Loverboy, Donald Junior

Nice work! I cannot wait for the contrast-in-offense montage that will be possible in a few weeks.

hot damn. xmas in august.

the audio vids are a great improvement. five stars.

Top Notch Shit Scott, thanks for taking the time for another great article (I almost said piece).

Well done on the videos. I got lucky, my woman is constantly asking questions, wanting to learn formations and trends and such. She’s taken a deep interest in all sports, she might be a keeper yet I reckon.

Really good stuff, man. Entertaining and informative throughout. The final video had me rolling.
  
The pans from Mack to GD in coaching box to DJ on the bench had me cackling. You matched it to the lyrics perfectly. It was FunnySadTrue.
 
DJ’s greatest enemy to his snaps is no longer the OC. It’s two freshmen running backs.

Love the breakdowns. I enjoy reading these.

Joyce Hyser’s breasts are phenomenal.

The Loverboy song with video montage is genius. Is it irrational that still hate Greg Davis as much as I do? Hopefully a National Championship in 2013 will help me forget about his sorry ass.

Why was the q-package/wildhorn such a massive piece of shit? Was it the typical GD horseshit of designing the package so that defenses could cheat in order to defend it?

Glad everyone is having a good time with it so far. This was a fun one to put together.

Mad Clapper, if you don’t know what to do with 6 blockers and you don’t know what to do with 7 blockers and you don’t know what to do with 8 blockers…

This stuff is great. One week and you’re getting me fired up to hopefully watch this come to life. LHN should give you a cut of the money they make off their 20 subscribers.

I am about to lay my house on Texas-23 over Rice. Free money.

Great stuff as always, one thing I’d like to add about the fly (load) option is that the defensive end is purposely left unblocked and read much like with zone read, if he hangs the ball is handed off, if he crashes you’ve got load option to the outside. The lead blocker should then then go block the alley player while the apex/force is read for the pitch.

Check out this write-up I put together awhile back for more info (treat the slot receiver as the load blocker):

http://www.thegamingtailgate.com/forums/content.php?434-Shotgun-Inside-Read-and-Triple-Part-Two

Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places. I think I was 6. I have recovered to lead a fairly normal life.

Thanks for another fantastic article! Love the final video – delightful 80’s cheese, all the way. Brilliant!

Very interesting, thanks. Monroe is such a unique talent it will be nice to think he will be creatively utilized not only as a ball carrier but as a deadly decoy once he burns the defense.

Oneback,

Really glad you stopped by. I definitely get the read… that also gives the defensive end time to collect and respond. I just question it in practice in this league. My concern is that an athletic defensive end is able to run down the QB before he gets wide enough to get the 2 on 1 with the linebacker and/or the linebacker is free to attack the pitch man because the end can take away the inside from the QB.

Like a 13 year old boy wrestling with the strange yet exciting new feelings that come with the early stages of puberty who is caught completely offguard by the boob flash scene in “Just One of Guys,” I was similarly blindsided by the sudden stirring in my pants when I discovered this post.

Truly enjoy all your work sir. Absolutely spot on and I am giddy like a school boy with football just a week away!

I thought you knew what you were talking about with these articles until I heard you speak and realized you are 15 years old. So, never mind.

In conversation with another Longhorn years ago, I asked how a hard-working, hard-driving coach could so quickly look like a softer version of the Pillsbury Doughboy. We decided he was just fat and lazy. Bye, Greg.

I am so glad that DJ finally learned the ‘plays’. Run, DJ, Run!

Needs more Cow Bell !!!

Great stuff

Codger Ransom, glad to see you haven’t changed.

Sheesh!

After enduring the nightmare that was the Wildhorn, I don’t know if I have fully come to terms with the fact that we might be running two Harsin-authored wildcats. It’s like Christmas all over again when I got 15 different Transformers. I didn’t know what to think. And watching our offense can be fun again. I just don’t know if it has hit me yet. It will when I am jumping around my living room screeching like a little school girl. At that moment, I will realize that I “get” that things have changed.

It’s like a 5-7 cluster has masked that inevitable truth. GD was not meant to be OC at Texas forevar.

LonghornScott,

I agree this could be a concern, however there are some things schematically that can be done to marginalize the athletic mismatch (unfortunately VY isn’t back there anymore). We can place a tight end to the read side with DJ in the slot opposite. Bring DJ in arc motion and have the tight end arc block linebacker to safety which will basically pin the defensive end who is in a head up or inside shade to the inside allowing the QB to get outside as the DE now has to fight through the TE’s release. As long as he is forced to go under the TE’s release the QB should be able to get outside. If the DE is in an outside shade of the TE the chances of him keying the QB are high so you can either pat and go with the TE to pin him outside and run inside zone. Not a true triple read but it gives you the ability to still threaten the outside with the play when an athletic DE starts to give you problems.

ransom,
 
Can you move you default setting from blood hemorrhoid back to miserable? Thanks.

On the last weekend of the year without college football and after a gut-wrenching season of watching the two remaining brain cells of GDGD attempting to read his decayed Pop Warner script, this is a life reviving, oasis article from Longhorn Scott. That was great! The videos really show the points well. I now have the strength to last another week. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks once again LHS. I appreciate the high production value with the diagrams and videos. I’m a regular reader of the website SmartFootball, which is consistently a very good read, but his diagrams are often scanned pen and paper illustrations. Your posts are the best I’ve seen of its kind.

burntoj,
there’s probably an ancient mating dance that looked exactly like football. It’s not our fault, it’s biology. Now never describe anything like that ever again.

randsomstoddard,
If i haven’t threatened you with my homo erotic theme and I didn’t frighten you with my casual academic inquiry tone then I don’t know what else to do. What’s it going to take!? Should I show up at your favorite place of macho wearing pasties and tattered converse, offer your friends some fresh veggies and hummus, and then dominance hump you while humming a White Stripes tune?

Balltastic Motivization,
watch out for fan blades, I’ve swatted at least three in spastic energized football watching moments. It’s such a double edged sword because football makes you nervous sweat and you need the fan on, dammit.

Oneback,
Thanks for the last post, you’re articulating some specifics and I was just generally saying… we may need to address Big 12 d-ends in a different manner. I think I communicated it but I’m certainly not suggesting we wouldn’t be able to adjust, just that we probably will need to and we are in more than capable hands in that regard. I’ve wondered about the tight ends using an arc technique in general in this offense… I didn’t see it on film for the games I have from last year from Boise but it certainly seems like a natural part of the progression from the off-tackle stuff we are developing.

manocornuda,
that’s about the best compliment I could receive but I am consistently blown away by the quality of stuff on smartfootball and brophyfootball. I’m a huge fan of any site that likes to talk nitty gritty but those two do it especially well and I always learn something when those guys share.

LHS,

I know, I’m just dying for some real football so any chance to talk about it gets me geeked…keep up the great work as always.

I’m sorry, LHS, but the way GD constantly teased us with the two plays a game in which he put the ball in DJ’s hands while the rest of the offense floundered was the cruelest tease ever perpetrated on a being capable of longing.

The narrated highlights w/ slo-mo and reverse are take it to another level.

For speed Wildcat I’d choose M. Thompson and for power I’d choose Demarco Cobbs. Both had success running out of the QB position in hs. Cobbs could probably sell power and flip it into speed if the D was playing tendency.

Geneviève Bujold in Swashbuckler.

The final video was enough to get me out of troll mode….beautiful.

Great analysis to boot.

Thank you for posting videos with explanations. That is the type of stuff I’ve been wanting someone to teach me. More please! I mean, why waste my time trying to find a guy I need to keep happy when I can just come to BC!

Seriously. It amazes me how many of you are posting on a Saturday evening. I mean, I’m single and in law school, so I’m a loser by necessity. The rest of you really need to get a life. ;-)

Geez, some of you guys need to give your Sarcasm Detectors a thump and make sure they are still working.

Maybe this will help: LHS, your articles are great and I especially enjoy the video [and now audio] enhancements.

Sasha,
My girlfriend is in brno right now and I tend to turn into a cave dweller as soon as she leaves town. What do normal people do, interact in person!?

ransom,
I definitely knew you were joking and I hope you read my response in kind. 17 maybe but not 15… 15 is clearly a joke. I mean I can totally buy cigarettes and concentualize relations… and some day I will.

Scott, based on the practice reports, I’m pretty sure I know who’ll play Chris Potter’s role and it’s not David Ash, although he’ll get some zone read run. Email me at recruitocosm@gmail.com and I’ll fill you in. After reading your post and watching the video, it all makes perfect sense with respect to all the special packages we’re running in practice.

Great work as usual. Thanks man.

Your response was classic. Your article dovetails with an interview with Rob Ryan in which he said, among other things, that defenses are so fast these days that offenses have to think of creative ways to buy a second’s hesitation—-whether its misdirection, play fake, or multiple options.

I am always amazed, when watching screen plays to the outside, how many times lateral pursuit stops the play. In many cases several olineman will be out front lead blocking, looking staight up field, but the insde pursuit usually makes the tackle. Rarely do the olinemen(or even a single olinemen) seal the inside, which if done would lead to a much more successful play.

I pray to God our perimeter blocking kicks it up a notch or two higher than what we’ve seen in the past. With the scheme to match the talent toting the rock, that’s the difference between no gain and the potential for a big play.

I see a lot of easy reads for the QB (he need only be able to count) that puts the defense under duress with moderate to high rewards for above average execution. In other words, it’s the antithesis of everything GD since VY left with the ZR base offense. Love it.

Really love the video segments. Just to offer some constructive criticism, I’d recommend you use the term “face-rape” more often in your analysis.
Thanks,
Big Dave Lapham fan

I don’t have the knowledge to add anything, so I’ll simply say thanks LHS and job very well done, as usual. The narrated video clips are outstanding. BC and the Cosm are blessed with knowledgeable and humorous authors.

Outstanding… just outstanding stuff here. Love the video breakdowns, thank you for putting in the time to break this down, frame by frame. I’ve understood conceptually how much creativity we were lacking under GD, but this really helped me visualize the difference between structuring your offense around the skills your players actually possess and building up preconceptions in a defense that you can exploit vs. just throwing shit out there. Stunning to think that, on the rare occasion when things did work last year, GD was patently unaware as to why.

Seven days still seems like an eternity, is it too early to start tailgating tonight?

Hold on to the ball D.J.

You guys are awesome and I believe I speak on behalf of all Longhorn fans with penis-drawing affinity when I say: we really appreciate the time and effort that goes into breakdowns like this. Just phenomenal.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I really understood any of it. But that’s on me.

LHS – Simply great stuff. Thanks for adding the audio + slo mo to the clips. Much quicker to pick up than watching, rewatching, rereading, rewatching….. Simply some of the best stuff of the internet for football. And I’m so glad they’ve found Dj’s helmet so he can play. Thanks for your continued efforts. Hook ’em!

Julie Andrews. S.O.B.

I’m surprised I still like sex.

On the more pressing topic, I add my thanks on the voiceovers. More of this stuff! And less of the stuff that’s not this stuff!

barbara bach force ten from navarrone

Beverly D’Angelo in Vacation. Still remember pausing that shower scene frame over and over and over…

regarding play design given the big, fast d-ends in the big 12, major, bruce, darrell, and oscar have recent experience that will no doubt influence how we incorporate boise play design into the big 12.

excellent break down…love the videos. great work.

IF we can make the blocks, we have the personnel and speed to make big gains on these type of plays. I could see wearing a defense down in the 4th with these packages. Moving the chains and chewing the clock. I know Mack loves the sound of that.

Thanks, Scott.

Again and again we see the essence of what Harsin is doing – putting FUD in the minds of the defenders, at least to the extent that defensive football players can be said to have minds.

We will see more of this as the season progresses – a play that starts out looking like THAT play… and, like Monty Python, turns into something completely different, and defenders are caught going the wrong way, being too far away to catch up, even running right by the guy with the ball. The whole idea is to make every defender absolutely HAVE to stop and think about what’s happening, to diagnose, to read and react… and that fraction of a second delay is all that is needed to make the play successful.

Somewhere last year I read Harsin (or maybe Petersen) saying that every play was designed to score, provided that the defense did what was expected, and everyone carried out their fakes and their blocks correctly… the plays shown here made that quite evident – there were several with equal numbers of blockers and defenders in the play that you can look at and say “Damn, if #80 makese his block, that’s six.”

Boys and girl(s?), I got a feeling we’re gonna see a whole lot of wow over the next few months (and beyond, of course, but…). DJ will be part of it, but we have some others who get down the field pretty quickly…

More please. Where do I send my $9.99?

To Tipsy Gypsie, c/o Recruitocosm. Thanks!

ransom,
absolutely. Harsin clears believes that it takes physical and mental advantages for the offense to succeed and you can see he is willing to intelligently experiment until he finds them. That’s the fun thing is that I feel like we are going to get taught by this coaching staff on both sides of the ball the next few years. They are running a real world experiment and still expanding their knowledge.

sunset,
no doubt. getting a linemen who plays heads up and will take away those side swipers will do wonders. Athletes know how to make guys miss who they are square with, it’s what they have been doing their whole life… it’s the shear stress that gets em. Same thing with blocking for running backs, give them a clear read and get them square and they will make things happen for you. Give them a muddled read and backfield penetrators and they aren’t going to trust a damn thing.

Cult,
thanks… glad you’re into it.

Dave,
truth. we may be frustrated with him at times as a result but we need his big play threat to help our fledgling offense. Now if he continues to struggle with fumbles that’s a whole nother can of worms.

thujone,
you don’t have to understand a damn thing, just keep being the funniest sob around.

il cattivo,
absolutely. execution from the line will help us build consistency, avoid negative plays, and set up the play action game but execution from the h-backs, tight ends, and wide receivers is where the big plays come from in the run game and it will determine our upside in our base power stuff.

Bobby_B,
yea I think in general we are giving plays a lot cleaner reads in this offense. Its not something that is talked a lot about but it’s of huge importance… especially in generating buy in from the players over the coarse of the season. If you give players confusing decisions, ask them to execute, and then hammer them for mistakes it’s not going to work out. Petersen/Harsin have done a great job of designing a system that is really modular, simple but also expansive and the results are obvious.

hoyahorn,
that comment keeps cracking me up everytime I think of his blathering brainscape.

topo,
that’s what attracted me to the video format and its why i wanted to test it out… just allows us to get to the detail much quicker. I’m pleased it seems to be translating well.

yeh,
thats a great point. Applewhite makes a great sidekick for Harsin for a variety of reasons but that’s one of the biggest ones… he knows our opponents really well and he’s probably been itching to try some new ideas on what he sees every year.

Tex Long,
I’m pretty sure that was a quote from Harsin. To me the point is that they basically overcompensate schematically to give themselves as much of an advantage as possible. They know they aren’t going to get execution across the board on average but they are still going to make their living and then when things do come together its huge. It also is completely tied to play calling. I’m trying to put something together in that regard and hopefully I can get it done sometime in the next few days.

bevobackside,
sent it to Scipio and maybe he can go pick up this month’s rag on “Human Waste, Composting, and Meatless Tailgating” from his local, West Bay college football outlets.

The on screen boob mentions feel like an AA meeting. We are a demented bunch.

What TexLong said. I’d just add that it will be fun to watch how frustrated the defense and the defensive coordinators get.

great stuff scott!!

every notice how GG always put the ball either on the wrong shoulder or make the receiver jump or stoop to catch even his short throws, that alone costs that split second that could make or break these kind of timing plays…

BTW, I saw loverboy last year and mike reno is now weighing in at about 300 lbs. i was calling it the “Get Chunky” tour…

mileslong,

yes. Ball placement matters (maybe the most on short routes). We didn’t exactly develop a lot of reps in short passes that hit targets moving upfield last year or crossing the middle and I do think there’s a lot of skill development involved, it’s not just a talent thing. Unsure pocket begets poor footwork begets inconsistent mechanics.

That note about Mike Reno is hilarious and depressing. Fat Canadians? What does it all mean?

oops.

couldn’t remember what i said so went back to read it, and realized i should have mentioned duane, as well. i did not — intentionally — because we were talking about defensive end play and only included oscar in my comment because that’s what he coaches. in retrospect, my comment was so general that i should have expanded it to include duane’s input, also, because i’m sure he has a lot to say about big 12 defensive play around the conference. i was responding, though, to the comments about big, fast big 12 d-ends.

MOAR!!!

Amazing stuff. Please do more.