Chattanooga jumped out to a big 17-7 half-time lead. But The Citadel’s Flexbone offense rallied with 10 unanswered points in the second half to force overtime. Chattanooga won in overtime by going for going for 2 to win 25-24. This blog post will look at six plays from The Citadel’s Flexbone offense that were affected by NAG: Numbers, Angles and Grass.
Two Plays Affected by Numbers
Numbers – #1
We have a 4×3 balanced defense against a balanced Flexbone formation. The offense fakes a Toss to the left and then runs a type of lead option back to the right…
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The design of this play leads to the offense being outnumbered to the option side. This play could work against a secondary that is flowing hard with motion, but these safeties are sitting on the hash and are not moving. So after the fake the offense is running a double option against a DE, OLB and Safety which leaves the offense outnumbered. To fix this the offense could have pulled the off-side guard, like on a trap-option, in order to even up the numbers. Also the play-side tackle took a bad angle and lost the Mike linebacker as he scraped. I think this play might work without pulling the guard against a 5×2 defense if the inside LBs are flowing hard, but it does not work against this 4×3.
Numbers – #2
This is a balanced, tight Flexbone formation for The Citadel’s offense. The only difference is that they have put a TE in for the receiver on the right side and put him in a 3 point stance. Look at what that did to the defense…
If we count the defensive numbers, they now have 6 defenders on the right side of the ball and 5 defenders on the left side of the ball. Running anything to the left is going to provide an advantage in pure numbers as well as blocking angles. The Citadel ends up running a QB double option to the left for a solid play. If the wide receiver could have helped that tackle just a little bit longer to seal the DE it could have been a lot bigger play.
Two Plays Affected by Angles
Angles – #1
Any option play can succeed or fail by any number of failed techniques. It could be a bad footwork, not running through the mesh or being too high for a lineman. What does your eye see on this Toss play that allows the stand-up DE #85 on the offensive’s left side to run down this play?
I think the timing of the snap was perfect. The A back is right behind the B back at the snap of the ball. But I think he got too deep after he reached that point. I teach my A back on Toss to run through the B back’s heals and then to run straight towards the sideline. The A back getting the Toss already has plenty of depth and does not need anymore depth. I bet he lost 1 to 2 yards because of that extra depth and that caused him to get caught by that DE. The pitch is also slightly behind the running back, which I would also chalk up to him being too deep. As a finer point for the quarterback, I think he should take one more step towards the A back after he releases the ball to make sure that the A back catches the ball, and also to setup any future boot plays so the QB can get proper depth.
Angles – #2
I like this play on 3rd and 4. The only bad part is that this secondary is not playing very hard downhill so it is going to be hard to get a big play over the top of these safeties.
However, as an offense we have to ‘take what the defense gives you’. Since the secondary is not aggressive on the option, they are able to cover both the wide receiver and the A back deep routes. So what is the offense left to do? There are two great options left, but I don’t think these two options are practiced enough because everybody is hoping the deep ball will be open when a pass play is actually called.
Option 1: The A back who is faking as the option back is running a swing route. The outside linebacker has dropped into coverage and if the ball is thrown well on this swing route you have your A back against the OLB with 20 horizontal yards of green grass to make the OLB miss. I placed this play in the ‘Angles’ section because a well thrown ball give the A back a ton of Angles to beat that OLB for 4 yards or to at least setup a 4th and very short.
Option 2: The B back here takes his fake and then correctly looks for somebody to block. But with how the defense brought five in the various gaps he has nobody to block. I believe we should use him in the route then. Just have him setup 3 to 5 yards right over the spot where he took the fake. It is an easy check-down throw and since we only need 4 yards here a completion is almost certainly a first down.
Two Plays Affected by Grass
Grass – #1
The Citadel has lined up in an Unbalanced formation with 6.5 players to the right and 4.5 players to the left. The defense has done a good job and balanced up to those exact numbers. But watch what happens when the play side linebacker for the defense blitzes….
As a defense you have to be very sure you know a tendency before you commit to a run blitz. If there was a large tendency for The Citadel to run Belly to this unbalanced side behind that TE this would be a great blitz. But the stronger tendency in this game seems to be for The Citadel to run QB Double Option and this blitz allows for an easy edge and a big hole with lots of ‘Grass’ for the quarterback. The A back and B back on this play both do great jobs being aggressive and making key blocks downfield.
Grass – #2
I think this next play is a very good use of a different offensive formation that ends up giving the offense an advantage to the wide side of the fields and more Grass to run within…
This is not a typical flexbone formation, but there is very little learning here for the offense to run their QB Double Option play to the left. The corner is the pitch man, the in-motion wide receiver will seal the edge and work to the play-side safety, and the B back will look for whoever is left over with his eyes inside to start. As the play progresses the defense over-scrapes and it is an easy touchdown for the quarterback and the B back did not even have to block anyone. I listed this under ‘Grass’ because the offense used a different formation to gain extra space to be able to run to the field instead of the boundary. This formation is not balanced as there are 6 offensive players to the left and 5 offensive players to the right. The defense just stayed in their base 4×3 and did not adjust, so they ended up being outnumbered.
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