In 2012, Wofford’s option-based offense featured a dynamic fullback in Walter Payton Award finalist, Eric Breitenstein. Defenses tailored their scheme to force anyone else to beat them except Breitenstein. It didn’t work. Terriers running backs coach Aaron Johnson made the appropriate adjustments, and Breitenstein went on to rush for 2,045 yards and 19 touchdowns.
In this month’s “Point-Counterpoint”, Johnson talks about different ways to get his best playmakers involved, while Northwestern College (IA) Defensive Coordinator Matt McCarty breaks down how to take an offense’s biggest weapon away.
McCarty employs a 3-5 stack defense, mixing in cover 2 and cover 3 and zone blitzing one of his five linebackers around 90 percent of the time. Here is how he’ll try to take away a team’s biggest offensive weapon and how Johnson will try to get his best player the ball.
McCarty: If they are an option team, we want to make sure we’re sending someone to him (best ball carrier) all the time. With our scheme as a stack, it’s a gap-control defense. One of our five linebackers is going to blitz directly to that player. If he’s a dive back, we’re sending someone to dive. If he’s a pitch back, we’re sending someone right to him at pitch. We don’t want him carrying the ball.
Johnson: Last year, we had one of our better fullbacks. Everyone wanted to squeeze and close down that tackle when he veered, and take the fullback. So it was hard to just run our triple option and get him (fullback) the ball. We would tweak our scheme with our offensive tackle to now open a gap, because if they are taking away the fullback, they have to be sound on the back end to account for the quarterback. We would just tweak it a little bit to create a little bit of space to avoid where the linebacker was.
McCarty: If it’s option, we’re going to dictate who’s carrying the ball and try to make sure it’s not their star. If that back is the dive back, the blitzer will bend his blitz flat and try to go to the dive. We don’t disguise it a whole lot. We just want to make sure we take away their best player. If they know what we’re doing, maybe they’ll have to adjust and I’m OK with that.
Johnson: If the defense is deciding that they’re going to squeeze because the fullback is dangerous, then we can always tweak it and run our mid-line concepts, because it doesn’t matter what the tackle does on the dive since we’re going to pitch off of it now.
McCarty: If it’s a regular zone scheme, one-back set or I-formation, we’re going to really try to take away what they do best. Maybe it’s their best one or two plays. We’re going to scheme against those and make them do something they’re not comfortable doing. We’re going to try to take away their two best plays.
Johnson: If they’re targeting our pitch man, then the quarterback has to run the ball or we have to adjust our perimeter blocking to account for that pitch player (defender). That can be as simple as taking the slot receiver or our wing against the linebacker or perimeter defender. We also arch our tackle on a mid-line scheme to get an extra number on the perimeter. If they are running someone out to take away the pitch, we’ll just arch our tackle and use him as a perimeter blocker along with our halfback or receiver on him to account for that extra number. Everything in option football is based on numbers and how the defense reacts to it. Everything that they do is naturally going to create another opportunity for us.
McCarty: If we play a team that has an outstanding QB, we’re going to make sure we’re blitzing him and we’re going directly to the quarterback. We’re going to make him give it and make sure he knows that we’re there all the time. If it’s a boot, we’re going to send someone to him all the time.
A few times, if it’s a zone read team, we will cross blitzes or mix up blitzes. For example, we may send our outside linebacker down to dive or at the quarterback and loop our backer outside to the pitch. And then the next time we’ll send our backer to the QB and our defensive end to the pitch. We’re going to try to adjust his reads to cause some indecision.
Because of Wofford’s option scheme, the Terriers don’t face a lot of bracket coverage on their wide outs, like McCarty uses against dynamic wide outs. Johnson tries to get his receivers involved in the running game.
Johnson: We’re always trying to see if a reverse is an option that’s available later in the game, no matter what the defense does. If we have a playmaker at wide receiver, a reverse is always one of the options that ensures we’ll get him the ball.
We look for any time that the reverse player (on defense), the cut-back player, on the back side away from the play ends up over-pursuing to the football. It’s hard to train yourself as a coach to not focus on the position that your guys are playing and how they’re performing during the game. But, instead, you need to actually watch and see what is happening on the back side or the back edge of the play and to how the defense is reacting. That is something one of our coaches is usually watching to be able to see if the reverse play is a weapon that we want to utilize later in the game.
McCarty: The main thing is we’ll play zone coverage behind him, but our flat defender is pressed on him, being physical with him and leaving our safety in zone behind him. If we’re in our cover 3, we put our dog or outside linebacker and have someone on the line of scrimmage that is physical to disrupt the timing. A lot of times they are going to try to throw screens to him, and that’ll help throw off the timing. If he tries to go vertical, we’ll still have help over the top. We will match up our best corner, switch sides if we need to, and make sure our best corner is on their best WR.
At Wofford, halftime adjustments are made by reviewing the call sheet and identifying the problems with the calls in the first half. The Terriers’ staff will then pinpoint the cause of the negative plays and figure out ways to tweak them to get their biggest threat the ball.
“For example, if it was a trap play and they took it away because X, Y or Z happened, then we need to come back and run our trap option,” said Johnson. “We basically create a formula in the second half based off the successful plays we had in the first half and the adjustments to the negatives plays in the first half.”
It will be up to defensive coordinators like McCarty to make counter adjustments, while still focusing on taking away the offense’s best players and plays.