Coloradojacket
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I spent some time watching last year's Miami game again. They spend a lot of time on defense in what I'm going to call the "Taco Bell Formation."
Its kind of a 3 man front, with 2 guys on the outside to help guard the perimeter. And then 2-3 more men in the middle. A lot of times it forms the shape of a bell with a 3-2 tight-2-1 formation (not so much here in this picture though - this one is more like a smurf hat). Very frequently they fire the MLB into the gap at full speed to disrupt the mesh...successfully. But unlike some other teams like Duke IIRC who changed defensive formations a lot, Miami stuck with this general formation the vast majority of the time from what I saw.
I was also surprised at how many times I saw corners staying 8-10 yards off the line like in this picture (we never passed):
To me that screams quick hit to Jalen Camp (I believe that's who it is in the slot) on the go.
Miami in this formation seemed to consistently do many things well:
1) Disrupt the mesh by firing a MLB into the gap.
2) Containing the perimeter by putting a guy on either side of the line.
3) Fighting to stay 'upstream' of the blocks on whichever side was playside.
A couple things I think we run that will help us this year with Miami compared to last year is our Belly Option and Midline Option. I don't think we ran those much at all with JT5, but we can/do with TaQuon Marshall. I'm not a flex bone cryptologist, but I think those are a couple of plays that help defeat this type of alignment. I sure would also like to see some more quick passing hits.
One final thing thats hard to check for, is if play action AB wheels and things like that would be open. They would seem to be, but that's a little hard to read definitively for me.
So if they run this formation I see two plays that will work every time. Yep smoke pass to the Wide out, and B-back dive in either gap off the nose guard. 4-5 yards per play. And last year....TOP GT 40 min Miami 20. And 133 B-back yards.