In Chris Brown's The Essential Smart Football a chapter is devoted to the guru of the zone blocking scheme, former Broncos and Falcons offensive line coach Alex Gibbs. Beyond the fundamentals of running the inside zone and the zone stretch, Gibbs stressed that the offensive line and the running backs were symbiotic. If the running back did not read the correct cutback, it'd look like the offensive line missed a block. If the offensive line missed an assignment, the running back gets stuffed. Accordingly, in Denver, Gibbs coached the team on the play, not just the offensive lineman. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Cohesion and timing are required for the zone scheme to be successful.
Western Carolina was a return to the basics for the Hokie offense. The running game featured a steady dose of inside and outside zones, with a couple of different variations in formation and assignments by the fullback. The X's and O's were rudimentary and have previously been covered in detail. Loeffler used fullbacks and two tight end sets, called inside, outside, and weakside zones pretty much the entire game minus J.C. Coleman's series late in the second quarter and Chris Mangus' long touchdown on a counter-pitch. Coach Grimes looked for the offensive line to get strong push against a smaller defensive line, while Shane Beamer wanted to see his running backs identify the proper cutback lanes and break into the Catamount secondary.
Initially, the Hokie offensive line seemed to have some difficulty adjusting to blocking a four-man front where the defenders looked to shoot the gaps instead of defeating blocks. Trey Edmunds didn't find much room early, as small execution errors derailed early efforts to blow out Western Carolina. After two runs, Loeffler exclusively called passing plays through the second series.
However, on the third drive, the Hokie running game started to show a push. On first down, the Hokies ran an inside zone, with fullback Sam Rogers bending back to cut off pursuit from closing the cutback lane.
00:04:31–00:04:37
On the play side, Caleb Farris is tasked with cutting off penetration of the one-technique defensive tackle. Farris takes a terrific first step and gets head position where he hits the tackle squarely on his outside shoulder with his head in the middle of the defender's body. This prevents penetration, but allows Farris to keep the defender from changing direction and getting him back into the play. He drives the defender towards the sideline. This is a beautiful block. Jonathan McLaughlin zone steps inside the defensive end and runs through the linebacker at the second level. The linebacker changes direction on Jonathan a bit, but McLaughlin is athletic enough to adjust and hit him squarely in the chest. Rogers opens the seam by cutting the unblocked defensive end, and Edmunds makes the correct read by turning up and getting six tough yards.
The injury to Andrew Miller raised the possibility of messing up that cohesion, but Brent Benedict entered the game and was solid with his assignments. From the third drive forward, the Hokies effectively ran inside zones, outside zones, and even popped the naked bootleg on several plays. The passing game improved with the running game, and minus a couple of drops and two interceptions, the Hokies essentially did what they wanted to on offense.
Another positive this week is the blocking of the wide receiver group. It was difficult to appreciate at live speed with the Hokies running so much in between the tackles, but when called upon, Aaron Moorehead's receivers had an outstanding performance creating running lanes on the edge. Demitri Knowles had an excellent option stalk block on the Chris Mangus pitch play. Josh Stanford had a terrific cut block to spring Chris Mangus on a screen for the Hokies first real positive play of the day.
The big plays stand out, but watching the mundane plays tends to tell the story a little better about blocking. In the second quarter, Scot Loeffler put J.C. Coleman in at tailback and looked to run the ball—7 runs with Coleman on a 9-play scoring drive. There were two plays with inverted veer action. Inverted veer is where the quarterback reads (or seems to read, in this case it's hard to tell) an unblocked defender and decides to keep and run up the middle, or hand off to the tailback, who sweeps to the outside with the quarterback's fake freezing the linebacker. Last season, the sweep was rendered ineffective by poor blocking, especially by the wide receivers. Let's see how Knowles and Stanford perform against the Catamounts.
00:07:46–00:07:53
Stanford is lined up at split end, with Knowles in the left slot. At the snap, Stanford engages his defender and turns him to the outside. Knowles drives off the line, forcing the safety to respect the possibility of Logan Thomas faking the hand off to Coleman and stepping back to throw the deep go route. Once Knowles reaches the defender, he gets both hands into the shoulder of the defender and drives him into the sidelines. Sam Rogers completes the play by kicking out the play side pursuit safety, and Coleman ends up with a nice 8-yard run and a first down.
The next play looks more like the inverted veer with the frontside end unblocked. However, it's zone blocking across the board, but focus on the receivers.
00:08:01–00:08:07
Again, both Knowles from the slot and Stanford from split end both lock up their blocks. Rogers gets the kick out. Coleman gets 8 yards. That is the consistency that was woefully lacking from the offense last season.
Depth along the o-line continues to be a concern. With Miller's status unknown, the Hokies contingency plan appears to be a recovering Mark Shuman at both tackle spots and left guard, Augie Conte at right guard, and Caleb Farris moving to center if an injury there takes place. Coach Beamer played walk-ons Marcus Mapp and Ross Ward at guard, while moving Benedict to left tackle, late in the fourth quarter to preserve Wyatt Teller's and Parker Osterloh's redshirts. The backup group, with Matt Arkema at center, moved the ball right down the field on a mix of inside zones and bootlegs. Joel Caleb finished it off with beautiful cut off Brent Benedict's second level seal on the linebacker.
00:19:16–00:19:21
I am still trying to figure out who the fullback is on the play, but he had a beautiful cut block on the back side of the play. The interior of the Hokie line rides the defensive tackles into the laps of the WCU linebackers, and Caleb shows us an electric cut and explosion through at tiny seam to score. That is a feel good moment at the end of a game.
It is certainly interesting how a few weeks can change perceptions about how a season will unfold. The running back position has gone from a position of uncertainty to one where Scot Loeffler can look to four running backs that have a clear grasp of the offense and can execute in both the pro-set and the spread. All four backs are also redshirt freshmen or sophomores, so we can expect each to improve. For all the discussion around the poor play of the wide receivers, their blocking has been much improved over last year's group two games into this season. Kalvin Cline has gone from a last second signing and surefire redshirt to a possible impact player. The offensive line has not been perfect, but the inexperienced group has been the tip of the spear for a running game that not only has rushed for nearly 400 yards in two games, but has only had 7 yards of negative rushing plays.
This season will not always be pretty offensively. Virginia Tech's passing game looked good against zone coverage versus the Catamounts, but the receivers struggled to get separation against man coverage, however a notable exception was D.J. Coles on his touchdown catch. The receiving group isn't going to generate a large number of big plays unless the Hokies can pound the football and create opportunities in play-action down the field. As it becomes more difficult to sustain long drives against better competition, Scot Loeffler doesn't have the same elite level of athlete to erase mistakes if an execution error puts Virginia Tech behind the sticks. Every game will be a grind, but it is clear that this offensive coaching staff has laid a foundation of solid fundamentals, and the playbook is logical, simple, and yet difficult to defend against. It will not always be pretty, but already I see significant improvement from an execution standpoint over last year's team.
Comments
If we can do what Lefty did at Temple with a run-heavy offense, I wouldn't mind at all. Can you imagine how much more potent the defense will be, getting lots of time on the sidelines?
This is great again. Seeing Caleb make a nice cut like that makes me so happy (he went to my high school). So many weapons and seeing the offensive line show cohesion so quickly is really encouraging!
A side question about the running game. I think I've seen French mention that he'd like to see counters (to the back side of the zone blocking with a wham block similar to what Pitt did to us last year) and other plays that work off of these zone runs. Do you think we're hiding these given our offensive game plan against Alabama (spread them out) and Western Carolina (back to basics, gain confidence)? Or are these most likely not part of our playbook? Sorry if this is a poorly worded question.
They have not run that interesting back side seal play as of yet. Since Alabama maintained such strict gap discipline with their front in the 3-4, that bend back counter would not have been a great call. Against Western Carolina, I think they did not want to show any particular counters, so they ran what amounted to the top 3 running plays that were installed in the spring.
One counter they did show was a simple variation of the inside zone. From Pop Warner/Midget League football on up, an inside linebacker's first key against an I formation is "the fullback takes you to the football." On this variation of the inside zone, the fullback lead blocks away from the direction of the play. This serves two purposes. First, it freezes the linebacker, who may read that the play is going to the weak side. Second, the fullback is in better position to create a cutback lane.
00:05:51–00:05:57
This play has some positives and negatives. To the play side, Duan Perez-Means turns the outside linebacker to the sideline. The left defensive end is aligned over right tackle Laurence Gibson. The defensive end stunts hard to the inside. Gibson takes the appropriate step to the play side and moves to the second level linebacker.
Now things go a bit awry. A large hole has developed from Mean's excellent turn out block and the stunt by the end to the inside. Brent Benedict, who entered the game on the previous series for an injured Andrew Miller, seems to run into the defensive end without reaching him. With the poor aiming point, if Benedict drives the end, he pushes him right back into the hole that has just formed. Fortunately for the Hokies, the end is as surprised as Benedict and doesn't recover to get back into the play. Meanwhile, Gibson looks like a freight train running into the inside linebacker, but catches him on his inside shoulder rather sealing his outside shoulder to the inside. The linebacker retreats slightly, and Gibson loses his balance and contact with the defender. The linebacker makes the tackle with the safety.
Still, this is a six yard play. Benedict is playing his first repetitions with the first team, so it is to be expected that his timing would be a bit off. Gibson's mistake was an overly aggressive mistake, and any coach worth a pee will tell you that if you make a mistake, you should make it aggressively.
This is awesome. Thank you! My football knowledge is so much greater now than before I started coming to TKP.
We played well but it was also WCU... The good news is they are doing it with fundamentals and not just athletic ability. Hopefully we can keep the run game going all season. The key to the offense will be the receivers beating man coverage. If we can force them to bring 8 in the box and play man, we have to be able to beat it.
Read in the Hokiesports.com game notes for ECU that the game against WCU was the first in CFB's at VT that had no run plays go for negative yardage. That is hard to believe, but if true, that is a major accomplishment for this new offense. Feeling good about the future run game.
I'm curious to see if Jeff Grimes can turn walk-ons Ross Ward and Marcus Mapp into contributors at both guard positions. It looked like both guys really drove their guys off the ball on the Joel Caleb touchdown run.
Ross Ward is listed as 6'3" 303 and Marcus Mapp is 6'4" 295, so they certainly have the size. Both were all-district players in high school and both played a variety of sports - - including tennis and basketball - - so they probably have some athleticism and quickness in them as well.
Both are r-Sophomores, so what could a few years of Gentrification and Grimes technique do for these two? It would be nice to continue to develop them into quality depth on the interior of this line for the next two years.
Ross was a tight end in high school and for a big guy was pretty athletic. He has a pretty good mean streak in him on the field too!
haha I lived with Ross my freshman year in Cochrane hes a pretty cool guy works his butt off on the field
What's the WR in motion (Byrn) supposed to be doing in the first video? Seems to be running a route and doesn't block anybody.
It is a bootleg pass route. If the defenders in the left flat start ignoring his route and crashing inside, Loeffler can call bootleg and catch them with their pants down. It keeps those defenders honest and slows their pursuit. If Logan was really good at play fakes and ran out his bootleg fakes, it would be much more effective.
I'm 99% sure that the FB in during the Caleb run is former walk-on Fuller Hoepner
In the second play you highlighted the WR blocking, and Logan handed the ball off.
Not to criticize, but it looked like that he also could have read 'keep' and trucked down the middle for more yardage ala Miami game and a 73 yard score.
Was this a 50/50 read or do you think the coaches told him hand off the ball so we can work on the RB's, outside blocking, etc.?
It seemed as if, watching the game real time, that he handed off almost all the time, when an inside keep run would have produced more yardage.
Coaches told him that they didn't want him running so it's a safe bet that every read play would be a handoff or a pitch, never a keeper.
Yes, the coaches told him not to run at all (which is a first) this game so they could iron out some other pieces of the offense. He'll run again in other games.
Well that and so he doesn't risk a stupid injury against an FCS team. The announcers also commented about how he stayed in the game much later than expected, but I thought it was the right move. It allowed him to continue to build a rhythm and chemistry with his receivers. He wasn't at risk of getting injured so it was worth it to keep him out there in my opinion.
It could be a function of design. Because they were not optioning an unblocked lineman, it is a distinct possibility that the play was a sweep all the way, made to look like an inverted veer with the style of mesh point and Logan faking a step forward as a method to freeze the linebackers.
Or, it could have been inverted veer, optioning the middle linebacker. If that was the case, it was the wrong read, but given how Loeffler did not use Thomas as a runner it was more likely that Coleman was getting the ball all the way.
Regardless, the blocks by Knowles and Stanford were excellent.
Loeffler said yesterday that they specifically didn't want to run Logan against WCU. So that was just a faux-veer sweep.
LT was told to not run much, I am sure.
I am also sure that WC knew that they wouldn't run LT much, allowing them to pursue the RB on the read handoff almost exclusively, which allowed huge holes to open up that LT would have busted pretty severely. If WC was actually keying on LT running the ball (as ACC opponents will), then the running lanes on that read play should open up more for whatever RB is in the backfield with LT.
WR blocking is the key to any run outside. If they don't block it goes nowhere like last season.
Nice analysis French.....
I believe the O-Line front 5 is still somewhat fluid.....Interior seems more set than the tackles.....We saw some of that against WCU.