By Dustin Ragusa
If you want to check out Parts 1 and 2 of this week’s film review, where I take a look at the overall scheme and the rushing attack, they can be found on the PFB+ Forum.
For today’s post, I’m going to take a look at how Oklahoma State attacked the Baylor defense through the air.
Passing Game
Quick Passing Game
The Cowboys went to the short route passing game, specifically the speed out route, early and often in this one. On this route, the wide receiver will normally take three steps and then break outside. He will use a “speed-cut,” in which he will try to get outside quickly and not worry about making a square cut to the sideline.
In this first clip below, you’ll see wideout Braydon Johnson as the intended receiver. Quarterback Spencer Sanders sees the cornerback over Johnson lined up in off coverage and playing with inside leverage (or lining up off the line of scrimmage and inside Johnson). This tells Sanders the speed out will be open. He motions to running back Dezmon Jackson to abort the run action, takes the snap and fires the ball to Johnson for the first down. See the clips below.
Next, we see the Pokes hit on the speed out again. Below you’ll see OSU in 11 personnel with Trips (three receivers) and a Cowboy back on the line of scrimmage to the field, or wide side.
As you can see above, both of the outside receivers run go routes, taking two of the defensive backs with them. The inside receiver, Landon Wolf, runs a speed out. With the safety for Baylor (No. 4) playing inside of Wolf, he has no chance to defend this route.
The Cowboys ran this same play again later in the game, shown below.
Here you’ll see the Cowboys use pre-snap motion to cause some confusion for the Bear defense and hit the speed out again.
The Pokes went to this play again in the fourth quarter, but this time the Baylor defense saw it coming and made an adjustment for the motion man. Seeing this, Sanders moves to the next route in his progression and hits Wolf over the middle.
Offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn had a nice game plan in terms of the passing attack against Baylor. He definitely liked what he saw on film, especially in regards to the quick passing game.
Power Run-Pass Option (RPO)
In Part 2 of this week’s film review, I talked about Power. The Power blocking scheme normally involves a backside lineman pulling around to the play side to lead block through the hole. OSU ran this play several times out of a few different formations last Saturday. In addition, they tagged a pass option to this play, as you’ll see in the following clip.
Here’s another example of the play above.
Dillon Stoner
Stoner was absolutely spectacular against the Bears. He finished the game with eight receptions (on 12 targets) for 247 yards and three touchdowns. He displayed a variety of different skills and was getting open all over the field. First, you’ll see him make a spectacular catch on a Shallow concept. With the defender lined up in press coverage, Stoner knows to run a go route. The safety to Stoner’s side is occupied by the dig route run by Cowboy back Logan Carter, leaving Stoner with one-on-one coverage.
Sanders also found Stoner in this Mesh concept, which I wrote about from the TCU game, as well.
A traditional mesh concept involves two offensive skill players running crossing routes from opposite sides of the field. As their routes intersect at around six yards from the line of scrimmage, one player runs underneath and one over, and they get close enough that they could reach out and slap hands.
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In the red zone, OSU felt comfortable letting Stoner make a play on the fade route, and it worked out in the Cowboys’ favor.
Dunn also got Stoner involved in the wide receiver screen game. As you’ll see below, the Cowboys have a Cowboy back split out wide to the right side with Stoner and utilize him as the lead blocker on the screen. I really like the WR screen game with the Cowboy backs split wide as both Carter and Jelani Woods are outstanding blockers.
Against TCU, there wasn’t a lot of variety to the Cowboy passing attack. Dunn had a game plan and seemed to stick to it. As you can see, that was not the case against Baylor. The Pokes weren’t doing a lot of stuff we haven’t seen them do before, but they had a nice mix of different route concepts and formations, and it paid off last Saturday.