The Washington Huskies end their three game skid as they took down the Purdue Boilermakers in an away edition of B1G After Dark in West Lafayette. The run game came alive and the offense was efficient, minus a handful of turnovers (some of which were just unfortunate luck). Elijah Brown continued to make his case for QB1, tallying 301 yards and 3 TDs on 21-27 passing. The defense once again showed some cracks but played shut down when it mattered, keeping Purdue to 5/14 on 3rd downs and 1/4 on 4th downs.
The Dawgs head into a bye with momentum in hopes of turning the season around and becoming bowl eligible.
To the film.
Offense: Imperfect Promise
What a breath of fresh air. Building on the momentum of Elijah Brown’s second half performance against Iowa, the offense posted its best performance this season against Purdue. It wasn’t without blemishes (3 INTs & 1 fumble), but the offense as a whole looked so much better. The passing game generally looked crisp, pass protection largely held up, the run game looked explosive, and everything just seemed to flow better. A lot of this can be attributed to Brown’s ability to execute within the structure of the offense, as well as better play from the OL now that Landen Hatchett is back at center. However, there’s also an undeniable shift in play calling that’s putting our players in a better position to succeed. We’ll never know exactly if the play calling changed because of Brown’s particular skillset or if it was already in the works by the time Demond got hurt, but it certainly looked effective with Brown at the helm.
This week we wanted to take a closer look at the handful of bad plays Brown had to see if it’s worth tapping the breaks on his hype train, what we did to unlock the run game, and other wrinkles that have been added to the offense against Purdue that are unlocking untapped potential.
1st Quarter – 14:55 – 1st & 10
So we’re going to get the bad out of the way first. While Brown’s INTs were obviously concerning, he otherwise played an incredibly efficient game that seems to prove that his Iowa 2nd half performance wasn’t just a fluke. As such, we wanted to run through the three picks he threw against Purdue to see how concerned we should be about them. Were they Brown’s fault? Are they indicative of a decision making issue? Are they a mechanics issue?
On this first INT from the very first play from scrimmage, we see one of Brown’s few vertical shot throws that he’s attempted this season. This was likely a scripted play that was looking for something the staff saw on film or was probing the defense to see how they’d react to such an aggressive call right out of the gates. The defense is presenting a 1-high safety look pre-snap with the CBs both playing off, so it’s likely some sort of Cover 1 or Cover 3. Either way, Brown knows that he’s probably looking at 1v1s on his two perimeter routes. Roebuck is one of them, and he’s probably the best matchup threat that we’ve got.
Brown had time in the pocket to let this play develop, so this really does feel like a situation where it was just a bad throw. Ideally, in a 1v1 situation with the Fade route getting outside release down the sideline, the pass is out in front of the WR or towards the perimeter. This placement gets the ball out and away from the defenders and limits the risk of an interception. Here, Brown puts a little too much air under the ball and it sails on him. Roebuck had a step on the CB, but the pass brings the CB back into the picture. In my opinion, Brown needed to drive this ball a little more, but it’s otherwise a fine decision. We don’t have a big enough sample size to know if these vertical throws are in his bag, but I also don’t think that his arm strength is that big of an issue given his ability to make all the other passes that he’s been successful with. Fewer called shot plays seem like an easy fix to limit his exposure to these situations.
1st Quarter – 4:05 – 2nd & 9
For Brown’s second interception, I kind of split the blame between him and the fact that it was a nice play by the defense. On this play, we’re in an empty formation, and given Brown’s relatively immobile style of play, the defense probably knows that this is a pass play. As such, we’re calling a quick pass concept to minimize the risk of the defense getting pressure to Brown if they bring a blitz.
To the field side we’re running a Slant from Lawson (WR, #8) out of the slot and a clear out Fade route from Roebuck to preoccupy the outside CB. The Slant is a matchup-based read or a potential safety valve option in case there is pressure coming from the field side. To the boundary side we’re running a Stick concept. Stick is an Air Raid staple that has the outside WR running a clear out Fade to open up space underneath, the WR2 running a Speed Out route, and the WR3/inside slot running an option Stick/Out route where he can either sit down on a Stick route against zone or run an Out against man. The goal of the Stick concept is to create horizontal stress on the slot defender between the Stick and the Speed Out, as well as vertical stress on the CB between the Fade and the Speed Out.
Fisch is trying to use the formation to set up the play and to help give Brown some pre-snap clues about the defense. We have the 3 WR side of our empty formation on the boundary side of the formation instead of the more conventional field side of the formation. This is also known as FIB (Formation Into Boundary), and it was one of Ryan Grubb’s favorite schematic wrinkles during the Penix days. FIB is a great scheme tool because it forces defenses to make tough decisions about how they want to organize their alignments. Defenses like to keep an extra body on the field side coverage to help cover the extra space, but that becomes harder when the offense now has more bodies on the boundary side and you still want to match numbers.
Based on Purdue’s pre-snap alignment against the FIB look, they only have three defenders in any sort of position to cover our three receivers to the boundary. The CB and safety are both backed off the line, so neither would really be in an immediate position to threaten the Speed Out unless the CB came downhill hard at the snap, at which point the Fade route would be wide open. That should be the primary post-snap read for Brown based on the pre-snap look.
Instead he’s looking towards the field where Purdue has decided to maintain the +1 coverage advantage despite the FIB look. With 3v2 in the defense’s favor, the three DBs can lean on each other’s coverage zones to sit on routes. The slot defender knows he’s got help over the top, so he can sit on underneath routes. He also knows that there’s a wide gap in coverage between him and the MLB, so he cheats his alignment inside a little to take away in-breaking routes. Those two things are what put him in a position to make a play on the ball. It’s all because he had extra help over the top, which should’ve been the sign to Brown to look elsewhere. This is a pre-snap mental error that could be ironed out in the film room.
3rd Quarter – 6:48 – 1st & 10
Last INT, this one is a little simpler to explain. This is a simple mis-run route from Baron Naone (TE, #85). Focusing just on Naone’s Drag route, there’s clearly a disconnect between where Brown expected him to be running and where Naone thought he should be going. On a Drag route like this, it is common for that receiver to have the option to either run the full route when facing man coverage, or to break off the route and sit down between zone defenders to create an easy target for the QB. There are usually some rules to this though so that the QB and receiver stay on the same page.
As you can see better from the end zone angle, Naone slams on the breaks on the far side of the formation from where he started. That’s usually a no-no. If the receiver is going to settle down against a zone look, they are usually taught to make that decision by the time they reach the center so that they can settle down somewhere in front of the OL. This gives the QB a big target directly in front of him, and it gives the QB a landmark to gauge off. If the receiver is still full speed past the midpoint of the formation, he’s going to keep going. You can see Naone kind of forgets this and only slams on the breaks after he got past the far side of Azzopardi at RT. That’s why Brown led him so much and ended up throwing the INT.
2nd Quarter – 15:00 – 2nd & 4
Now for a more fun topic, the resurgent run game. Brian Bonner’s flashed a couple of times this season, but Trey Cooley has been a major disappointment to date. That’s why it was so surprising to see him rip off a couple of huge runs against Purdue. Some of his success can be attributed to his growing confidence and decisiveness as a runner, but that’s also been aided by the play calling. Against Purdue, we found a lot of success running a Pin n Pull sweep concept that we had run a couple of times before, albeit unremarkably. Like the Counter runs we called against USC several weeks ago, we’re shifting away from a pure Zone run scheme and are emphasizing gap schemes that simplify things for the running backs.
Using this play as an example, Pin n Pull sweeps are pretty similar in concept to Counter. There are two pullers on the play. The first puller kicks out the EDGE, and the second puller leads the RB through the hole. The rest of the OL down blocks away from the play to widen out the other half of the run lane. Every pulling/blocking assignment is based on getting preferential angles for blocks and creating that rushing lane just inside the EDGE. There’s very little reading needed from the RBs. All they have to do is hit the hole and be an athlete once they hit open space. In this case, Champ and Mills pull out ahead of Cooley and clear a nice lane for him. The Purdue safety comes downhill right at the snap and nearly stuffs the run in the hole, but Cooley made the safety miss to set up the nice gain.
2nd Quarter – 7:30 – 1st & 10
Cooley wasn’t the only RB that showed out. Bonner, despite not leading the team in rushing yards, was our leading ball carrier when it came to carries and overall touches. He too had a strong performance against Purdue, and this big run on another Pin n Pull Sweep play was his best run of the day.
There wasn’t much more that we wanted to touch on that we haven’t already covered in the last play. We just wanted to throw this one on Film Study to give you another look at a concept that worked multiple times for us. You can also see a little clearer from the end zone angle just how straightforward of a read it was for Bonner. After taking the toss hand off, there really wasn’t a whole lot for him to do other than get up field. Also, nice block by Kodi Greene on this play.
4th Quarter – 10:38 – 1st & 10
The other big run play from this game that wasn’t on a Pin n Pull Sweep concept was this TD run from the 4th quarter of the game. We’re running base Inside Zone here instead of our more frequently called Zone Slice, so instead of a TE cutting across the formation to kick out the backside EDGE to create the cutback lane, we have the TE helping wash down the backside DT with a WR (Trez Davis, #12) walling off the backside EDGE to keep the cutback lane open.
As you can see a little better from the end zone angle, this small tweak in how we’re setting up the cutback lane makes a huge difference in how that hole develops. Baron Naone is a solid in-line run blocker for us, and the combination of him and Drew Azzopardi washing the DL out of the gap and getting a blocker on the second level defender creates a nice crease for Cooley to immediately hit without much reading or cutting necessary in the backfield.
TL;DR – Putting Naone on the backside of the run to speed up the development of the cutback lane seems to help our RBs get vertical faster and can lead to more explosive quick hitting runs.
2nd Quarter – 6:33 – 3rd & 6
Circling back to the passing game, there were a couple of interesting play calls that caught our attention. They’re interesting not because of the design but because we hadn’t seen many of these types of plays getting called earlier in the season. What we’re talking about are backfield screens.
Over the last five seasons that Fisch has called plays, dating back to his first season at Arizona, running backs have averaged about 19% of total receptions for the offense. Sometimes this was as high as 25% but was no lower than 14%. Target share might be a better indicator of play calling intention, but reception share is still a pretty strong indicator that Fisch likes to utilize his RBs in the pass game. This is usually through a combination of screens and designed checkdowns built into play designs. However, this season we’ve only completed 7 passes to RBs for a reception share percentage of 4%. Obviously you don’t want to force passes to RBs who aren’t good receivers and who aren’t going to capitalize on the opportunities, but it does illustrate the point that this is a portion of the passing attack that might be under utilized with untapped potential. This 25-yard TD play to Bonner is a good example of what we might’ve been missing out on but are coming back around to.
The play design is a Swing Screen to Bonner out of the backfield with Decker releasing up field to get a block on the safety and Azzopardi pulling out into the flat to take on the CB out ahead of Bonner. It’s not a sophisticated play design, but it does a couple of things that I like. For starters, it’s an easy way to get the ball into our talented RB’s hands out in space with minimal reliance on the blocking scheme developing properly or Bonner needing to make a challenging read after he gets the ball. Screens are a tried and true way of manufacturing these low-risk, high-reward touches, but as we’ve seen throughout the season, not all screen plays create quality opportunities. I like this type of screen design because it sets up easier blocking assignments ahead of the ball carrier. I’ve mentioned it in the past, but many of our WR screens don’t do a good job of this and they ask the OL to win a foot race against DBs and LBs. Instead, on this type of screen, the ball carrier stays behind the blockers when he gets the ball. This draws defenders towards the blockers and makes it easier for them to get hands on the defenders, like the CB having to meet Azzopardi in space. It’s a small detail, but it makes things so much easier for the blocking to work as designed.
3rd Quarter – 2:48 – 2nd & 7
Finally, we have a new “Leak” screen design that again gets the ball into the hands of our best playmakers out in space through a low-risk, high-reward design. Riffing off of the old Slip Screen concept where the the QB retreats to draw in the DL before dumping the ball off to the RB leaking out of the backfield, this play introduces a couple of new wrinkles to the concept.
First, instead of targeting a RB, we put Roebuck in the backfield as the featured receiver on the play. We’ve used him in the backfield enough this season where his presence back there doesn’t immediately tip the defense, and this screen concept is an easy way to manufacture touches for our best WR.
Second, instead of having Roebuck feign blocking before leaking out of the backfield like most Slip screens do, we instead have him running an Arrow route into the flat right at the snap. We also have him release through the middle of the OL to ensure that he gets a clean release with maximum separation from his coverage defender. This is a style of backfield release that’s become popular in the NFL because it increases the chances that the coverage defender getting caught in traffic over the middle and can get RBs wide open at a higher rate.
Lastly, and speaking of traffic, instead of having downfield blockers out ahead of Roebuck, we instead us a bunch alignment on the play side to get defenders packed around the line of scrimmage before running those receivers right across the formation to create even more traffic and natural rubs over the middle to help spring Roebuck free into the flat.
Great play design with a little creativity that gets us an easy 20+-yard gain with minimal risk.
Defense: Bounce Back
It was a great bounce back performance from the Husky defense against Purdue. After getting gashed by the venerable Iowa rushing attack the week prior, Walters and the defense bowed their neck and shut down a Boilermaker offense that had just run over Minnesota to the tune of 305 rushing yards the week prior. Some of that can be contributed to a return to fundamentals, such as open field tackling, sound run fit assignments, etc., as well as a less cohesive opposing game plan. Either way, the defense was ready for the challenge that Purdue posed.
Instead of diving all the way into a bunch of plays, we wanted to just touch on a few wrinkles we had prepared specifically for Purdue’s offensive scheme.
The first interesting wrinkle we featured was a 3-man front type of look that I hadn’t noticed us use up until this game. This was run from our base 4-2-5 personnel grouping, but instead of Ramzak Fruean (EDGE, #11) playing up on the line, he’s playing off-ball LB. We are also playing our three remaining DL in a Tite front where the NT is head up on the center and the two other DL are playing inside the OTs. The DL alignment clogs the interior gaps and better shields the LBs.
Schematically, Purdue’s run game leans heavily on Inside Zone and Counter runs, so this defensive look does a good job of limiting both of those concepts. The three DL playing the Tite front limits the iOL’s ability to get clean combo blocks up the LBs on Zone runs, and having the extra second level defender (the dropped back EDGE) gives us one more player who can flow with potential pullers to the point of attack on a Counter run.
This is a cool wrinkle to add into our defense because this gives us three distinct fronts we can play with our base 4-2-5 personnel (3-man, 4-man, and 5-man). It’s also another way for us to feature our versatile personnel. In our 5-man look, we’re featuring Zaydrius Rainey-Sale’s ability to play up on the line despite primarily being an off-ball LB, as well as Jacob Lane’s ability to hang tough on the interior despite primarily being an EDGE. In our 3-man front, we’re again relying on Lane’s ability to anchor on the interior against the run, but are now also featuring Fruean’s background playing off-ball LB despite now primarily playing EDGE for us.
Another cool wrinkle we saw was an expansion of our 3-2-6 dime personnel package. Purdue’s passing game featured far more empty formations than we’ve seen up until this point in the season, and this was our response. Similar to Coach Kwiatkowski’s old anti-Coug dime packages, we rolled with a lighter, rush-based 3-man line and swapped the second DT for a sixth DB. This appears to be a situation-based sub package rather than a personnel matchup-based one since there were a few times when Purdue’s personnel still featured a RB on the field. If they had motioned the RB into the backfield and ran the ball against us, or if their QB was more of a run threat, then we probably would’ve given up a sizeable gain on the ground. It didn’t really hurt us, but it was a good thing that we kept this package limited to passing situations.
Awgs’ Bonus Play(s) of the Week
Defense takes this week’s honors for this Rylon Dillard Allen INT to seal the game. Absolute beauty of a user lurk a la College Football 27. It’s in the game.
