Three dumb questions

year_of_the_swarm

Jolly Good Fellow
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1.) The play that G-Tech runs over and over that Virginia Tech and South Florida can't seem to stop, that only Oliver seems to run. Snaps the ball, no intent of pitching, finds a crease and gets anywhere from 3-4 to 20+ yards on... Is that a QB sweep? Or is that the Triple Option and Oliver just decides he is never going to pitch it?

2.) Why couldn't USF and V-Tech stop it?

3.) Why does that seem like the official play of Tobias Oliver?
 

Jacketman1

Ramblin' Wreck
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601
TaQuon had his own little play last year that he seemed to always get a bunch of yards off of, the QB counter. Not sure why we didn't see i his year.
 

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
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3,606
1.) The play that G-Tech runs over and over that Virginia Tech and South Florida can't seem to stop, that only Oliver seems to run. Snaps the ball, no intent of pitching, finds a crease and gets anywhere from 3-4 to 20+ yards on... Is that a QB sweep? Or is that the Triple Option and Oliver just decides he is never going to pitch it?

2.) Why couldn't USF and V-Tech stop it?

3.) Why does that seem like the official play of Tobias Oliver?
1) sweep
2) we had better athletes in those games
3) he doesn’t have a grasp of the offense outside of a few plays and power running seems to be his strength. He looked great running the midline in the second half.
 

Oldgoldandwhite

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My guess is the defense practices to stop the triple option. When we change the blocking and go away from our base, they can’t adjust. There is an old saying “they are on defense for a reason”.
 

steebu

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625
1.) The play that G-Tech runs over and over that Virginia Tech and South Florida can't seem to stop, that only Oliver seems to run. Snaps the ball, no intent of pitching, finds a crease and gets anywhere from 3-4 to 20+ yards on... Is that a QB sweep? Or is that the Triple Option and Oliver just decides he is never going to pitch it?

2.) Why couldn't USF and V-Tech stop it?

3.) Why does that seem like the official play of Tobias Oliver?

1. It is a designed QB keep play, Bud Foster called it a QB sweep, not sure what CPJ calls it. There are some subtle nuances that can tip you off as to whether it's an option play or a keeper: on an option play the QB will place two hands on the ball knowing he may have to pitch it. On a keeper he will tuck the ball and go. On these plays you will see Tobias tuck the ball and get it secured with NO possibility of pitching.

2. Here's the simple answer as to why it worked: let's say this is 5-on-5 football. The quarterback gets the snap and starts running with it. His four guys block your four guys, so it's now 1-on-1 with the last defender. That's actually not too bad of a situation, especially if you have a fast, athletic quarterback who can run. Now let's get technical for a second:
  • We only ran this play out of our Double Flex formation. This is where the WR's are one yard away from the OT's on either side.
  • This severely compresses the formation and changes blocking angles, and in fact, is better for some of our running plays because WR's and OT's don't have to run 15 yards downfield to try to block someone.
  • Everyone on the playside is accounted for.
Here's a picture of how VT lined up against us: (weird, can't link an image normally)


We are running this to the left. If we've got 10 blockers on 10 of their guys, who's their 11th to tackle Tobias? Their opposite side cornerback who is nearly 10 yards away from the play?

Here's South Florida's lineup against us. Same deal, running to the left:



Hat-on-hat. We've got 10 blockers on 10 of their defenders. Who is their 11th to tackle Tobias? Again, the backside CB who is 10 yards away from the play?

The toughest thing on defenses these days is a QB who can run. Previously you never had to account for it, but now that you do it creates tremendous problems.

3. I dunno, ask CPJ.
 

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
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1. It is a designed QB keep play, Bud Foster called it a QB sweep, not sure what CPJ calls it. There are some subtle nuances that can tip you off as to whether it's an option play or a keeper: on an option play the QB will place two hands on the ball knowing he may have to pitch it. On a keeper he will tuck the ball and go. On these plays you will see Tobias tuck the ball and get it secured with NO possibility of pitching.

2. Here's the simple answer as to why it worked: let's say this is 5-on-5 football. The quarterback gets the snap and starts running with it. His four guys block your four guys, so it's now 1-on-1 with the last defender. That's actually not too bad of a situation, especially if you have a fast, athletic quarterback who can run. Now let's get technical for a second:
  • We only ran this play out of our Double Flex formation. This is where the WR's are one yard away from the OT's on either side.
  • This severely compresses the formation and changes blocking angles, and in fact, is better for some of our running plays because WR's and OT's don't have to run 15 yards downfield to try to block someone.
  • Everyone on the playside is accounted for.
Here's a picture of how VT lined up against us: (weird, can't link an image normally)


We are running this to the left. If we've got 10 blockers on 10 of their guys, who's their 11th to tackle Tobias? Their opposite side cornerback who is nearly 10 yards away from the play?

Here's South Florida's lineup against us. Same deal, running to the left:



Hat-on-hat. We've got 10 blockers on 10 of their defenders. Who is their 11th to tackle Tobias? Again, the backside CB who is 10 yards away from the play?

The toughest thing on defenses these days is a QB who can run. Previously you never had to account for it, but now that you do it creates tremendous problems.

3. I dunno, ask CPJ.

The answer to 2 sounds pretty good. The only thing is we leave the A back from motion behind the qb. That makes it 9 on 10. Is like to know why we wouldn’t have the AB go in the midline motion where he goes in front of the QB. Regardless, we did really well running the play.
 

steebu

Ramblin' Wreck
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625
The answer to 2 sounds pretty good. The only thing is we leave the A back from motion behind the qb. That makes it 9 on 10. Is like to know why we wouldn’t have the AB go in the midline motion where he goes in front of the QB. Regardless, we did really well running the play.

Correct, technically he doesn't block anyone. But, because it "looks" like an option play they have to account for him. VT had their cornerback fly to the outside, essentially taking himself out of the play, while South Florida had their safety run outside with the A-Back. So while the A-Back didn't block anyone, he effectively ran a defender out of the play.
 

Heisman's Ghost

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Steebu and ibeatthetris pretty much nailed it. I would only add for number 2 that I have never seen a Bud Foster defense tackle as poorly as this one. Granted TO is extremely gifted at finding even the slightest crease and unlike Marshall he does not go down with sloppy arm tackles. Marshall is slippery while TO is fast and decisive. I have no idea which is better suited for our offense but glad to have both of them. TO only weighs about maybe 185 on his 6'2" frame but he runs much bigger hence the comparisons to Nesbitt which in my view is not warranted. They are entirely different animals.
 

year_of_the_swarm

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
360
Wow, fantastic answers... Thank you.

Ok, so that play works because it's a favorable numbers matchup and the defense has 1-2 players essentially out of the play, and they can't overload because they have to account for the option or risk a huge play.

Sounds like the perfect play.
 

UpperNorth

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
282
Great analysis! And of course the defense has to stay honest because while we ran this play a ton Thursday night, there are counters to it. Our problems arise when teams are better coached across the board to defend our offense and when teams have guys that we simply can’t block.

Here are some questions, are we capable of running this play with as much success (and our offense in general) against our next 4 opponents? Will we look back and say our offense was unstoppable in each game this year outside of Duke and Clemson? Or will someone else shut it down?
 

Fatmike91

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So what should we expect future DC’s to come up with to foil this play and what’s our counter move to make them look even sillier?

It seemed like VPISU had their ends jump outside every play which often took them out of the play and opened up the middle.

Obviously you could bring the safeties all the way down and also fire the corner. The corner was taking the a-back pitch.

So our counters to that are:

- midline (which you saw)
- pitch (like a speed option)
- throw

Can we throw? If I were CPJ I would spend the next couple weeks developing a simple RPO package for Tobias out of the QB sweep play and Georgia would get to see it live without any game film.

This may already exist but since we beat VPISU so easily maybe we left it in the locker room.

/
 
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And with all this it would not make sense for CPJ to play both TQM and Tobias in the games. This type of switch up would wreak havoc. also you could have TQM play A back, take a toss, stop pop and throw it.
 
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