A Quarter with Kawika

A final parting thought is that the schematic overhaul on offense cannot be overstated, in my opinion. Keep that in mind as information floods in from practice reports how much better an offense scheme our defense is playing against in practice every day. Last year, one of the running plays we struggled with the most on defense was Outside Zone and yet that had been one of our offensive staples for years. In my opinion one of the reasons we struggled was because we had so much built up bad muscle memory on that play from defending the Texas flavor. Now flip that trend on its head and think about the cascading benefits of a fully coherent offensive attack. Think about how much our defensive ends are growing in practice as they contend with all the diversity this offense throws at them. Think about how much better our defense is getting at understanding their run fits and adjusting their responsibilities on the fly.

The last couple of weeks around here have been fantastic. Thanks, LHS.

It’s fitting that your post is paired with today’s practice report the day after Shuttlesworth informed us the Texas staff went out of its way to put the kibosh on detailed BC/‘Cosm practice reports. It’s also funny considering if they tried to put the kibosh on your installments, they’d probably be deemed worthy of publication by WikiLeaks.

Enjoyed it very much. Thanks.

LHS just won a smurf turf tote bag. Awesome.

These are awesome.
 
The journey into the Kawika mindfuck was very rewarding.
 
Get defenders thinking. Uncertainty is death to any defense.
 
I’m consistently impressed with Boise’s ability to get numbers at the point of attack. Or, in military terms, concentration of force. As Confederate tactician Nathan Bedford Forrest said “Gettin’ there firstest with the mostest.”

great stuff. i can’t believe the education we are not having to pay for. all you guys are great.

Great as always. Longhornscott=must read.

This makes the relative silence about Jeffcoat in the practice reports understandable and the plaudits for Okafor even more impressive. I love the notion of taking the other team’s most critical player and mindf*cking him out of relevance. Should be a joy to see, especially now that I know what to watch. Thanks LHS.

How in the world do you get all of this done Scott?

Maybe the best yet. Any chance Ash is the new Coughlin?

Great stuff LHS! Your time and effort is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately I dont have the time for extensive film study these days, but I’ve always loved it and it used to be one of my favorite hobbies. You are very very good at what you do. Thanks again.

Damn LHS, you absolutely kill with these posts, and showing how Boise attacked and affected a specific player is a brilliant way to illustrate the schemes for us laymen. I really appreciate the time and effort. I forward these posts to all my friends, and each one is better than the last.

I imagine there are GAs at every school on UT’s schedule taking notes from your posts. Hell, I bet Venables and Deruyter are printing these out as soon as they’re published.

Totally appreciate the compliment, Mano Cornuda but I’m not touching on anything that any defensive coach wouldn’t pick up on right away in film study. The tricky part is not recognizing it, the tricky part is coming up with a plan to deal with it in a week and get your defense prepared. This offense spreads you thin by giving you a ton of different formations to prepare for and then it’ll pick away at one part of your defense in slightly different ways over and over again. So you end up either trying to do too many things and doing them all so so or you end up giving up gotcha plays. Either way almost every defense ends up like Shook above… in sort of passive read and react mode against Boise State after not too long. It’s just very difficult to maintain aggression against them.

Great work on this and the entire series LHS. Incredible informative.

Not going to lie though, when I read “(1) Force the defensive end to play in uncomfortable alignments,” the immediate question I had was:

Like in the backseat of a Volkswagen?

Um, Scipio, I’m not sure that’s exactly the description of Forrest that comes to mind for most people.

That Harsin puts so much pressure on the DE’s with multiple formations and attacks them with so many different players (especially the H-back and TE) makes me much less concerned about our somewhat iffy situation at O-tackle. If we can just get serviceable play out there, they’ll get help from the scheme.

Oh, and let me just echo what everyone has said so far: you’re absolutely killing it with this series, Scott. Many thanks.

From a decades long football fan with near zero knowledge of the nuts and bolts of it, thanks bunches. Being able to actually SEE what you are talking about might not make me really understand it enough to spot it in a game, but at least I’ll be able to say on every good play: “Man, they snookered that defensive end good there that time!” And I will think myself wise.
Thanks.

And somehow I think my “WTF was THAT?” moments are going to be greatly reduced.

Best Longhorn site, and one of the best college football sites, on the Internet. This series is one of the reasons. We’re not worthy, LHS. Thanks.

Again: so this is what a real offense looks like.

agree with hopefulhorn. and with toadvine. there were confederate generals for whom one might feel some empathy — longstreet, for one — but forrest remains a pretty despicable character in my constellation, though there is evidence that he might not have been quite as bad a person as he seemed to be. plenty bad man, though. that said, his ability and his insight as a cavalry combat officer was without parallel. i think the man’s tactics are still studied today by armored cavalry units. in that sense, quoting the man when he was right should not be a ‘no say’.

i’ll leave that with a couple of clips from robert browning’s soliloquy of the spanish cloister:

Gr-r-r — there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
   Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
   God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
. . .

When he finishes refection,
   Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
   As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
   Drinking watered orange-pulp —
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
   While he drains his at one gulp.
. . .

LHS, I made the point you made in your first comment in one of the practice reports. In my case, I was commenting on how we are accelerating the DBs learning curve. We were getting bad reports one day but that turns into valuable lessons for the next. I guess this principle should apply to the whole team!

Having played DE some in high school, the diversity of looks you mention is well taken. I would say though that for most of the scenarios the coaches at least should have given him very specific instructions, like what to do when you are left unblocked and flow is away from you. I think the hardest thing for any DLineman is to interpret where the ball is going based on who is blocking you where. That point is made very well in your article. There are a few examples where the DE takes a false step (due to the aforementioned mind-f_ck) and then the blocker gets onto him play side and it is basically over. That’s tough. Not much you can do about it. At that point as a DE you are hoping the DC calls for stunts so that you can point yourself in a direction and be the aggressor yourself.

yeh, thanks for the Robert Browning. That’s my uncle’s name though he is not a poet.

Did anyone else get the Arian reference?

I idiotically wondered why you had not done this earlier, LHS. Sadly, the Longhorns did not offer worthy subject matter. Like lurker in the dark, I’m not a great observer of why something works in a football game even though I have been watching for decades. At least now in the replays, I might be able to nod a few times and say, “Ah!”

Those defensive coaches may be able to read these things with great ease, I doubt many of them could write about them with such engaging clarity. Well done!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

that is ironic, howsomeever.

Who was it that posted a while back about Greg Davis’ offense and how his run & shoot preferences were better suited for the NFL because you need more reps, experience, and skill than most college players can give you? I just looked, but couldn’t find that article.

Anyway, I thought this post was great. It’s a perfect example of the difference of philosophy between GD and Harsin. One has a rigid ideology that demands perfect execution from players, and the burden of success falls on them. In the other system, the coordinator bears the responsibility of using strategy and perception to put players in the best possible positions to execute the play.

I can’t be more pleased to now have the latter in our program, rather than the former.

Good grief, this is just excellent. It really serves as a great companion piece to Scipio’s O-line discussion as we think about finding our best options at offensive tackle – it’s comforting to know that whoever ends up out there will be getting this level of schematic assistance. Some grab-bag thoughts:

- Scott’s follow-on comment on this offense’s prepatory benefit for our defense is terrific. I was a huge fan of Muschamp, and at some point last year when our run D was getting gashed I made the comment that we literally had no capability to simulate an effective running attack for our defense to practice against. Now our defenders will have learned to cope with everything up to and including the kitchen sink, which HAS to pay big dividends this season. It’s also a lot easier to reconcile the reports of the troubles that man-child Reggie Wilson is having getting off blocks in practice – it’s likely more a result of constant mind-fucking than it is getting consistently out-physicaled.

- I’m still a worrier when it comes to our tight end/h-back position, but between practice reports of DJ Grant’s solid blocking and continued examples of the offense’s ability to set up advantageous blocking angles through alignment and forced hesitation I’m growing more optimistic. I would imagine the scheme is having as substantial an impact on DJ’s blocking as it is on Reggie’s ability to shed.

- It’s easy to imagine a number of the plays YouTubed above fitting nicely into our ‘Ash Package’ – the Big/Coughlin read play, Diamond Bunch run/pass option and fly option plays in particular. While this particular series didn’t include any bootlegs you can bet those will be in there as well as further punishment for DE’s with the inclination to crash.

- It’s fun to watch any group of maroon and white Aggies getting worked. No offense, Kawika.

yes, nobis, the name ‘ash’ went ding-ding-ding when i was reading about harsin’s use of coughlin and the ‘packages’ comments from jeese’s sources.

also, did you mean ‘bootleg’ or did you mean ‘waggle’? not to stir a quiet pot there.

Absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for a real education! And highlighting the importance (not that we didn’t know from the last few years) of game planning.

LHS, I feel like I just wandered into a 3rd year calculus class when I was supposed to be in the freshman remedial math.

Contextually, you sir are a genius in my book.

Aside: Best quote attributable to a Texas Coach so far this spring has to go to Diaz regarding guys coming out of holes in the ground and dropping out of helicopters … agreed?

BTW: the blog clock is set to Pacific Zone.

Isn’t the RT uncovered in the Coughlin play. Looks like an illegal formation to me. Two ends on one side of the ball, no end on the other.. or too many men in the backfield- take your choice. At least, that’s what it looks like.

“This time Boise State breaks tendency.” I found myself re-reading this sentence at least five times.

Great stuff as usual, LHS.

Great post as usual LHS. Thank you. I do wish that you could show some clips of BSU against a D that wasn’t ranked in the 100s of Huck’s adjusted stats though.

You just need 7 men on the LOS and they’ve go it, it’s the wizard Harsin instilling uncertainty in you (re mindfuck).

Really great stuff LHS, appreciate it immensely.

Loved the fakes to a sweeper in a few of those plays to extend the uncertainty to the back 7.

“Think about how much our defensive ends are growing in practice as they contend with all the diversity this offense throws at them. Think about how much better our defense is getting at understanding their run fits and adjusting their responsibilities on the fly.”

I can’t find the piece on MB-TF now, but there was a post-practice interview with Manny where he said he’s very happy to have his defense training against the Harsinwhite offense. Paraphrasing here, but he said, “When we end up playing a team with less motion, fewer tricks, and a standard alignment for each down, our boys are going to be looking at me on the sideline asking, ‘Coach – what do we do? They aren’t moving around. They’re just standing in one spot. Is it really that easy?’”

Well, they have seven men on the LOS, so no foul there.

And the NCAA rule currently defines eligible receivers as those in the backfield not numbered 50-79 and those on the end of the LOS not numbered 50-79. So on that play Boise simply has one fewer eligible receiver than normal.

I don’t believe it’s a penalty in the NCAA to leave an ineligible receiver uncovered.

Mind blowing! Thanks. “That explains so much.” (Almost Famous)

ut-06,

I almost included some additional examples from the Virginia Tech game to show the same principle, but I wanted to just stick with Kawika for this post. I’ll add some links to this reply when I get some time later tonight.
======

Okay here’s a some stuff from the BSU/VT game. I highlighted Chris Drager through all of his snaps in the game (until he gets banged up in the 3rd) because he plays on the same side as Kawika. You could also choose to pay attention to the other side of the formation with #82 Steven Friday who is in the NFL now. Pay attention to how active and disruptive Drager is in the first drive compared to a few drives later compared to the defensive ends becoming a non-factor. Also pay attention to how much Boise varied their tempo and mixes in Draws, Play-action, screens, etc to help their offensive line out. If you just showed me the first drive of the game, I would have told you that the offensive line was in for a long day because they were physically outmatched. This was Boise State’s worst offensive performance of the year by far and they still managed to get a lot done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME9hq6ltprE

yes, the point of this piece was the m-f job bryan did on kawika. very nicely done, indeed.

Very interesting but seemingly very complex. How long can we anticipate it will take to install all of this?

Wow, LHS, this is really amazing stuff. I played HS and a little D3 in college (engineering degrees and football don’t mix well), and the level of sophistication that has developed in the 30 years since I played is astounding.

I certainly have never seen nor read stuff like what you, Scip and others have written- it should be compiled into a book for newbies and ancients like me. As noted above, it would keep my WTF moments WAY down!

And it’s great to not have to pay for essentially the same (or likely lesser) kinds of information and status on practice. Plus not getting treated like a dumb shit noob is nice.

I don’t know what I will do if our offense comes out and dictates what it wants to accomplish and imposes its will on a defense. [as opposed to 13 years of “let’s go to the game and see what kind of defense they are playing, and then call random plays until one works”.

…13 years of "let’s go to the game and see what kind of defense they are playing, and then call random plays until one works".

What’s wrong with that? It worked most of the time, didn’t it? It worked until it didn’t. Mostly. Didn’t it?

LHS:

Great stuff. Really appreciated the cuts from Boise/VT. You could see Harsin knew his OTs weren’t going to dominate that matchup and he gameplanned accordingly. Beamer’s adjustment (going to a 3 man front) seemed to be fairly effective. Boise scored one less point in the rest of the game than they did in the 1st quarter.

I’ve thought that the way Venables employs the 50 front defense would be a great counterpoint to this sort of offense. With Travis Lewis out for 8 weeks, losing Austin Box, and Ronnell Lewis’ status uncertain (no, he hasn’t been declared ineligible yet; yes, he very well could be) you’d have to wonder if OU can still run that defense. Box and T. Lewis really made that formation work. It should be interesting to see if we still try to run that look.

Do you think it’ll have any impact that Venables has tape of Harsin’s offense going against his defense (the 07 Fiesta Bowl), or is this different times, different coaches?

Thanks Nate, glad you enjoyed it. I think the 50 front would be interesting but it seems like a better option for 6-7 gap looks to me against the spread. I think Harsin would mess around with Big personnel against the 50 and go to 9 gap looks and see what the D wanted to do there and then also work bunch groupings from 11 personnel and pressure the flats. I imagine that what Oklahoma would do from the 50 against this offense is not that dissimilar to the 3-3 and 3-4 Fire Zone looks that Diaz is running.

On the impact of film, I think it goes both ways. But the bigger component is different times, different players in my opinion and Oklahoma’s players certainly are going to be more comfortable and easier to adjust in their system. So I think Venables benefits a little more there in this first year. You’ve got Co-OC Applewhite on staff for Texas who has plenty of familiarity with OU and he will be very fluent in what we are doing. For over a decade OU has enjoyed a significant edge in the RRS when it comes to gameplanning, play calling, and in-game adjustments. I don’t see them having any advantage in that department going forward.

LHS, you are a gentleman and a scholar. your play descriptions are detailed but not overly technical, and you never fail to provide us with lots of information without alienating of those of us who are just starting to understand the intricacies of offensive scheme. simply put, you rock.

agree, mehta. probably the hardest thing for a writer who is fluent in a difficult subject to do is couch the beast in terms that less knowledgeable people can follow. peter norton’s most remarkable trait in my opinion was exactly that. he wrote a book that essentially taught a decently computer-friendly geek the ropes about assembly language programming that i think was the best i’ve ever seen. complicated issues were handled systematically and in simple enough language that a dolt like me could follow and come away with a very good conceptual understanding with considerable hands-on expertise. of course, we don’t get actual experience in coaching football, but a know-nothing like me can gain a pretty good understanding of the principles by reading scott and several of the others who post here. i can’t tell you how impressed i am with that.