So what exactly happened during the first offensive play for Kansas against Oklahoma when Todd Reesing threw an interception?
Welcome to “The Breakdown,” where we’ll look at one KU play each week and try to go a little more in-depth into why it did or didn’t work.
For help with this blog, I have consulted a Division-II defensive assistant coach, someone we’ll just call “Coach” in this blog.
Hat tip to the Missouri football fan site, Rock M Nation, which has been doing this for a few weeks now and inspired the idea for this type of blog.
First off, here is the replay of the Reesing interception for reference. You can also click back to this as you read later in the blog if you need to.
Before we go any further, I asked KU offensive coordinator Ed Warinner about the play, and this is what he said:
“We were going to take a shot at them and see if we could get them on the first play. Their kid made a great play. There’s a lot of safeties in this league and a lot of safeties that we’ve played against over the years that couldn’t have made that play, but he ran a long way.
“They disguised a coverage, and you know, he made a great play. So there’s some risk in taking a shot after them in the first play. It came back to bite us in the rear. … You’d like to have that one back, but if you don’t take any chances against Oklahoma, you play conservative, you probably have a hard time beating them, too.”
Let’s take a look at what happened.
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You can see the KU players looking to the sideline. This is where the Jayhawks are confirming the play call.
Warinner mentioned that OU had disguised a defensive play call. At this point, it appears that OU has lined up in a Cover 2 shell.
In this Cover 2 scheme, four players rush the passer and each of the other seven defenders drops into a zone. Those seven players guard the areas I have indicated in the above photo.
This diagram also illustrates the zones played by this kind of Cover-2 zone defense.
So, seeing this setup, Warinner most likely believes the Jayhawks will go against a zone coverage.
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This is where it all changes. Notice right before the snap, one of the OU cornerbacks comes up late toward the line of scrimmage and will be blitzing on the play.
“He does a very good job here,” our D-II defensive assistant coach — or Coach — says. “You can do this if you’ve got a lot of speed at this position. If this guy isn’t going to be a very good athlete, obviously he’s going to have to cheat down so he can get a good blitz. But what makes the play, obviously, is this guy plays at Oklahoma. He’s an excellent athlete.”
By coming late, the cornerback tries to catch KU’s offense off-guard. Notice also that the backside safety takes off toward the middle of the field, indicated with the other arrow.
So what is going on? OU is not going to run a Cover 2, but instead is running a Cover 1 with a cornerback blitz. This means that instead of two safeties splitting the deep coverage of the field, one safety covers the entire field.
This also means for a significant change in coverages for OU. Instead of seven defenders playing seven zones, OU instead will go man-to-man on KU’s four eligible receivers, with the safety playing deep. Take a look at what OU’s coverage is with the Cover 1.
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Suddenly, KU’s play call to take advantage of a Cover 2 defense might not be so effective because of a well-timed and well-disguised blitz.
Let’s take a step back before we go forward, though. Let’s pretend OU had stayed in the Cover 2 defense (which it did not). What was KU’s play call trying to accomplish? As you can see from the next slide, Meier goes out in the flat and gives a fake leap for the ball, letting us know that it was a planned fake for Reesing the whole way and that Meier was not an option for this play.
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So what purpose does the fake serve?
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According to Coach, the purpose of the fake bubble route is to widen out OU’s No. 1, who is the bottom cornerback on the screen. By having him break toward Meier to the outside, that opens up the field for Dezmon Briscoe, the second receiver from the bottom.
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The goal now could be to put a “two-way stretch” on the back safety. This simply means overloading the safety’s zone with more men than he can cover.
If Johnathan Wilson runs vertically up the hash and Briscoe runs vertically up the numbers, it’s very difficult for OU’s safety to cover them both. That’s why the cornerback’s job in front of the safety is important as well.
In Cover 2, the cornerback (standing on the bottom hash at the 25-yard line) has the job of collisioning the receivers. If Wilson runs toward him, his job is to try to funnel him to the outside to make him run his route closer to Briscoe.
“If those receivers are running 15 yards apart and both are running vertical, that’s hard for the safety to cover,” Coach says. “But if those guys are running five yards apart vertical, that’s easier for that high safety to cover.”
So, if KU read Cover 2, the goal was most likely to get Briscoe in single coverage against OU’s safety (who also had to worry about Wilson) and try for a big play down the field.
Obviously, that’s not the way it worked.
Let’s take one more step forward and go through how the play actually turned out with OU running its Cover 1 defense.
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Let’s go back to this slide, because it’s important. Notice how the OU safety cheats toward the bottom of the screen right away?
There’s two reasons he can do this.
For one, he’s very confident that the linebacker up top (the one on the Big 12 logo) can guard KU’s tight end (Tim Biere) in single coverage without any safety help. Coach says this isn’t a slight on Biere; typically, teams figure they can get by covering a tight end with a linebacker man-to-man.
There’s another reason the safety can cheat immediately: KU doesn’t have another receiver to the top of the screen. Because KU has trips, or three receivers, to the near side, the safety can cheat over to where there are more receivers.
If KU had split its receivers, putting two on each side, Coach says it would have been much tougher for the safety in Cover 1 to cheat over so much to one side, as he would have had to worry more about covering the entire field.
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As you can see from this next slide, Wilson and Briscoe cross routes, essentially running the common “pick” route. OU schemes it well, though, according to Coach.
“What you don’t want to do in man-to-man coverage is have your defensive backs or defensive players play on the same level,” Coach says. “You don’t want to have them both at five yards, because when teams run crossing routes like that, if the receivers cross paths with each other, that causes your defensive players to run into each other.”
As you can see from the picture, OU has it played nearly perfectly, as the defensive backs are three yards apart and are in no danger of running into each other.
Coach does see one big mistake from OU, though, and that’s from the cornerback covering Briscoe at the bottom of the screen.
“He should have his hips open ready to run,” Coach says. “He thinks he’s going to get a jam right there on (Briscoe), and that’s very hard when that receiver’s got two yards of cushion, and he’s going to be able to make a move. That (cornerback), essentially, should have his hips open and be ready to run.”
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The poor hip position costs the OU cornerback. As we can see in this photo, Briscoe has the cornerback beat by nearly two steps. Even worse for the cornerback is the fact that he’s not guaranteed safety help in a Cover 1 scheme.
“If that safety didn’t get over there and help him out,” Coach says, “that was a big play for Kansas.”
Most likely, Coach says, Reesing sees Briscoe beat the cornerback and figures he can throw it over the top to his receiver without any issues.
The problem is, Reesing either doesn’t see the backside safety, or he doesn’t think the safety will be able to get all the way across the field to make a play*.
* — Remember what Warinner said earlier: “There’s a lot of safeties in this league and a lot of safeties that we’ve played against over the years that couldn’t have made that play, but he ran a long way.”
OK, so the throw gave the safety enough time to come over the top to make the interception and save his cornerback.
Why didn’t Reesing just throw it harder, you ask?
Simple. It would have been nearly impossible.
Let’s go back to the first slide.
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Notice KU’s play starts from the top hash. That makes his throw to the right sideline an extremely long throw.
“Reesing has a good arm, but that’s a tough throw, and he’s not going to be able to put it on a line,” Coach says, “so it’s going to give a guy time to come over and help on it.”
Perhaps the only way Reesing could have safely gotten the ball to Briscoe would have been an intentional underthrow, hitting him on his back shoulder near the 40. That way, Briscoe could have reacted to the ball and caught it in a spot that the safety couldn’t have gotten to.
OK, so how could this play have been successful for KU against OU’s Cover 1 scheme?
Let’s take a look.
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The irony of this play is that perhaps the best pass KU could have completed was the bubble screen that Reesing faked at the beginning.
If you look above, because of the blitzing cornerback, OU is forced to put a linebacker in man-to-man coverage against Kerry Meier.
“This is a pretty risky coverage,” Coach says, “but it’s also smart knowing (OU’s) got a pretty good athlete out here at outside linebacker.”
OU’s hope is that its linebacker has as much speed as the possession receiver Meier and will be able to run with him down the field.
However, to start the play, the linebacker is beat by alignment, as he is playing a huge distance off Meier.
If KU had called the bubble screen, Reesing could have taken the snap and immediately gunned it to Meier. Briscoe and Wilson then simply could have blocked the cornerbacks in front of them, as the picture above shows.
“If you throw it to Meier and just run out here and get what you can,” Coach says, “you’ve got a good play.”
There’s another option as well.
After the fake to Meier, Wilson crosses with Briscoe and has a defender running with him.
At this point, he is facing man coverage, not a Cover 2 zone*.
* — Take a look at the first slide again.
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Wilson is pointing up at an angle. Did he already notice that the OU cornerback was blitzing? Was he trying to alert Reesing and/or Warinner that perhaps the Jayhawks weren’t going to go up against a Cover 2?
It’s hard to know, but I’m guessing the receiver was trying to communicate something.
With the safety bailing towards Briscoe at the bottom of the screen, it’s Wilson’s job to beat the cornerback and get himself open against the man coverage.
However, Wilson doesn’t get much separation at first from his defender.
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“The corner does a great job on him. See how he jams him right there and doesn’t let him off and basically has him blanketed. He does a nice job there,” Coach says. “So what has to happen is 81 has to beat that guy. We ran a play similar to this, and what has to happen is that guy, if you get man coverage, you have to win right there. (No.) 81 has to beat No. 1 right there.”
Though we can’t be sure of KU’s specific receiver routes, most likely Wilson has the option of multiple routes to get himself open.
“He just needs to keep running straight up the hash and let the quarterback lead him to where he wants him to go,” Coach says. “It’s probably going to be straight up the hash or straight up the middle of the field. That could have been the throw.”
It wasn’t, though, and for the second straight week, a first-half turnover put the Jayhawks in an early hole they couldn’t recover from.
