fairly small room for error because it needs to be either inside and down (for a post) our outside and up (for something like a go route). General rules are you never overthrow a short route or underthrow a long route. But the inside and outside placement is also important.

The intermediate passing game is the most challenging. The read takes place not only pre-snap, but also during the play, as you are dropping back and going through the progression. You have to first read man/zone. This can occur pre-snap but might not depending on the defensive alignment. After that you have to identify, based on ALL the routes, which receiver is most likely to be open. Then you have to make a more difficult throw not only because it is a bit longer, but also because it isn't a lob type of pass. What makes this even more difficult are hot routes. On long and/or short passes reading the blitz is usually fairly secondary. In the short passing game you get off the passes quick enough that it makes no difference. In the long game it is more of a problem of picking it up rather than adjusting to it. There are usually only a few receivers out in the pattern and you have a safety valve if needed. The protection is better, prepared for a blitz, and you have a secondary check-down option. In the intermediate passing game you send out the most receivers in pattern. Therefore, pre-snap reads and or reading effectively just after the snap is of paramount importance. If the defense is blitzing a hot route adjustment is typically needed. If you can't see this as quickly as the receiver does you're in big time trouble because you aren't prepare to pick up the blitz, the idea is that you make them pay for the blitz by reading and reacting more quickly. If you don't have sight reads/hot routes installed you are in even bigger trouble.

I think this is the problem both quarterbacks face. There are three solutions that can help this. First is to move your quarterback out of the pocket on a designed roll out. Second is to be effective running screens and draws to slow down the blitz and pressure. Third is to be able to play action. Weis doesn't really have the first in his playbook, the second we can't execute, and the third is ineffective due to a lack of running game."

I believe the conversation above helps to explain our offensive woes and contributes to my other post regarding BC (link here).