Pass defense schemes...

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Golden Elephant

Golden Elephant

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Alright, I've got something that's been bothering me for years now, and seeing as how I don't have any 1-on-1 meetings scheduled with Jerry Kill or any of his assistants, I figured I'd ask the fine football minds here at the Hole.

Here's my question - why does any team (cough, our Gophers, cough) ever play DBs 10 yards off the WRs? The answer I've heard and guessed to this is that you want to avoid giving up deep passes. But it seems to me that it's just as easy - often times easier - for a WR to run 7 yards, make a move and get around a guy than if the DB was running with him from the line of scrimmage (and is able to jam him in the 1st 5 yards, and is running the same direction as the WR the whole time instead of trying to figure out if they need to backpedal or attack). And you add in the fact that you're just offering the other team 5-10 yards any time they can throw a reasonably accurate pass and not drop it, and it just seems like a horribly idiotic scheme to me. The worst is when it's 3rd & 2 or 3rd & 5 and we're effectively conceding the 1st down. If they can run that play in practice, it's a 1st down because we have no chance to stop it - we just pray for a bad throw or dropped ball.

On Thursday, the first sequence we were 10 yards off and they marched down the field. The 2nd series and for the rest of the game we came up to the LOS and they had a lot more trouble moving the ball. So can anyone help me out and tell me why we do this? I only played football through HS and on the O side of the ball, so I don't have any deep understanding of defensive schemes, but it'd be nice to understand this as I watch the game. Will we always do this and I should assume it's working if TDs aren't scored on deep passes (though they will be scored on and set up by 5 yard slants and outs every time)?
 

1. Defensive schemes to have successful pass defense schemes: Everyone is perfect on defense, and everyone on opponents offense screws up. Simple scheme on paper.
 

I don't know if this directly answers your question, but here goes. When I was listening to the post-game show on the radio, they were interviewing Sawvel. He was very happy with how the DBs played, and indicated that they were willing to let UNLV have the short passes. On the first drive, they wanted to make sure that one of the young CBs didn't bite and get beat deep. They also didn't know what type of offense UNLV was going to run. Sawvel said that Sherry is prone to make mistakes, and that the game plan was to let this happen over the course of the game. He thought the DBs tackled well and seemed very pleased with how they executed the game plan.
 

prevent corners

I used to think we did that back in the days of Mason when we had slow db's. I think Tremaine Banks was our best corner and at the combine he ran a 4.65 40. Now with faster db's you would think we would play, if not bump and run, at least only giving a 5 yard cushion. One think i noticed some was that we could not stop the run so i think at least one safety was helping out there so only one side of the field had over the top coverage. I was very upset that we got outphysicaled on both lines, you would think thats where a big ten team should have an advantage. Giving up 419 yards is pretty ugly no matter the scheme. Lots of teams actually play their corners off the ball and expect that wr to get tackled right when he catches it, unfortunatly that didn't always happen.


Golden Elephant said:
Here's my question - why does any team (cough, our Gophers, cough) ever play DBs 10 yards off the WRs? The answer I've heard and guessed to this is that you want to avoid giving up deep passes. But it seems to me that it's just as easy - often times easier - for a WR to run 7 yards, make a move and get around a guy than if the DB was running with him from the line of scrimmage (and is able to jam him in the 1st 5 yards, and is running the same direction as the WR the whole time instead of trying to figure out if they need to backpedal or attack). And you add in the fact that you're just offering the other team 5-10 yards any time they can throw a reasonably accurate pass and not drop it, and it just seems like a horribly idiotic scheme to me. The worst is when it's 3rd & 2 or 3rd & 5 and we're effectively conceding the 1st down. If they can run that play in practice, it's a 1st down because we have no chance to stop it - we just pray for a bad throw or dropped ball.
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It was obvious right away the gameplan was to keep UNLV from hitting big, momentum changing plays and that we thought we'd be able to tackle their quick hitters and eventually disrupt them. I think it took some time for the corners to get a good "feel" of what the receivers were capable of.
You force an offense like UNLV to take what is given to them and be perfect. One simple miscue and it can be an INT or a drop, or a incompletion and then you're in 2 and 10 or 3rd and 10 and the D can pin back it's ears and attack if it wants.
 


I re-watched most of the game and didn't see our DBs 10 yards off the LOS ever, 7 at the most. Most of the time on 3rd and short, they were maybe 5.

It's all about not giving up a big play. If the receiver is three yards off the LOS, he gets a free 3 yard acceleration zone. Once he makes a move, he's at full speed and the DB is maybe at quarter speed and trying to catch up.

This isn't a video game. The DB doesn't know what the WR is thinking.

Keep the WR in front of you, don't give up a big play. Our pass defense gave up 4.43 yards per attempt, which is outstanding. UNLV was 6 or 18 on 3rd down. We gave up 2 red zone scores in four attempts, which was 2nd best in the NCAA (and we scored on the other two).
 

Sawvel said later he thought the corners were tentative on that first drive, i.e. if they are off the line, they are not supposed to just sty there until the ball is thrown.
 

My educated guess as a former collegiate DB is this:
1) Coaches did not have a great idea of the scheme they were going to see so they decided to play a little soft and get a feel for both the speed and talent level of UNLV receivers, as well as the scheme. No big plays early is a main coaching objective when you feel you have far superior talent level.
2) We were playing some quarters coverage. When playing young corners and not offering safety help over the top you tend to give more cushion. This puts more pressure on the LB to cover flats (in cover 3 and 4) and with our presumed increase in athletic ability at OLB, we likely felt comfortable with this scheme as a safe starting scheme.
3) When receivers cushion are decreased its usually because we view ourselves as having superior corners to receivers (as Boddy and Murray proved from 2Q on) or a change in scheme (i.e. man or cover 2).

People get really worked up about receiver cushions, but a lot of times it is only used to get a feel of your opponent/prevent big plays while feeling out your opponent and because a schematic reason for giving that cushion. I remember screaming at the TV two years ago when we were at USC because we seemed to give Robert Woods 10 yard cushions, but we figured we were safer giving 6 yard gains than trying to cover him downfield. There is a lot of pick your poison in the defensive back 7.

This is just my insight and I'll be honest, I have not reviewed game film or anything like that.
 

highwayman said:
I re-watched most of the game and didn't see our DBs 10 yards off the LOS ever, 7 at the most. Most of the time on 3rd and short, they were maybe 5.

It's all about not giving up a big play. If the receiver is three yards off the LOS, he gets a free 3 yard acceleration zone. Once he makes a move, he's at full speed and the DB is maybe at quarter speed and trying to catch up.

This isn't a video game. The DB doesn't know what the WR is thinking.

Keep the WR in front of you, don't give up a big play. Our pass defense gave up 4.43 yards per attempt, which is outstanding. UNLV was 6 or 18 on 3rd down. We gave up 2 red zone scores in four attempts, which was 2nd best in the NCAA (and we scored on the other two).
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I agree with all of this, highwayman. But, what about UNLV being 4 for 4 on 4th downs? No concern about that? Just asking.
 



gophervet said:
My educated guess as a former collegiate DB is this:
1) Coaches did not have a great idea of the scheme they were going to see so they decided to play a little soft and get a feel for both the speed and talent level of UNLV receivers, as well as the scheme. No big plays early is a main coaching objective when you feel you have far superior talent level.
2) We were playing some quarters coverage. When playing young corners and not offering safety help over the top you tend to give more cushion. This puts more pressure on the LB to cover flats (in cover 3 and 4) and with our presumed increase in athletic ability at OLB, we likely felt comfortable with this scheme as a safe starting scheme.
3) When receivers cushion are decreased its usually because we view ourselves as having superior corners to receivers (as Boddy and Murray proved from 2Q on) or a change in scheme (i.e. man or cover 2).

People get really worked up about receiver cushions, but a lot of times it is only used to get a feel of your opponent/prevent big plays while feeling out your opponent and because a schematic reason for giving that cushion. I remember screaming at the TV two years ago when we were at USC because we seemed to give Robert Woods 10 yard cushions, but we figured we were safer giving 6 yard gains than trying to cover him downfield. There is a lot of pick your poison in the defensive back 7.

This is just my insight and I'll be honest, I have not reviewed game film or anything like that.
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All very good points.
 

John Galt said:
I don't know if this directly answers your question, but here goes. When I was listening to the post-game show on the radio, they were interviewing Sawvel. He was very happy with how the DBs played, and indicated that they were willing to let UNLV have the short passes. On the first drive, they wanted to make sure that one of the young CBs didn't bite and get beat deep. They also didn't know what type of offense UNLV was going to run. Sawvel said that Sherry is prone to make mistakes, and that the game plan was to let this happen over the course of the game. He thought the DBs tackled well and seemed very pleased with how they executed the game plan.
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Hum:confused: Who am I to believe here? According to some of our experts here our pass defense was terrible yet Sawvel was happy. It is so confusing.
 

Thanks for the answers everyone, especially gophervet & John Galt. As for the 10 yards, I guess I was looking at the separation between the DB & WR. I haven't re-watched the game, but I definitely remember counting a full 10 yards in there - maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, I still hate that scheme, but from the 2nd series on when they were mostly up on the WRs I thought they did pretty decent at coverage. Like others have mentioned, I definitely thought Eric Murray did a nice job.

I guess I understand the general idea on this, highwayman, but my contention all along is: if - as you point out - you'd be giving up a 3-yard acceleration zone if you're at the LOS, how is giving the WR a 10-yard acceleration zone better? This didn't happen Thursday, but in years past I've seen plenty of times where the DB is playing 7 yards back or whatever, then the WR makes a hard step one direction and goes around the DB the other direction. The DB is back pedaling then turns around and starts sprinting and the WR easily gets 2-3 steps beyond him. So it's always seemed like it not only just concedes 5-8 yards every play, but that it doesn't make it any easier to stop the deep ball.
 

I think another thing to keep in mind for the UNLV game is that we knew that Sherry had a lot of problems last year. He wasn't accurate and he threw the ball to the other team a lot. Part of playing "soft" is the gamble that he will make a mistake before they score. I think it was a smart strategy against UNLV and it worked (they had picks, UNLV struggled a bit closing out drives, etc). So it worked, even on a game where Sherry played over his head or at least considerably better than last year.

The pass defense seemed to bother some people, it didn't bother me in the slightest.
 



e.bigelow said:
I agree with all of this, highwayman. But, what about UNLV being 4 for 4 on 4th downs? No concern about that? Just asking.
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Forcing a team into 4th down and a chance to turn them over is preferred. We could be like Nebraska and give up 600 yds. on mostly 1st & 2nd down. Both teams are 1-0 and can show improvement this week.
 

e.bigelow said:
I agree with all of this, highwayman. But, what about UNLV being 4 for 4 on 4th downs? No concern about that? Just asking.
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Annually, the average Third down rate is 40%. Fourth down rate is 50%. If anyone can explain that, you can get your answer.

My theory is that (in general) the yardage to go on 4th down is less than that on 3rd. The upside to UNLV's 4 for 4 on 4th down was that they were 0 for 4 on those third downs.

According to the box score:
3rd and 1, 4th and 1
3rd and 2, 4th and 1
3rd and 4, 4th and 6
3rd and 2, 4th and 1

Average 3rd and 2.25, 4th and 2.25. The fact is that the D gave up an average of 0 yards on those third downs, and that is spectacular. They gave up 46 yards on the 4th down plays, but 34 came on one play. It is a weird stat.

The D gave up 77 yards on 18 third down plays (4.25 per play) , 42 coming on one play. That means 35 yards on 17 the other third down plays, an average of 2 yards a play. Damn impressive.
 

As Highway and others have pointed out, we successfully prevented their offense from making big plays through the air while at the same time making a couple of big ones on pass defense and in particular the pick-6. Not that you would but if you subtract those pick 89-yards or whatever it was from UNLV's passing totals, their net doesn't look very good. Bottom line, not a bad defensive outing against the pass.
 

highwayman said:
Annually, the average Third down rate is 40%. Fourth down rate is 50%. If anyone can explain that, you can get your answer.

My theory is that (in general) the yardage to go on 4th down is less than that on 3rd. The upside to UNLV's 4 for 4 on 4th down was that they were 0 for 4 on those third downs.

According to the box score:
3rd and 1, 4th and 1
3rd and 2, 4th and 1
3rd and 4, 4th and 6
3rd and 2, 4th and 1

Average 3rd and 2.25, 4th and 2.25. The fact is that the D gave up an average of 0 yards on those third downs, and that is spectacular. They gave up 46 yards on the 4th down plays, but 34 came on one play. It is a weird stat.

The D gave up 77 yards on 18 third down plays (4.25 per play) , 42 coming on one play. That means 35 yards on 17 the other third down plays, an average of 2 yards a play. Damn impressive.
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Good point on the bold. :) Good points all around.

I think it is the one big play on 4th down which resulted in the long TD (pretty much was a broken play, pretty darn hard to defend) that is skewing my thoughts.
 

e.bigelow said:
Good point on the bold. :) Good points all around.

I think it is the one big play on 4th down which resulted in the long TD (pretty much was a broken play, pretty darn hard to defend) that is skewing my thoughts.
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Actually, the broken play would have been very easy to defend, Shabaz had a much better route to the ball than the receiver did, but he lost the play somehow.
Hopefully that is a once a year type of play for the dbacks. I saw Sawvwl asking him what happened when he came off the field. (He did not jump him by the way, just talked to him.) I don't think Shabaz played D for about the next quarter after that play.
Basically both of their first half touch downs came on large mistakes, one by Shabaz and one by Wilson.
Given that this defense seems to have a critical need for good reads from LBs and Safetys and we are playing a bunch of new guys, we can only hope a lot of this is corrected by Iowa. It is what blew us up last season.
 

corcoran1 said:
Actually, the broken play would have been very easy to defend, Shabaz had a much better route to the ball than the receiver did, but he lost the play somehow.
Hopefully that is a once a year type of play for the dbacks. I saw Sawvwl asking him what happened when he came off the field. (He did not jump him by the way, just talked to him.) I don't think Shabaz played D for about the next quarter after that play.
Basically both of their first half touch downs came on large mistakes, one by Shabaz and one by Wilson.
Given that this defense seems to have a critical need for good reads from LBs and Safetys and we are playing a bunch of new guys, we can only hope a lot of this is corrected by Iowa. It is what blew us up last season.
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Do you think the second td was a mistake by Wilson? I noticed Campbell turned his back on that long td run (he thought it was a pass).
 

highwayman said:
Annually, the average Third down rate is 40%. Fourth down rate is 50%. If anyone can explain that, you can get your answer.

My theory is that (in general) the yardage to go on 4th down is less than that on 3rd. The upside to UNLV's 4 for 4 on 4th down was that they were 0 for 4 on those third downs.

According to the box score:
3rd and 1, 4th and 1
3rd and 2, 4th and 1
3rd and 4, 4th and 6
3rd and 2, 4th and 1

Average 3rd and 2.25, 4th and 2.25. The fact is that the D gave up an average of 0 yards on those third downs, and that is spectacular. They gave up 46 yards on the 4th down plays, but 34 came on one play. It is a weird stat.

The D gave up 77 yards on 18 third down plays (4.25 per play) , 42 coming on one play. That means 35 yards on 17 the other third down plays, an average of 2 yards a play. Damn impressive.
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Once again proving the stout nature of this defense. All the naysayers from last week can just approach their reproach without the roach.
 

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