We’re back! Sort of. Our offense actually looked really good for a half and pretty good for a quarter. Lots of small reasons and one big reason. Small reasons include Malcolm Williams in the starting lineup, moving Jordan Shipley back to the slot and the fact that the Missouri secondary was uniformly dumb.
But the biggest reason that the offense was successful is that we decided that using play action is legal. Once we decided that it was, it allowed us to actually use our tendencies against the Missouri defense.
So let’s take a look at a few plays that show how using play action helped us.
1. First play of the game. Shipley in the slot left with a linebacker over him (really, Missouri?). We fake our zone play to Fozzy, and the linebacker over Shipley takes a few steps playside. Shipley runs a short out, and then easily jukes the linebacker who is out of position. Thirty yards later Shipley is tackled. Now most of it was a great play by Shipley, but you can use play action to make it easier for Colt to get him the ball.
2. Second and goal on the same drive. The play before we ran Cody Johnson on our zone play. The Missouri strong safety comes up hard, but Johnson shakes him off. Next play we use play action (flow, no fake), the strong safety gets caught in no man’s land after coming up and Shipley scores untouched.
3. Next drive on 3rd and 2 at the Missouri 20. We bring in Lamarr Houston and Johnson for our jumbo set. The weakside defensive end crashes at the snap of the ball, but McCoy fakes it and rolls out instead with Antwan Cobb blocking. Easy first down.
4. Next drive 1st and 10 from the Missouri 34. We again fake our zone play to Johnson, but McCoy rolls away from it. All three Missouri linebackers crash leaving a wide open Jordan Shipley to drag the vacated zone behind them. But the strong safety has come up as well, and so there is no deep help for the corner on John Chiles. Easy td.
Football is hard.